Saturday, March 14, 2009

I've Been a Busy Girl

Since I last posted I've been busy! My brother brought me a few more items to try to sell and I've been back to the storage unit myself to bring more items out of the way so that I can clear that long path to my books! I had to put some stuff for sale on Craigs list to try to clean out my garage. I sold my old inversion table so that I can have room to set old furniture. I've had two antique dealers come to my house and buy a few things. That helped clear the clutter a little but I have a long way to go.

Right now I have an antique prayer chair and and antique chamber pot seat in my garage. I also have some antique oriental rugs. I've spent quite some time researching antique rugs to try to find an idea of the value of these I have. Not much luck with that research. We don't have a rug dealer in my town and apparently no rug appraiser either!

I ran an auction on ebay last week and sold 10 things. All of the women's antiquarian sewing books sold in bulk. They were a popular item and had a dozen people watching them! I put one of the old Oz books up and it sold for $17.50. I couldn't believe it! I put in my description how bad the Oz book was but the people were interested in the book's color plates which were still in good condition. So the lesson I learned is that if you have an old book that's really nasty, but the color plates or pictures are still in good shape, then this book will most likely sell. (If it's popular, rare or collectible to someone.)

The two antique dealers that came over told me not to change anything. They said even if I think something is too old, dirty, dingy, dusty...just leave it be. They said there are people who will take it in the poor condition I find it in and do whatever their project is. They said a big part of the appeal is that old, worn out look. So I've stopped being hard on items that I thought were beyond selling.

My sister sent me a link last week to a place called http://www.bonanzle.com/. I looked it over and liked it so much that I joined. It's like listing your items for sale in a place that combines ebay with craigs list. You can actually get a free account and click on a feature to show items near you that are for sale. The beauty in that is that you can find something you want to buy, go pick it up and not have to pay shipping! But you can still sell your items all over not just locally. Another good thing about it is that you can set up your booth, list your stuff for sale and leave your listing until it sells. In the meantime, you don't have to pay any fees if your item doesn't sell. When your item does sell, the fees charged are cheaper than ebays! So instead of listing my books here in my right column, I have added an RSS feed in my upper right column that leads to my booth at Bonanzle... and a widget too! Now if you want to see what I'm selling you can click on my inventory link or the widget and it will take you to my very pretty Bonanzle booth items! Cool huh?

I've only listed 7 items so far but I'm sure I'll be hanging out over there uploading more and more in the next coming days. Speaking of uploading more, I best be on my way to taking more pictures and getting them posted. Until next time....kat

2 comments:

  1. Bring the rugs by our Forum, you should be able to get some good insight!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Dave. I will gather up the rug numbers and names and visit your forum.

    ReplyDelete