posted on October 27, 2004 07:03:07 AM new
I think it was you that said you have some old marbles to sell. We had some too, and don't know much about them. At first I was selling them in jars or cigar-box-fuls, a hundred at a time or so, but I changed to selling them one handful at a time and made much better money on them. Just draped a solid color cloth over a cereal bowl and dropped a handful in and did a close photo, then one more photo, zoomed in to a few of the more 'interesting' looking ones, (which I made sure some of the more interesting ones were placed close together in the bowl) and I let the buyers be the judge. ... I would start each handful auction at 99 cents (that's cheaper fee than starting it at $1.00) ... they sold for an around $4 or $5 per lot ... I would do up each listing and put them in a baggie marked (for instance) lot #428, etc. in sharpie pen, so I would reference each auction as 'Vintage small lot of marbles - lot#428' etc.; then my descrip would read something like, "Nice selection of vintage marbles from estate ... I know nothing about marble collecting so I just took a close-up photo of a few of the ones that 'look intersting' to me ... let me know if you have any questions I can answer" ... s/h $3.95.
Just thought I'd let you know. We ended up stretching a few big jars of marbles into many hundreds of auctions and really got some good money from some of them.
posted on October 27, 2004 09:10:13 AM new
I'm not Kevin, but I eavesdropped here anyway.
Good for you, getting good money for all those marbles. Wish I had some to sell right now.
I haven't begun to sell the 800 old postcards I have here, but I just bought one for our museum and got a great idea from that seller. He put the postcard in a plastic sleeve and marked the sleeve with the auction #. (I nearly had a heart attack when I got it in the mail, thinking the number was on the postcard itself.)
All of you people probably know this already, but I guess I'm not too old to learn.
posted on October 27, 2004 11:00:07 AM new
Thanks for the tip one the remaining few. I like the idea of the bowl! The others that I sold were very common and fairly new (within the past 20 years) but these others... good idea! As far as the auction # part, I already use little stickers, that I bought at a yard sale (probably 50000 of the silly things), and bags or boxes to store items in until they are sold. I sell to much of the same thing (Spheres) to be able to remember which was which without having all kinds of numbers on them. (Image number, ID number for pre-done listings, then auction number).
Once again, Thanks. New presentation idea to play with!!!
Kevin
posted on October 27, 2004 11:18:26 AM new
You're welcome! If you have the time to do them this way, it really does give the buyers a chance to see each and every marble in the 'lot' instead of a crapshoot (for them AND you). Just do them up to end 5 minutes apart or so, and some of them will bid them up to get combined shipping.
