In Finding A Profitable Collectible/Antique eBay Niche - Part III we looked at eBay to see if stereoviews were a potentially profitable sub-niche for an eBay business. We found from our initial research that there were several factors that detracted from their potential as a profitable sub-niche on ebay.
At this point most people would probably decide stereoviews weren’t a good prospect and begin looking for a different niche. However, stereoviews have two characteristics that make me think we should dig a little deeper.
- They are available at most antique shops, malls, and flea markets at reasonable prices
- There appears to be several smaller sub-niches to the stereoview sub-niche that warrant additional research
If you look closer there are some very obvious deeper sub-niches that show up.
The first one, and the one that regularly brings the highest prices realized, is complete boxed sets. Another is stereoviews of anything related to the Civil War. Any early Native American related stereoview looks like it’s also a good seller. Risqué stereoviews also sell well. Stereoviews of railroad locomotives also seem to sell well.
However, as well as all these smaller sub-niches sell on eBay, none of them meet the first criteria discussed in Finding A Profitable Collectible/Antique eBay Niche - Part I - They must be readily available in fair sized numbers. You will probably find numerous examples for sale in nearly every mall or flea market you go to.
While they sell well, they all are part of other highly collectible niches that dealers are very aware of so when you do find examples they are very likely to be priced pretty competitively. Neither do they fit several of my other criteria, so we need to dig deeper.
Since another important criteria is that items within a sub-niche regularly sell within the $25 to $50 range, let’s look at closed sales that ended in between those prices. If you once again go to stereoviews, completed sales, sort by “highest price first” you should find that pages 4 to 11 pretty much cover this price spread.
You will notice that quite a few of the cards on these pages show either street scenes or buildings from cities around the US and, to a lesser degree, in foreign countries.
Dig deeper and you will find that stereoviews within these two smaller sub-niches are a pretty good fit for the last five criteria we set for potential profitable eBay sub-niches. In my mind, these two sub-niches have enough potential that I’m going to begin actively buy stereoviews within these two sub-niches to list on eBay and see how well they will sell.
That’s the final step in the process - actually buying some examples of the potential sub-niche you’ve found and testing them on eBay.
Finally, while I’ve pointed out two potentially profitable sub-niches in this series of articles, when I originally did this research a couple weeks ago, I was able to find several other sub-niches that have a lot of potential. I challenge you to do some digging within the stereoview niche and see what other potentially profitable sub-niches you can come up with on your own.
I’m going to start buying examples of stereoviews within these niches and will be listing them on eBay under my paperpleasures46 user ID and I invite you to follow along and see how I do.
In Part V of this series we will finish up with some overall thoughts about finding profitable sub-niches on eBay and how they should fit into your plan of action if you decide to explore this niche.
Popularity: 9% [?]
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
