If you are thinking about selling books on eBay or Amazon, I’ve just uploaded nine short videos from You Tube that provide some basic book selling tips for the beginner. I uploaded them as I found them, so they are in no particular order but each should stand on it’s own.

If you are reading this offline you will have to go the the blog to view them.

Photograph by Bing Ramos.

Popularity: 45% [?]

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This morning I visited a local thrift store to find that they had put out quite a few new books sometime yesterday.

When I walked in, a friend who buys books to sell on Amazon, was already there. He had several piles of books on the floor and was just putting his cell phone away when I arrived. One pile had three books in it, the others appeared to each be about 15 to 20 books high.

As I said ‘Good Morning’, he began putting all the books from the larger piles back on the shelves and said, ‘There’s lots of new books here, but you’re wasting your time looking at them. I’ve gone through all the new stuff and those three are the only ones worth buying. I just spent 30 minutes going through all these for three books I’ll probably get $40 for. It’s hardly enough to pay for the gas.’

As he walked up to the counter to pay for his three books, I went to the shelves where they regularly put out cookbooks and, within five minutes using ScoutPal, had found four cookbooks that I can list on Amazon for a total of roughly $85.
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Today is the beginning of a big weekend in Grand Forks.

The North Dakota State Democratic Convention is taking place here this weekend and in just a few hours both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will be addressing the Convention. Several hours before either candidate is scheduled to speak, the line outside the Alerus Center, where the convention is taking place, appears to contain half the people in Grand Forks.

For those not interested in seeing either candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination, at about the same time Senator Obama (the first speaker) steps onto the podium, the opening ceremonies of the week long World Curling Championships take place at the Ralph Engelstad Arena. While the line outside The Ralph isn’t as long as the one outside the Alerus, it’s still plenty long due to the number of people from our neighbor to the north, Canada, in town for the Championship.

Both events are receiving a lot of television coverage. Part of that coverage has focused on the lines waiting to get in each venue.

But the most important lines won’t appear until tomorrow morning and without any media coverage. Tomorrow morning will see the first garage sales of the year in Grand Forks and the people will be out in force. So far, there are four that have been advertised and they offer a range types of sale.

There will be an estate garage sale loaded with antiques, another sale that advertised lots of books, a church sponsored sale charging $2 for early buyer rights one hour before it opens to the public, and the last along the lines of an everyday garage sale.

Photograph by Mike Licht.

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Based upon last week’s poll, the majority of readers who voted would prefer to see another garage sale challenge.

Based on those results, I started thinking about whether this summer’s challenge should mirror last year’s, or if some changes might make it more interesting.

One of the changes I thought of was the possibility of having interested readers be able to set their own challenge and share their progress and final results with everyone on the blog.

That leads to a second question. If I can figure out some way to easily share your results with other readers,

Photograph by A. www.viajar24h.com.

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One year ago on The Auction Rebel I was just wrapping up the final $1000 A Month Thrift Store eBay Challenge and was starting to make plans for The $10,000 Garage Sale eBay Challenge that began in May.

I hadn’t given much thought to doing another Challenge this summer, but several readers have written and inquired if there would be one this summer, but if enough readers would like to see something similar over the next few months, I’ll consider it.

To gauge the level of interest I’ve set up a simple poll and encourage everyone to voice your opinions.

Photograph by Indy Charlie.

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It appears that eBay rolled out their previously announced Seller Dashboard sometime last weekend. The current version, dubbed by some as ‘Seller LIte’ doesn’t contain all the information that will eventually be included, but it does allow sellers to see what their Detailed Seller Rating (DSR) is over the last 30 day period of time.

For most sellers the portion of Seller Dashboard that will draw the most attention is Detailed Seller Ratings sectiion. The figures provided in this section are a 30-day average that is updated on a dialy basis.

Here’s what the currently functioning portion of Seller Dashboard looks like for my seller ID Paperpleasures46.

And a closeup of the DSR portion.

I don’t know if we will see it when the full version of Seller Dashboard is rolled out, but I think one change many sellers would appreciate is if the actual DSRs were displayed to two decimal points rather than only one as they re now.

While a rating of 4.87 might not cause much concern, if it dropped to 4.82 a seller could take steps to improve it before it dropped into the 4.7x range and possibly affected discounts and where their auctions appeared in ‘Best Match’.

I’m not going to go into a lot more about Seller Dashboard but for readers who would like more detail, Scott Wingo’s post eBay Releases Seller Dashboard (lite) For Tracking Those DSRs…. goes into quite a bit more detail.

I found his analogy of DSRs to the Bell Curve many teachers use for grading to be interesting and probably right on.

If you don’t know how to find your own Seller Dashboard just sign into eBay and go to My eBay. You will find ‘Seller Dashboard’ under ‘My Account’ in the left-hand sidebar.

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A short time ago in A Trip To The Thrift Stores I described one of the local stores as pricing their books pretty high and as a result their turnover was very slow Because of this nearly all the people in town looking for books had stopped going there.

Just a few days after writing that I made another visit to that thrift store around 11:00 in the morning. When I walked into their book room the shelves were nearly empty. As I was leaving I asked the woman behind the counter what happened to all the books.

Her response was that most of the books that were on the shelves had been there for more than a year and they were getting rid of them and putting new ones out. I said the reason they had been their that long was because they were priced too high. She told me she knew that and when new ones were put out they would be cheaper.

At 3:30 that afternoon I went back to find the same woman pulling books out of boxes and putting them on the shelves which were now about half full. I started building a pile of books. Most trade soft covers were priced at $.75. Mass market paperbacks were $.50. Hardcovers were mostly in the $1 to $2 range. About an hour later, when I left, I’d spent a little over $80 for several boxes of books.

The following day I went back again and the shelves were now full. This time my purchases came to a little over $65. When I paid for them the woman who had been shelving books the day before was once again behind the counter. We started talking and in the course of the conversation she told me they had boxes of books in storage that had dates on them showing they had been donated as long as three years ago. She also asked what kind of books I was interested in and gave her a general Idea.

I’ve been back every day since and each day the holes I left on the shelves the day before are filled. Most days there are also one or two boxes behind the counter containing books pertaining to the subjects I had told her I was interested in for me to look through. I’ve walked out of there each day with several good books, although nowhere near the number I bought the first two days.

The majority of them end up on Amazon and I’ve already sold enough have made a considerable profit above what I’ve spent so far.

Eventually one of the other book buyers in town will walk in there and the word will get around that it is now a good place to buy books. But until that time, I’m enjoying my time there and buying good inventory.

Some might say I got extremely lucky, but I prefer to think of it as a case of being persistent enough to keep putting myself in a place where good books had a chance to find me, even if it took quite a while before they did.

How persistent are you in your search for inventory for eBay? Have you given up on local shops or stores that never seem to pay off? They never will if you give up too early and stop checking fairly often.

Photograph by Greg Hickman.

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Prices within the antiques and collectibles marketplace are never static. They are always changing. At times these changes may be short term up or down fluctuations similar to the day-to-day swings in the stock market.

At other times the price changes within individual niches or sub-niches may be long term gradual increases or gradual decreases. Longer term changes, whether up or down, can be the result of a number of different factors, but normally they are brought on by collector interest and demand.

These changes were dramatically illustrated on eBay within the last two weeks with the sale of two items in the same collector niche.

The Eureka typewriter ribbon tin to the left sold for $32.50. This style of flat rectangular ribbon tin is among the earliest styles of ribbon tins and they are quite hard to find. Similar to this example, most of them have beautiful graphics.

Just a few years ago this tin would have easily brought $200 to $300 or more. These days, when they are offered on eBay, most flat rectangular ribbon tins sell in the $25 to $50 range. (As an aside, with some patience, you could put together a wonderful collection of these rare tins for very little money and you would have a collection very few others would have.)
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Every day new people start selling on eBay. The majority begin on a part-time basis. Being a part-time seller on eBay while holding a full-time job can, in some areas, put you at a disadvantage when competing with others who sell full-time. The following tips should help the part-time seller build a sound business foundation while being successful.

1. Learn time management skills - When you are working a full-time job, there’s not always a lot of time to devote to eBay. Factor in time obligations to family and friends, and there is even less time. Learning even the most rudimentary time management skills will allow you to make the best use of the time you do have for eBay. These skills will be even more useful if you do decide to sell full-time in the future.

2. Reinvest most of your profits - With a full-time income from your job, You aren’t totally dependent on your income from eBay. You are able to reinvest all, or the majority, of your eBay earnings back into your business. Doing so can dramatically increase the growth of your eBay business in it’s early stages.

3. Develop a good work ethic - When you only have a limited amount of time each day or week to devote to your business it’s important you make the most of it. The time you set aside for business should be used only for that. Don’t spend ‘work-time’ checking email, surfing the web, etc. Use every minute of it productively.

4. Do your research - As a part-time seller you may not be able to attend every sale, get to every yard sale, visit every thrift shop or antique mall during the week. That means you need to make every hour you do have for inventory acquisition as productive as possible. The way to do that is by increasing your knowledge base is by setting aside a definite amount of time for research each week.

5. Have a good bookkeeping system in place - Take the time to set up a complete bookkeeping system and use it faithfully right from the start. Knowing the financial condition of your business is just as important when you are selling part-time as it is when you are selling full-time.

6. Take educated risks - Don’t be afraid to take a calculated risk based on your research now and then. Risks can be learning experiences and as your experience and knowledge increases, more and more of them will be profitable. As a part-time seller, since you aren’t dependent upon your eBay income for living expenses, the occasional one’s that don’t work out won’t be catastrophic.

Developing the above skills will allow you to be much more successful in your part-time eBay business. Additionally, if and when you decide to take your business full-time, you will already have many of the skills in place you will need to make it a success.

Photograph by Go Climb A Rock.

Popularity: 35% [?]

In 6 eBay Newsletters Worth Reading I mentioned a few newsletters in which the publishers regularly provided pictures of , information about, and links to auctions of some of the things they sell.

While some newsletters are valuable resources for the seller interested in learning about new things in the antiques/collectibles market on eBay, in some ways specialized collector blogs can be even more productive.

Some of these blogs are very tightly focused and are published by collectors or dealers who have a passion for what they write about. Since they’re at the heart of the niche they collect, the information they provide is just about always useful when researching new ideas for items to sell. In addition, since they love what they collect, they often spend a great deal of time in research saving us a great deal of time.

While there are hundreds of this type blog around, here are six that you may find useful.

Forrest Flanders’ Old Catalogs Blog - While the Old Catalogs blog’s ‘About This Site’ page states the blog is about all kinds of vintage catalogs, it’s only a couple months old yet, and most of the posts are about the kind of catalogs Forrest himself collects - magic and novelty catalogs.

That’s okay, because the kind of novelty catalogs he talks about often show up in antique shops and flea markets very reasonably priced. Read Forrest’s blog and, when they do, you will be able to take advantage of what you’ve learned.
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