December Recap

Well lets take a moment to see how the numbers are looking.......

Item	Paid	Costs	Total	SOLD	ROI%	CASH
Black Americana Sheet Music	35	5.1	40.1	5.95	85.16	-34.15
Penny and Dime	7	7	14	52	271.43	38
TOTALS	42	12.1	54.1	57.95	7.11645	3.85

Took an extremely heavy hit on the sheet music, but have bounced back into the black with the coins.  WHEW, that feels good!  Currently up 7% on everything...fells good to be in the positive and gives me confidence that there are more deals out there to be had!!

Coins are money......in more ways than one!

Remember those two fancy dancy old coins from the police auction?











kaching cling cling ding ding bing ( sound of money(obviously))

SOLD for a total of $52

Definitely a great return!  I will no doubt keep an ear to the ground, and an eye open for old collectible coins.  It is however (like most collectibles) all in the eye of the beholder.  If you can know exactly what people are looking to buy, you can hyper-focus your search leading to a great buy/sell!

When the going gets tough.....

....the tough check out police auctions!?

With not seeing much in the local area, I thought trying a new tactic might work.  Instead of trying to buy local, and sell global......I reversed it.

There seemed to by alot of classifieds of people wanting to buy coins in my area.  These collectors can be very specific in what the are looking for, but most list exactly what they want, so all that needed to be done were to find those rare ones in a sea of not so rare ones!

I searched on auction websites, or out of my area craigslist pages, to see if there was much out there that i could get shipped to me.  Theres alot, alot, alot!  Prices are like retail and I'm looking for wholesale.

I remembered stumbling across a site awhile back that was essentially the ebay of police auctions, and checked it out.  They had a whole coin section!!  

What I did from there was to check out the coins they were selling, then cross reference what they were selling for on more public auction sites.  If I found any that were well under that value, I bid.  

An Indian head penny and a barber dime! 1902 and 1911 for a cost of $7.

I think its so neat to hold something in your hand that is over 100 years old.  Makes you think where have these coins been, what did they buy, whose pocket did they jingle in?  The answers we may never know, but we can imagine some pretty exciting ones!

Oh the Holidays

As with most people the time around the holidays is busy with making great memories and sharing old ones.  I continued to look around to get a new piece to help try to turn this investment around!

I had been watching a listing of some old glass insulators on craigslist.  They were used on telegraph poles throughout the US and Europe. It was for a large grouping of them various styles and qualities.  I started doing some research and found that some of these can be quite collectible and valuable.  The average selling price of these on ebay were around 8-10 dollars.  The listing was for almost 200 hundred of them, at $50. Thats a $.25 a piece!  Seemed like a steal, even if there were a bit of a drive.

I made an appointment to take a look at them, but unfortunately holiday things came up, didn't have the time, and had to cancel the appointment.

Without a large selection of pieces to browse around the holidays, I will have to sit tight for the right deal!!

Current ROI

                        
 Black Americana Sheet Music       

Price Paid                 35
Costs involved          5.10
Total Investment       40.10
Price Sold                5.95
ROI                        85.16%

Here's the breakdown on the first auctions.....Down quite a bit, but as stated in the previous post I think it was my timing.

 Holidays Holidays Holidays

Good for family get togethers, egg-nog, fruit cake, but not good for selling Vintage Black Americana Sheet music!!!

On to the next one!!

UPDATE-Black Americana Auction

Zero Bids, Zero Bids, Zero Bids

......But I'm not worried!

There are plenty of watchers on these auctions which hopefully mean the longer these auctions go on the more  suspense will build!!

3.5 days left!!

Time will tell!

FIRST SCORE-Black Americana Sheet Music!

 

Got these off of craigslist in my area, they are pretty cool pieces!
They were advertised as all being from the 193o’s but after getting them home and researching them a bit, found out two are from the thirties, two from 1916 and one from 1912!! WOW
The reason I snatched these up is that Black Americana is a hot niche collectors market.  I feel that not only will they sell but at a profit.
Did I invest the full forty in them…….?
Got em for $35, thats $7 bucks apiece, a deal in my opinion!
Threw them up on ebay to sell, in all separate auctions.  Why separate auctions?  Collectors can be very specific in their tastes, therefore if listed in a group a buyer might not bite only because one out of the five is what they want.
All are listed at .99, with no reserve (meaning they sell no matter how low the price is) a bit of a risk but I feel that the low price gets people interested and bidding.  Once they’re  involved their competitive spirit takes over and the bids go up and up!
I plan to give an update midway through the auction in a few days!!
Lets see what they do!

One Year-40 Bucks-Endless Possibilities!!!

Is it possible to scour classifieds, flea markets, garage sales, estate sales, and auctions for items that can be bought and resold for a profit?  Then roll that profit into more items, continuing to successfully grow that original investment?
Thats what I am setting out to do!
160 quarters, eight 5 dollar bills, four 10 dollar bills, or two Andrew Jacksons.  However you want to cut it, its $40 USD, and thats what I am going to start with.
With one year, some searching, a bit of intuition and some luck from the picking gods…. I am looking to grow it into something more.  What kind of return on my original investment can I make?  Only time will tell.
Methodology:
I plan to find anything in my local area to resell,  mostly online, for a profit taking into account any costs associated with it (mileage when going to purchase, ebay fees, paypal fees, gradings/appraisals, etc.).  I will then set out to repeat the process with single or multiple items attempting to grow that original $40 into a sizable sum!
I will use a basic ROI (return on investment) formula to calculate it.  Lets look at an example:
Lets say I buy this antique cutlery for $10 dollars and it sells for $20 on ebay.  My profit looks like $10 right?
Well I did drive 10 miles to get the set…. @ $.12 a mile thats $1.20, ebay charged me $1.70 to list it and another $.88 in paypal fees actually makes my original investment at$13.78  Essentially that means I made 6.22
ROI = [(Payback - Investment)/Investment)]*100
Sooooooooo…..
45=[(20 - 13.78)/13.78)]*100
45% return!
Not a bad return in such times!
So that gives me $16.22 to put towards the next find, and that is how I will calculate my returns.
I will be getting started as soon as I can find an item!!

STAY TUNED