Please Allow Me to Introduce Myself...

I dropped-out of the "system" a long time back & for the last 20+ years I've been playing around with the buying & selling of Antiques, anything art-deco, some pre-1940's furniture, old kitchen stuff, really old guns, old radios, phones & phonographs especially wind-up, a few jukeboxes & especially Pop Culture Collectibles... Collector Cards, Comics, Coins, Vintage Magazines, 1930'-40's Sci-Fi & Hero Pulps are my favorite, Old Toys of every kind from board games, Barbie & GI Joe, Aurora monster models, battery & wind-up tin toys especially Robots & Space Toys made in Japan in the 1950's & 60's, Records & Rare Books, learned a lot from reading them before they had to be sold!

For many years I spent all my time looking for just about anything old or unusual ( sometimes after you drive 10 hours, set-up at 5;30 in the morning, buy & sell & haggle with people over prices till dark, it almost seems like "real work" ).

I Started out at Flee Markets, worked in an Antique store, hung out with a few "pickers" helping them ( usually moving really Heavy furniture ) for free to learn the ropes & buy their rejects ( I knew more about the pop-culture stuff. Example; A 1962 Beany & Cecil vinyl lunch box I bought for $1, sold for $225 at toy show, the "expert" walked right past it at garage sale ).
I Bought my Own Antique store in 1997 and kept it going till 2007, drove old chevy van with a 16 ft, trailer cross country to swap meets, collector shows, garage sales, thrift stores, friends houses & shops to Buy Large Collections of whatever seemed cool & could be sold at a profit ( Mr. Capitalist, that's me! ).
Of course I had to really Like anything I bought, cause I might be stuck with it a long time.

Got into ebay back in 1997, when you could make a killing, before prices became "rationalized" for the cool old stuff & ebay was flooded with millions of people selling brand-new stuff you could most likely get cheaper at Walmart! ( I'll admit I don't think very highly of those who only sell on the internet & never had to "pay their dues" & learn the Antique biz hard way ) .

the old ebay did make it possible for me to pay for store in less than 2 years! Ended up selling store ( toward the end I mostly used it for storage ) & got lazy selling off left over stock on the net. Of course, there is no-way to replace any of it now-a-days, everybody has a computer & can look-up exactly what something is worth & tries to sell it for Twice as much! ( I always cut people deals as long as I didn't lose out, lots of them made good money off my finds ).

So when the last few collections run-out, not long now. I may be faced with finding a "real-job". Oh Well, it was Fun while it lasted.
I put my faith in the good old American Free-Market Capitalist system for a long time & did OK. I guess.
eace:
PEACE!

 

I seem to have skimmed over a very boring piece of a memoire you might one day write, and welcome to HF.

 

Welcome. That sounds like an interesting pursuit.

 

Welcome to the show...

 

Welcome to Hip

 

Welcome Aboard DocWho !

Enjoy an looks forward to chatting with you

 

Welcome

 

Yeah - it's odd, isn't it. Online trading is driving out the market-makers. Which is fine when you're trying to sell ... but a right pain in teh whotsit when there's something in particular you want to buy, and no dealers you can go to and say "this is what I'm after ... let me know when you find one"!

 

Yah DocWho welcome pay no mind to malestrom he seems to be quite disenchanted. Look forward to seeing you around.

 

Welcome