Where to get Stuff to Sell on eBay? (4)

Buying collections to break down and sell as individual items can be a great way of sourcing stuff to sell on eBay.

Years ago before I sold on eBay I used to sell second hand vinyl through the mail, advertising in the Record Collector magazine.  I would routinely travel to see people who were selling their album collections.  Usually I could buy 100 or more albums at a set price per album, usually 50p -£1 each.  There would be some dross, of course but there would almost always be a few gems.

One time sticks in my mind.  I went to an address in Manchester to see this chap who had a 100 or so albums to sell.  They were the usual rock mixture but there were 12 mint copies or 2 different albums by an extinct band called Excalibur. I asked him why he had 24 albums by the same band and he said that his son had had a connection with the band and the albums arrived through that connection.  Fair enough.  I sold one of the albums for £10 each copy (12 x £10).  The copies of the other album fetched £25 each  (12 x £25).  Those 2 albums gave me a return of £420.  I bought the whole lot for £50.  I also sold most of the others for £5 ish.  Not bad for half a day’s work.

The same applies to eBay, but your potential market is greater.

Where do you get collections to break down?  Look on eBay under Job Lots.  There are sometimes some great things there.  Go to local auctions and rummage through the miscellaneous boxes, car boot sales are another source.  I bought 50 DVDs of steam trains last year (not something that interests me) but on Amazon I was able to sell almost half for between £5 and £10 each.  I paid £20 for the lot.