Make Money Selling Stamps

Ok all, I want to make some $$$ buying and selling stamps + FDC etc.

Any tips? Any suggestion on what are good stamps to sell? Where to get bargain priced stamps & fdc that I can re sell higher prices.

Any suggestions welcome. Thanks

Duncanvr, (IMO) The very first important question one should know the answer too is;

How much of your own money (not borrowed) have you/are you prepared to put away/tie-up in scarce quality stamps, and how many years can you afford to sit on it/them ?.

Good question finches. I most likely could invest up to $2000 more in good quality stamps. Yet I am one step ahead there, as I have acquired a few early American and Canadian scarce high values. Each one worth between $1000 - $2000+. Good ones without errors. But what I am looking at now is bulk lots where you can get say 500 items for 50 cents each and on sell for $1 plus each, allowing for selling fees to make profit. Has anyone tried buying 500 FDCs in bulk and selling them separately in 500 lots?

The only way to make quick money, find an estate sale selling a collection with all the world's expensive pieces, offer 50 bucks, take it home and make Thousands on ebay. Only little problem with that is there is a reason the Stamps worth Money are hard to get, they are farther and fewer between which means you'll probably have to tie up some funds. The only way to do it is to have very good sources of new material and you need to do high volume sales to compensate for the time and hassle. As far as the FDC lot of 500 ? Scanning nightmare.

DUNCAN--------"but what I am looking at now is bulk lots" you missed the boat !
Today you have very big sellers on E-BAY looking for the bulk lots and anytime good large lots come on the market they are in there to buy at 75 cents on the dollar to out bid you for material and your wishful price of 50 cents isn't going to happen . SORRY ABOUT THE BAD NEWS .
I don't remember you bidding against me back years ago when I was the only one buying the big bulk lots at the major stamp auction houses before E-BAY came along and the buyers who sell on e-bay .Yes sir I use to fill up the back of a SUV for dozens of different stamp auctions over many years for pennies on the dollar ,but now with all the E-BAY buyers its nuts to even bid on stuff were the profit is very close to actual value ..

Not so many estate lots selling around here:( I wish I could get a great estate lot. But I do have 500 USA FDC right now, so far I scanned up 8. Will keep working on that but you are right a real scanning nightmare. I am going to go year by year till I get it done. Darn going to work is slowing me up. Floortrader I did get the 500 at 50c each so it can happen but ya got to be lucky. you r right a lot of ebay buyers and it is hard to get a bargain at the right price. I wish I could fill up my suv with such stamps like you did.

I am no expert but floortrader is right about ebay. I wanted to buy bulk lots for myself mainly to build on my own collection and most of the time those are bid so high it makes it not worth it even for the builder. I've bought one lot so far for 30 something dollars and it was only a few 1000 stamps. I did find some goodies, by the top one probably was a 200 dollar stamp catalogue which means resell at lower than half if someone was wanting to do that. Going to be hard but good luck. The rest of bulks sell for hundreds most of the time.

I have been outbid on ebay for bulk lots eight times in the past several months - each time by less than $20, and several times by less than $3.00. I question if you can really buy bulk on ebay!

Bulk lots are fine for your own collection, but buying bulk to single out for profit ? How much profit is there on a 1$ FDC after scanning, listing and Postage ?

duncanvr,

As almost all comments said already you are not going to be the only dealer looking for bargains in order to re-sell, and I guess you already know that

I have few advices - and please forgive me if I say the obvious:

1) Don't rush and spend these $2000.

2) Start selling whatever you already have and see how the market responds. You might be surprised to learn that what you consider to be a "good seller" doesn't sell at all, and what you might consider to be a "no seller" sells very quickly and for a profit. Only after you gain understanding of the real (as opposed to the supposed) behaviour of your market start spending the rest of your cash.

3) Online selling has it challenges. You must add new items on a regular basis and let your already existing buyers (and you'll have those of-course) know about new items in your store. Repeat business is the bedrock on which every online business builds itself.

4) There are strong months and weak ones. You will gain understanding of the seasonal nature of the trade only after a year or so of selling. Until than, any conclusions deriving from good/bad sales are wrong.

4a) It is a seasonal market and since you have mentioned the different ebay sites on another thread I would suggest you wait for your US and European material to be listed on the relevant ebay sites during their winter and do the same with your Aussie and NZ stamps on your winter.

5) ebay is where sellers "harvest" email addresses. After your inventory grows you might want to consider moving it to cheaper venues (delcampe and such) and let your buyers know where to find it. As you already know ebay charge like a wounded bull and if your profit margins are thin you will end up with no profit at all selling only through ebay.

I could go on and on and on....

To sum things up. Give yourself a year keep on listing and refresh your inventory on a weekly basis, buy after gaining understanding of what sells (where and when) and be patient - you can and will build loyal clientele which will keep coming back to purchase more stamps.

GOOD LUCK !!

Unless you are retired, and have nothing else to do, you can give it a try. Because the amount of time you would have to put into it is huge in proportion to the profit. Your earnings would be about a dollar or two per hour spent at best.

i have tried making money selling dollar and two dollar items on the internet and I am afraid its "go big or go home" .the time involved is tremendous and so is the competition !!

Although I agree mostly with the above expressed views that their is no money is selling most stamps online and of the time involved, I feel I must say that

PERHAPS (I have no real proofs)

IF the time invested where spent wisely on automating processes and organizing listing sales and other duties involved

AND the sales skills of the individuals involved were keen

AND the time management skills applied to the tasks were of a good quality

AND the luck of the Gods were with you

AND your motivation (edit: and spirits!) did not lag

THEN, mayhaps, you might have a chance at a successful venture.

BUT, considering all of the above, these reasons have never stopped me from having fun at it, when I choose to attempt it.

And, by God, sometimes a man learns enough hard core business skills along the way to make a go of it if his confidence is strong and he can get up and keep trying.

By the way, I'm still somewhere back there with the God that helps when you try hard enough, awaiting my luck and thanking my lucky stars I have this forum to fall back and rest on and learn from and enjoy stamps and people with.

I am finding it is possible to get bulk lots in the on line auctions from non ebay auctions, and there are a few running auctions around the world. 50 cents a cover then sell them $1.50 each small profit but it all counts. Spend a couple of hundred bucks after you sold them all you get close to double ur money after all sold. The only thing is they won't all sell at once. And scanning will take time. But I agree on ebay bulk lots are to close to the full value for profit. I think ebay is a good place to buy stuff , auction houses are better for selling. Although there is no way of knowing what you will get for your stamps in an Auction house.

well the good news is I am going to retire in May and I am going to go hard at it and try to list hundreds of lots. I'll put every day of the week into it. I want to give it a go, I think like puzzler wrote, I want to put all I got in this. Stamp dealers are making money doing it so it should be possible for others to.

well I am retired and sell as a form of trading..and I enjoy transactions with other collectors...but it does not cover my stamp collecting expenses much less my t.v. cable bill !!