Collection Reselling On Ebay

I see waves of collections on ebay supposedly shortly after some auction. Some sellers sell using buy it now and others put up for bid.

I am curious what kind of return do they expect? If they spent say $1000 and sold it lots, what do they think the return will be?

When I decide to bid on a collection I usually won't bid unless I can expect a 100% return. Last year my overall result was about 80%. I know this seems like a lot but after ebay fees, Paypal fees, shipping materials, and Federal and SS taxes I keep about 20% and overall make less than $20/hr.

A couple other facts, when I look at an 80% markup I am including auction fees and shipping.

I usually buy and sell Big Blue Vol I collections and when I break these up I have between 150 and 250 items. Larger collections can result in up to 500 items.

All in all it's a lot of work but it makes a nice retirement business for my wife and I.

Selling no matter how or what it is can really give someone a life that has a lot of time on their hands!

Just have to find your niche. Sometimes you have to loose a little at the beginning but it will work out.

Interesting that you found a popular way that some sellers work at doing what they do.

KRelyea gave some input I was curious about. You often see buy it now and wondering what they paid for it. I do not think 100% is unexpected. I would expect some demand or hope to get more.

It's all about the price you pay, of course. There are a lot of $500-$2000 lots at auction that can (potentially) be broken up profitably into many $20-$200 lots for ebay. There are also many auction lots that won't be profitable on ebay, either because the auction bidding gets too heated, or the material just doesn't sell well on ebay.

When selling, you also have the choice between doing regular auctions or fixed-price; the latter might get you more money per sale, but inventory will take longer to clear.

NobleSpirit, nystamps, and ckstamps made million-dollar businesses buying box lots and collections at auction and reselling on ebay for years -- nowadays, a lot of their stuff is consignments, but they still source material at stamp auctions and they do bid aggressively when they smell a profit. If you want to do this business yourself profitably, you'll have to compete with them. They have a lot of experience and money. Specialized stamp knowledge can get you an edge in areas where you're an expert: that may be the best way to go.

Agree with CODEHAPPY ,It is hard to compete with these big sellers on ebay .I lost lots of auction material to them but also understand they also had to over spend tens of thousands of dollars because I was bidding on the same lots . They were buying like mad men and just killing the old time bourse dealers and the guys who started selling on ebay ,at the time I had a mail order business but ebay soon killed that and I moved to ebay .

Now I just sell what I can't use in my collection thru a second party . I still enjoy buying a huge bulk lot that is so messed up ,it wouldn't be profitable for anybody watching the clock , I think there are a few retired guys doing the same thing but then as mentioned above some are using auctions and ebay to supplement their retirement .

We have come full circle with the selling on ebay . At one time 2001--2010 it was very profitable to buy at Stamp Auctions and resell on ebay .After about 2012 prices for lots started to drop they just wasn't getting top dollar but everybody continued at less profit . By the time 2014-2015 came around all the big lots at the auction houses were being overbid to the point it wasn't as profitable to buy them and list them as good as before .

Now what do we find ,recently notice a up tick in the lot being described as ebay SELLER liquidation lots ....they couldn't sell it ,so they are offering it to you to sell.

@KRelyea - curious as to what sells better in your experience given lots with roughly the same #/quality of stamps - fewer but fuller pages, or more pages with sparser coverage?

gnot that's an easy one! Bidders love nice full pages, I call it "density" and I always want that in a collection I sell. I am convinced that if you had 20,000 1840-1940 stamps in a Scott International Album which is abridged you would get a lot more $ than if the same exact stamps were in a Schaubek or Scott Vintage Album which aren't abridged. I'm talking 2 or 3 times as much $.

I agree with codehappy I sell everything using the auction format because I don't want to carry or invest in inventory and I like the action. I turn my inventory over 7 times/year and I couldn't come close to that selling fixed price.

I sell in the WW Collections category and I don't consider NYstamps, Noblespirit and CKsstamps to be competitors I view them as my "anchor" stores. They bring viewers to ebay and then they stumble across my modest little "boutique" listing.

I think there are a lot of ebay sellers with 10,000 and 30,000 feedbacks that are profitably selling stamps on ebay but staying under the radar. Check out pavstamps, he sells a huge amount of stamps and if you're not his customer you don't know him. ebay doesn't give you any ability to list out sellers and you can only find them by searching the listings.

Thanks Krelyea! That is interesting - I do love a full page too, a very satisfying feeling. I've moved some of my more comprehensive country collections from IPSA pages to Palo/Lighthouse pages, and have to admit that initially it can feel like I went "backwards" from full pages to half-empty ones... But of course that's incentive to fill in those blank spaces again :)

On the other side of the coin is having a stamp and not having a space for it, this bothers me more than future resale so I personally use the Vintage pages for the countries I collect.

I think there's always money to be made by buying big lots and breaking them up.
Most people have narrow collecting interests, and there are lost of people who don't fell comfortable spending big amounts at one time.
By buying a big general lot you can capitalize on both those aspects.
I can do ok by it, but you have to be selective about what you buy.