EBay, Collectors, Flea Market & Antiques

Unless you have a high traffic spot in an area where folks have plenty of dough (where is this anyway?!) I am convinced that the way to make it is to break even or a little better in the brick and mortar, use the storefront to acquire good collections and pieces, and sell the better stuff online to get actual dollars you can live off of.

We have accounts on Amazon (books, CD's, DVD's), eBay (high end stuff), Discogs (records) and Etsy (quality vintage stuff that doesn't need an auction to determine value). We don't do nearly enough of this yet but it works pretty well when we do. Stuff that would sit for six months is gone in days.

Having a niche or two is also a good plan. It's impossible to be good at very many areas. For example when we opened I tossed my comic collection into the mix and sold some. But fairly quickly it became apparent that it was one guy that was buying most of them and he was a dealer. So I ended up selling them all to him and getting out of that.

Our big niche is vinyl records which works well because I previously owned a record store. It's working fairly well. I'm getting quality collections and able to flip the better titles online.