The previous person had some really good advice and I too looked at your auctions. Of course, I have some of my own advice. There are two types of button people, collecting and crafting. I deal with both. Therefore, you need to ask yourself are these buttons for the collector or crafter. Generally, collectors like to purchase for their collection. Duh! Think in the lines of what you would like to see if you are collecting buttons. Therefore, I think these folks would like 1) buttons with same subject matter, but with different materials (such as flowers, insects, horses, faces): or 2) buttons made with the same material such as plastic, metal, glass, mother of pearl, etc. or 3) realistic buttons – these are buttons that are shaped based on their subject, such as a horse or dear.; or 4) color - some of my collector buddies collect buttons based on color. As you can see collecting buttons can be diverse. Can you group some buttons together to make a unique set. So, if you have several of one buttons, you could make up several sets and experiment with what I recommend above. There is one thing you should think about, I personally will not bid on a lot of buttons for my collection with a bunch of plan and useless buttons in it. As a collector I don’t want to be bothered with buttons that don’t add benefit to my collection. Specify the size of the buttons and please include a picture of the shank. Depending on the material of the button, shanks are important to button collectors. I take it you don’t want to get into specifics. For example if the buyer eyes an older polymer, such as bakelite or celluloid, they can confirm it one way by the shank. There are other buttons that shank is used to validate what they are. So, just include a picture of the shank on all of them or at least describe it.
Now let’s talk about craft people. They generally like buttons in a set of about 6 to 10 buttons and the only thing they are worried about is the size, shape and color for their project. Not much terminology here. Think about what a crafter might use buttons for, sewing, scrapbooks, etc. (Search for “button*”) on eBay and see what sections come up. I think you will be surprised. Than again, I was. Just because a button is old doesn’t mean it is collectable. The reverse is true for new buttons. Just because a button is new doesn’t mean it is only used in crafts. A set of old buttons might sell in the craft section better than in collectable vintage sewing section. I think you get it.
One last piece of advice, remember that eBay charges a fee for listing auctions. Duh, again! If you have a ton of buttons, look into using an eBay store and using some of your auctions as a marketing tool to get the sellers into your store. Let’s say you have determined you have 400 buttons, some of them sets, which you want to list as separate auctions. You are going to list 100 auctions a week, starting price for each auction is $9.99 and you are going to run them for 7 days. Therefore, your insertion fees for each auction will be 30 cents, or $30 per week, or $120 per month. With an eBay store, there is base fee of $15.95/month and an insertion fee of 2 cents/listing for the entire month ($8.00). The grand total is $23.95/month. The eBay fees for auctions can kill you so beware of them. If you have any questions contact me.
If you saw this piece of information in another discussion, you are correct. I just cut and paste it here to save some time. I thought it work here also.
Thanks - Linda at The Responder
Linda Falkenthal
