Just wondering if anyone is sourcing... from what I can see, there are deals to be had, but a lot of what I want to buy comes from Europe and shipping is a little sketchy at the moment. (My stamp albums took 6 weeks to come from the UK. They did eventually show up, but it was past the last date).
So my B&M store (which is closed except mail order), has boxes of militaria stuff in the backroom. I have a bit more time working from home (saving 1 hour of driving, being able to take a 3 hour lunch by starting earlier and finishing later, it's a good time of day to take pictures of new items). I grabbed two giant binders packed with items 3x3 pages, along with some ziplock bags of random militaria (and other historical stuff).
I had to return everything that wasn't identified to the store (I don't make enough on the sale to waste 30 minutes researching each piece, the ones that are identified get listed for usually $10-15, and I get half... so I'm applying $5-$7 worth of effort into each listing). There are also some pretty cool things (foreign items, not just Canadian), but there's British, Australian, New Zealand, Ceylon, British India, and South Africa... there's some random European things. Lots of patches, collar and cap insignias. I sold two Traffic Enforcement vintage patches from South Africa for $27 last week. Most items are more than 50 years old. And let's not forget the hundreds of buttons I have from all sorts of uniforms.
I'm not sourcing stamps anymore now that I have a dozen albums that need attention (they got set aside when I turned sourcing stamps into collecting stamps). I did manage to take apart a few albums and make up pages of stamps to sell. They are selling.
For anyone following the stamp debacle, I've recovered 21% of what I spent so far, and I haven't sold significant numbers of items yet, but a few are going every week. (And the shop's stamps are still selling as well). I'm getting more attention from the stamps and picking up new regular buyers. In my 21% calculation, the albums that are set aside for me to pick stuff for myself are not included yet. With those albums I want a bunch of stamps for me, and to recover what I spent on the albums (or most of it) to basically obtain a stamp collection by only putting in some effort.
C.
mam98031 • Volunteer Community Member • Buyer/Seller since 1999
