Cue the Confetti

After 12 years selling on Etsy I finally had the kind of one-day sales I’ve dreamed of. On Sunday,14 items sold bringing in a smidge over $1,000 in revenue. I was thrilled. But Monday dawned and I needed to get everything packaged and to the post office. I had small things, big things, breakable things, expensive things. Oh jeez. In the end I spent almost two hours bubble-wrapping, weighing and taping up all the packages that filled two large Ikea totes. Phew!! At my little local post office the drop-off counter was overflowing with other packages so I had to stand in line to drop them off. Still, they were all scanned in and I got a receipt so that’s good.

I think what pleased me most was that the sales represented a mixture of older and newer listings.

I was glad to see the Stanford Binet Children’s Intelligence Testing Kit find a home. I bought it from Shopgoodwill.com in 2020. Recently someone from Italy wanted to know what it would cost to ship it there but it’s so heavy (almost nine pounds) with so many bits that I decided to decline any international sales for it. Would it even make it through customs? This one is headed to New York City.

That odd antique brass kitchen tool (a salamander as it turns out) was bought in an Asheville, North Carolina, antique mall in 2022 and is heading back to North Carolina! I remember thinking when I picked it up that it “was something” and it was. (Thankfully a reader clued me in!)

I bought three of the 1970s Dansk silverplated animals at a Lewiston, New York, antique mall this past summer. They were half price…yes please! Then a friend gave me two more that she didn’t want which made a cute collection of five.

One of the “new” sales was for an antique wood and gold leaf frame from those big, private picks this fall. I loved this old frame with the patina of time. I had it in my living room and was looking to see where to use it as part of my Christmas decor when it sold. Honestly a part of me wanted to keep it.

But now it’s Monday and it’s been radio silence in my store. Still I am okay with that. It was sunny and 62 degrees and so lovely that I sat outside for a bit. I got a few other things done. In the evening four things sold, so I am cautiously optimistic that the year will end strong.

That’s the best I ever am…cautiously optimistic. The online vintage/antique market space is so competitive and vast. New sellers enter it all the time. New sites open up all the time. Fees compound. It’s crazy. And stressful. Still, I am making it work on a small scale. Learning more all the time and mostly loving it!

Wishing you happy hunting,

Karen