Posted by Okay, being a vintage seller is not exciting. Until it is. Hearing the cha-ching on your phone and finding out one of your more valuable items sold. Or scoring that really good item at the thrift store. But mostly it’s like any other job…a lot of work.
A few sales…
Every week includes sales. (I average a sale a day and that is holding true so far this month. I’ve been hoping to grow my number of sales to no avail. Still, it’s been holding steady and my revenue has climbed a bit). And every sale needs to be packaged for shipping. Most of my items aren’t too onerous to pack…thankfully! But every now and then I curse myself for buying something that is so hard to package. I typically go to the post office three times a week, but lately my husband has been dropping off some of my orders relieving me of that duty.
These latest solds range in price from $15 to $175.
A little hunting…
Of course every week includes time spent sourcing. Lately it’s been less than four hours a week! I still have enough items to list or relist so I don’t NEED to source right now, but I go for the fun of it.
Strangely when I walked into my neighborhood thrift store on Wednesday at opening time I was one of only two customers. For a minute it was total bliss. Unimpeded aisles. No rushed feeling. Then “the others” swarmed in.
Wasn’t finding much of interest until I spotted something embroidered hanging in the linen racks. I practically sprinted towards it, unfurled it and discovered a pristine Tree of Life rug. Not super old but just lovely and a good size (6 feet by 4 feet as it turns out).
I thought this could be crewel embroidery, but given the sheen in the thread I don’t believe it is wool. The chainstitch appears to be in silk or rayon, likely from India and likely hand done.
This was one to buy. Happy dance worthy!
Back at home an image search found a very similar pattern in different colors by the Kashmir Design company. The website no longer offers this rug, but their smaller version sold for $395 at some point.
This is why I love this biz!!
Listing and more listing…
Most of my work time lately, usually mornings, is spent listing items. It’s tedious…but necessary. But I put on a fav TV show or music and get down to it. I try to be disciplined. Afterall things can’t sell if they aren’t listed!
Here are some of my latest ones…
Relaxing!
And there is a point in the early afternoon where I say “That’s enough for today” and I move on to other things, like yard work or curling up for a well deserved nap!
I won’t be doing this biz forever. At some point I’ll be done scrabbling around in thrift stores and estate sales. I’ll be done with dealing with all the inventory and shipping supplies. (Our garage is awash with boxes and bins.) At some point I’ll just want all of this to be gone. But for now it’s fine.
Wishing you happy hunting,
Karen
Hunting for Vintage 
Congrats on all your solds…Thinking that $15 sales are not worth the hard work it takes, to list & pack.
I think that your chain stitch item is machine done.
Keep on, keeping on!
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Hi Liz. You’re so right about $15 sales. Thankfully this one shipped with two other items. I originally thought the rug was machine done too but found that many similar ones are described as hand made and they have the same stitch regularity.
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My shop keeping is very similar to yours as well. About 4-5 hours of sourcing a week. Good find on the tapestry! Yay! And there’s nothing like that cha-Ching.
But I don’t think I’ll ever give up treasure hunting. It’s such a part of who I am. Even if I don’t buy much, I’ll always want to search. And sell the random item or two. I think Etsy will be with me for a while. ☺️
Great post!
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Hi Heather. Even after I stop selling (off in the future!) I’ll likely still do a little looking! I’ve loved vintage and antique things since my teens.
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When I list something that’s difficult to ship I always pass off that job to my local shipping co. I email him a photo and measurements for a price and that’s what I use for the listing. When it sells, I simply drop it off – he packs and ships FedEx home. It’s a life saver.
Clearing out old inventory, I prepare a generous “box lot” and put it on ebay. My goal is to get my money back plus a bit to cover my time.
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That’s a great idea for shipping awkward things! When my Chairish store was open I loved to use their “Drop off and go” program which was a godsend for bigger items.
I do create lots from time to time and even did a fun “junk drawer” lot of interesting items. But typically I’m contacted by someone wanting to buy just one of the items in the lot and it’s not really worth the time to create a separate listing for that one item and redo the other listing.
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