Adventures on Etsy

So, I am finally getting lots of inventory listed on Etsy. (Click on that to see my shop.)

I find, though, that it is a very niche market when it comes to selling antiques & collectibles.  The type of merchandise that sells on ETSY is not generally the merchandise I want to spend the bulk of my time dealing with.

Maybe it is because I am a Taurus, and we tend to be stubborn, stuck in our ways,etc.....

Or, it is due to the fact is just that ETSY is more geared towards crafts, fashion and decor, and "vintage" just happens to cover a portion of that.

I do have inventory that is of an ETSY ilk, but sales are still slow.  I find that all the extra activity it takes to get eyes to your listings is extreme, and, frankly, harkens of a ton of extra work that was at one time unnecessary.

If I had someone else working for me, and they could strictly run and promote the ETSY store front, that would be fine, but the only people working for me at the moment are the 3 of us...

Me, myself, and I.

There is always eBay, right?

Wrong.

eBay has long been out of the picture for me....and I will tell you one of the many reasons in the next posting.

TRASH TO CASH - Upcycle Your Dogs!

Ever since I started this blog, I have been meaning to write on "upcycling"  vintage (and not-so-vintage)"junk."  I have been doing this sort of thing for YEARS.


Long, long, long before the "Picker Chicks" even existed (or even thought about doing the things they do) I was creating many things from "junk".  As early as I can remember I was creating things from "trash".  Craft and art supplies are expensive. Why go out and buy them when you can get them for free or near free?

This carries over into the world of antiques, collectibles and vintage items...and the business of selling those items.

One of the things a hardcore picker and a newbie picker have in common is:

Needing to sell that low-end merchandise....and in the process end up making some real money from it.

The newbie may have bought the items in error, and needs to re-coup some of their investment. The hardcore vet likely has accumulated the items as parts of bulk purchases, auction box lots, house clean-up contents, etc, etc, etc.

Hardcore vets, like myself, like to maximize our money. Combine that with the fact that this sort of low end, common stuff is impossible to sell to bulk to our regular dealer and decorator customers.  Plus, we are not afraid of doing work.

You CAN make lemonade out of those boxes and boxes (and boxes, etc....) of lemons.

 All you need is IMAGINATION...and a little hands-on effort.   "Upcycling" is a recent term, but antiques dealers have been doing it for YEARS. Human kind has been doing it for centuries, actually.

The concept is darn simple....taking low and/or "no value" junk and creating something of value by reworking it and/or combining it with other low/no-value items.

Here is a simple thing, that takes items with low and no value, all items you have lying around, or ready to go to the trash, recycling or thrift store, and makes something you can sell at a flea market, craft sale, and even in your antiques store.

Grab that box of round cookie tins you have been hesitating putting in the recycle bin. Dig in the boxes of old hardware you have in the back rooms, the ones you bought at the auction so you could get the antique door knobs and Eastlake drawer pulls from...oh, and snag that busted 1980s table lamp you scavenged a socket from...you can use some of the parts from it, too.

You can create an item that you can retail for $15 - $45...just from some of these tins, some short lengths of copper, brass, or chrome tubing, (or even rusty pipe!), maybe an old lamp part or 2 some washers,   and some elbow grease!

Below you will find a link to the article describing how to do it. With a little imagination and your own pile of "junk", you can now create some salable inventory from that trash you have been hoarding....!

----- Click here to go to what I call the Vintage Tin Tree Storage/Organizer article -----

After you sell a bunch of these creations, you can get back to pickin'!

Makin' Lemonade from Lemons - Vintage Reflections

You likely read about my mis-buy at the auction in the last post.

The remnants of the deal was a 1950s, faux-paint-textured cardboard print in a faux-antique frame. The thick cardboard these sorts of prints are made from is useful as stiffener when shipping paper collectibles and other thin items, to prevent bending in transit. So, off it went into the shipping room to be sliced up for that purpose.

I suspect in 50 years I'll be lamenting my destruction of 1000s of those things, cursing myself for not hoarding them...a potential million dollars destroyed. Then again, with inflation the way it is, "a million dollars" then might not be what it is today. So, I may only be loosing out on covering the cost of a meal at a good restaurant by not hoarding them...Ah heck, I'll probably be sucking my means through a straw by then anyway.

What to do with the frame....

It was sort of attractive...could paint it white, and distress it...

Toss a mirror into it...but, that means buying a mirror...

Or does it?

I had a broken mirror, removed from a cheap, paper/fibre-board dresser acquired from a clean-out I did. I smashed up the dresser itself, as it was beyond repair, and tossed it in the trash.  The mirror was intact, for awhile. My main storage space is, well, just that, space...outside.   It was in a frame that did a poor job of imitating real wood...other than being made of the industrial equivalent of laminated sheets of paper. That materials acts like a sponge for water...especially rain. Yes, it got wet,  warped in 5 directions, then the thin mirror fell out...and broke.  Never saw nor heard it break, so should I assume I missed out on the predicted 7 years of bad luck?

 Does a mirror make a sound when it falls, breaks and no one is around?

Anyway, there was a chunk that was big enough to cut to size to fit the frame!

VOILA, add a piece of "junk" mirror to a "junk" frame and you have a $35 - $45 hall mirror!

Two negatives DO make a positive!

Hmmm...might make some profit on my bad buy yet!

Yes, I am being melodramatic... it didn't quite happen with the "voila" with magician type flair. I already was thinking about how to make lemonade out of my lemon of a purchase, after I was done flogging myself for the stupid mistake.

The lesson here is that 2 pieces of junk can still make you MONEY. 

Combining things that are otherwise useless, have no value, etc is like creating gold with Alchemy...except in this case, using junk as your ingredients CAN create gold from combining other things, unlike using Alchemy to create gold...which is impossible...as far as anyone has revealed, anyway! And if you HAVE figured it out, let me know, I won't tell a soul! I promise!

Janet Picard, friend from years back, an artist, and the original owner/founder of Ragpickers Anti-Fashion Emporium of Winnipeg, created jewellery from found, salvaged objects. She created works of quality, long before the now commonly seen pieces with watch gears, brass buttons, bits of china, chain, etc, in a collage form. She created many wearable sculptures in the form of earrings, brooches, necklaces and assorted other jewellery.  She called her artistic enterprise "Salvage Alchemy".  After doing a quick online search, I see many others of a similar artistic bend, as well as folks in different areas of "salvage" have found/thought/adopted the use of the name as well.

To me, though, "salvage alchemy" a perfect term for what many of us in the junk business do...

Or rather, those of  us who can think "outside of the box."

That trash can be made into CA$H with a little effort, and it can pay you back in spades for that little bit of time and imagination.


If you wish to survive in the "junk biz", as a picker, antiques dealer, storage auction locker buyer, scrapper, flea market seller, swap meet seller, etc, etc, my advice is to embrace "salvage alchemy" as part of your business wholeheartedly.   

Ok, junk alchemists, now go dig into those piles of mis-buys, junk, trash and scrap and see what gold nuggets you can come up with!