vintage Christmas apron

Saving all your good Christmas stuff for the Christmas season? I do too but I also sell it all year round. If you are buying or selling, there will be less competition at other times of the year. Right now on eBay, the highest price for a sold Christmas apron was 55.00 for one! It has Santa on it, so look for those!

 Ugly Christmas sweaters are great sellers too. This is one of the few I have left — and it’s not that ugly. The more bling on it, the better! I used to put all mine on auction and see where they went but this year I decided to put some on fixed price at 25.00. I sold a few almost right away! I usually pick them up at the Goodwill clearance store for 1.00 or less.

I did save my Spode pieces to sell at Christmas but I am sure they would sell all year round as well. I only found 2 pieces this year! I have a vase and a cup and saucer listed. I discovered Spode about 5 years ago when I bought an entire set of it at an auction for about 3.00. I noticed the tag on the box was for over 300$ so I figured I got a good deal. I even got another complete set a few weeks later for about 10.00. I kept part of the set for myself that I now use every Christmas and sold the others by the piece. Nice find!

My favorites are the Christmas linens. I always have the tablecloths and I also look for napkins, tea towels, even handkerchiefs. I love them! Check out my finds at:

EVERYTHINGVINTAGESTEPH.COM

mining in the nevada mountains

I don’t have many pictures yet and just got back last night but we are home! Yes, we found treasure and we had lots of adventures. This photo is my daughter standing by the tents where we were camping at 7000 feet in Nevada, a little below the town of  Tonopah. The turqouise from this mine was lying on the ground everywhere!

Some of our adventures in brief were:

1. driving through blinding snow for 30 miles

2. using one lane “roads” carved out of the side of a cliff by a bulldozer years ago (but not in the snow!)

3. driving on a tire with very little air for 60 miles because there is NOTHING around but mountains

4. 2 flat tires at various times

5. waking up to sleet and 20 degree weather in 30 mile per hour winds (just one night)

6. bats are cute close up when they are not moving

7. there IS gold, silver, and turqouise in them thar hills!

I’ll write with more detail in my next post. Still recuperating and getting back to my eBay sales!

]]> http://www.everythingvintagesteff.com/2011/11/back-from-my-mining-trip-for-gold-silver-and-turqouise-hunting-for-treasure/feed/ 0 http://www.everythingvintagesteff.com/2011/11/getting-ready-for-my-gold-rush-trip-working-in-a-silver-and-turquoise-mine-in-nevada/ http://www.everythingvintagesteff.com/2011/11/getting-ready-for-my-gold-rush-trip-working-in-a-silver-and-turquoise-mine-in-nevada/#comments Wed, 02 Nov 2011 13:36:28 +0000 steff http://www.everythingvintagesteff.com/?p=1219

hiking boots NOT

Leaving soon for my trip to the Nevada desert. We are working a silver and turquoise mine — gold too. (read my last post!) So I needed some hiking boots. We might be hiking a few miles and there will be lots of rocks and climbing for sure. So I went to my usual place to find stuff–the Goodwill store. I found these boots for 1.50. Bargain! Maybe not. My son in law told me NO GOOD. “You gotta have lots of ankle support, leather in case there’s a rattlesnake or something else that might bite you, warmth for the cold.” It’s going to be in the 40′s by day and 20′s by night.

So, we went to Cabelo’s and I bought this pair of hiking boots for 99.00. They better be worth it! They threw my bargain bone out of whack. Ouch!

Cabelo’s also had some nice thermal “base layers” (can you say long underwear?) for 55.00 a piece. Not a pair, a PIECE. I shopped at Kohl’s instead and got both top and bottom for 22.00 after my discounts. (they would have been 25.00 each at regular price). I HOPE I’m not cold. I HATE the cold. We do have heaters in our tents at night though. I should be OK with the Kohl’s stuff if I wear lots of layers.

I’ve got plenty of other stuff to keep warm. Also bought a folding knife for the “wilderness” and we already have tents, blankets, sleeping mats, picks, and everything needed to cook in the middle of nowhere for 3 days. Bathroom is a tent with a hold in the ground. We’ll be using it a lot because we have to drink bottles of water everyday (and night) due to the high dry altitude. Hope I don’t get altitude sickness either.

I also bought a pair of SMART wool socks. 14.00. I’m trying them out today. They better be REALLY smart. Follow me on twitter and facebook as I will try to update those through my phone if I can’t update this blog.

just search for everything vintage steph or everythingvintagesteph.com or click on the links on this page. Thanks for reading!

vintage trifari pin

I don’t think I mentioned in my blog before that I am part owner of a jewelry store. Well, I am but I don’t do much there. My son in law does all the work and his mom also works full time at the store now. I just go in once a week to keep up with the finances and other minor details. Speaking of minor, that is MINER…. I am going to become a MINER next week.

We at the jewelry store, decided to buy a few mines out west and see if we can find any of our own gold and silver instead of just scrapping other people’s gold and silver. This is very interesting. I don’t understand it all yet but I am going to try to blog about it.

eBay radio free CDs

Did you ever listen to eBay radio? You can listen live 2 times a week. See http://groups.ebay.com/topic/Ebay-Radio-Town/Welcome/Ebay-Radio-Town/2245?#msg3924 if you want to find out about it. I don’t have time to listen when they are live but I am told that 95% of the audience listens to the archives. That is what I do. But I take it one step further and download each show and then burn it onto a CD so I can listen to it in the car. You know, when I am travelling to auctions or sales or flea markets! Like tomorrow when I set up at merchants square mall in allentown.

Then I am left with all these great CDs that I used to throw away. So I started giving them to my friend who also sells on eBay. She gives them back to me and then I was throwing them away. I don’t like to throw things away — well good things anyway. So who wants them? I will send you all of the shows that I have for JULY if you are the first person to leave a comment and ask me for them. Then I’ll get your address privately. I’ll give away august and september too as soon as my friend is done with those. Probably in my next post. WHO WANTS ‘EM?

I don’t sell much vintage and costume jewelry on eBay. I sell most of it at the antique shows and flea market Why? Just search for the words “vintage jewelry” on eBay and there will be over 400,000 hits! I tried “costume jewelry” and got over 300,00. hits. So I narrowed it down to “vintage jewelry lot” and got over 10,000 hits. Too much competition!

I do like to sell “lots” of jewelry though. I don’t think I have anything listed right now so I need to get a group together. I put together about a pound of pieces that are mismatched or missing a stone or slightly imperfect and sell these as parts and pieces for craft projects. A great way to save money for the crafter! This way a piece of jewelry never gets wasted! These lots can sell for 10-20$ depending on the quality.

I also like to group together 3-10 pieces of either earrings, or pins, or rings — all of one style or set. The bigger the grouping, the better the chance of a sale.

The individual pieces do sell well at the flea market though! No matter what other items I take to the flea market, they ALWAYS buy the jewelry! I sell it for anywhere from 50 cents to 5.00 a piece.

This might be a good set to try on eBay but I know I could sell it faster at the flea market. 2 of the places I go are merchanstssquaremall.com in Allentown, Pa and renningers.com in Kutztown, PA.

No matter what, vintage and costume jewelry is always a hit and lots of fun!

CHECK OUT MY EBAY STORE AT EVERYTHINGVINTAGESTEPH.COM

grasshopper shoes listed until Jan 6.

This is a question I struggled with for a while and I have advised others on it so I decided to write about it. I started selling on eBay in 1998. I opened my eBay store about a year later. Why? My initial reason was to have a “dumping ground” for all of the items that didn’t sell on auction. Many of my auctions would start about 3.00. If the item didn’t sell, I would move it into my store and mark it at 9.99 or “best offer.” I would often sell it for 9.99! This proved to me that I just didn’t have the right person looking for my item the 7 days that it was on auction.

This was a no-brainer for me. I paid 15.00 a month for my store and only had to pay 3 cents per month for each listing. The only problem was, for many years (it is differnt now) store sites did not show up on the default search on eBay. Store items only showed up when a customer would go directly to my store or they would change the default search setting to search for store items. This is about the same as selling on a tiny strip mall behind a huge chain store–it’s hard to get noticed.

It’s different now. It still costs about the same price to open an eBay basic store (15.95). BUT the cost of each listing is now 20 cents per month. At first I wanted to close my store—that’s a BIG increase! (my friends that I trained decided to close theirs and put everything on fixed price) But my dumping ground theory was really working! AND now all store items were showing up in the default search on eBay. It’s like I was now selling INSIDE the big chain store instead of hiding behind it.

You may have noticed this—now when you search on eBay, you get all store items as well as auction items listed in your search. I was hoping I would sell more from my store to make up for the increase in listing fees. I hung in there for a few months. It was working! I was selling at least 20% more from my store every month. But I still hated those 20 cent listing fees. I tried removing things from my store if they didn’t sell in 60 days. That was a lot to keep track of and I was still stuck with items that weren’t selling right away. If I could only go back to 3 cents per listing!

I decided to check out the idea of upgrading my store from a basic store to a premium store. The cost would be 49.95 per month. BUT the listing fees would be 5 cents per item. I figured if I could list at least 300 items per month, it would be worth it. So in November, I upgraded.

It’s working! I sell a lot more gently used clothing because of the great source I have for this (check my earlier posts!) and because they are so easy to list. I still love the vintage items though and move a lot of those into my store. Just yesterday, (New Year’s Day) I sold 6 things out of my store. My average sales for 60 days used to be about 2700$. Now they are staying at about 3300$. From October to November I had a 69% increase in sales! It’s a little more work to keep up with all the sales but that’s what it’s all about!

So I am glad I upgraded my eBay store. I didn’t want to loose my “presence” on eBay and the internet either since I have my own domain name at http://everythingvintagesteph.com. I would loose that if I put everything on fixed price and closed my store. I like to be able to direct my customers directly to my store. It’s a great selling tool and it works for me! Check out my store by clicking on any of the photos or CLICK HERE!

24 new costumes

How do I find great costumes to sell at Halloween for a great price? I buy them the year before! Yes, I have a nice large place to store items so that helps.

After every holiday, Target usually does a 75% off sale and then if you can hit it just right, they clear out all holiday items at 90%! Yes, I hit 3 Target stores in my area yesterday and picked up a total of 34 costumes for less than 50$. The most expensive costume was a 19.99 one for 1.99. I just packed them all in a bin and will get them out next year and sell them for half price or a little more and they will fly out of my store! (I know because I had some this year).

10 of those costumes were for dogs! You can dress your dog like a ram or a blowfish or a submarine! Very unusual so I think they will do well next year.

I just listed this one in my eBay store. Sure, it’s a costume but it could also be a blanket for a cold day! I have 3 of these in a large size and listed them at 8.00 with free shipping. Ok, they cost me 1.29! I think they will sell soon!

Visit me at   everythingvintagesteph.com

for some vintage and not so vintage STUFF.

vintage milk bottle cap

Yea, people collect milk bottle caps and I have at least 500 more of these! I sell these 48 at a time and I only start them at 3.00. Sometimes I get 3.00, sometimes I get more. The reason this is one of my favorite finds is that I got over 3 cartons of these at a local estate sale and only paid 1.00 for all of them. They are brand new and never used but they are for vintage milk bottles and are probably from the 1960s or so. I remember this dairy and it has not been in business for quite a while. 3.00 doesn’t seem like much but I keep relisting them over and over and it adds up with very little effort since once the auction is up and running it only takes one click to relist it.

My next favorite find this week is the Boehm porcelain flower. This is my favorite because it was a found treasure at the local auction. I bought one of those famous box lots that I love for about 3.00 and there was something else in it that I was interested in—-I forget what! When I looked at the other items in the box I pulled out this very pretty porcelain flower. I got out the magnifying glass to read the name on the stem and it read Boehm. I went right to eBay to look it up because I had never heard of Boehm before. (hey I don’t know everything!) I saw some other very pretty flowers and sculptures made by Boehm and some of the larger ones were going for 100s of dollars–check it out yourself! So I listed it right away and even though there was a very tiny flaw in the one petal, it sold for 36.55. I’m lovin’ eBay again!

Almost the same thing happened with the Commodore 64 plug and play. I got this at the same auction that I bought the Boehm flower. It’s not a vintage item but it actually plays 30 vintage games just by plugging it into the TV. My son-in-law was with me at the auction and he wanted it so I think he bid about 5.00 for it. He actually got 4 of them for 1 price and only wanted the 1 so he gave me the rest. Thanks, Scott! I sold the first one for 42.98. I just listed the second one last night and I have one more after that is over. HINT: don’t list same items at the same time unless you want to compete against yourself! If you are reading this before June 22, you can check it out on auction.

Thanks for listening to my auction stories and if you want to check out my auctions click on  everythingvintagesteph.com OR click on any of the photos.