Find out what the most popular antiques are by reading Collect It magazine, which can be used as a pricing guide when selling antiques. Find out more about Collect It magazine withtips from an antique appraiser in this free video about using advertising to sell antiques. Expert: Jan Braunstein Bio: Jan Braunstein owns and operates the Antique Avenue antiques store in Pomona, Calif. Her mother also owned an antiques store. She is a certified antique appraiser. Filmmaker: Nili Nathan…
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Jan
Ginger window #4
Image taken on 2009-02-13 18:28:50 by Martin Kimeldorf’s Pixel Playground.
Most classic car lovers who attempt to restore cars do so out of love for the automobile and what it represents to them. Many also do it for the pure challenge and personal satisfaction of restoring an object to its former glory. Although it’s possible to make money restoring and selling antique autos, few do it for the money alone.
If you’ve never before attempted to restore a classic auto, here are some tips to save you money and aggravation before you lose yourself in your hobby.
Before you do anything to the car and especially before you spend any money, take an appraisal of the car and determine exactly how much restoration you want to do. Do you want to restore it EXACTLY to the state it was in when it came off the assembly line? Do you merely want to restore the shell and interior of the car to its former state, but completely modify and soup up the engine and internal parts? Do you want the car to be driveable or do you simply want a showcase car? The time to answer these questions is now, before you even begin to think about the next step.
With the answers from step one in hand, estimate and write down all of the materials and parts you’ll need to restore the car to its desired state. Of course, you can’t know everything that needs to be done until you actually get under the hood and start to work with the body, but do the best you can with what you know.
If you are not mechanically inclined, you’ll have to find or hire someone to do the inspection for you. If you happen to live nearby an automobile restoration shop, you can often get one of their mechanics to make a house call and inspect your car for a fee.
Now find a good price book or a respected automobile restoration expert and begin pricing the replacement car parts. And don’t forget online research. The prices of many car parts can be found on the Internet.
If you are planning on contracting the car restoration to a shop, price the labor costs also. This may take some time, but when you’re done, enter all of your figures into a spreadsheet and compute the estimated total costs. Then, just to be conservative and account for unexpected repairs and cost overruns, increase the total amount by 50%. The final tally may shock you. But at the very least you won’t be surprised when money begins to drain from your checking account.
Here are some of the problems you may run into while attempting to evaluate classic car and price parts:
It’s not unusual to be unable to locate all of the parts that you need. Car parts become available when they become available, and some antique car parts are extremely rare. It this is the case you will either have to settle for a substitute part or wait for an authentic part to hit the market.
You may find the perfect car part that you need but it’s in another city or state and needs to be shipped to you. Make sure you include shipping prices in your parts estimates. Some people and companies use transportation costs as profit centers and the resulting price may be more than you expected.
As you know, rust is the enemy of cars. Body rust is not something to be too concerned about – you are doing an automobile restoration after all. However, rust on structural parts can bust a hole in your budget big enough to sink the entire restoration project. So make a special note to look for evidence to look for rust in the wheel arches, roof pillars, floor, and so on.
For those of us who love cars, finding and restoring antique autos can be one of the most enjoyable hobbies around. Just be sure that you don’t go broke while enjoying it.
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Jan
Chinese Antiques ????
Chinese antiques are very interesting, historical, worth appreciating and collecting. Therefore, this raises the interest of foreign people especially from Europe. China has a history of several thousand years, a pretty long history. It is not that easy to be very clear about the Chinese antiques at a time. No wonder you like them but, at the same time, don’t dare to buy. Perhaps you start being interested in antiques gradually. Or, you would like to start a business about selling antiques in Eruope. I think now is right time to do that because of China fever in recent years. The whole world is highly proactive towards China antique market. Anyway, you should bring your expert friends to our store to examine our products if they are genuine or fake. Eventually, you will be confident in our products and believe me. Welcome to our store! http://chnantiques. blogspot. com/ Wishes be smooths sailing in everything! Antiques tips-Snuff Bottles Beginning the Qing Dynasty (mid-1600’s), tobacco reached China from the Americas via Japan. It was ground to a fine powder, with herbs and oils added. The Chinese used their traditional medicine bottles for storage, rather than wooden snuff boxes. For the next 100 years the habit of taking snuff retained within the Royal Palaces, until the mid-1800’s when it spread over the whole of China. Antiques tips-Jade Jade is treasured in China as the imperial stone. In two forms, jadeite the best for its more vivid green and translucency. Also in lavender, pink, and white. Nephrite is dark spinach greens, white, browns, and black.
I began selling stuff on Ebay in July of 1998. Since then Ebay has grown to enormous proportions and I am not sure how many of the millions of people who visit Ebay every day really know much about what it was like and how it has changed. I will not pretend to present a comprehensive history of Ebay which may have already been done or will most certainly be done at some point in the future. Please, allow me to just relate my own experience of buying items and selling them for profit on Ebay.
In 1996 I was one of the co-founders of a company that provided local dial-up internet access for the small rural community where we live. The company is still in business and has grown with the times to now be a primary provider of high-speed wireless internet access in several communities in 3 counties in the area. So, I have been closely associated with the internet for the past 11 years.
In 1997 or so we started to hear about a web site called Ebay, an online auction site where people were buying and selling stuff. I was no stranger to auctions having attended auctions with my parents when I was a young child. And now as an adult, I still attended estate or farm auctions in the area. So, I checked out the site and thought it might be an interesting thing to try. In 1998 I registered as an Ebay user and started to look for some stuff to sell.
The first item I sold on Ebay was a little hand woven wool rug. It was only about 2 feet by 3 feet and quite worn because it was pretty old. I paid 5 dollars for it and it sold for 20 dollars which I thought was pretty good since it was four times what I had paid for it. If I had a hundred dollars worth of stuff sell for 400 hundred that would be some good money.
I was off and running to sales all over the area. My wife and I bought stuff of all sorts, brought it back to our office, took pictures, wrote descriptions, and listed the stuff during the evening so it would end a week later during the evening when people were home in front of their computers.
At that time Sunday evening was the prime time to have your auctions end. It was then that the largest volume of potential customers were on the Ebay site. Keep in mind that internet access at work was not nearly as prevalent as it is now. People used their computers from home in the evening. The downside to this was the Ebay site would become so busy the site would sometimes become unresponsive for buyers and sellers alike.
There was nothing worse than having to wait for a couple of minutes for each page view in the listing process to happen or, worse yet, have some one trying to bid on your stuff that is ending in a couple of minutes and they cannot get the page up. Ebay was working furiously to update its software and hardware and its internet connections to handle the traffic that just continued to grow.
On the Ebay front page it used to say how many items were for sale at any given time. I remember seeing that figure at around 800,000 and thinking it was huge. I do not know how many millions of items are now for sale on Ebay at any given time and not sure if they even say any more.
I have always focused on selling antiques and collectibles on Ebay. Like any other area of the country there are 8 or 10 auctioneers in a four county area around us. When we really started to go to auctions a lot there would be anywhere from 2 to 6 auctions during any given week one could attend. We bought a lot of stuff because it was usually cheap.
I would have 50 to 75 items for sale on Ebay at any given time. A person could buy stuff for a dollar or two or maybe a little more and list it on Ebay for a minimum of 9. 99 and it would sell for maybe 15 or 20 dollars or more. You never knew what something would bring which is why it was so much fun. It seemed like you could sell just about anything for a profit.
Estate sales and auctions have always been my largest source of items to sell on Ebay. In 1998 and for a few years after these auctions were attended by the local public, maybe a couple of collectors, and a handful of antique dealers.
Nowadays, upon arriving at an auction site there are still those same groups of people but there is another group who have come exclusively looking for items to sell on Ebay. These people may have come from 50, 100, 200, or more miles away.
Before the auction you see people going through the days offerings while talking to someone on a cell phone who is probably in front of a computer telling them what something might potentially bring or has sold for on Ebay. Sometimes these people are specialized or sometimes they seem to want to buy everything at the sale. Consequently, prices at live auctions have risen to where many items sell for what they might sell for on Ebay and the people who seem to have to buy everything are most likely just spinning their wheels and really going nowhere.
The cost of doing business on Ebay has steadily increased over the years. It is still a bargain considering the market exposure your offerings receive. In the past the expenses associated with selling on Ebay were kind of an afterthought. Now the expenses are something to consider.
I will certainly continue to sell items on Ebay with the hope of picking up some extra cash from time to time. There are numerous methods, books, and programs to make millions on Ebay. Some of them may work but probably only if you are willing to work hard at it. I am sure there are lots of people whose sole enterprise is selling things on Ebay. There are people selling stuff from warehouses, offices, garages, home offices, off the dining room table, or their bedroom. All of them contributing to making Ebay the most successful online business of them all.
Image taken on 2009-03-21 23:42:31 by _cck_.
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Jan
Get the Best Home D
Buying and selling antiques from online antiques stores is becoming a very popular business for many people. There are many different types of antiques that you can buy and sell at these resources on the internet. Often certain types of antiques are more popular than other antiques. If you are planning on buying and selling antiques you need to understand the market and how to make it work for you. The best way to establish yourself is to find the most unique item that you can. It or they should be fairly easy for you to acquire. The next step is to learn everything you can about it. This will help you to shop for antiques in the best possible way.
Some up-and-coming antique items that are becoming more and more popular among collectors can be found at opposite sides of the country. Some of these antiques can be found in New England and date from the time of 1790 to 1860, finding heavy influence from Anglo sources. These New England antiques include hutch tables, highboys, blanket chests, and pewter cupboards. If you are able to obtain any of these antique items from New England you are sure to have a winner when it comes to an antique sale. You may find some of these pieces from New England so beautiful that you may want to keep a piece or two for your own private collection of antiques. Other antique items that are gaining popularity come from the state of Texas. Many Texas antiques have a German influence that can be seen in the craftsmanship. The time period for these antiques is from 1870 to 1900 and includes such items as rawhide chairs, tables, and wardrobes. Most of these antique items can be identified by their tapered legs and by the use of wood from Texas that is known as heart pine. If you are unsure if one of these Texas items is actually an antique or not is by checking the dovetailing that you can find on the corners of the drawers. If the dovetailing is uniform and looks too perfect then more than likely the item isn’t an antique. Dovetailing in antiques looks rough, irregular, and handmade. If you are just starting out with your own online antique shop and want to start up a business of buying and selling antiques, you will have to obtain items such as the ones mentioned above so that you can establish your uniqueness in the antique field. You want to be able to offer antique buyers something that they can’t get anywhere else without a great deal of effort.
- Hot Wheels 2000: First Editions : Ferrari 333 SP 1/64 scale (11 of 36 Collector #071)
- age 3 plus
Product DescriptionHot Wheels 2000: First Editions : Ferrari 333 SP 1/64 scale (11 of 36 Collector #071). . . More >>