Collectible Treasures

Have you ever wondered where all the wonderful vintage collectibles come from that are for sale on almost any web site you look at.  I am sure some of them are family collections or someone has cleaned out the garrage and thought "why am I saving these I will never use them" and they end up on one of the auction sites.  These are the people that will list whatever they have and you never see them again. (with a few exceptions)
I have been selling online for about 10 years now and find it to be a great hobby and really enjoy doing it. The most challenging part of this hobbie is finding items that can be sold and not put people in the poor house. Some of the best places to find items of interest are yard sales, estate sales, storage locker auctions, and flea markets.  Each one of these are very good places to purchase items if you are diligent in analyzing your cost verses what can be expected to sell it for.
My personal favorite is yard sales followed by estate sales.  Yard sales usually consist of items that the owner has no use for and will sell far below retail value and estate sales vary considerably,  some estate sales are run by professionals and it is hard to find real bargains but others are run by family members and tend to have a better chance of getting some real bargains.  Storage space auctions can be very risky since they are auctioned as is and you are not allowed to go inside to see what is there.  Some have some real great items and some have next to nothing.  Flea markets are my least fovorite because most of the vendors are regulars and travel from one place to another and tend to have items priced higher leaving less room for proffit.
No matter where you find your items it is important to be somewhat knowlegable about the items you are looking at and it is advisable to kind of specialize.  I try to limit my items to quality, limited edition pieces by well known artists and manufacturers. 
Just as important to keep in mind is the size and weight of the items because the shipping cost has to be considered.  As an example, I live in California and if I can find small items that when packaged weigh 1 pound or less the shipping cost to the East Coast would be $4.95 and if it goes 1 ounce over the cost jumps to $8.70 and the cost stays the same up to 2 pounds, 2 pounds 1 ounce jumps to $11.95.  If I ship something weighing 6 pounds the cost is $22.05.  As you can see the shipping is very often more than the cost of the item beeing shipped.
I hope I have given everyone reading this something to think about and maybe a better understanding of the way ecomerce works.  Please visit my store and check out some of my bargains.
http://mystuff.mybisi.com/