153: Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Selling Postcards On eBay - John Miller

John has been selling postcards on eBay since early 1999. He's a part-time eBayer and a one-man operation. He has over 18,000 active postcard listings and grosses about $1,000 a week. He'll retire from his real job in about two years and will double his listings. He has a YouTube channel called Popeyes Postcards where he educates people about the profitability of selling postcards. Interesting Notes John got the nickname Popeye when he got out of the navy and went to college. He started collecting Popeye stuff. When eBay came along, he sold his Popeye stuff on eBay. Then he started going to live auctions to see what other things can he buy and sell. He bought box lots of junks and paper stuff. One of the boxes he got had a stack of postcards. Postcards opened a wide door to John. He realized that postcards take little space to store and are easy to list, pack and ship. He pays only in pennies but makes a thousand percentage increase on the return of investment. So he made it his niche. Now, he sells 6,000+ postcards a year with an average selling price of $10 per card. He operates in a 12 x 12 office with a quarter of a million cards surrounding him. His postcards date back to 1890s. Older cards are not always valuable. Sometimes, the cards from the 50s and 60s can make a hundred dollars. The back of the cards helps sell the front of the cards. There are postcards that have secret messages, codes, or stamps in the back that help it sell. Postcards are cheap to buy. When he buys postcards, he tries to stay under 25 cents per postcard. Sometimes he would pay up to a dollar. A month ago, he bought 10,000 postcards for $600 or 6 cents each. It was a collection of postcards in New Jersey. He sold one postcard lot for $125. John does a lot of sourcing from other eBay sellers who don't know that much about postcards. Two months ago, he saw a postcard lot from an eBay seller. He pulled up the listings. It showed real photo postcards of the Filipino native warriors from the 1930s. He looked it up while the auction is still going on. He found out that the postcards are sold for $30 to $40. He bought the lot, 150 postcards in all, for 23 cents per postcard. He sold 9 Filipino native warriors for $575. He also goes to antique malls and shows to source postcards. A couple of weeks ago, he went to a big antique show called the DC Big Flea. This week, he would go to a postcard show on the Eastern Shore in Maryland. He spends an entire day sourcing from older postcard sellers in the postcard shows. These sellers do not how to list on eBay. He would buy the postcards from them for $2 or $3 and list it on eBay for $20 or $30. One of the postcards he packed before this interview is going to an insurance company. The postcard is the old hotel where the insurance company is holding their office. The weirdest postcard he has sold is a real photo of an adult magazine from adult movies in 1920. Most valuable postcards are Hong Kong and other Asian countries. He ships postcards overseas. The postcards he packed before this interview are going to Canada, to the UK and one to Germany. He uses the same mailers, but a different combination of first-class stamps. He charges a couple of dollars for the overseas shipment. With 18,000 active listings and doing it all alone, John has set a system in place. He uses a combination of a Box Letter and a Tab Number for his labels. He also included the labels in his listings. For example, H09, which mean Box H, Tab 9. He keeps 50 postcards per tab. Postcards can be made of almost anything. There are leather postcards, metal postcards, and silk embroidery postcards. His best postcard costs him only 30 cents and sold for $545. But, it turned out to be his biggest failure. He failed to notice that the postcard had been trimmed on one side. He got it back and refunded the buyer's money. Eventually, he sold the postcard for $150 after he disclosed the trimmed side. John has a YouTube channel, the Popeye's Postcards. There he educates people that postcards are a great source of income. There are two main types of people who buy postcards: 1. People who like history. They are those who want to see what the main street of a town looked like a hundred years ago. They are those who are looking something old to see of their hometown. 2. True collectors who collect topic postcards like Halloween, Christmas, clown, acrobats, etc... To date, he has 7,000 postcards waiting to go on eBay. He needs to scan them with his scanner, upload and do the listings. So he is set for years and years of selling postcards. John plans to retire in 516 days. He loves selling postcards and he is excited to go from two hours a night to 12 hours a day work. He wants to expand, from 18,000 listings to 40,000 listings, doing it all by himself. He will also try to vend his postcards at the postcard shows and see how it will go. Advice, Tips, and Tricks Postcards are everywhere. There are billions of postcards produced and are still being produced. But the best ones are pre-1950 which can be found in grandma's house. So, start selling from your grandma's collection. Go to antique malls or source from other eBay sellers who do not know what they have. Check their listings. They might be selling matchbox cars but have a listing for postcards. He bought a postcard lot from an eBay seller - 450 postcards for one penny. The seller made a mistake of starting an auction at a penny. Go to postcards show. There are older postcard sellers who may not know what the cards are going to sell for on eBay. He had sourced a card from a postcard seller at a postcard show for a dollar and sold it on eBay for $125. Be careful of the postcards to sell. The number one to avoid is a Niagara Falls postcard. Also avoid postcards of bigger cities like Wall Street, New York, Washington DC Monument. He lowers the price to $.99 of the postcards that have been sitting in his list for long. With his present inventory of postcards, he tries to put new postcards in his listings. He uses up his 1,000 free auction listing every month from his Anchor Store subscription. Do a research on the postcards you are selling. Look them up on eBay sold items or WorthPoint, and see what those postcards are selling for. If you cannot find the postcards on eBay, do a Google search. Look for similar postcards and see what they are sold for. Then set a starting price of the postcards. He patronizes and enjoys the service of WorthPoint. It has helped him get the most value out of his postcards. Q and A Question: With a low price item that offers Free Shipping, how do you incorporate all the fees to make sure that you are making a profit? Answer: John's total cost per postcard is under a dollar. He builds it into the price of his postcards. He ships with a first class stamp. His shipping cost is 52 cents. He uses cardboard mailers that cost him 7 cents. He uses plastic strips for his postcards that cost him a penny. He buys his first-class forever stamps from other eBay sellers for 32 cents. He uses a tracking service called LetterTrack that costs him 11 cents. The tracker puts a bar code above the shipping address and it will track the first class letter. He pays $300 for his Anchor Store that gives him 10,000 free listings. For the extra 8,000 listings, he pays a nickel each. In summary, he spends $700 for listing fees that give him a cost of less than 4 cents per postcard per month to list. He builds it into the price of his postcards. If he sells a postcard for $5.99 and he only bought the card for only a quarter dollar or less, his return on investment is $4. Quotes "As a seller, the best and funniest part is going out and buying." "Just because they are old does not mean they are valuable." "People are like a little historian and want to see what the place look like a hundred years ago." "The postcards back in 1900 are the Twitter of the day." "You must have a love of history and love of learning to do postcards." Contact Information eBay Store: Popeye's Postcards YouTube: Popeye's Postcards Sponsors Solutions4Ecommerce 3DSELLERS eCom Chicago Norila Digital Marketing

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153: Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Selling Postcards On eBay - John Miller is an episode from So You Wanna Sell On eBay by Ali Young & Ron LaBeau.

This episode is 36:19 long.

This episode was published on Aug 7, 2018.

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