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Want to make money with investing, but in an unconventional way? The world of collecting and trading is not limited to stocks and bonds, but tangible items as well. Like when your friend bought that cheap item at a garage sale that turned out to be the rarest of the rare and made them thousands. It’s difficult, but can be done. Here are a few important tips to keep in mind if you are going to take a risk on other kinds of investing that involve buying and trading/selling goods.
#1) Look Out For Fakes
When you’re investing in antiques of any kind to resell, you have to been on the lookout for fakes. This can be a bit challenging unless you’re very knowledgeable about the business in general, and of course people can be misleading when they are trying to make sales and get things off their hands. The other thing to keep in mind is the quality of the products, because if they are not perfect sometimes they are not worth as much as you would think they are. Not to mention many people overcharge for them to begin with so you might have a more challenging time making a profit when you resell them.
That being said, if you do spend some time getting to know the details you can really make quite a lot of money. The genre of antiques is a pretty broad one so it’s generally best to narrow it down to specifics. You might for example choose to focus on lamps, or you might focus on typewriters. To make your purchases it’s best to go places in person so you can be sure of what you’re getting.
#2) Become Your Own Importing Business
The same way that any retailer gets their products and then sells them for a markup, you can do the same. The key is to find a product that is going to sell repeatedly and to make sure you can sell it with a large enough profit to make it worthwhile and not lose you any money. Take a look around eBay and Amazon to see what sort of thing sells well and then see if you can find somewhere to purchase them cheaper.
#3) Make Sure Your Products Are Quality
It’s important to sell quality products, particularly if you’re selling them online because you don’t want people to be returning the items frequently lest you start losing money on shipping fees. A good rule of thumb is not to sell something that you wouldn’t use or see the quality in yourself. For example if you’re buying and selling cosmetics, they have to be of a certain caliber to please your customers. One thing you can do is try making a deal with an existing cosmetics manufacturer that might cut you a deal, or you can even create your own line.
#4) Customizing Is Always an Option
Another option for buying and reselling is to purchase parts and then custom build things, such as golf clubs. Golf is an incredibly popular sport and when you can acquire a lot of different parts you can make custom clubs that fit exactly what your customers are looking for. If you can make a name for yourself selling affordable, quality, custom clubs you might create more work for yourself than you even bargained for! This is possible for all kinds of different things, really whatever you can set your mind to. You can get parts from wholesalers, auctions, or just normal online sales.
#5) Hidden Gems Can Be Easy to Find
Some things to buy and resell only seem valuable to collectors. One example of this is used books. At first glance they might seem useless but to a collector a first edition can be worth hundreds or thousands of dollars. That means that when you know what your looking for it can be pretty easy to come across some winners, as people usually don’t know the value of them. But of course you need to know what you’re looking for! First additions and autographed copies are generally a good place to start. A good place to look for valuable used books include garage sales, flea markets, estate sales, and even used bookstores.
Are you thinking of trying to make some extra money by buying and reselling stuff or full on starting your own company? Let us know if these tips were useful to your thinking about where to start!
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