Initially, the only place I bought and sold from was eBay, where selling from a distance suited a sociopath like me. I wasn’t aware of antiques fairs when I first started, and I wouldn’t have considered running a stall myself. My personality needed an overhaul before I’d consider putting myself on show like that.
I bought and sold some Clarice Cliff on eBay: mostly modern reproductions rather than the 1930s originals. I thought I was making shrewd buys, but I was making little profit. I was buying high and selling low. Ceramics are bulky and fragile, so I looked at dealing in a variety of different items.
I just can’t sell some items: I’ve not done well with rings, handbags or watches. Armed with Miller’s Collectables Handbook & Price Guide 2021 – 2022 I learnt that handbags can be worth big money. I figured that if I sold a Hermes Birkin bag for £8,000 I could probably make £2,000 profit. So, if I sold two bags a month I’d be laughing. I couldn’t invest £6,000 on one handbag, so to get started I bought a few around the £400 mark: beautiful Gucci, Prada and Mulberry bags. Beautifully simplistic and elegant Mulberry bags are my favourites. If my ship ever come in, I’ll buy a Mulberry man bag. I believed I priced them right, but they were slow to sell. People spending £500 on a handbag ask a lot of questions and have high demands. Condition is very important, so you need to supply multiple photographs from every angle, and show every blemish. People would ask if the bag would accommodate a laptop, or ask how long the handle was. I’d not even considered such questions. I’m not sure I made a profit on any of them. Some I made big losses on as I just wanted to get rid of them.
Back then, if a ring had missing diamonds, a vase was chipped, or a silver pepperette had a non-matching lid, my hand would be the last to go up at an auction. I bought my first watch at an auction at Tring. After an hour watching antique oil paintings go for twenty quid a pop, I was bored and depressed. I was keen to make my first purchase. After returning from a quick pub lunch, we were on to the jewellery. A gold-plated watch flashed up on the screen. Nobody else seemed interested, but it looked nice on TV and it was only £20. Wah Wah. I knew I’d made a terrible mistake straight away. This Swiss watch might have been a decent timepiece back in its day, but it was in terrible condition with rolled gold flaking off and the back ground down to base metal. I think I put it on eBay with a 99p reserve. After a few weeks I gave up. I didn’t throw it away. I’ve kept it as a reminder of how I started. For a couple of years I wrapped it up and gave it to the wife for Christmas as a joke. I call pieces that are hard to sell “problem items”. I’ll reduce the price until they sell, then forget about them. However, I look at this watch occasionally as a reminder how far I’ve progressed. Other watches I’ve bought have suddenly stopped working, so immediately lost value. I did a bit better with antique pocket watches later on, but I buy few now. I always worry they’ll give up the ghost and stop working. I’ll then have to pay money to have them serviced, or sell them off cheaply.
Weird & Wonderful
One of the items they didn’t think was worth auctioning was a brass Chinese urn. It was sold to me on eBay as a censor. This is a receptacle for burning incense. I’d heard they go for £100-plus. The valuer pointed out that it didn’t have any holes for smoke to escape. He didn’t know what it was; probably some tourist tat. I think it was an urn. This started the tradition of bringing macabre items home to scare the wife. Mo’s very sensitive to paranormal activity. She sees all sorts and gets strange feelings in certain places. After a trip to London she thought a ghost had followed us back from the Coal Hole pub on The Strand and was living in our shed.
For a while the brass urn took pride of place on the coffee table. But Mo wanted the dead Chinaman gone. So did I. It was an early problem piece, and it sold on eBay for a fraction of the £83 I paid for it. I’d later bring in mourning brooches, complete with lockets of hair and photos of newly deceased children, plus other weird and wonderful items, that I’m proud to say I’m becoming known for.
