1. No category

Make Money
Tearing Up Old Books
and Magazines …
… and Selling Them
on eBay
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All information is provided in good faith and is accurate
to the best of our knowledge. This document is for information purposes only and
does not impart legal or financial advice to readers who must consult their
own legal and professional advisors before spending money or taking
action of any kind based on operating a business such as
outlined in this document. No part of this document can be copied by
any means whatsoever in part or total without the express written
permission of the copyright holder.
It is the reader’s responsibility to ascertain and abide
by national and international legal, moral and ethical issues.
This book is based on using original materials known to be in the public domain to
safeguard against the reader inadvertently or negligently breaching copyright,
trademark or privacy and other legal rules. This book is more about selling original
print than reproducing prints from the public domain which in itself is a profitable
business model requiring special understanding and legal knowledge.
Ideas included for using more recent items are provided on the strict understanding
that the individual checks he or she is allowed to use those items in his or her
intended manner.
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“I Make Good Money Tearing Up
Old Books and Magazines
and Selling Them on eBay”
(I’ll Show You How to Do the Same)
For more than ten years I’ve been tearing up old books and magazines and selling
them on eBay and generating very good profits.
The entire concept has made me an eBay PowerSeller three times over, yet I
genuinely am just touching the surface of this exciting opportunity.
That’s because there’s much more to this business than any one person can ever
hope to tackle, and the market is wide open for more people to copy me exactly and
generate some extra spending money or even earn a full-time living this way.
That said, no doubt you are wondering why I am giving you this vital information,
why I should share my secrets with you. After all, if the business I’m telling you
about today is so very profitable, why don’t I keep the entire business to myself and
make sure no-one ever grabs a share of these easy profits?
The truth is I have as much of the market as I can reasonably handle, and I
genuinely don’t want to spend my entire working life cutting up old newspapers
and magazines. I like writing, too, and publishing, and selling collectibles.
So a few days a week is all I can manage for this business. The rest is wide open to
you, and many more people, and there’s no way this market can ever be saturated
even if thousands of people buy my guide.
It’s all so easy, so profitable, so enjoyable, and when you see what’s involved you
really will be amazed at the prices people all over the world will pay for items
anyone can find, take home and dismantle, and …..
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………. Best of All ……….
….. you don’t have to learn for yourself how to get started making good money
from tearing up easy-to-find books, newspapers and magazines, because Make
Money Tearing Up Old Books and Magazines and Selling Them on eBay is
packed with illustrations, showing you how to turn your finds into easy cash.
You will learn how to operate one or a string of eBay businesses, all selling
individual items removed from old books, magazines and newspapers, and how to
turn almost every page of those publications into a profitable income source for
you.
It Gets Even Better Because …..
* No personal contact is required ………. Everything can be done by email, fax,
telephone or post.
* There is nothing else to buy ………. my guide, and the publications
themselves ………. are all you need to get started and run this amazing business on
eBay.
* No special skills or knowledge are required ………. If you can open a book
and carefully sift through the pages ………. you can operate this business. All
you need are the publications themselves and knowledge of what to do with them
next. Listing your products on eBay takes just a few minutes and costs very little.
Even so there are many ways I will reveal to reduce the ‘work’ involved and still
those items taken from old books, newspapers and magazines can generate many
dollars - or pounds, or euros, or any other currency - apiece and attract multiple
bidders and lots of Second Chance offers. I’ll tell you more about this Second
Chance offer concept later.
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This Is What You Need to Know
You Can:
* Start this business right away with no risk whatsoever ….. there is little or
no investment involved.
I started with a book I already owned (It was a huge book about dogs and packed
with pictures, text and diagrams), and a few pounds for eBay advertisements,
alongside some additional materials for presenting my stock (this is the big secret to
turning what most people consider rubbish into valuable ‘must have’ items).
* Run the whole thing from the comfort and privacy of your own home.
* Be paid $5, $10 ….. even $100 or more by every customer. Remember some
people will buy several of these items, others will bid incredible amounts for items
that cost you pennies. Look at the first illustration, for example, look at prices paid
for dog prints from a book that can easily be bought on eBay for less than $30, and
which contains dozens of prints that can fetch equally high prices on eBay. I’ll tell
you all about this type of product later, it’s a great niche market money spinner, and
you could make a full time living on eBay by listing just one or two of this type of
print every day.
You’ll see illustrations of high bid items throughout this book including many for
my own auctions. I’m working in the UK so £ signs are inevitable in parts of this
book, but the business actually works better in the USA with its huge population
and millions of eager collectors for the type of items you’ll soon be selling. The
fact is, although I started working mainly on ebay.co.uk I quickly discovered the
bulk of my sales went to America, where the market is wide open for hundreds
more people to market products similar to mine.
Potential profits are unlimited, sometimes shockingly high, and only today someone
paid me £29.01 for an item that cost me £10 for a mammoth book still packed with
pages for me to sell. That book is Hutchinson’s Dog Encyclopaedia dating from
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the 1930s and a frequent money maker in my own eBay business.
* Work when you like ……… mornings, evening or weekends ……… you
choose the time and place.
It really doesn’t get much easier, especially when you have someone already
experienced in the business to guide you in the early days.
So, let’s not waste time, let’s get on with learning this business.
Best wishes
Avril Harper
Avril Harper, Chartered MCIPD, DIP PM
P. S. This document has been created as a FAST START GUIDE to selling items
taken from old books and magazines on eBay. It was never intended to cover
everything there is to know about selling on eBay. There is so much more to know
about selling on eBay, so many different products to sell, so many tips and
techniques to increase the perceived value of your items, and so much money
waiting for you to claim.
P. P. S. This document takes no account of the simple process of actually starting
out in business, such as opening a business bank account, choosing a business
name, registering to pay taxes, and so on. That information can easily be obtained
from local libraries, government business advisory units, banks and accountants,
and you are recommended to approach those people before you set to work on the
business idea you’re reading about now.
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Introduction
If you’re tired of buying business start up guides from people telling you they are
making lots of money on eBay but won’t show you proof, then worry no more. I
will show you exactly what I do to generate good profits from this business. I’ll
show you screenshots and reveal my own selling secrets throughout this book.
Selling Section of One of My eBay Accounts
Notice prices here are in £s, it’s my UK account, and it’s the one through which I
list most of my paper items here in the UK, while attracting bidders from all over
the world.
The above is an early screenshot for one of my eBay accounts specializing in dog
collectibles, which are essentially clippings and prints and other items taken from
old books, magazines and newspapers. You may be surprised to know that the bulk
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of my stock comes from the United States eBay site, where many suitable books are
easily available at $50 a time or much less. The fact I can buy my stock so
inexpensively from America is testament to the fact that very few people in the
United States are actually running a business like mine.
Let me show you more examples to illustrate the worldwide potential of this
business. Some of these illustrations are quite old, but that is irrelevant, they
represent the same kind of things fetching very high profits today.
Completed Listings for ‘Clippings’
There is always significant interest in articles, clippings and cuttings from
newspapers and magazines, especially about famous people, especially deceased,
and it’s true to say that clippings and other memorabilia cut from old books and
magazines and relating to deceased individuals are usually worth more on eBay
than similar items for living celebrities.
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Cuttings For a Popular Subject - UFOs
Articles for Niche Market Subject: Sport
Sport is a popular subject, especially boxing, baseball, football, golf, cricket.
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Historical Subjects Are Profitable
Al Capone and the Titanic disaster are always popular sellers.
Famous People Are Also Popular
Legends like Houdini, Al Capone and Babe Ruth can fetch huge prices on eBay.
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Influence of the Public Domain
The public domain spawns an immense range of best selling products on and off
eBay, such as these vintage patterns which are delivered on CD and were
previously processed as email attachments until eBay banned digital download
products. Today you can market public domain originals on CD or other memory
device or in printed format. Note that you should always ensure your original texts
are in the public domain or you risk being chargedwith copyright infringement. My
advice is to always choose items dated 1923 or earlier, this being the date at which
you can be almost certain your original item is in the public domain.
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Big Big Business Idea
Articles, cuttings, patterns and other out of copyright and so called ‘public domain’
items, can be copied - photocopied, scanned, photographed - and many will still sell
very well today, as long as you choose subjects that have a strong collector
following in their own right.
Once you have a high priced article, relating to Houdini or the Titanic disaster, for
example, copy it before fulfilling the order and keep the original somewhere safe to
prove your entitlement to make and sell copies.
Offer the copies on eBay as I and lots of other PowerSellers do, and have those
items also recreated as pictures, postcards, articles, prints.
I could spend hours just researching and giving examples of items people are
selling on eBay which you will soon be selling, but that would just waste time that
would be better spent on showing you how to profit from all of this fabulous stuff.
So let us content ourselves with a short list of the things you’ll be selling, all
derived from books, magazines and newspapers:
Prints
Advertisements
Publications themselves
Knitting, sewing and other craftwork patterns
Free Gifts such as blotters, calendars, tape measures
Puzzles
Recipes
‘How to’ articles
Historical articles
Famous people articles
Music scores
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Items I Have Sold on eBay
The above advertisement for Pears’ Soap by Phil May is actually the back of a book
containing hundreds of Phil May cartoons. It’s a bit grubby but it cleaned up nicely
with a special soft eraser made especially for cleaning antiquarian paper items.
This page with pattern for a soft rabbit toy came from a huge book containing
articles, short stories, plans, patterns, and lots of information now classed as in the
public domain. These toy patterns are great sellers on eBay.
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Learn from Sellers More Experienced Than
Yourself
Let me show you examples of eBay sellers all over the world making hundreds of
pounds a time for clippings and similar items on eBay.
Then let me reveal how to use eBay’s Advanced Search Facility to locate ideas
from other people selling products you will soon be listing on eBay. Start by
clicking on ‘Advanced Search’ on eBay’s home page, any country will do but I
prefer the American and UK sites.
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Using eBay’s Advanced Search Facility to Locate Hundreds
of High Price Product Ideas
Enter search word (‘clippings’, ‘cuttings’, etc.)
Tick ‘Completed Listings’ box to reveal past
auctions from which to check finishing prices,
also the number of possible Second Chance
bidders, and other factors I’ll tell you about later.
Click to ‘Search’ and next page, left of the screen, choose to search worldwide. At
the right of the page, at ‘Search by’, choose ‘Price: highest’. Next page feast your
eyes on amazing and sometimes ludicrous prices fetched for items similar to those
you will soon be selling.
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Screenshot Showing Completed Auctions from Advanced
Search for ‘Clippings’
Check out the high prices achieved for some of these clippings. Notice how some
sellers focus on specific themes, such as film stars, but there are many other popular
and immensely profitable subjects also, including cats, dogs, horses, great crimes,
Jack the Ripper and Harry Houdini and some other infamous criminals and
celebrities, and much more besides.
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Immense Prices are Possible
Wow! This screenshot from recently completed auctions shows how wonderfully
profitable this business can be. Look at those prices and wonder why you have
waited so long to get started in this easy business.
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ONE OF MY FAVOURITE SELLERS
OF DOGGY PRINTS
And why, like me, you should look for a tiny niche market
with thousands of high spending bidders – then work hard to dominate
your market!
Doggy Prints are Very Popular but Many Other Special Interest Subjects
are Just as Prolific Record Price Breakers, such as Sports Memorabilia, for
example, also Topographical, Naval, Military, and Hundreds More.
The screenshot below shows just one eBay seller who regularly makes very high
profits (topping £100 a print on occasion) and who has a very simple system for
adding value to prints that cost literally pennies to buy and sell at incredible
profits, especially in the run up to Christmas when prints make fabulous gifts.
She simply adds a little color to her prints, which she then mounts and sells as
H/C (Hand Colored), thereby turning her very ordinary items into unique
collectibles.
All names and listing numbers have been removed to preserve privacy of buyers
and seller.
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LEAVE NO STONE UNTURNED - because you can find
spectacular profits in the most unexpected of places.
The print below made me just over £120 on eBay. It’s an original watercolor of
Peel Harbour in the Isle of Man. It isn’t especially good artwork and I could
have worked far harder at presenting it. See the tiny crinkles on the scan?
Those crinkles could very easily have been ironed out (iron from the back with
thin cloth between iron and paper item) and I could have made much more
money from its sale. The fact is I didn’t try to tidy it up because I didn’t expect
to get more than a few pounds for the picture.
That’s because I didn’t expect a page torn out from a child’s autograph album,
dated 1911, to be worth anything more than £3 or £4! More fool me! But then I
didn’t specifically buy this album for resale. The album came with a large
bundle of postcards I really wanted, the autograph album I considered worthless
rubbish, consequently you could say I paid nothing for this item.
Given the fact ten more similar pages from the book also sold well on eBay, I
will definitely allow at least another few hours for studying autograph albums as
well as photograph albums and scrapbooks I spot at local auctions and flea
markets.
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Let Us Get Listing Together!
The first time you list an item on eBay the whole process seems very complicated,
but with a few weeks’ experience it’s a simple question of pressing a few buttons,
and making whatever changes are necessary.
Let’s look at what’s involved for your first sale for items torn out of old books and
magazines. We’ll use one of my products, a doggy print, as our example.
Print from National Geographic Dogs Edition 1919
Brief Description of the Product
This is one of my most popular prints and a consistent good seller. It’s a picture of
Greyhounds by well-known artist Louis A. Fuertes and it is an original print or
book plate, not a reprint or copy.
The print was taken from a genuine original copy of National Geographic
Magazine published in March 1919.
Once removed from the publication, it has been mounted ready to frame. The
outside of the mount measures 10 inches by 8 inches. The entire ensemble is in
good condition and I have produced a certificate of authenticity testifying the
print/book plate is an original item.
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I don’t ever sell reproduction prints on eBay because the originals are in much
greater demand and they’re also very easy to find, as well as fetching much higher
prices than their respective modern copies on eBay.
Big Tip: Once I have listed this item, I save my listing as a template for all other
breeds of dog from the same publications and by the same artist. You’ll find the
button allowing you to save your listing as a template for future listings at the
bottom of the screen during the listing process for your first item listed. So that one
template works for all dog breeds in the publication I am using here, with just a few
amendments required to reflect breed and listing category.
Additionally, creating and editing one template to promote different dog breed
prints from one specific publication applies equally to most other subjects and
original out of copyright publications.
To begin selling head over to your chosen eBay country site and click on ‘Sell’ as
the top of the screen. You’ll be asked to provide your ID and password, then click
on ‘SIGN IN’. Now choose a selling format: Auction, Buy It Now, Shop, being
most appropriate for our kind of business. I prefer auction format and find it more
profitable virtually every time over asking a specific price for my prints.
Choosing Categories
Now you’ll be asked to choose a category for your listing, this being the place you
consider people who might like to buy your print are most likely to congregate.
Sometimes the choice is simple and there’ll be a category just perfect for you, for
example ‘Collecting > Advertising’ and ‘Art > Prints’, and so on.
You may also choose a second category for the same listing if appropriate. eBay
also has a Category Selector Tool into which you key a few words describing your
item, in response to which you’ll receive a list of possible places to list your item.
On all eBay sites you’ll find the selector tool by hitting the ‘Sell’ button top right of
eBay’s home page and next page click on ‘List Your Item’. Key in words to
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describe what you’re listing in the search box on the following page and eBay will
present a selection of categories for you to choose from.
Tips
* Sometimes eBay’s own suggestions are perfect, sometimes they’re a waste of
time and can actually restrict your money making potential. That’s because eBay’s
ability to choose a profitable category for you depends on words you key in to
describe your item, and if your choice of words or description are ineffective or go
unrecognized by eBay’s Category Selector Tool, you’ll be worse off than using a
pin to choose your category.
I recommend you follow advice given in the next tip for choosing categories in
which to sell items you tear out from old books and magazines.
* Learn from experience and spend time studying eBay’s categories, noticing
where other sellers have placed similar items, how they’ve described them, what
starting prices and reserve prices they have used.
By the way, most buyers hate reserve prices and prefer to see a realistic starting
price, which is just as useful to you and less confusing for them. Search for past
completed auctions for products similar to those you want to sell by using the
‘Advanced Search’ facility as mentioned earlier.
When you find suitable past completed auctions for other people’s listings, click on
those that most closely resemble your product, and when those listings open, at the
very top you can see the category chosen for the listing as shown in the following
illustration.
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Checking Other Sellers’ Categories
This is the category chosen for this advertisement.
* You pay for each category used so it’s rarely a good idea to use a second
category until you have experience of listing specific items, in this case prints.
Instead work at getting the first category right before expanding.
In any case I’ve always found my buyers search by keyword, not category, so by
packing your titles with keywords similar to those used by potential buyers, your
listings will always be found, and that means just one listing category is usually
enough.
* Once you’ve chosen the category, you’ll probably have to choose a sub-category
also, and sometimes further sub-categories.
If you chose ‘Collectibles’ as your first category, for example, you’ll have to choose
from types of collectible - postcards, animals, pez dispensers - again, learn what
you can from other sellers before wasting your hard earned cash on mistakes.
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NOTE: In time, I discovered the best place for my Greyhound print in the UK was
‘Collectibles’, sub-category ‘Animals’, sub-sub-category ‘Dogs’, last category
‘Greyhound/Whippet’. For most prints, however, listing under ‘Art > Prints’ is
usually sufficient to attract visitors and buyers.
Creating Titles and Descriptions
After choice of category comes ‘Titles and Descriptions’, where you provide
information about your product which hopefully encourages bids and discourages
dozens of requests for more information.
Creating listings is an art form, and a science, too, and must never be hurried or
guessed. AIDA is the formula to which all sales materials comply, including on
eBay, and it stands for the process of selling by:
Attracting ATTENTION
Gaining INTEREST
Creating DESIRE
Forcing ACTION
On eBay this means getting people to notice your advertisement, getting them
interested and make them click on your listing, then get them to want your item, and
finally to act - namely to bid.
Your title is where you include words similar to those people key into eBay’s
search engine to find the kind of items you are selling. Without those important
keywords in your titles, your listings sill be missing from eBay search returns.
Experience taught me that, for prints, the most important words for the headline
were: ‘Vintage’, ‘Early’, ‘Original’, ‘Print’, ‘Book Plate’, and others, coupled with
breed of dog, artist, and year the print was published.
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From what you’ve read so far you won’t be surprised if I say the best way to create
your own title and description is by reference to top prices achieved by other sell
people selling similar items to those you are listing.
But be careful because you must never copy another person’s wording too closely
or you risk being accused of plagiarism, or even copyright infringement. Instead
copy other people’s ideas, not their exact wording.
Typical Listing for the Greyhound Print
GREYHOUND. Vintage Original Print / Book Plate.
1919
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
–
DOGS ISSUE MARCH 1919
GREYHOUNDS
Beautiful print of Greyhounds from original by Louis A.
Fuertes. Not a reprint or copy. Good condition.
Mounted ready to frame.
Mount size: 10 inches x 8 inches, aperture approximately 8
inches x 6 inches.
Adding Pictures, Payment and Delivery Details
‘Pictures’ is self-explanatory; ‘details’ is all about using special devices to give
impact to your listings, such as emboldening text, using special highlight colors,
having your listings appear in high-traffic locations, and more.
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My advice: forget the expensive add-ons, they are not at all necessary for the type
of products you are selling. If you just get the title right in your listing and use
keywords to attract your potential buyers, your audience will find you.
Payment and Postage Details
Click through to the page where you provide Payment and Postage details, then key
in the starting price for your product, state whether a reserve price is required, and
if you are offering your item at auction or Buy It Now. You’ll also state what
payment options are available, what delivery times are available, and so on.
SPECIAL NOTE: If you decide to sell worldwide, I recommend you insist
overseas buyers use PayPal or other intermediary payment processor, but not
Western Union which is largely unacceptable to eBay.
I also recommend your starting price is one you’d be happy to accept if only one
person bids. This way you won’t risk selling your item at way below the price you
paid for it.
You will come by many eBayers who swear you should set a really low starting
price, regardless of how much the item is actually worth. This is because lower
starting prices save on listing costs, and they also generate bidding from people
‘trying their luck’ and hoping they’ll get a real bargain if theirs is the only bid.
The theory is that once a bid has been placed, others will invariably follow. I’m not
altogether in agreement with this school of thought in case a listing attracts just one
bidder. That’s why, to reiterate, I recommend your starting price is the very
minimum you want to receive for the item.
Finally, click through to the next page to ‘Review and Submit’ your listing.
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Reviewing and Submitting Your Listing Details
Be careful, study everything, check for typos and mistakes, and then press to submit
your listing. If you discover a mistake you can revise your listing, subject to
conditions, by entering your eBay listing and clicking on ‘Revise Your Item’ to of
the page.
Now You Wait, Look and Learn!
The listing’s up there, your products are ready to sell, and there are still seven days
(other options exist though seven days seems most popular) to go before your first
auction ends.
Now it’s time to sit back awhile, take a break, and spend time looking for more old
books and magazines to tear up and sell for high prices on eBay.
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Why the best item to buy to resell on eBay is something
nobody wants and would never contemplate buying.
But wait, there is an incredibly good reason for you to buy that item, and with just a
few minutes’ effort, I’ll show you how to turn it into something people will fall
over themselves to buy!
The very best type of item is a book, packed with prints, even damaged and dirty
prints, with covers that are torn and tattered and totally uninteresting to collectors
and booksellers. A very good example is a book I bought in Northumberland a few
years ago; it cost £10, but as a collectors’ item in good condition it would have been
worth several hundred pounds. It contained numerous cat prints by Louis Wain
which are always hugely collectable and can fetch really high finishing prices on
eBay. My book was in very damaged condition but many prints were fresh and
clean with sometimes just a few age spots.
The secret here is to dismantle the book, separate the prints and neaten the edges.
Discard any prints that are really dirty and damaged and will spoil your reputation
on eBay and lower the perceived of your other prints. Then you set to work
colouring over stains on the prints and using watercolour crayons to brighten colors
that are scribble stained or faded. Now all you do is add a mount, call the whole
thing a ‘matted print’ (it just means ‘mounted ready to frame’) and list it on eBay.
My book had about thirty Louis Wain prints still in good condition, some of which
fetched $20, some $50, some more.
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The Magic of Second Chance Offers
You will often find your listings attract plentiful bidders and lots of scope for
Second Chance Offers, which makes for lots of profitable sales where you have
duplicate copies of prints you have listed.
I don’t personally agree with Second Chance Offers, it just does not seem fair that
the winning bid is really the losing bidder where lower cost second chance offers
are made after the sale. But if there’s money to be made, it makes sense to know
how to use Second Chance Offers on eBay.
Let’s do that by imagining you auctioned a dog print, by Lucy Dawson, from one of
her beautifully illustrated books.
Consider the auction attracted four eager buyers, and a finishing price of $42.
Imagine, too, that you can easily obtain duplicate copies of the book at prices
leaving plenty of profit for you. Let’s say these are the final bids from your four
eager bidders.
Bidder 1 - $42
Bidder 2 - $41
Bidder 3 - $31
Bidder 4 - $21
When the auction ends, Bidder Number 1 gets the print for $42. If you already
have duplicate stock you might consider offering bidders 2 to 4 the print at their
finishing bids.
But notice that, if bidder number 4 gets the print for $21, then he pays $21 less than
the ‘winning’ bidder, that’s fifty per cent the price your winning bidder paid. This
is why I consider Second Chance offers a tad unfair at times.
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So you, the seller, must decide which Second Chance Offer to make based on the
price you paid for current stock, and the cost and ease of obtaining duplicate items
in sufficient time to fulfill Second Chance orders without risking delivery delays or
eating too heavily into your profits. You must also take into account the possibility
of achieving higher bids for duplicate items from a forthcoming separate listing
than you’ll get from today’s under bidders.
Oftentimes a book will be so rare that duplicate stock is almost impossible to find
but there is another potentially very profitable option here, namely one of offering
reprints of prints and other items that are in the public domain, that is out of
copyright or for which copyright never applied.
Be careful however and make absolutely certain your customers know which items
are original and which are recent copies. However, as I’ve said already, I don’t
personally sell copy prints as I’ve never had trouble finding hundreds or even
thousands of really early original books and magazines at prices that leave plenty of
profit for me. I reckon you can find enough original out of copyright prints also to
make a very good living for you, without resorting to selling reprinted stock.
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How to Start a Bidding War for Your eBay
Listings
Now I’ll show you how a little extra ‘work’ can increase your prices significantly
and lead to multiple bidders for whatever you are selling. This is so easy, yet most
people on eBay just don’t know about the secret I reveal here, even though it costs
nothing and takes just a few minutes.
This idea is based on the fact that one-off items such as you will soon be selling,
emanating from publications which may have been published in limited edition and
are now quite rare, can very often attract multiple bidders and start a frantic bidding
war even for the smallest item, such as a pattern or advertisement.
Bidding wars are great, and just one page can make you many more times the price
you paid for the entire magazine from which it came.
However, there are a few things you can do to start your own private bidding war,
such as:
* List two items in one listing, to appeal to potential buyers with different
collecting interests. So, for example, you might list an article about Houdini with a
magic game that came free with an early magazine, meaning your listing will attract
both Houdini fans and magic fans in general, as well as people seeking unusual new
tricks to actually put into practice today. And that of course means people wanting
just one item will have to bid against others wanting the partner item, which
obviously leads to higher bidder numbers on the day.
* You can grow bidder numbers by using two categories to suit a single item listing
or a multiple item listing such as the Houdini / magic trick example. But that can
be expensive and not always necessary.
Get it right and one listing can attract multiple bidders from each of two different
categories and culminate in a fierce bidding war. But you must bear in mind that
keywords are more important than categories but only if words used in your title
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match those people with varying interests actually search for on eBay.
* Turn your item into a decorative piece and appeal to collectors and non-collectors
wanting something different for their walls at home or in the office. The next
illustration shows how it’s done.
Article Turned into A Decorative Piece
This article from a publication dated 1954 isn’t what you’d call ‘old’ but it did
attract several bidders, and who knows whether they bid on the poem itself or for
the finished decorative piece?
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Tips to Help Your Business Grow Quickly
and Prosper
* Don’t think if an item goes unsold first time round that no-one really wants what
you’re selling. That isn’t usually the case and I have listed items that attracted no
bids at all in their first listing, only to have people fighting over them and
generating great prices second time round. This is because eBay is one of the
fastest changing markets ever, where new people register daily, some leave the site,
bidders’ needs and fashions change, all of which means items that don’t sell first
time can become best sellers just a few weeks later.
* Promote your most likely eBay best sellers off the Internet. For example, I had a
postcard and print from an early newspaper recently depicting a very famous
classical concert conductor from the late 1890s. I sourced a list of newspapers
from all over the world, dedicated to classical music, and sent an email about the
card, including its listing number on eBay. I don’t know if my actions influenced
the steady bidding on the item, but it took just a few minutes to send the press
release by email and bidding was much higher than I expected.
* Be honest in all aspects of your business and treat customers with utmost care
and attention. Also be honest in all your product listings and descriptions and don’t
make promises you can’t keep. Offer a satisfaction or money back guarantee to
generate more bidders and keep negative feedback to a minimum.
* Offer as many payment options as you can to tempt maximum bidder numbers.
* There is no such thing as the ‘right price’. No-one knows how much an item is
really worth, even at auction. Price is what someone is prepared to pay at any point
in time. So at auction an item might go for many times its catalogue value, or for a
pittance if your product is badly described or has an over optimistic reserve price.
* Most paper items with just light stains can be left as they are and still attract
eager bidders. People expect items aged 100 years or so to show a few signs of age,
it shows they are more likely to be genuine than other items in pristine condition.
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But grime and dust, scribbles and pencil notes do not look good, and can detract
from the appearance of the item and its selling potential. Most such blemishes can
be removed with a light eraser or piece of dry bread.
Rub the eraser or dry bread carefully across the problem area, in one direction and
not back and forwards or you could cause the item to crinkle or tear.
There are ways to remove heavy foxing and really dirty stains from antique prints
which involves chemicals and wet cleaning.
But most such processes are complicated and potentially dangerous and should only
be attempted by professional restorers.
Add to that the fact that heavy and sometimes expensive cleaning is not always
commensurate to extra value added to the item.
But if you think you have a valuable, but very dirty print, you might get a
professional to clean it for you. You’ll find them advertising in local Yellow Pages
or online by keying something like ‘Professional paper restorer’, or similar into
search engines.
* Look for add-on profits from every sale by either directing buyers to your eBay
shop for similar or complementary items or by adding a catalogue or list of offers in
all your outgoing packages.
* Save every listing you make to use for similar prints available in future.
* Some items naturally attract more people in their country of origin, especially
collectibles, such as vintage prints of New York City (they’ll attract more interest
on eBay.com), and others from Melbourne, Australia (best on eBay.com.au), and
Berlin, Germany (ebay.de).
In reality, really enthusiastic bidders check the entire eBay marketplace through the
‘Search’ facility, but you can never be sure, so consider very carefully which
market to use for every new listing.
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* Paper items such as clippings and framed prints should be packed very carefully
or they’ll get damaged on route buyers. Most paper items can be placed inside a
white envelope of appropriate size and again into a hard backed envelope.
Really delicate or expensive items can be packed inside pieces of thick unbendable
card just a little bigger than the print itself, before placing it into a hard-backed
envelope or other suitable wrapping. Do not, EVER, fold a print or other item for
any reason, especially to force it inside a package for posting.
A long circular posting tube is best for very big prints and maps, but unsuitable for
thick and textured surfaces which might crack from being rolled to fit the tube.
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Locate All Your Stock on eBay
eBay is one of the best places to find publications to use in your business. As an
example, I buy all my old dog prints on eBay in the form of books by popular artists
like Lucy Dawson, Cecil Aldin, Nina Scott Langley, and other very popular late
19th and early 20th century animal artists.
Few people bid on these books other than to read or collect them, and they will only
bid up to the actual market value of the book which is often way below the price
you might receive for just one print sold from the book. So it’s sometimes worth
paying a little over normal book market value to obtain new items from which to
expand your stock.
I also purchase all my mounts and frames on eBay and usually find them much
cheaper than from high street suppliers. Find them by keying ‘mounts’ into eBay’s
search box or check for stock in both the crafts and photography categories.
Locate suitable donor magazines and newspapers by maintaining careful records of
publications from which your own and other eBay sellers’ best individually
presented prints and posters, articles and other items come.
Determine how much each book is worth to you in terms of resell values for those
individual items, then actively search for similar items selling on eBay.
There’s an easy way to find thousands of books containing hundreds of illustrations
(for posters, advertisements, prints, articles, etc.) for countless different high selling
subjects. You do it using eBay’s search engine, at the top right of any screen, and
mid-way down the home page.
Choose ‘Books, Comics and Magazines’ as your main category and key specific
words into eBay’s search engine, such as ‘illustrated’ or ‘advertisement’, to find
potential good buys across a wide horizon of subjects.
Alternatively, you can key in specific words to locate specific interest books, such
as ‘dog illustrations’, ‘fire service advertisements’, ‘photographs New York’, etc.
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Tip: When you find someone offering suitable quality items on a regular basis, at
low prices, add the seller to your ‘favorite sellers’ list because many specialize in
particular subjects or collectibles and could represent regular suppliers for your
business.
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Problem of Perception
Some people see what they want to see in your eBay listing, and often see
something that is not there at all. Let me explain by saying that for many people the
word ‘print’ means expensive, limited production, very rare.
But they are wrong because ‘print’ is the actual process of creation, it does not
always refer to the item itself. So, because you say you are listing a ‘print by Cecil
Aldin’, for example, some people will think you are offering an illustration that may
be one of just a few created from an original of Aldin’s work., rather than the item
being an illustration ‘printed’ in a rare vintage book which you have dismantled to
resell pages individually on eBay.
So I have very often had people who have bought my prints right back ‘You said it
was a print. It isn’t a print, it’s a page from a book.’ I had this problem surface
many times and once I explained their mistake to buyers, all was well, even for
what I thought might be very difficult customers.
The problem was eventually solved by very carefully wording my eBay listings and
describing items as ‘book plate / print’ from early books illustrated by ‘Named
Artist’.
The fact you are breaking no rules by referring to pages from magazines and books
as ‘prints’ may antagonise some people, and even though it is their fault, their
misconception, you should act to avoid any problems later and certainly to avoid
complaints and requests for refund.
The following examples show how I word my listing to minimise problems, you are
free to use these words in your own eBay listings:
Example One
Original book plate / print from one of Lucy Dawson's (also
known as 'Mac') spectacular books published in 1936. Genuine
item, not a copy or reprint, guaranteed 70 years old. Matted
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ready to frame. Overall size in mount 8 inches by 10 inches.
Would make a wonderful present. Please note, as a page from
one of Dawson’s rare and beautiful books there may be text or
other illustrations on the reverse of the print which do not show
through to the front featured in this listing.
Example Two
The following information is to benefit visitors to our listings
who are unfamiliar with the meaning of the words 'print' and
'book plate'.
Definition of Print: ‘A picture, design, or the like, printed from
an engraved or otherwise prepared block, plate, etc.’ (Source:
Webster’s College Dictionary.
http://www.definitions.net/definition/print)
Definition of Plate: 'A full-page book illustration, often in
colour and printed on paper different from that used on the text
pages.’ (Source: The Free Dictionary.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/plate)
An 'original' print or book plate indicates an item 'originally'
published in an appropriately mentioned work. Almost always,
'original' describes the source of the product, such as the
publication from which the print emerged, and does not always
mean the artist actually hand signed whatever item is on offer.
Almost all items described by experts and authorities as 'prints'
have been 'printed' and subsequently removed from published
works, many of which are rare and not easily found with prints
remaining in good condition.
I’ve personally found no appreciable difference between those examples.
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Look Between the Covers
Some books contain much more than just prints and text, having sometimes been
used to store small flat collectibles, like separate prints, funeral cards, newspaper
clippings, autographed letters. Such items can be immensely valuable in their own
right, as in the next illustration showing a funeral card I found between the pages in
an old history book.
At first glance it looks like any early In Memoriam card, but look more closely and
you will see it is also a valuable piece of topographical memorabilia, and also of
importance to collectors of mining memorabilia.
I found several similar cards inside the book from which this one came, each
pertaining to one of several miners killed during a fall of coal at New Shildon
Colliery, County Durham, England in 1880. The original book packed with text
and prints cost me about £100 and will probably yield many times that amount for
its bound contents once dismantled and sold individually. These small funeral cards
fetched up to £10 each and sold on eBay the first time they were listed.
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Advertisements
For this idea you’ll normally be selling full-page advertisements found in great
profusion in very early publications. Advertisements might be colored or black
and white, photographic or artist-drawn.
Whatever shape they take, framed or unframed, mounted or unmounted,
advertisements are very popular sellers on eBay.
I have always sold advertisements unframed, and find them popular with collectors
and dealers alike, and I find many people tend to buy handfuls of advertisements of
their favorite subjects.
Some publications are prolific sources of quality advertisements, especially
Illustrated London News and National Geographic, The Graphic, and The Sketch,
and many more besides.
To understand how profitable this business can be, consider that some early
publications included twenty or more full-page advertisements, which can easily
fetch $20 or more individually on eBay.
Better still, those magazines can be purchased in bulk for pennies at local auctions,
flea markets and collectors’ fairs.
The secret to buying publications containing a multitude of high profit prints and
such in bulk is to arrive early in the day at garage and boot sales, flea markets,
jumble sales and collectors' fairs, and buy every pre-1940 publication you can find
featuring advertisements before the trade arrives and gives your bargain hunting
game away.
To know whether you are getting a bargain, count the ads in an average issue,
multiply this by 35 or 50 cents (I work on 25p in the UK) and that's the very
minimum the publication is worth to you. More likely you'll get your source
materials at much lower prices especially if you buy in bulk.
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As for most ephemera-based projects, the secret is to buy inexpensively, package
and display your prints well, then list and sell them individually in specifically
themed categories, such as Coca Cola, Dogs, Horses, Food and Drink, and so on.
Here are just a few categories from within eBay UK’s Collectibles/Advertising
section, they closely resemble categories in other eBay sites, and these are the areas
where you will list most of your advertisements from vintage publications:
Chemist
Distillery/Spirits
Drinks
Coca Cola
Coffee/Tea/Cocoa
Pepsi
Soft Drinks
Other Drinks Advertising
Fashion/Clothing
Food
Bakery
Cereal
Confectionery
Dairy
Packaging/Drinks
Signs
Transportation
Aeronautica
Petrol/Oil
Other Transportation Advert
There are numerous other categories available to sell your advertisements, also
prints, clippings and other paper items and, as you will discover by studying other
people’s listings, some items which might more accurately go under
‘Advertisements’ could actually sell better in other categories. A useful example is
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advertisements for early dog related items which I would personally sell in the dog
collectibles section.
The next illustration shows one of my own listings which panders to several
popular collecting themes and should enjoy a high finishing price. It is a poster
advertisement (so called because it is large and would make a good wall
decoration), it is antique (published 1900 so more than one hundred years old being
the most commonly accepted definition of ‘antique’), and it is the work of one of
the world’s most popular artists, Cecil Aldin.
Notice how I carefully ensured artist, production date, product and high frequency
keyword ‘poster’ feature in my title.
Cecil Aldin Advertising Poster Print
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Articles
People have always enjoyed reading about subjects that interest them, and many are
also keen to read very old information about their favorite subjects, even if that
information originally appeared several hundred years ago.
And so you will find people bidding on eBay for articles taken from antique and
recent publications, some for pure reading potential, others to keep and cherish
them as collectibles.
To make this idea work, all you do is remove the pages from the magazines that
feature articles you want to sell which you then illustrate and describe in your eBay
listings.
One publication may in fact yield several profitable items for selling on eBay, some
publications just one. The latter type, where just one subject might interest eBay
buyers, are usually special interest niche type publications or from a specific
topographical location. Where just one popular subject exists, you are faced with
either selling the publication as one lot or dissected into individual articles.
Personally I tend to scan the articles without removing them from the publication,
then list them separately, days apart, to see if any of my chosen articles actually sell
and make it worthwhile dissecting the magazine. If all my articles go unsold, I list
and offer the publication intact.
If just one of, say, five articles from the publications sell, I generally still dissect the
magazine, fulfill the one order, then I relist the others at a reduced price.
The secret to always making money from individual publications is to list your
articles with a starting price for which one sale covers your costs for the entire
publication and still yields a profit for you.
No really heavy or technical work is involved listing articles for sale on eBay, and
as long as your title contains keywords to describe the collecting interest, for
example: slavery, Civil War, Boxer Dogs, Kate Greenaway (and millions more
45
collecting areas), potential bidders will find you, and you won’t have to work hard
to sell your item.
Here’s an example of something I am selling, it’s an article about slavery and the
terrible conditions endured by victims of this barbaric period of our history. The
article appeared in a newspaper called The Mirror published in 1839.
I discovered that collectors of Black Americana and slavery related ephemera
probably use keywords like ‘Slave’ and ‘Slavery’ to locate items that might interest
them on eBay. So the title for my listing uses both those words to ensure most
people looking for similar items will find my article.
Having researched past sales for similar items on eBay, I discovered that no specific
category was involved and that most sellers chose a category specific to the type of
product, not the subject, in this case ‘newspaper’.
So I listed my items under Collecting > Paper and Ephemera > Newspapers >
Antique (pre-1920). For this particular item which I expected to fetch a high price,
I chose an additional category: Collectables > Ethnographic > Americas.
Listing for Article on Slavery
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As a side issue, because very early articles, like my slavery article, are now in the
public domain, I could copy them and sell them as reprints, as downloadable pdf
files or on CD.
A Unique Concept
This is a truly unique concept and one well worth emulating. The individual has
either purchased, written, or otherwise obtained rights to reproduce certain articles
which are presented in newsletter format with spaces for individuals to add their
own business details and create their own customer newsletter. That’s a neat idea
and one you could also cash in on using text from public domain articles presented
on CD or paper format.
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Clippings
‘Clippings’, sometimes called ‘cuttings’, as both names suggest, are simply items
cut from books and other printed publications. They can be large or small, or even
comprise entire sections of a book linked to a specific theme.
Ideas and Suggestions
* Sell a complete section of a particular book. For example a book about dogs in
general can be broken into breeds and listed separately. Next illustration shows my
lead illustration for clippings featuring Beagles. It’s from Book of the Dog, 1910,
which contained many different chapters relating to different breeds of dog. My
listing used a headline something like: ‘BEAGLE. Vintage Clippings, 1910’.
The description was also brief, giving just the title of the book, the appropriate
breed, the number of pages and illustrations included in my pack, and the fact the
item is a genuine original, not a reprint.
Much the same technique would work for almost any book on any subject.
One of My Clippings Packages
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* Sell items taken from several different sources, preferably on a common theme,
presented in a plastic wallet or see through paper-backed bag.
* Clip items on one theme taken from various parts of the same publication. So if,
for example, you buy a set of books about freemasonry, you could clip individual
themes relating to freemasonry from across the various volumes and sell those
themed items separately on eBay.
For example, you may offer one bundle articles and images about freemasons in the
UK, another about freemasons in Australia, and so on. This is especially profitable
because many people collect items according to their topographical collecting area
or other interest, not necessarily the subject at hand.
So some people will collect anything vintage relating to Hartlepool or Newcastle,
for example, regardless of the fact those items focus on freemasonry. Others,
however, will buy anything relating to a subject, in this case freemasonry,
regardless of the topographical area featured in the articles or images.
* Sell the items in specially made scrapbook format. All you need is a children’s
scrapbook into which you paste all the items you have about a specific subject such
as the next illustration showing clippings featuring Bon Jovi.
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Screenshot showing write up for Bon Jovi!
Notice the write-up in the above illustration, and how very detailed it is.
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Gifts and Advertising Novelties
Many early publications contained useful free gifts for readers, some of which are
profitable collectors' items today, such as advertising inserts and advertising
blotters.
Free gifts were very common in publications from the 1890s to 1920s, and they are
fairly easy to find and can be marked up at a very high profit. I have often
purchased dozens of publications in bulk for just a few pounds and priced them
several hundred times higher purely for their free gift and novelty content.
Advertising inserts are especially beautiful and highly collectable. They normally
appear as a page, smaller than the magazine page itself and they are often bound
into the body of the magazine. Many are highly colored, others quite plain, all are
very easily damaged so you must be very careful removing them from their host
publications.
Best of all, magazines most commonly containing inserts are also a very, very rich
source of full-page advertisements ready for you to clip and sell as they are or to
hand-tint and frame for display.
Inserts can be sold separately, as collectors' items, or framed, as does a colleague
who frames and sells all types of early advertising ephemera.
Many early publications also included bonus gifts, normally bearing an advertising
message. For example, paper measuring rulers were common in books of knitting
and sewing patterns. Offering something the recipient will actually use, as for a
ruler or color shade chart, for example, was highly targeted advertising and would
doubtless generate many sales for the firm promoting the gift.
Other common freebies include whist score cards, children’s painting books, quality
knitting patterns, and more. All are highly collectable and very popular sellers on
eBay. The next few illustrations show what to look for.
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Advertising Insert
Advertising Blotter
52
Patterns and Plans
Patterns and plans are popular with collectors and others who want to make
whatever items are depicted on them. They can be sold in their original format, as
pages or pullouts or, in the case of public domain items, they can be recreated on
paper or in pdf or other digital format.
Knitting and other craftwork patterns are hugely popular sellers on eBay, especially
unusual and niche market types, such as dolls’ clothing, war-time economy designs,
fancy dress, and so on.
Woodwork plans are immensely popular and, like knitting and crochet patterns,
those that featured just once in a low-circulation publication - meaning yours might
be the only copy in existence - can be worth a premium today in original or
reprinted format.
Vintage Pattern Reproduced for Today’s Craftworkers
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Posters
These are hot sellers on eBay and many are just pages out of early and more recent
magazines. Some early publications, especially larger sized, had double center page
spreads that make great posters and prints. They can fetch bids of $20 plus.
At online and offline auctions and other suppliers, look for special interest
magazines targeting a specific audience, say dog lovers, train enthusiasts, classic car
owners, and so on. This way you will be able to buy huge bundles of similar titles.
Most are from once avid collectors who have given up their interest, or maybe they
have died and consequently their entire collection will almost certainly be available
as one lot in offline auction salerooms and their online counterparts.
Before attempting to sell these magazines intact, scan a few of the advertisements
and other interesting full-page features and offer these on eBay as individual
advertisements or posters. You do not have to remove those items from the
publication until you know some pages will definitely sell individually.
Many magazines contain twenty, thirty, or more, great items, and some will easily
fetch more offered as individual posters, prints or advertisements, than the price
they’ll achieve as a complete book.
Many early magazines, such as Illustrated London News, contained special news
features, at Christmas, for example, and on the occasion of important events such as
a Royal Coronation, Guy Fawkes’ Night, and so on, when some spectacular prints
and advertisements are found that can generate great prices at appropriate times of
year. Fireworks advertisements, in particular, were highly coloured, and were often
drawn by well-known illustrators and can fetch great prices offered just before
November’s big day.
Generally, the more affluent the audience targeted by early magazines, the better
and more artistic the pages will be, and the better the quality of paper they’re
printed on. By implication those magazines would be expensive to produce and
would probably be in limited supply, then and now, and they’re worth a premium to
people buying magazines intact or for items derived from those publications.
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Prints
Old prints are valuable collectors' pieces and there's a good income to be made
simply from packaging prints neatly and categorising them according to theme.
Popular themes include animals, sports (especially golf and horse racing), royalty,
music hall artists, topographical (named locations) and children.
Very early magazines containing lots of prints which can be picked up for pennies
at garage sales and flea markets include Illustrated London News, The Graphic,
Sketch and The Sphere, alongside a multitude of books and magazines targeted at
specific subjects, such as dogs, railways, cats, horses, woodworking, travel,
topography, and thousands more popular themes.
The Sort of Items You Are Looking For
This print is by Cecil Aldin and most of his
books contained several prints, up to twenty
or thirty each time. Aldin’s books are readily
available here in the UK for upwards of
tenner apiece and virtually all prints will sell
at between £9.99 and £30 each! The mount
increases value significantly.
55
This print is interesting for several reasons: it’s about bats which are themselves
a collectable subject, as well as being from a book by popular writer and artist
Oliver Goldsmith, not forgetting it was published in the late 1840s so it is
officially an antique.
Notice I have used examples of vintage prints in this book but that does not mean
modern prints are not also popular on eBay. I just happen to find older prints sell
much faster for much higher prices on eBay than their modern day counterparts.
Prints need to be carefully removed and made to look more attractive. Most will
have jagged edges from being removed from the publication. You should cut the
jagged edges, removing as little as you can and aim for an even border all round.
Look for old (antique and modern) picture frames at boot and garage sales, flea
markets and collectors' fairs, and make a point of visiting auctions where boxes of
frames can be bought at a pittance and used to increase the perceived value of your
prints as well as to add significantly to their resale value.
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Multiply the Value of Your Prints
1) Add a mount with backing card to the cheapest print and immediately it is more
attractive and valuable to potential buyers. The benefits are several and include:
* Makes your stock look more professional.
* Hides text on the other side of the print.
* The print can now be classed as ‘matted’ which sounds good, but simply means
‘with a mount, ready to frame’.
* Makes a much more desirable gift than the unmounted version.
* Makes the item look bigger and increases perceived value.
* Cuts competition since many other sellers are too lazy or lack time to mount
prints this way.
* Increases perceived value of item and encourages multiple bidders.
* Hides jagged or foxed borders which do not encroach on the picture itself.
Without the mount a print with foxed margins is far less attractive than its cleaner
counterpart and will generally attract low bids.
2) Have black and white prints and engravings hand coloured and mounted or
framed to increase the value of even the most common and cheapest print.
3) Give a Certificate of Authenticity. This is simply a sheet of paper, with or
without a decorative border, which testifies the print is original and taken from a
specific source and published on a particular date. The certificate should be taped
lightly to the back of the print in the mount, so it can not be removed and added to
another print obtained elsewhere. Next illustration is a close copy of one I use
which you are free to adapt for your business.
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Certificate of Authenticity
CERTIFICATE OF
AUTHENTICITY
This is an original print from The Book
of the Dog by Robert Leighton, 1910.
Signed ……………………..
Castle Eden Books, Avallan, High etc,
etc.
Tel:
Fax:
4) Make sure your listings include age, theme, date and source of your prints. Bear
in mind when people use the search box instead of making their way through the
various categories, eBay will search for headlines featuring those words and also
descriptions. Consequently, most important features of your product should be
included in both headline and descriptions. There are also spelling and grammatical
variations to consider where you sell internationally, such as ‘matted’ which in the
USA means the same as ‘mounted’ here in the UK.
58
5) If your original book is special, say a first edition, or a limited edition, then say
so in your listing. To the expert book collector it might be unimportant, to people
viewing your listings it might make the difference between making a sale or
overlooking your listing. It might also increase the perceived value of your
product and hence attract frenzied bidding.
6) Take great care removing prints from publications. We tend to open the book
midway and fold it back on itself, so the spine is inside the fold and the inside pages
appear on the outside. The object of turning the book inside on itself is to break or
weaken the spine and therefore loosen the pages. If pages are difficult to remove
take the staples or other binding material from the book or begin breaking the spine
by hand from the outside or by individually removing threads that bind pages
together.
Tips
* I find the best place to get quality mounts very inexpensively is on eBay. Find
them by going to the search facility, request a search for items locally (so many
available it isn’t worth looking long distance), and use keywords like: ‘mounts’,
‘photo mounts’, and wait for a nice selection of suppliers to appear, some selling
items by auction, others offering Buy It Now.
* When you find a good supplier you can buy mounts in bulk and save on cost and
delivery charges.
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Decorate Your Products
You’ll often find prints from very early publications are bland and sometimes very
lightly printed and not always attractive. But I have seen those very same items
given a ten minute touch up and sell at up to $200 a time.
That ten minute touch up involves either hand coloring the items or mounting them
or even framing them.
Hand colouring is a simple job and there are many places to turn for help to have it
done for you or from which you can learn to do the coloring yourself.
Let me show you how it’s done with this following print, a view of WEST COWES
IN THE ISLE OF WIGHT. The print is from the European Magazine published in
1806. The European Magazine contained hundreds of prints in every annual issue
and they look absolutely wonderful colored and matted.
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Print Before Treatment
Print After Coloring and Matting
Pastel colouring like the above is achieved by sweeping crayon or chalk very lightly
across the print and blending the color across your target using a finger tip or
cotton wool bud that won’t stress or stretch or damage the print.
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Print Before Coloring - Hugely Popular Subject: Dogs
Print After Coloring and Mounted (Matted) Ready to Frame
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Turn Out of Copyright and Public Domain
Pubications Into Top Selling Items on eBay
There are millions of books in the public domain, just a tiny handful have been
reproduced for today’s readers. Many, many more are waiting to be found.
A good example is Illustrated Book of the Dog by Vero Shaw dating around 1880.
Vero Shaw’s Illustrated Book of the Dog was the first real attempt to catalogue,
describe and illustrate the breeds in existence at that time. It went out of copyright
many years ago.
An original copy today costs more than one thousand pounds. So many people
want to read the book but sadly few can afford that kind of money. Consequently a
tiny handful of people have brought the product back to life using public domain
sources.
A large US publishing company recreated the entire book, in print format, with a
new title, but the words and pictures remain true to the original (other than changes
to fonts and colors entitling the company to copyright their book). Another firm
offers a CD version of the original book with pages scanned into pdf format, while
another sells paper copies of individual breed titles mainly on eBay.
There’s still lots of scope for someone to sell the entire version of the book, text and
illustrations, either as a full printed book (very big) or on CD (hard work scanning
the pages but eventually you’ll have a winning product potentially for life).
Don’t let that one thousand pound price tag bother you, the book is in the public
domain, and though I have not yet found a downloadable or other free source of the
original text, it will exist somewhere.
Because an original copy might be hard to find you might ask if you can just copy
the republished version from the American company and retype that for your own
book? The answer is definitely ‘No’, because the few changes the company made
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to pictures and text means the book is copyright protected to them. Even changes to
layout such as shorter paragraphs, explanations in the text to outdated words and
such, can render the book a copyright item. It is always best to use an original copy
and work from that, either by scanning pages in graphic or text format and
compiling into a Microsoft Word or other editor document.
Originals do sometimes become available, inexpensively, some publishers sell
damaged copies, you can sometimes find copies at local auctions, and the original
text and illustrations will be available somewhere from an online public domain
source.
eBay, a Great Place to Look for Product Ideas
The above illustration shows results I obtained from searching for ‘dog’ in eBay’s
antiquarian and collectable books category. As you see, from eight items, seven are
books, one a print, and all (seemingly) suitable for reprinting from the public
domain. Notice I said ‘seemingly’ because I don’t know if these books are
originals published in the USA or if they have been reprinted later and still bear the
original title. I must check that before assuming I can reprint any of these items.
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I always play it safe by obtaining only original items, not later reprints, hence the
reason I buy quite a lot of originals from eBay or at flea markets and offline
auctions.
Let me show you how I do this using a very popular subject, Magic.
eBay, a Search for Books on Magic
Wow, just look at those books and all (seemingly) suitable for reprinting for today’s
readers.
For more product ideas let us check the ‘Illustrated’ section of ‘Antiquarian and
Collectible’, where today I found some great titles and many wonderful prints
which can be sold as originals first and later as reprints.
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Books, Illustrated This Time
The above illustration shows a book that took my fancy, second picture down,
called: Photo Album of Washington D.C., which we’ll talk more about on the
following page.
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Republish Early Book Illustrations
That book about Washington, called Photo Album of Washington, D.C., got me
thinking about my own love of early topographical postcards which I reproduce and
sell on eBay. I reckon if several people fight over an original postcard from my
listings, then at least some will be happy with a reprinted version.
Back to that Washington D.C. book and the following illustration from the seller’s
listing. Look at the fabulous old photographs involved. They’re perfect for
reproducing as postcards, but there’s nothing to stop you selling reprints as wall
posters, framed prints, letterheads, or hundreds of different items.
Illustrations Now in the Public Domain
These panoramic photographs are very popular as reproductions, they are much
rarer than their postcard size counterparts, and they also look more unusual than
small postcards when mounted or framed.
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More Great Illustrations from the Public Domain
More great photos, well animated, making them much more interesting than
pictures with buildings and trees, but no movement of people and traffic which
always add to the value of prints and postcards.
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Comics
Comic are best sellers in their own right and are commonly found in bulk alongside
other paper collectibles commonly at local auction houses, especially those in outof-the-way areas where few bigger traders are likely to travel
They can be sold individually, or in bulk, say in year groups, or listed individually
with date and issue number in auction title and description.
But we found if an item doesn’t sell individually after one or two appearances on
eBay, it can be sold either mounted or already framed in much the same way as we
display and sell prints taken from old books and magazines.
A Comic With Better Eye Appeal than Reading Potential
Here is one we couldn’t sell on its own, but which went quickly at a great price
once it was mounted.
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Maps
Maps are among the very best money-makers of all especially from vintage books
and magazines, also atlases. Most atlases contain maps from all over the world,
from well-known and sometimes out of the way locations, and therefore target very
tight niche markets on eBay.
They can often be purchased very inexpensively at smaller, poorly advertised
auctions, where just a week ago I bought a massive book published in 1903, which
contained 140 plus maps all in good condition. It cost me £3. When I got home I
checked into eBay’s Advanced Search facility for completed auctions and found the
very same maps selling at upwards of £20 each. Then I clicked on the menu on the
screen showing these items and chose ‘Highest Priced’ to learn exactly which maps
fetched the highest prices once those auctions had ended, and those, naturally, were
the ones I listed first.
Maps are my particular favorite seller on eBay where it isn’t unusual to find one
atlas, costing just a few pounds at boot sale, flea market or local auction, can
generate fifty plus maps all of which should sell at £10 or more each.
To prove it, at a flea market recently I purchased The International Atlas, which
was published by William Collins of Glasgow and London in 1878. All the maps
were in excellent condition and I paid £10 for the complete package. Right now I
see the same item listed on eBay for £40 and currently having no bidders. From
that one atlas I made several hundred pounds from my first seven day listing, and I
still have plenty of maps left to list.
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Making Money from Modern Publications
What does ‘old’ mean in Make Money Tearing Up Old Books and Magazines and
Selling Them on eBay? Does it mean vintage, does it mean antique and at least one
hundred years old? Or is it something you bought yesterday, read today, and you
won’t be using it again?
In fact it can mean all of those things, and more, and although items at least fifty or
sixty years old might fetch more money on eBay you might still be surprised to find
items published just a few hours ago can soon be worth ten or twenty times their
cover value.
Case in point: a few weeks ago, the UK newspaper Mail on Sunday came with a
free copy of the latest CD by popular singer, Prince. The packaging said the CD
could not be resold, but that did not stop people selling the CD on eBay at up to £20
a time, nor did the ‘one per household’ provision prevent eBayers buying hundreds
of copies of the newspaper and listing the CD without and sometimes with the
newspaper from whence it came.
Currently those CDs are selling at £11 apiece, still a huge advance on the
newspaper’s cover price.
Here’s the proof:
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Free CDs Reselling on eBay
CDs and other free gifts offered on newspapers and magazines are always great
sellers, especially from niche publications and others available in limited quantities
or restricted to specific country locations.
Popular niche subjects, like dogs, art and celebrities, available in one country but
not elsewhere, can be hugely profitable sellers on other country eBay sites, notably
ebay.com.
The following screenshot, for example, shows prices fetched by many recent
publications, especially depicting iconic events like the Glastonbury Festival.
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First Issues Selling on eBay
The first issue of any new publication will invariably grow in value faster than most
later issues, hence the reason a two month old issue of SciFiNow recently fetched
£41 on eBay.
It’s well worth looking out for first issue publications and other featuring free gifts
or depicting high profile events, such as celebrity articles (see the next screenshot),
sports events, and whatever other subjects might interest readers outside a
publications’ normal geographical circulation.
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Celebrity Clippings on eBay
Celebrity clippings are always popular.
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More About Turning a Page from a Book or
Magazine Into a Decorative Collectible
I have chosen a print which, quite honestly, I really do not think will sell on eBay.
But the print is perfect for describing the process of mounting (matting) a page from
a book or magazine and turning it into a decorative collectible.
This print is of a once famous actor, Charles Kemble, who lived from 1775 to 1845,
and featured in many Shakespearean roles. This print came from The Mirror
newspaper bound volume for 1840. This print show Kemble as Romeo in Rome
and Juliet.
I’m going to start by telling you I am not taking the same care mounting this item I
would for a page from a magazine which I consider might be a good seller. What I
am doing now is for illustration purposes only.
Anyway, this is what the page looks like still intact inside the bound publication:
I remove the page from the book and I get:
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Those brown marks round the ages are caused by age and they are called ‘foxing’.
They look terrible, and they definitely must not show on the finished mounted matted - item.
If a print is bland I usually add a few colours, in this case using blue pastel chalk for
the background and watercolour pencils for the face, hair and garment.
These are the stages involved:
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Notice I have added a little color and the print now has a blue background. That
looks okay; now for the face.
That makes him look a little more healthy. Now I colour the tunic and this is where
I admit I was a bit heavy-handed with the colours:
Here’s how my print looks with my chosen mount in place.
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In this case I have used two mounts, grey and blue, to increase the size of the
finished item and to add a bit of contrast, as well as hiding most of the worst foxing
stains.
To begin attaching the print to the mount, in this case the blue mount, I need to cut
around the margins of the print so it is just slightly larger than the aperture for the
mount – ‘aperture’ being the ‘hole’ in the middle.
The first stage in the process of fixing print to mount is to place a small piece of
fixing tape to the back of the print and the sticky side facing upwards, like this:
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Hard to see but this is adhesive tape with sticky side facing upwards.
Now position the mount over the front of the print so the illustration sits squarely
inside the mount, whereupon we press on the mount onto the sticky tape to seal the
mount to the print.
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With that in place I hold the mount and print carefully together and turn the whole
thing over, so the back is showing, and then I add sticky tape all around the print
and press to fix the mount firmly to print.
I add a second mount using a similar technique.
Here it is, all finished, and doesn’t it look nice?
With one mount or mat the print is called ‘mounted’ or ‘matted’. With two mounts
or mats it is called ‘double mounted’ and ‘double matted’ respectively.
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Frequently Asked Question
What Happens if Pages are Two-Sided, Which Side Do I
Promote on eBay?
Here is another potential problem we all face, and it’s impossible to know which
side will attract more bids and better finishing prices than its counterpart.
In such a case I either choose the potentially most profitable myself or I illustrate
and describe both sides in my eBay listing and let bidders know this item is double
sided. That means they do not get two items to hang on their wall, but they do get a
choice of two very nice items.
*****************
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Summary
So there you have it, an introduction to a very profitable business opportunity, one
from which I personally make a very good living on eBay and elsewhere. I hope
you also find something in my book which not only proves enjoyable, but which
also generates a very nice income for you.