19-Year-Old Antique Reseller

Hello, hello, my friends!

Some of you know that I started up an antique booth back in February.

My mom has been reselling antiques for a few years now, and for a while she had two booths at our local antique mall.

She mostly does live auctions on Whatnot. Here’s a little shout-out for her in case you’ve always wanted to know more about my mom LOL.

https://www.whatnot.com/s/CYMSS4sT

She had gotten tired of her second booth and was going to stop renting it, but my friend and I were like:

“Hey, we’ll take it!”

So now the two of us are renting a booth to sell our wares.

My friend, Addie, was actually given hundreds upon hundreds of old books for free not too long ago, so part of the reason she wanted to rent half the booth was to finally sell some of them.

The other day, I think we spent nearly 6 hours at her house simply organizing everything 😅 She has a lot of cool inventory!

We even found a bunch of really old German Bibles from the 1800s.

My grandpa once gave me $100 to invest in something. I’m pretty sure he meant invest in stocks, but I decided to invest it in this antique booth venture for fun. You all know how I feel about stocks😏

I have been consistently making $15-$20 per month in profit, which is hardly anything, but for this being a fun side hobby, $20 is $20.

This month may be the first time I actually lose money on the booth. So far I have only made $5 in sales, and with rent being about $19, that ain’t gonna cut it!

It is a little disappointing, but I am not too worried about it. This whole thing has been a journey of learning the world of reselling.

That is kind of the basic update on how it is going financially, but now I want to share some of the cool things I have learned since starting this booth.

1. People like buying from young sellers

I am not even kidding; every time I stop by the booth to move things around and add new inventory, some shopper always stops and asks me a couple of questions.

After I leave, I almost always make a sale. It’s like nearly guaranteed, and I think that is because the customers I talk to and connect with want to support me.

I told Addie that we need to capitalize on our ages by making a sign with information about us to prompt more people to buy from us XD. We’ll see if it works!

2. You can find fabulous deals if you know where to look

I lucked out by having a mom who has already been doing this for several years. She tells me all her secrets, and she somehow knows when all the crazy good sales are happening.

The amount of inventory I have gotten for free or less than a dollar is pretty impressive. You don’t need to buy expensive things in order to get started; in fact, it is quite the contrary. I try to make a couple of dollars on every item, and that has been working well for me so far.

3. The stuff you think will never sell somehow sells

   There have been a few times where I have gotten some random things for super cheap and stuck it in the booth with the mentality of:

   “Oh, nobody will ever want to spend money on that.”

   Somehow, someway, someone does want to spend money on it. A funny example of this is that not too long ago I was at a rummage sale where I could stuff an entire bag for $1. Obviously, I was going to fill the entire bag.

   Once the bag was full, it had the most random junk dishes in it. Apparently they were legit stoneware, but let me tell you… they were an ugly color.

Amongst the ugly stoneware was a butter dish. Completely and entirely random… yet someone went out of their way to spend $3 to possess it. Fascinating.

4. The stuff you think will sell doesn’t always sell

There are so many things in the booth right now that are killer good deals.

I hardly ever price anything over $5, so even if it’s worth $10, I’ll price it at $5 to have a higher turnover rate.

For some reason, it doesn’t seem to always work that way.

5. I buy more things for myself than I should

I now have a reason to go to thrift stores and garage sales more frequently, which is so dangerous! Not only do I find things when I am out and about for my various collections, but I also tend to wander over to the clothing department.

I have been spending nearly $20 on clothes every month lately, which is amusing because that is how much I have been making in profit every month XD.

If I use girl math, all my shopping is free!

6. I price everything super high that I want to keep

There have been a few pieces I have absolutely loved, but I didn’t have a place for them! When that happens, I just slap a high price on it so that it doesn’t sell.

A very sad example is this beautiful folk art wooden chicken painting I found for $8.

I didn’t want to sell it, so I threw $24 on it, which is a lot when everything else in my booth is $5. That chicken did not last very long😅. I should have put $30 on it.

My epic antique Christmas tree saw is still holding out strong with a $50 price tag. I will be so sad if someone buys that thing.

7. Some stuff is just really cool

I recently bought this little oil lamp, and for “science,” I decided I needed to light it up.

Sigh, I was born to live in the 1800s.

Because 7 is the number of completion, I think I will stop there for now.

But first, look at this awesome crock I bought today for $5!! These things are often selling for $75-$100.

I have to keep it; by the way, there is no way I am selling this guy. I am determined to have a stoneware crock collection, and I will do that slowly but surely.

Thank you all for taking a few minutes to read about my latest hobby! What are some of your favorite antiques?

I recently started my very own cow creamer collection… I am obsessed.

Come to think of it, I should write a post one of these days about my many collections. I think you would find that interesting.