December 11, 2024 • 43 mins
In this episode of the What's Sold Podcast, the hosts dive into the holiday cheer and discuss their preparations for the festive season. They talk about personal holiday experiences, including trips, decorations, and festive drinks. They also provide valuable tips for resellers on how to prepare for the Christmas season, including listing specific holiday items, running discounts, managing store time away, and effective marketing strategies for selling vintage ornaments and other collectibles. Major announcements include the upcoming first-ever guest on the podcast and the creation of a new subreddit for listeners to join and share insights.
00:00 Welcome to the What's Sold Podcast
00:54 Holiday Cheer and Personal Updates
01:32 Upcoming Trip to Grenada
03:53 Time Away and Store Management Tips
05:43 Exciting Announcements and Future Guests
07:25 The What's Sold Podcast Subreddit
09:07 Sharing Knowledge and Collaboration
16:11 Matt's Sales and Vacation Preparation
22:09 The Power of Notifications in Business
23:48 Balancing Work and Family Life
24:51 Challenges of Selling on Facebook Marketplace
28:49 Holiday Selling Strategies
35:32 The Market for Vintage Ornaments
41:36 Final Thoughts and Holiday Wishes
The What Sold Podcast Subreddit
#holidayselling #businesspractices #businessvacation #vintagechristmascards #vintageornaments #ornaments #christmas #whatsold #jewelrylots #whatsoldpodcast #rustythereseller #whatsold #reselling #ebaystore
Rusty the reseller:
https://www.youtube.com/@RustyTheReseller What Sold: https://www.youtube.com/@whatsold Postcard Planet: https://www.youtube.com/@postcardplanet What Sold Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCc513e2aPbloS20mTwuv8bAMark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:37):
Welcome, welcome, welcometo the What Sold Podcast.
I'm not gonna lie to you, Matt.
I am with you today innot only body but spirit.
I am in the holidaycheer season of my life.
I love the holidays.
I know for some people it's tough.
Not for me.
I just love them.
Highland Breweries releasedtheir Cold Mountain Brew.
(00:57):
We put up our lights.
Our tree is up.
It's decorated.
I've got my handle of eggnog.
I'm ready for the season, Matt.
I'm not going to lie to you.
I really, truly mean, I amexcited about this season.
How about you?
You guys, I can't tell if you guys arelike Christmas frivolity type folks, or if
you're kind of like, we'll put it up, but.
Well, frivolity is my middle name,so I mean, yeah, we get into it.
(01:23):
We've already put up the tree anddecorating that sort of thing.
I got behind the eight ball withregard to putting out Christmas
lights, so that's going to happen.
I'm, I say that because I'm leavingtomorrow early in the morning.
My wife and I are taking a trip tocelebrate this month is our 20 year.
(01:43):
So we are going to go to Grenada.
Ooh.
Yeah, we're gonna, this is goingto be a trip minus the kiddos.
We're going to try torelax and enjoy ourselves.
Yeah.
So Christmas is on the backburner until I get back.
I'll finish, Christmas lights.
We can get back to the the frivolityas you called it, I imagine myself
(02:05):
skipping around the house anddoing cartwheels on the deck.
Why not?
It is a joyful season.
I think of you in Grenada or Grenada,however way you want to say it.
It's two things come to mind.
One is that.
That Corona commercial where the lightscome on, I'll, that'll be you and
your lovely wife out with the lightscoming on and sipping some sort of,
I'm assuming rum drinks in Grenadabecause they are in the Caribbean.
(02:25):
They do, yeah.
Caribbean rum is a big thing.
When we, where was it?
The Virgin Islands.
When we visited the Virgin Islands manyyears ago, I recall them as we were
getting off of the plane, walking intothe airport, they were handing us shots
of something and I, I think it was rum.
And so I'm just wondering though,because rum is a thing there.
(02:45):
Is that going to be also somethingwe experienced them sort of handing
that as a welcome to us as we,I don't know, I'll let you know.
Sugar has a long and sulliedhistory in the Caribbean.
For sure.
Lots of those islands have beenruined by the sugar plantations,
but they did invent rum.
So I guess that's a good thing.
No, I wouldn't say I'm aparticularly big rum drinker.
(03:07):
I guess I'm physically a big rumdrinker, but I don't drink a lot of rum.
So, but I do love a delicious, fruityrum filled drink out of a monkey skull.
I do enjoy that.
I also don't, because I don'treally like really sweet things.
Now, rum connoisseurs out there aregoing to say, it doesn't have to
be super sweet and higher end onesaren't, and that's not incorrect.
(03:27):
I just haven't spent a lot of time.
I wish I liked rum because if youwant to get like a very long aged
rum, you're only going to spend 20%.
On that bottle of what you wouldspend on the equivalent age for
a bourbon or an American whiskey.
So if you like distillates and youalso like being frugal, maybe rum is
your, that's where you should navigatetowards, but yeah, so we're hitting that.
(03:52):
We'll get back.
I'll get back to work.
I've had to put my store on pause.
For just a few days and you can actually,there's a couple ways you do that.
You just go into theback end of your store.
There's a link that just says time away.
You schedule it and you can also, youcan either not list things during that
period of time or you can set it up towhere you can continue to list items.
(04:12):
The buyers just see whenever they'relooking at your item that hey this
person is not going, the selleris not going to be able to fulfill
this shipment until, A day or twoafter the end of their time away.
So I have both, and we'll get into thislater in the episode, but I've done time
away, I'm also being strategic aboutsending some things on auction to end
(04:33):
around the time that I am ending my trip.
So that hopefully there will besome fresh sales for me to fulfill.
Once I get back, he has not done time.
He's done time away, but Ibelieve Rusty's done time.
So, I don't know, I'm justassuming Rusty's done time.
Rusty would be the kind ofperson, he wouldn't actually be
the one committing the crime.
He would befriend somebody.
(04:54):
Yeah, somebody to ask him to take apackage to the Hold on to this package.
Yeah, he would do it for him.
He's just being a nice guy all of a suddensquat It's like a gun used in a crime.
I think that's great a reminder toeveryone that If you haven't, if you're
new to this, if you're new to the sellingbiz, what Matt's talking about closing
(05:16):
your store, you might want to go back toone of the old, older shows and listen
in on like kind of what that looks like.
I think it was aboutfour or five shows ago.
I can't remember exactly which one, butif you look at the show notes, it'll
tell you, or in the title, I can'tremember, but we talk, we go to deep
dive on what to do about returningfrom a vacation and how to, Close and
open and the problems you can run into.
(05:37):
So definitely worth going back toone of those episodes and listening
in on that, especially for thoseof you that are brand new to this.
Okay.
Yes.
So we have a couple of huge announcements.
It'd be like if we had in thebackground, it'd be like a announcement.
We have our first ever guestscoming on the show in two weeks.
We're very excited about that.
(05:58):
We'll give you a littlebit more reveal next week.
We have been lots of people have beenreaching out to us and there's a fun story
behind this guest that we will share.
We don't want to steal the thunder.
We hope you join us, but we arestarting to interview interviews.
We're going to collaborate,interview, meet with.
I don't like interview becauseit feels like we're interview.
(06:19):
Tell us how to do that.
I guess we could at some point,but we're having conversations
with cousins is what we're doing.
So we are going to be having aconversation in a couple of weeks.
That'll be our first ever conversationon the what's old podcast.
Yeah, I'm excited.
This is someone that reached out and I'veinteracted in a few ways with this person.
So I have not met this personor spoke with them directly.
(06:41):
So that'll be really fun.
They've got.
Things that they're doing businesswise that kind of mirror some of
the stuff we're doing over here.
And it will be really coolto, for that person to share.
And I think we talked about iton last week's show about the
fact that there's a lot of crosspollination that has to happen.
You could just shut it all down and say,we're going to, I'm going to make whatever
(07:03):
I can make and I don't, I'm not going tohelp anybody, but that's not what we're
about here on the what's old podcast.
We want to basically germinatethe seeds throughout the selling
world to believe that everybody.
Can make some money doing that.
So we're hoping that will be a creativeit's a, say in the business world,
helpful to you people out there.
We do have one other announcement andthis is more of the technical kind.
(07:25):
We have the very first what'sold podcast subreddit now.
I don't know how to read it.
We're in the subreddit world.
I didn't know if we could say if Iwas under an NDA, I didn't know, the
powers that be, if I'm able to, yes,it is good that you have a propensity,
To let the cat out of the bag.
Sure.
You're like my eight year old daughter.
Who's always, who's terrible atkeeping secrets around Christmas.
(07:48):
She's like, daddy, I know whatmama got you for Christmas.
Oh man.
Oh, and then I just slowlybut surely get it out of her.
She's she thinks she's so tricky.
Oh, you're not tricky.
Anyway, we did create a subreddit.
It's just literally calledthe what's old podcast.
I'm going to put a linkto it in the show notes.
We would absolutely love it.
(08:08):
Now.
I don't know if a lot ofpeople on here use Reddit.
I love Reddit.
I think it's a great space for ifyou're trying to get information
and knowledge from people,it's a great space to do that.
There is a lot of garbage on Reddit,like every social media site, sure.
But we are going to keep it clean.
We've already laid out some rules.
We would love for you to join us in it.
Ask questions, talk with one another.
(08:29):
We are the moderators of thatsubreddit, but we hope that other
people will be involved and can share,I don't know, information, news.
We talked about New Mexico last week.
The way people sell in New Mexicomight be very different than
the way people sell in Maine.
Even though we're on these internationalplatforms like eBay, everybody's going to
(08:49):
have a little bit of a different world.
So we're excited about that.
Take a look at the show notes.
As I said, click on that.
And if you haven't signed upfor red, it's really simple.
Sign up for it.
And that people on the rustychannel on YouTube, they have been
people who have either complainedor just pose the question to me.
What do you think?
If you continue to give this informationout for free, aren't you concerned that
(09:13):
this is going to help your competitorsand it's going to make it harder for you?
And it's a valid question.
I don't.
I think that this is a rising tide.
I think that giving thisinformation out helps other people.
You being able to sell somethingyou have or something you inherited
does not hurt me and my business.
It just doesn't.
Even if more things come out intothe world, the same types of items,
(09:35):
and we end up all having to sellthat particular item for cheaper.
There's trillions upontrillions of different types
of things out there to sell.
I think when the Marketshifts a little bit.
You can look at it as this is frustrating,annoying, or you can look at it as,
okay, I need to find ways to pivot.
How do I get better at my business?
And that would be something that people inother businesses, leaders and businesses
(09:58):
would say, you always need to be learning.
You need to be looking ahead.
I think that it's finegiving out this information.
And if people can come and collaborateand share on the subreddit or just
reach out to us through our email.
We're going to bring that stuff.
We might bring you on to talk about it.
It helps everyone.
We are not authorities on everything,quite the contrary, but we are
(10:19):
getting better at it all the time.
And that's when we're going to,we're going to share our failures
as well as our victories with this.
And hopefully you can learn from that.
And that's the reason we're going tostart bringing on people for conversations
because they don't necessarily haveto be resellers per se, but they can
be people that have a business modelthat works for them, have some ideas.
(10:40):
Anybody that's worth theirsalt these days, like I need
to know how to build a deck.
What do you do first?
You go to YouTube andyou take a look at it.
And there's always somebody out there.
That's just an expert at building decksor doing whatever bottom line in this,
no matter if it's in the resellingworld or you're running a small
business franchise or whatever it is.
Time in is what it is.
So we're all putting the time in.
(11:01):
And if we're not going to be successful.
So we're just trying to help with that.
We're trying to move thingsalong, make it easier for you.
But ultimately at the end of the day,it's going to be up to you on whether
or not you do the work and put thetime in to make these things happen.
We just want to speed it up a little bit.
That's right.
That's how I started when I wasbeginning to sell more and more.
I watched a lot of YouTube channels.
(11:21):
I would encourage you if you want to dothat to find ones, find channels where
the person or people are good teachers,don't just get pulled into these.
I just made a million dollars off of thislike these really, that is entertaining.
And I see the entertainmentvalue of going and watching
someone's big score that they got.
Some people like to just watch channelswhere they're, they got the GoPro
(11:43):
strapped to their chest and they'rewalking around in someone's store.
And I just don't do that because I don'twant to make other people uncomfortable.
So I don't do that.
But yeah.
My channel is or the Rusty channelis more about trying to educate.
I talk about things I paid a dollar for.
I talk about things I paid 5, 000for and everything in between.
It's not sensationalized.
It's really to try to teach sometactics, but find ones that are good
(12:06):
teachers, and you'll be very impressed.
You can.
Be the person who's just trying to bea jack of all trades and learn as much
as you can about various things, or youcan say, Hey, I really want to get into
selling jewelry, or I have a bunch ofthese old store where's collectibles.
What do I need to know about these?
And you can find people that willtalk about very specific things, and
maybe their channel is all about that.
(12:27):
And that's a one stop shop, butit's definitely worth checking
out, spending your time.
It's like a modern day.
You could get almost like adegree in certain things just by
consuming lots of information.
And like you pointed out maybeearlier, like there's good and bad.
It's the internet.
You can't believe everything you hear.
So you've got to sift through some ofthat stuff, but you will find some gems.
(12:51):
I've found that.
And it has helped me immensely.
I think it's good.
Go there.
I'm still consuming stuff in my research.
And then I'll go and see if anyoneelse had experience with this thing.
That kind of thing.
And that's one of the reasons whywe like the Reddit and the subreddit
because we're both in different Redditsthat talk about specific things.
And one of them that I do is onpodcasting and it's just all podcasters
(13:12):
or people that produce or do sound andit's just a really collegial group.
Now there are again, some that aren't, butwe're trying to create the collegial one.
I would argue as a former teacherthat in fact, the self taught version
now, again, with that said, there'ssome bad stuff, like you said,
there's some not so great teachers,but if you find somebody out there.
Man, you can get a master's degreein selling or whatever it is.
(13:35):
It's just going to be the time,the practice, the experience.
And that's why it's notjust about learning.
Looking at the video and saying,Oh, that's how you do it.
It's also about talking withpeople that are also doing it.
And so learning from themand learning from each other.
And that's what we're doing here.
I have to ask before we move forwards,the shirt you're wearing today.
Was that for me or wasthat just a random thing?
(13:58):
For those of you that are listeningand not watching, I have a huge.
T shirt collections.
Wow.
It's silly.
I just like T shirts.
I feel like they just, whenpeople say, Oh, I've been there.
It's like, yeah, I've been to walldrug and South Dakota or wherever
it is that the shirt represents.
I have a shirt on.
This is poor.
It's called poor tap room.
And the relevance to the what's oldpodcast is that our very own Matt
(14:22):
rusty worked at the poor tap room.
He was one of the peoplethat built the poor tap room.
Poor tap room was this kindof interesting idea where.
You would go in and you would,I would scratch my head and say,
wait, I'm doing all the work here.
They had, I don't even know how many taps,hundreds of taps of different beers, and
you would go in there and you would poura beer and then they would charge you
based on, I think the ounce of the weight.
(14:43):
Yeah.
Beer, wine.
Kombucha, anything that you can,alcoholic beverages essentially, and
we had some non alcoholic ones aswell, but it's like a restaurant bar
concept, taps, you can serve yourselfanywhere from an ounce to more than that.
And you just pay based on thecents per ounce it's displayed.
Imagine like an iPad or a tablet,something like that above a tap.
(15:05):
You are the user.
You get your glass, you go upto the tap, you serve yourself.
We did that.
I was the chief operatingofficer of that company.
The man who started it, a friendof mine we started doing this.
We opened several stores, several States,but what's ironic about him wearing that
is that I, it's like, I'm looking at mypast because COVID caused me to lose that
(15:26):
job and now I'm a full time reseller.
Yeah, I was a little worried.
No, I've smiled really big when I saw it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
I have no, there's no Ido not, this is just life.
Things happen.
You've got to make changes.
Still very good friends with.
With the man I worked with,he's not working in that either.
That sort of went away.
It is still around.
It's just has different ownership.
(15:46):
I it's funny.
I bought the shirt long before Iprobably had this shirt for 15 years.
I didn't even know how long ago I boughtthis shirt, but I happened to be just.
I go into my closet picture and I waslike, Oh, poor, I remember that place.
I think I know somebody that worked there.
So anyway I think there's one inSanta Cruz or maybe one in Atlanta.
One in Santa Cruz.
Yep.
Who, any who, we once again havecut half the show out with just,
(16:09):
frivolous banter here, Matt.
I want to know, and the people want toknow, we're dying to know, what, before
you go off on your crazy vacation withyour wife and sit on the beach and drink
rum drinks, what did you sell this week?
This is going to be, I'm goingto throw you for a loop here.
I have nothing to show you.
And the reason is I had to geteverything fulfilled by now.
(16:29):
I had to get it all out in, in,because I'm leaving for several days.
And this is one of those things.
When you, we can talk a little bitabout this, when you're going to, when
you work for yourself and you're goingto take time off, I got back, we went
to for Thanksgiving and we got back.
On Sunday, Saturday night,something like that.
I've been back for three, three,four days, but in the last two and
(16:52):
a half days, I've had 70 orders.
So 70 listings sold.
That is a combination ofindividual items and lots of items.
So that takes time to locate those.
Get the shipping labels, packagethem, get them to the post office.
The other downside was thatthe week before, same thing, I
(17:14):
had to get things done before Ileft on that Thanksgiving trip.
I had scheduled for the postal service tocome and pick up packages from my house.
I've done it many, many times.
I left it.
I go on my trip.
I come back.
I find that tub full of thosepackages that were supposed to be
delivered, picked up and sent onFriday, still at my house on Sunday.
So I'm behind somethinglike 30 or 40 packages.
(17:37):
So, in the last three days,I've had a hundred packages
had to go out to the post off.
And some of the things that were soldwere things like, these are all the
theme here is small, but pocket knives,pieces of jewelry, Little photographs,
picture, postcards, what else?
All kinds of stuff has sold both things.
(17:59):
I personally purchased tosell and other things that I'm
selling for other people also.
So it was a mixed bag of all that stuff.
It was good.
It, I can kind of do that now that I'vegot that done because I have several other
things I got to tie up before we leave.
Today.
And, we have this podcast,we're recording and everything.
So I wanted to hold onto stuff, butI had to get that stuff out before
(18:20):
we did this today, a lot of things,but this was a unique situation
because I had two back to back.
Trips with only like threeto four days in between.
But what I try to do when I know Ihave a trip coming up is I will set
up my store to be on time away acouple of days before I leave my trip.
And that's so that nothinghits like day or two before.
(18:42):
So I'm not, rushing like I had to do now.
And I usually try to have, a week anda half prior to the trip, I run several
hundred or maybe a few thousand items onauction to try to generate some good sales
to, to get done right before my trip.
And then the day before my trip.
I will run auctions to end right aboutwhen I'm getting back from my trip.
(19:04):
So that I have fresh things tofulfill as soon as I get back.
I have some extra salesbefore, some extra sales after.
Just because I'm time away doesn'tmean people can't buy from me.
In fact, people will still buythings and they just know that I
can't fulfill it till I get back.
But I can't tell you how nice it'sgoing to feel when I'm laying on that.
Chair out in the sunshine,sipping something.
(19:26):
And I get a notification that something'ssold I'm going to be making money.
I'm not working, but I'm making money.
That was a result of the workI did in the past, right?
A month ago, three months ago.
And sometime three months fromnow, there'll be a dead couple
of days, two or three days.
I'll be like, what's going on?
Oh yeah.
That trip I took toGrenada in December, right?
That's what it was.
(19:47):
Because when you work foryourself, you don't get time off.
You don't get paid for no work, likepeople who have standard W 2 jobs
often will get some kind of benefitin the form of vacation pay or PTO.
Yeah, vacation pay.
Exactly.
You don't get vacation pay in this job.
It's everything that you put intoit is what you get out of it.
And you're dependent upon otherpeople, but that's a strategy.
(20:09):
That I employ those strategies of gettingsome sales ahead of time, some after,
but I don't want to have a situationwhere I'm on the hook to somehow
ship something to someone when I'm inanother state or in another country
because that will spell some problems.
You're going to have tocommunicate with the person.
They may not be happy.
They may leave you a negativereview and I'm trying to avoid that.
(20:30):
Yeah, you've had that happen inthe past, where you've been under
your best intentions that thingsdon't work out exactly right.
And I make mistakes.
I'm a human being, you know?
I make mistakes sometimes, andsometimes I have to own it.
Why was the box left at your house?
The packages?
I don't know.
I think that it, and I even got anotification that it had been picked up.
Right.
So that's, what's weird.
I got an email saying,Oh, I was like, Oh, good.
I think it's because of the normal malelady that had been serving me for years
(20:54):
here is I don't know if you retired oris no longer there and they have someone
filling in and I think that they justweren't familiar with maybe where to
look at my property where I put it.
I have to put it underneath of thedeck area when I'm gone so that they
can still access it, but it's outsideit's away, so if it rains, it's not
going to get wet, that kind of thing.
There may have been a vehicleblocking it, that kind of situation.
(21:18):
I'm not exactly sure, but luckily,I got back to it fairly quickly.
Now, if I was going to begone for two weeks and that
happened, I'd be in trouble.
Right.
Because I wouldn't be able to goback there and get, I'd have to like
somehow chase down a friend locallyor something and see if they could run
by and grab it and take it in for me.
Call your friend Brandon.
Sorry to label.
Yeah, exactly.
I'd get you over here and thenI'd be in your back pocket.
(21:39):
I'm trying to avoid that all the time.
I don't want to have to owe you a favor.
I would own you.
Listen, I spend every day.
Trying to figure a way to stayout from under the, out of
the clutches of your producer.
That's how people like thepenguin, like this TV show.
Like he just gets people inhis he does something for him.
So he's like, okay, now when I needyou, I'm your Michael Cohen, exactly.
(22:00):
You watch some documentaryabout Michael Cohen.
And he, so he did it.
He would get the information on peopleand he would own them at that point.
I'm like, Wow.
I don't want to be owned by anybody.
Let's talk really quickly beforewe get into the bulk of it though.
What you're going on your vacation,you set something I find interesting.
Cause this is a struggle for.
Anyone that has their own businessor doing their own thing is, you
(22:21):
said, I checked the notification.
I see a notificationcome through on my phone.
Do you ever turn them off?
Yeah, you don't have to have thenotifications for a long time.
I didn't, I turned them on.
I think because sometimes whenyou get those notifications,
it's people asking questions.
And let's say you have a handful ofthings on auction that you listen,
(22:43):
it happens every time somethingwill be on auction for seven days.
In the last two hours, you get a slewof people wanting to ask you questions
because they're really trying to decide,am I going to bid on this or not?
And they decide they have a question.
And if you don't get that questionanswered in a timely manner, before
that auction ends, the likelihoodthat they're going to bid is very low.
(23:04):
They want.
Enough to sit down and send the message.
So, I want to be able to answerthe question in hopes that it's
the answer they're wanting tohear so that they bid on the item.
I'm not caring to see that, inreal time when something's sold.
That doesn't matter to me.
I sell so many things now.
So frequently, and that's not a brag,it's just, I've worked up for years and
(23:27):
now I'm the, I put in a lot of work.
I have inventory leftover every year.
So it just builds up over time.
So the more you have, the more cellsit's just sort of the stats on that,
but I'm fine going to bed and wakeup in the morning, coming down when
I start my day and then seeing what'ssold that doesn't matter to me, but
I'm, it's more so that I can communicatein a timely way to prospective buyers.
(23:48):
Now, if you have a problem withboundaries, which I'm not saying I've
always had good boundaries with work,because I'm not a workaholic, but
I could fall into that very easily.
And I have a family and Ineed to attend to them because
they're the most important thing.
That's why I work.
It's a kind of a give and a take.
I have to hear feedback frommy spouse and know when I'm.
Leaning too far over the lineand I need to dial it back.
(24:11):
But I, if you have issues with boundaries,you should probably turn it off.
Like it's probably not a healthy thing.
I don't want to be on my phone allday either, but this is part of the
dynamics of this type of a business.
If you're selling things online andthere's a time crunch or something,
and you need to give informationout to someone, you need to be
(24:32):
available, otherwise they may notbe interested in coming to your
store again, to buy something.
And it's the age old battle of anybusinesses that are you available enough,
but not to, that is one of the problemsthat's happened with the internet and with
modern phones and everything is that we'rejust available to everybody at all times.
There's this expectation.
I sent you an email.
This is why I don't hardly sellthings on Facebook marketplace at all.
(24:56):
There's several reasons I don'tlike it, but one of the reasons is
if let's say you are in a group.
That is a buying and selling group.
It could be for a very specificlane of types of items.
This is all about Tiffanyjewelry or something like that.
There are administrators of those groups.
(25:16):
They might have their own, since that'stheir group, they have their own policies.
Like you need to respond tosomeone with an X amount of time.
I don't want to be told by somebodyelse when I have to, that means I
have to set up alerts on Facebook.
And then if you have a, like a really.
Exciting item at a good price.
You might get 20 responses and you'resaying I have to get on here and quickly.
(25:39):
No, no.
Like I'll get back toyou within the same day.
That I can commit to that.
I don't have to get toyou within an hour for me.
That's ridiculous.
I don't want to do that.
I don't want to mess with that.
And I don't want to be bombarded withthat stuff and feel the pressure of that.
Get that out of here.
Does eBay insulate youaway from the kind of crap?
I always find with Facebook marketplacethat people, I sold a car on Facebook
(26:00):
marketplace and actually workedout really well, but it was amazing
people would be like, I don't know,say I was selling it for 10, 000.
They'd be like, will you take 500?
Of course.
Yes.
It's funny.
I was waiting for that.
It's the classic ask for waymore than you're going to get.
Again, I don't want to mess with scammers.
I don't want to like, Oh,send me your phone number.
(26:20):
And like, no, I'm not going to do that.
Right, exactly.
Let me tell me, give me your addressand send me your phone number.
Maybe your social security numberand your bank account number.
That would be great too, because I'm goingto, I'm going to email you right now.
I'm going to, I'm a Nigerian prince.
Exactly.
Oh I usually respond to the princesbecause if you can get connected
with a prince from that area,you're a You get somebody in that.
So I definitely respond tothe princes when they need
(26:42):
money, but not anybody else.
I and scammers are getting betterand better and better at it.
I don't know if you've had thishappen to you, but I've noticed a
lot lately where smishing attackshappen in the security biz.
They call them smishing attacks.
They're basically when somebodytexts you and they're like, Hey,
what time is dinner tonight?
You're like, I don't recognize the number.
You're like, I'm sorry.
Who is?
And then they say, they try tostrike up a conversation with you.
(27:04):
The next thing you know you'relike sending them money because.
Whatever.
It's a total scam.
When someone sends youthat, that's a scam.
Last year was when lastyear was earlier than that.
But I had somebody who was a friendback in the day, contacted me, seemed
really interested in some stuff, wantedto get together we were in the area.
He happened to be at aconference at this hotel.
So I just came to the hotel tomeet him and see him and stuff.
(27:26):
And it turns out he was trying topull me into a pyramid scheme thing.
I hadn't seen this guy in years and Iwas like, Oh my God, how did I fall?
Because I knew the guy personally,but I hadn't seen him in years.
And then last week I get a message onFacebook from a friend of mine being like,
Hey man, I don't, it's embarrassing toask this, but I need to borrow some money.
I'm sorry.
I'll definitely pay youback, blah, blah, blah.
(27:47):
And I go, man, it's good to hear from you.
I would totally give youmoney if you need it.
Just to confirm though, canyou tell me where we met?
And he goes, Oh, Man, Ipromise I'll pay you back.
I'm just very sorry.
And so I get on my phone.
I text, cause I havethis guy's phone number.
I text him.
I'm like, I sent him a screenshot.
I go, just so you know, someone isin your account asking, begging your
(28:09):
friends for money, just in case youwant to know, but that's what you get.
There are people out there like that.
You've got to be careful.
I've sold vehicles on Facebook marketplacetoo, but I just, it's more involved.
I like to be the purveyor of my scheduleand dictate when I spend my time and how.
There's some things I can't,whenever I have like deadlines of
(28:30):
shipping, but outside of shippingdeadlines, I don't want to be
beholden to someone else's schedule.
That's one of the things I love aboutthis job is that I have a lot of
control over my own daily schedule.
Okay.
So in the last, as always, wefilled the air with lots of noise.
Yeah.
We wanted to talk a little bit.
We started talking about this lastcouple of weeks ago about, and we've
(28:53):
talked about a lot about holiday selling,but we have Christmas right around the
corner and you've given advice like,Hey, if you see any holiday stuff, start
collecting, we're going to talk a littlebit about how you prepare for Christmas
and Christmas selling, because I got toimagine that it's just a crazy season.
Let's launch into that.
How do you get ready for the holidays?
(29:14):
There are several thingsthat I do to get ready.
Some of it involves holding onto itemsand listing them in anticipation of
Christmas about a month ahead of time.
And that would be usually primarilyChristmas items that could be little
figurines, like snow globes, SantaClaus things, even jewelry that
(29:37):
is Christmas themed, little candycanes, little snow people, like.
People reindeer snowmen, thingslike that, brooches and stuff.
People are going to wear that around theholidays when their family comes over.
So that they're going to belooking for that kind of thing.
If I get that stuff throughoutthe year, I might pull that stuff
(29:57):
aside and I'll wait and sell it.
As a lot at Christmas time oraround that, because people
are going to want to buy it.
What do people do at Christmas time?
What are they doing?
They're going to be buyingthings for family and friends.
They're going to be buying thingsfor adults, but they're also going
to be buying things for kids.
When you buy things for adults,usually you're trying to think
of what does that person like?
(30:20):
Oh, dad, he likes pocket knives.
He has a pocket knife collection.
I'm going to go on and lookfor vintage pocket knives.
My kids, I'm going to buy them toys.
It's been a difficult year.
Let's see if I can find some vintagetoys from when I was a kid, or maybe
I can find some toys on eBay that arestill in the package or barely used.
(30:41):
They're going to be a lot cheaper.
They're not going to care.
It's still in the package.
It's new to them.
It looks like it hasn't been used.
I'm going to save somemoney that way and get it.
So I sell a lot of toys.
If I get things at places likeRoss or TG Maxx or things like
little Star Wars action figuresthat was used to be sold for 19.
99 at Walmart.
And this one now it's only 3.
(31:02):
99.
I buy that up.
I snatched those things up all year.
And then when it comes Christmastime, Oh, look, here's a big lot of
10 action figures that, if you've beenlooking at the new ones, they cost
20 bucks, but here he's only sellingthem for 14 a piece or 10 a piece,
depending on how low I want to go.
I'm still going to makemoney cause I got them at 3.
(31:22):
99, but I know that they'llbe looking for those now.
Everyone's looking to buygifts for kids or their family.
If you have wrapping paper that youdon't think you're going to use,
what do people need during Christmas?
They buy wrapping paperto wrap their gifts.
There's a funny story in my family.
My wife's.
Grandfather maybe a little bit ofa hoarder, but he would get things.
(31:42):
And one of the things they jokeabout is that he had this wrapping
paper that he must've bought likein bulk on discount someplace.
And it was according to them, veryugly, very gaudy, probably old,
like from the fifties or sixties.
And every year they would get things andthey were always wrapped in the same rack.
And be like, how much of thiswrapping paper do you have?
But something like that, if you'vegot 1960s wrapping paper, that's
(32:04):
probably going to sell for a premium.
That's a vintage call it midcentury modern wrapping paper.
If you want to like whatever you needto do, but throw it out there because
people will buy that kind of stuff.
So selling Christmas oriented things.
Knowing the mind of the buyer.
What is the buyer looking for?
There's a lot more buyersin December and November.
And they're buying everything.
(32:25):
They're buying everythingyou can think of.
Some people like to, who make let'ssay you make your own custom t shirts.
You come up with your own designs.
We just had an election.
Is there some kind of funny t shirt youcan make that merges something about the
election and something about Christmas?
Something with the Donaldtrump as santa claus.
(32:45):
I don't know.
You know what I mean?
Something that some people would findfunny or appreciate there's all kinds
of things out there You don't have tothink super hard about it Typically
the end of the year is a better timeif you are still listening and I
guess that's the first thing Is whatcan you do to prepare for christmas?
Get a lot of things out there.
List a lot of things.
Because the more things youlist, hopefully the more
(33:06):
things you're going to sell.
Another strategy I takeis I run a lot of sales.
You can go into eBay, you can markdown things so that it shows up
as a discount on the buyer's end.
You can do an entire store discountwhere everything is now 10 percent off.
Everything in the store is 20 percent off.
(33:27):
If I find a pocket knife I want toget from you, Maybe I need to go to
your store and look at more of youritems because maybe you have other
knives and then they're going tofind something else they didn't even
know that they wanted something forthe aunt or the grandma that they
hadn't even started searching for yet.
They found in your store too.
Oh, good.
I'm going to try to buy both ofthese and I'm going to ask him if
he'll give me a shipping discountbecause I'm buying multiple orders.
(33:49):
That's another way people can save money.
The answer is yes.
Buy more things from me.
I'll put them in one box.
It's a cheaper shipping price foryou and it's less hassle for me.
I'm not sending out fivedifferent packages now and five
different boxes I had to pay for.
I'm sending one box.
And it saves me time too.
So you can run discounts.
You can give shipping discounts.
(34:11):
I would send offers out to people.
You can do things like write inthe description or in the title.
Christmas gift!
Great Christmas gift!
Gift for dad, gift for thekids, that kind of thing.
And if a person goes into eBay and theylook up Christmas gifts or Christmas
dad gifts, the search query is goingto pull up anything that has those
(34:36):
words in it, or most of those wordsin it in eBay and show it to them.
And it doesn't matter if it's, Idon't know, a new Patagonia jacket.
You didn't look up jacket.
You just looked up Christmasgift for dad and all of a sudden,
boom, Patagonia jacket pops up.
Oh, it's his size.
Great.
It's 30 percent less than thestore in town sells it for.
Those are some ideas I would say,get out there and really list.
(34:58):
I know it's busy.
I know you've got peoplecoming in and out.
I know that it can be a crazystressful time of year, but also.
Maybe it's nice to say, Hey family, I'mgoing to go take two or three hours.
I got to do some work.
You're really just needinga break from the guests.
And then you go and list some thingsand you're going to make some money.
So there's, it could be a win win for you.
(35:21):
So can I get some freeselling advice from you then?
Sure.
All right.
So this is my, we're testing thesubreddit, but on the show, as you know,
I've mentioned that we collect ornaments.
Is there a market for vintage ornaments?
And if I was going to say, if I wasgoing to do a reselling business,
it would be vintage ornaments.
I love them.
I think they're amazing.
(35:41):
But what's Specific brands or?
Oh, look at you throwing specific,I don't know anything about specific
brands, but I'm assuming that exists.
Does it exist?
Oh, absolutely.
In fact, It's you didn't know this,but I came back a little while ago
meeting up with someone that I sellthings for, giving them some money.
I owed them and they gave me atub full of Christmas ornaments.
They're all in the original packages.
(36:01):
Some have never been used, butthey come with the original
packaging, which is great.
Collectors like that.
And a lot of them are Hallmark brand.
Highly collectible ones.
The most collectibleof Christmas ornaments.
Certainly certain ones that are rare,like they only made, it's one of
five or something like that, right?
Those can be rare, but really antiqueornaments that are made out of glass,
(36:26):
hand blown glass ornaments thatare hand painted, things like that.
There's a brand, I think it's, itwas a German brand called Kugel.
K U G E L.
I don't know if I'm pronouncing thatcorrectly or not, but kugel ornaments
they're, a lot of them are very heavy.
You have to be careful because theydefinitely make fakes because they are
pretty sought after as collectible items.
(36:46):
But you can find websites and even YouTubevideos showing you how to identify.
Authentic ones or not, but those thingscan sell for hundreds of dollars.
Look up Kugel ornament or look up antiqueornament, glass ornament, go to sold items
and look at the ones that have sold forthe most, you're, you will be shocked.
Oh, I bet you it would be.
Every time I go to my grandmother'shouse and I look at her
Christmas tree, I'm like that.
(37:09):
Not the tree.
The ornaments on there areworth a couple thousand dollars.
Grandma.
And she's been using them for 65 years.
Every year, it's the same ones.
Probably were passed down to her.
Probably, yeah.
And that's great.
There's nothing wrong with that.
And keep them if you enjoy them.
You don't need to sell them.
But if, let's say, unfortunately,you had someone pass and
(37:30):
There are things come to you.
Don't just pitch or donate the oldChristmas ornaments because there's, there
can be some high values in that stuff.
Depending.
Do you think that if you got that legfrom like a Christmas story, the lamp
leg, that would be worth, if you gotthe original before the exact one?
Yeah, sure.
Oh, absolutely.
It feels like it wouldhave some real value.
(37:50):
You have to auction that off.
You'd have to run maybe throughan auction house on that.
Yeah, I think about the ideaof you just as i'm listening.
I'm thinking to myself How many times haveyou gone to I don't know a garage sale
tag sale yard sale Whatever you want tocall it and somebody's got a box of old
christmas stuff that they're like Yeah, itwas my grandfather's and I don't use it.
I'm like, oh man I'm gonnastart looking for that even
(38:12):
old christmas cards from the.
As old as you can get but up untileven like the 60s I would say 60s
maybe 70s had to have just a differentlook to them They portray Santa in
a little bit of a different way.
Maybe he's not wearing red.
He's wearing a different color, bythe way, old postcards of Christmas.
Now's the time to sell Santa postcards,particularly Santa postcards where
he's wearing green or blue or purple,not red, because we don't think
(38:36):
of Santa wearing things other thanred or green, really these days.
But back in the day, they had Santaportrayed in all kinds of different ways.
So old cards, even if it's signed, it'slike this from Mary to Chester 1948.
It doesn't matter if it'swritten in because people will
put those up on the mantle.
People will put those up on the table.
They're cool because they're vintagelooking because they are vintage.
(38:58):
They're authentic.
And it's paper ephemera.
You can buy that stuff in bulk lotsthroughout the year for next to nothing.
Pull that stuff out.
You sell some of the stuff that you wantto sell immediately, but maybe you hold
onto the Christmas stuff for a monthbefore Christmas, maybe you hold onto the
Halloween stuff a month before Halloween.
And that's when the peak interest inthose items will be, you'll make the most
(39:19):
money selling them in that time period.
So here's the deal, people,listeners out there.
I am searching for an advent calendar,one of those fancy wooden vintage.
I don't know if you know what I'mtalking about, where they actually
have the little doors you pull out.
Yeah.
Yep.
So I don't know how old it is, but wehave, I don't even need it to be old.
I just want it to be cool.
(39:40):
So if anybody has one of those outthere, this guy's look, hold on a second.
Cool is such an abstract term.
It's can we, it's very qualitative.
Can we, it has to be festive, festive.
Again, festive is not concrete.
How would someone know thatthey have a cool and festive?
I guess that's a great question.
I guess.
How's it, how about this?
(40:00):
Email us at the show.
Send me a picture and if it's whatI'm looking for, I will definitely
get back in touch with you.
If you need a consolation,there is a Lego Harry Potter.
I think it's Harry Potter,but if it's not, it's.
It's Lego, but they have a Lego one.
This is good for kids.
It's cardboard is paper, but inevery one of the little days,
there's a little, like maybe aminifigure or a little toy in there.
(40:23):
So every day that they go throughAdvent, they can pull out a toy.
Oh, that must be worth something.
They still sell them.
You can still buy them as of last year.
You could buy them brand new.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They're not somethingthat you reuse every year.
I think it's more like a one year.
We have one that we use, but I'vewanted to get something that I
could give to my daughter becausewe just love doing it every day.
(40:43):
She's excited.
We, Hershey's kiss outof there and whatnot.
, as we like the advent wreath andall that, we're very, again, like
I said, Matt, I'm not kidding.
We're very festive holidaypeople around here.
Frivolity of all kindshappened at this house.
That is for sure.
Remember though, if you don'thave a picture of a advent
calendar That you want to sell me.
(41:04):
You could still follow us.
You could like us and subscribe toany one of these different places.
Keep the emails coming.
It is awesome.
We are stoked.
We are all going to wish Matt right now.
Positive thoughts as he and his lovelybride head off to the beaches of Grenada,
hoping that their days are bright.
(41:24):
I'm imagining myself like in a vat of rum.
Do you float on rum?
I don't know.
I get like, I'm not a big, Iknow they make it from sugar.
That's about all I know.
But anyway, any last wordsfor the folks today, Matt?
It's a good time to be listing things.
There's a lot of buyers out there, but.
If it makes more sense to just spendthat time on vacation with your family,
do that because that's, you're notgoing to remember, I don't remember
(41:48):
three months ago, the things I sold.
If I saw it again, I'd be like, Ohyeah, but make those memories with your
family and your kids spend that time.
This work will always be herewhen you come back to it, but
have fun out there, be safe.
That's about it.
That is a good way to send us out.
We will have, like I said, we'll havea couple more shows before Christmas
(42:09):
before the holiday season is fullyupon us, but we are wishing everybody
a joyous season, take a break, enjoyyourself, spend some time with family.
Otherwise we'll be back with a brandnew show next week and we are looking
forward to our first conversation.
Yeah.
Can't wait.
The next couple of weeks.
So have a good one, everybody.
Welcome, welcome, welcometo the What Sold Podcast.
I'm not gonna lie to you, Matt.
I am with you today innot only body but spirit.
I am in the holidaycheer season of my life.
I love the holidays.
I know for some people it's tough.
Not for me.
I just love them.
Highland Breweries releasedtheir Cold Mountain Brew.
(00:57):
We put up our lights.
Our tree is up.
It's decorated.
I've got my handle of eggnog.
I'm ready for the season, Matt.
I'm not going to lie to you.
I really, truly mean, I amexcited about this season.
How about you?
You guys, I can't tell if you guys arelike Christmas frivolity type folks, or if
you're kind of like, we'll put it up, but.
Well, frivolity is my middle name,so I mean, yeah, we get into it.
(01:23):
We've already put up the tree anddecorating that sort of thing.
I got behind the eight ball withregard to putting out Christmas
lights, so that's going to happen.
I'm, I say that because I'm leavingtomorrow early in the morning.
My wife and I are taking a trip tocelebrate this month is our 20 year.
(01:43):
So we are going to go to Grenada.
Ooh.
Yeah, we're gonna, this is goingto be a trip minus the kiddos.
We're going to try torelax and enjoy ourselves.
Yeah.
So Christmas is on the backburner until I get back.
I'll finish, Christmas lights.
We can get back to the the frivolityas you called it, I imagine myself
(02:05):
skipping around the house anddoing cartwheels on the deck.
Why not?
It is a joyful season.
I think of you in Grenada or Grenada,however way you want to say it.
It's two things come to mind.
One is that.
That Corona commercial where the lightscome on, I'll, that'll be you and
your lovely wife out with the lightscoming on and sipping some sort of,
I'm assuming rum drinks in Grenadabecause they are in the Caribbean.
(02:25):
They do, yeah.
Caribbean rum is a big thing.
When we, where was it?
The Virgin Islands.
When we visited the Virgin Islands manyyears ago, I recall them as we were
getting off of the plane, walking intothe airport, they were handing us shots
of something and I, I think it was rum.
And so I'm just wondering though,because rum is a thing there.
(02:45):
Is that going to be also somethingwe experienced them sort of handing
that as a welcome to us as we,I don't know, I'll let you know.
Sugar has a long and sulliedhistory in the Caribbean.
For sure.
Lots of those islands have beenruined by the sugar plantations,
but they did invent rum.
So I guess that's a good thing.
No, I wouldn't say I'm aparticularly big rum drinker.
(03:07):
I guess I'm physically a big rumdrinker, but I don't drink a lot of rum.
So, but I do love a delicious, fruityrum filled drink out of a monkey skull.
I do enjoy that.
I also don't, because I don'treally like really sweet things.
Now, rum connoisseurs out there aregoing to say, it doesn't have to
be super sweet and higher end onesaren't, and that's not incorrect.
(03:27):
I just haven't spent a lot of time.
I wish I liked rum because if youwant to get like a very long aged
rum, you're only going to spend 20%.
On that bottle of what you wouldspend on the equivalent age for
a bourbon or an American whiskey.
So if you like distillates and youalso like being frugal, maybe rum is
your, that's where you should navigatetowards, but yeah, so we're hitting that.
(03:52):
We'll get back.
I'll get back to work.
I've had to put my store on pause.
For just a few days and you can actually,there's a couple ways you do that.
You just go into theback end of your store.
There's a link that just says time away.
You schedule it and you can also, youcan either not list things during that
period of time or you can set it up towhere you can continue to list items.
(04:12):
The buyers just see whenever they'relooking at your item that hey this
person is not going, the selleris not going to be able to fulfill
this shipment until, A day or twoafter the end of their time away.
So I have both, and we'll get into thislater in the episode, but I've done time
away, I'm also being strategic aboutsending some things on auction to end
(04:33):
around the time that I am ending my trip.
So that hopefully there will besome fresh sales for me to fulfill.
Once I get back, he has not done time.
He's done time away, but Ibelieve Rusty's done time.
So, I don't know, I'm justassuming Rusty's done time.
Rusty would be the kind ofperson, he wouldn't actually be
the one committing the crime.
He would befriend somebody.
(04:54):
Yeah, somebody to ask him to take apackage to the Hold on to this package.
Yeah, he would do it for him.
He's just being a nice guy all of a suddensquat It's like a gun used in a crime.
I think that's great a reminder toeveryone that If you haven't, if you're
new to this, if you're new to the sellingbiz, what Matt's talking about closing
(05:16):
your store, you might want to go back toone of the old, older shows and listen
in on like kind of what that looks like.
I think it was aboutfour or five shows ago.
I can't remember exactly which one, butif you look at the show notes, it'll
tell you, or in the title, I can'tremember, but we talk, we go to deep
dive on what to do about returningfrom a vacation and how to, Close and
open and the problems you can run into.
(05:37):
So definitely worth going back toone of those episodes and listening
in on that, especially for thoseof you that are brand new to this.
Okay.
Yes.
So we have a couple of huge announcements.
It'd be like if we had in thebackground, it'd be like a announcement.
We have our first ever guestscoming on the show in two weeks.
We're very excited about that.
(05:58):
We'll give you a littlebit more reveal next week.
We have been lots of people have beenreaching out to us and there's a fun story
behind this guest that we will share.
We don't want to steal the thunder.
We hope you join us, but we arestarting to interview interviews.
We're going to collaborate,interview, meet with.
I don't like interview becauseit feels like we're interview.
(06:19):
Tell us how to do that.
I guess we could at some point,but we're having conversations
with cousins is what we're doing.
So we are going to be having aconversation in a couple of weeks.
That'll be our first ever conversationon the what's old podcast.
Yeah, I'm excited.
This is someone that reached out and I'veinteracted in a few ways with this person.
So I have not met this personor spoke with them directly.
(06:41):
So that'll be really fun.
They've got.
Things that they're doing businesswise that kind of mirror some of
the stuff we're doing over here.
And it will be really coolto, for that person to share.
And I think we talked about iton last week's show about the
fact that there's a lot of crosspollination that has to happen.
You could just shut it all down and say,we're going to, I'm going to make whatever
(07:03):
I can make and I don't, I'm not going tohelp anybody, but that's not what we're
about here on the what's old podcast.
We want to basically germinatethe seeds throughout the selling
world to believe that everybody.
Can make some money doing that.
So we're hoping that will be a creativeit's a, say in the business world,
helpful to you people out there.
We do have one other announcement andthis is more of the technical kind.
(07:25):
We have the very first what'sold podcast subreddit now.
I don't know how to read it.
We're in the subreddit world.
I didn't know if we could say if Iwas under an NDA, I didn't know, the
powers that be, if I'm able to, yes,it is good that you have a propensity,
To let the cat out of the bag.
Sure.
You're like my eight year old daughter.
Who's always, who's terrible atkeeping secrets around Christmas.
(07:48):
She's like, daddy, I know whatmama got you for Christmas.
Oh man.
Oh, and then I just slowlybut surely get it out of her.
She's she thinks she's so tricky.
Oh, you're not tricky.
Anyway, we did create a subreddit.
It's just literally calledthe what's old podcast.
I'm going to put a linkto it in the show notes.
We would absolutely love it.
(08:08):
Now.
I don't know if a lot ofpeople on here use Reddit.
I love Reddit.
I think it's a great space for ifyou're trying to get information
and knowledge from people,it's a great space to do that.
There is a lot of garbage on Reddit,like every social media site, sure.
But we are going to keep it clean.
We've already laid out some rules.
We would love for you to join us in it.
Ask questions, talk with one another.
(08:29):
We are the moderators of thatsubreddit, but we hope that other
people will be involved and can share,I don't know, information, news.
We talked about New Mexico last week.
The way people sell in New Mexicomight be very different than
the way people sell in Maine.
Even though we're on these internationalplatforms like eBay, everybody's going to
(08:49):
have a little bit of a different world.
So we're excited about that.
Take a look at the show notes.
As I said, click on that.
And if you haven't signed upfor red, it's really simple.
Sign up for it.
And that people on the rustychannel on YouTube, they have been
people who have either complainedor just pose the question to me.
What do you think?
If you continue to give this informationout for free, aren't you concerned that
(09:13):
this is going to help your competitorsand it's going to make it harder for you?
And it's a valid question.
I don't.
I think that this is a rising tide.
I think that giving thisinformation out helps other people.
You being able to sell somethingyou have or something you inherited
does not hurt me and my business.
It just doesn't.
Even if more things come out intothe world, the same types of items,
(09:35):
and we end up all having to sellthat particular item for cheaper.
There's trillions upontrillions of different types
of things out there to sell.
I think when the Marketshifts a little bit.
You can look at it as this is frustrating,annoying, or you can look at it as,
okay, I need to find ways to pivot.
How do I get better at my business?
And that would be something that people inother businesses, leaders and businesses
(09:58):
would say, you always need to be learning.
You need to be looking ahead.
I think that it's finegiving out this information.
And if people can come and collaborateand share on the subreddit or just
reach out to us through our email.
We're going to bring that stuff.
We might bring you on to talk about it.
It helps everyone.
We are not authorities on everything,quite the contrary, but we are
(10:19):
getting better at it all the time.
And that's when we're going to,we're going to share our failures
as well as our victories with this.
And hopefully you can learn from that.
And that's the reason we're going tostart bringing on people for conversations
because they don't necessarily haveto be resellers per se, but they can
be people that have a business modelthat works for them, have some ideas.
(10:40):
Anybody that's worth theirsalt these days, like I need
to know how to build a deck.
What do you do first?
You go to YouTube andyou take a look at it.
And there's always somebody out there.
That's just an expert at building decksor doing whatever bottom line in this,
no matter if it's in the resellingworld or you're running a small
business franchise or whatever it is.
Time in is what it is.
So we're all putting the time in.
(11:01):
And if we're not going to be successful.
So we're just trying to help with that.
We're trying to move thingsalong, make it easier for you.
But ultimately at the end of the day,it's going to be up to you on whether
or not you do the work and put thetime in to make these things happen.
We just want to speed it up a little bit.
That's right.
That's how I started when I wasbeginning to sell more and more.
I watched a lot of YouTube channels.
(11:21):
I would encourage you if you want to dothat to find ones, find channels where
the person or people are good teachers,don't just get pulled into these.
I just made a million dollars off of thislike these really, that is entertaining.
And I see the entertainmentvalue of going and watching
someone's big score that they got.
Some people like to just watch channelswhere they're, they got the GoPro
(11:43):
strapped to their chest and they'rewalking around in someone's store.
And I just don't do that because I don'twant to make other people uncomfortable.
So I don't do that.
But yeah.
My channel is or the Rusty channelis more about trying to educate.
I talk about things I paid a dollar for.
I talk about things I paid 5, 000for and everything in between.
It's not sensationalized.
It's really to try to teach sometactics, but find ones that are good
(12:06):
teachers, and you'll be very impressed.
You can.
Be the person who's just trying to bea jack of all trades and learn as much
as you can about various things, or youcan say, Hey, I really want to get into
selling jewelry, or I have a bunch ofthese old store where's collectibles.
What do I need to know about these?
And you can find people that willtalk about very specific things, and
maybe their channel is all about that.
(12:27):
And that's a one stop shop, butit's definitely worth checking
out, spending your time.
It's like a modern day.
You could get almost like adegree in certain things just by
consuming lots of information.
And like you pointed out maybeearlier, like there's good and bad.
It's the internet.
You can't believe everything you hear.
So you've got to sift through some ofthat stuff, but you will find some gems.
(12:51):
I've found that.
And it has helped me immensely.
I think it's good.
Go there.
I'm still consuming stuff in my research.
And then I'll go and see if anyoneelse had experience with this thing.
That kind of thing.
And that's one of the reasons whywe like the Reddit and the subreddit
because we're both in different Redditsthat talk about specific things.
And one of them that I do is onpodcasting and it's just all podcasters
(13:12):
or people that produce or do sound andit's just a really collegial group.
Now there are again, some that aren't, butwe're trying to create the collegial one.
I would argue as a former teacherthat in fact, the self taught version
now, again, with that said, there'ssome bad stuff, like you said,
there's some not so great teachers,but if you find somebody out there.
Man, you can get a master's degreein selling or whatever it is.
(13:35):
It's just going to be the time,the practice, the experience.
And that's why it's notjust about learning.
Looking at the video and saying,Oh, that's how you do it.
It's also about talking withpeople that are also doing it.
And so learning from themand learning from each other.
And that's what we're doing here.
I have to ask before we move forwards,the shirt you're wearing today.
Was that for me or wasthat just a random thing?
(13:58):
For those of you that are listeningand not watching, I have a huge.
T shirt collections.
Wow.
It's silly.
I just like T shirts.
I feel like they just, whenpeople say, Oh, I've been there.
It's like, yeah, I've been to walldrug and South Dakota or wherever
it is that the shirt represents.
I have a shirt on.
This is poor.
It's called poor tap room.
And the relevance to the what's oldpodcast is that our very own Matt
(14:22):
rusty worked at the poor tap room.
He was one of the peoplethat built the poor tap room.
Poor tap room was this kindof interesting idea where.
You would go in and you would,I would scratch my head and say,
wait, I'm doing all the work here.
They had, I don't even know how many taps,hundreds of taps of different beers, and
you would go in there and you would poura beer and then they would charge you
based on, I think the ounce of the weight.
(14:43):
Yeah.
Beer, wine.
Kombucha, anything that you can,alcoholic beverages essentially, and
we had some non alcoholic ones aswell, but it's like a restaurant bar
concept, taps, you can serve yourselfanywhere from an ounce to more than that.
And you just pay based on thecents per ounce it's displayed.
Imagine like an iPad or a tablet,something like that above a tap.
(15:05):
You are the user.
You get your glass, you go upto the tap, you serve yourself.
We did that.
I was the chief operatingofficer of that company.
The man who started it, a friendof mine we started doing this.
We opened several stores, several States,but what's ironic about him wearing that
is that I, it's like, I'm looking at mypast because COVID caused me to lose that
(15:26):
job and now I'm a full time reseller.
Yeah, I was a little worried.
No, I've smiled really big when I saw it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
I have no, there's no Ido not, this is just life.
Things happen.
You've got to make changes.
Still very good friends with.
With the man I worked with,he's not working in that either.
That sort of went away.
It is still around.
It's just has different ownership.
(15:46):
I it's funny.
I bought the shirt long before Iprobably had this shirt for 15 years.
I didn't even know how long ago I boughtthis shirt, but I happened to be just.
I go into my closet picture and I waslike, Oh, poor, I remember that place.
I think I know somebody that worked there.
So anyway I think there's one inSanta Cruz or maybe one in Atlanta.
One in Santa Cruz.
Yep.
Who, any who, we once again havecut half the show out with just,
(16:09):
frivolous banter here, Matt.
I want to know, and the people want toknow, we're dying to know, what, before
you go off on your crazy vacation withyour wife and sit on the beach and drink
rum drinks, what did you sell this week?
This is going to be, I'm goingto throw you for a loop here.
I have nothing to show you.
And the reason is I had to geteverything fulfilled by now.
(16:29):
I had to get it all out in, in,because I'm leaving for several days.
And this is one of those things.
When you, we can talk a little bitabout this, when you're going to, when
you work for yourself and you're goingto take time off, I got back, we went
to for Thanksgiving and we got back.
On Sunday, Saturday night,something like that.
I've been back for three, three,four days, but in the last two and
(16:52):
a half days, I've had 70 orders.
So 70 listings sold.
That is a combination ofindividual items and lots of items.
So that takes time to locate those.
Get the shipping labels, packagethem, get them to the post office.
The other downside was thatthe week before, same thing, I
(17:14):
had to get things done before Ileft on that Thanksgiving trip.
I had scheduled for the postal service tocome and pick up packages from my house.
I've done it many, many times.
I left it.
I go on my trip.
I come back.
I find that tub full of thosepackages that were supposed to be
delivered, picked up and sent onFriday, still at my house on Sunday.
So I'm behind somethinglike 30 or 40 packages.
(17:37):
So, in the last three days,I've had a hundred packages
had to go out to the post off.
And some of the things that were soldwere things like, these are all the
theme here is small, but pocket knives,pieces of jewelry, Little photographs,
picture, postcards, what else?
All kinds of stuff has sold both things.
(17:59):
I personally purchased tosell and other things that I'm
selling for other people also.
So it was a mixed bag of all that stuff.
It was good.
It, I can kind of do that now that I'vegot that done because I have several other
things I got to tie up before we leave.
Today.
And, we have this podcast,we're recording and everything.
So I wanted to hold onto stuff, butI had to get that stuff out before
(18:20):
we did this today, a lot of things,but this was a unique situation
because I had two back to back.
Trips with only like threeto four days in between.
But what I try to do when I know Ihave a trip coming up is I will set
up my store to be on time away acouple of days before I leave my trip.
And that's so that nothinghits like day or two before.
(18:42):
So I'm not, rushing like I had to do now.
And I usually try to have, a week anda half prior to the trip, I run several
hundred or maybe a few thousand items onauction to try to generate some good sales
to, to get done right before my trip.
And then the day before my trip.
I will run auctions to end right aboutwhen I'm getting back from my trip.
(19:04):
So that I have fresh things tofulfill as soon as I get back.
I have some extra salesbefore, some extra sales after.
Just because I'm time away doesn'tmean people can't buy from me.
In fact, people will still buythings and they just know that I
can't fulfill it till I get back.
But I can't tell you how nice it'sgoing to feel when I'm laying on that.
Chair out in the sunshine,sipping something.
(19:26):
And I get a notification that something'ssold I'm going to be making money.
I'm not working, but I'm making money.
That was a result of the workI did in the past, right?
A month ago, three months ago.
And sometime three months fromnow, there'll be a dead couple
of days, two or three days.
I'll be like, what's going on?
Oh yeah.
That trip I took toGrenada in December, right?
That's what it was.
(19:47):
Because when you work foryourself, you don't get time off.
You don't get paid for no work, likepeople who have standard W 2 jobs
often will get some kind of benefitin the form of vacation pay or PTO.
Yeah, vacation pay.
Exactly.
You don't get vacation pay in this job.
It's everything that you put intoit is what you get out of it.
And you're dependent upon otherpeople, but that's a strategy.
(20:09):
That I employ those strategies of gettingsome sales ahead of time, some after,
but I don't want to have a situationwhere I'm on the hook to somehow
ship something to someone when I'm inanother state or in another country
because that will spell some problems.
You're going to have tocommunicate with the person.
They may not be happy.
They may leave you a negativereview and I'm trying to avoid that.
(20:30):
Yeah, you've had that happen inthe past, where you've been under
your best intentions that thingsdon't work out exactly right.
And I make mistakes.
I'm a human being, you know?
I make mistakes sometimes, andsometimes I have to own it.
Why was the box left at your house?
The packages?
I don't know.
I think that it, and I even got anotification that it had been picked up.
Right.
So that's, what's weird.
I got an email saying,Oh, I was like, Oh, good.
I think it's because of the normal malelady that had been serving me for years
(20:54):
here is I don't know if you retired oris no longer there and they have someone
filling in and I think that they justweren't familiar with maybe where to
look at my property where I put it.
I have to put it underneath of thedeck area when I'm gone so that they
can still access it, but it's outsideit's away, so if it rains, it's not
going to get wet, that kind of thing.
There may have been a vehicleblocking it, that kind of situation.
(21:18):
I'm not exactly sure, but luckily,I got back to it fairly quickly.
Now, if I was going to begone for two weeks and that
happened, I'd be in trouble.
Right.
Because I wouldn't be able to goback there and get, I'd have to like
somehow chase down a friend locallyor something and see if they could run
by and grab it and take it in for me.
Call your friend Brandon.
Sorry to label.
Yeah, exactly.
I'd get you over here and thenI'd be in your back pocket.
(21:39):
I'm trying to avoid that all the time.
I don't want to have to owe you a favor.
I would own you.
Listen, I spend every day.
Trying to figure a way to stayout from under the, out of
the clutches of your producer.
That's how people like thepenguin, like this TV show.
Like he just gets people inhis he does something for him.
So he's like, okay, now when I needyou, I'm your Michael Cohen, exactly.
(22:00):
You watch some documentaryabout Michael Cohen.
And he, so he did it.
He would get the information on peopleand he would own them at that point.
I'm like, Wow.
I don't want to be owned by anybody.
Let's talk really quickly beforewe get into the bulk of it though.
What you're going on your vacation,you set something I find interesting.
Cause this is a struggle for.
Anyone that has their own businessor doing their own thing is, you
(22:21):
said, I checked the notification.
I see a notificationcome through on my phone.
Do you ever turn them off?
Yeah, you don't have to have thenotifications for a long time.
I didn't, I turned them on.
I think because sometimes whenyou get those notifications,
it's people asking questions.
And let's say you have a handful ofthings on auction that you listen,
(22:43):
it happens every time somethingwill be on auction for seven days.
In the last two hours, you get a slewof people wanting to ask you questions
because they're really trying to decide,am I going to bid on this or not?
And they decide they have a question.
And if you don't get that questionanswered in a timely manner, before
that auction ends, the likelihoodthat they're going to bid is very low.
(23:04):
They want.
Enough to sit down and send the message.
So, I want to be able to answerthe question in hopes that it's
the answer they're wanting tohear so that they bid on the item.
I'm not caring to see that, inreal time when something's sold.
That doesn't matter to me.
I sell so many things now.
So frequently, and that's not a brag,it's just, I've worked up for years and
(23:27):
now I'm the, I put in a lot of work.
I have inventory leftover every year.
So it just builds up over time.
So the more you have, the more cellsit's just sort of the stats on that,
but I'm fine going to bed and wakeup in the morning, coming down when
I start my day and then seeing what'ssold that doesn't matter to me, but
I'm, it's more so that I can communicatein a timely way to prospective buyers.
(23:48):
Now, if you have a problem withboundaries, which I'm not saying I've
always had good boundaries with work,because I'm not a workaholic, but
I could fall into that very easily.
And I have a family and Ineed to attend to them because
they're the most important thing.
That's why I work.
It's a kind of a give and a take.
I have to hear feedback frommy spouse and know when I'm.
Leaning too far over the lineand I need to dial it back.
(24:11):
But I, if you have issues with boundaries,you should probably turn it off.
Like it's probably not a healthy thing.
I don't want to be on my phone allday either, but this is part of the
dynamics of this type of a business.
If you're selling things online andthere's a time crunch or something,
and you need to give informationout to someone, you need to be
(24:32):
available, otherwise they may notbe interested in coming to your
store again, to buy something.
And it's the age old battle of anybusinesses that are you available enough,
but not to, that is one of the problemsthat's happened with the internet and with
modern phones and everything is that we'rejust available to everybody at all times.
There's this expectation.
I sent you an email.
This is why I don't hardly sellthings on Facebook marketplace at all.
(24:56):
There's several reasons I don'tlike it, but one of the reasons is
if let's say you are in a group.
That is a buying and selling group.
It could be for a very specificlane of types of items.
This is all about Tiffanyjewelry or something like that.
There are administrators of those groups.
(25:16):
They might have their own, since that'stheir group, they have their own policies.
Like you need to respond tosomeone with an X amount of time.
I don't want to be told by somebodyelse when I have to, that means I
have to set up alerts on Facebook.
And then if you have a, like a really.
Exciting item at a good price.
You might get 20 responses and you'resaying I have to get on here and quickly.
(25:39):
No, no.
Like I'll get back toyou within the same day.
That I can commit to that.
I don't have to get toyou within an hour for me.
That's ridiculous.
I don't want to do that.
I don't want to mess with that.
And I don't want to be bombarded withthat stuff and feel the pressure of that.
Get that out of here.
Does eBay insulate youaway from the kind of crap?
I always find with Facebook marketplacethat people, I sold a car on Facebook
(26:00):
marketplace and actually workedout really well, but it was amazing
people would be like, I don't know,say I was selling it for 10, 000.
They'd be like, will you take 500?
Of course.
Yes.
It's funny.
I was waiting for that.
It's the classic ask for waymore than you're going to get.
Again, I don't want to mess with scammers.
I don't want to like, Oh,send me your phone number.
(26:20):
And like, no, I'm not going to do that.
Right, exactly.
Let me tell me, give me your addressand send me your phone number.
Maybe your social security numberand your bank account number.
That would be great too, because I'm goingto, I'm going to email you right now.
I'm going to, I'm a Nigerian prince.
Exactly.
Oh I usually respond to the princesbecause if you can get connected
with a prince from that area,you're a You get somebody in that.
So I definitely respond tothe princes when they need
(26:42):
money, but not anybody else.
I and scammers are getting betterand better and better at it.
I don't know if you've had thishappen to you, but I've noticed a
lot lately where smishing attackshappen in the security biz.
They call them smishing attacks.
They're basically when somebodytexts you and they're like, Hey,
what time is dinner tonight?
You're like, I don't recognize the number.
You're like, I'm sorry.
Who is?
And then they say, they try tostrike up a conversation with you.
(27:04):
The next thing you know you'relike sending them money because.
Whatever.
It's a total scam.
When someone sends youthat, that's a scam.
Last year was when lastyear was earlier than that.
But I had somebody who was a friendback in the day, contacted me, seemed
really interested in some stuff, wantedto get together we were in the area.
He happened to be at aconference at this hotel.
So I just came to the hotel tomeet him and see him and stuff.
(27:26):
And it turns out he was trying topull me into a pyramid scheme thing.
I hadn't seen this guy in years and Iwas like, Oh my God, how did I fall?
Because I knew the guy personally,but I hadn't seen him in years.
And then last week I get a message onFacebook from a friend of mine being like,
Hey man, I don't, it's embarrassing toask this, but I need to borrow some money.
I'm sorry.
I'll definitely pay youback, blah, blah, blah.
(27:47):
And I go, man, it's good to hear from you.
I would totally give youmoney if you need it.
Just to confirm though, canyou tell me where we met?
And he goes, Oh, Man, Ipromise I'll pay you back.
I'm just very sorry.
And so I get on my phone.
I text, cause I havethis guy's phone number.
I text him.
I'm like, I sent him a screenshot.
I go, just so you know, someone isin your account asking, begging your
(28:09):
friends for money, just in case youwant to know, but that's what you get.
There are people out there like that.
You've got to be careful.
I've sold vehicles on Facebook marketplacetoo, but I just, it's more involved.
I like to be the purveyor of my scheduleand dictate when I spend my time and how.
There's some things I can't,whenever I have like deadlines of
(28:30):
shipping, but outside of shippingdeadlines, I don't want to be
beholden to someone else's schedule.
That's one of the things I love aboutthis job is that I have a lot of
control over my own daily schedule.
Okay.
So in the last, as always, wefilled the air with lots of noise.
Yeah.
We wanted to talk a little bit.
We started talking about this lastcouple of weeks ago about, and we've
(28:53):
talked about a lot about holiday selling,but we have Christmas right around the
corner and you've given advice like,Hey, if you see any holiday stuff, start
collecting, we're going to talk a littlebit about how you prepare for Christmas
and Christmas selling, because I got toimagine that it's just a crazy season.
Let's launch into that.
How do you get ready for the holidays?
(29:14):
There are several thingsthat I do to get ready.
Some of it involves holding onto itemsand listing them in anticipation of
Christmas about a month ahead of time.
And that would be usually primarilyChristmas items that could be little
figurines, like snow globes, SantaClaus things, even jewelry that
(29:37):
is Christmas themed, little candycanes, little snow people, like.
People reindeer snowmen, thingslike that, brooches and stuff.
People are going to wear that around theholidays when their family comes over.
So that they're going to belooking for that kind of thing.
If I get that stuff throughoutthe year, I might pull that stuff
(29:57):
aside and I'll wait and sell it.
As a lot at Christmas time oraround that, because people
are going to want to buy it.
What do people do at Christmas time?
What are they doing?
They're going to be buyingthings for family and friends.
They're going to be buying thingsfor adults, but they're also going
to be buying things for kids.
When you buy things for adults,usually you're trying to think
of what does that person like?
(30:20):
Oh, dad, he likes pocket knives.
He has a pocket knife collection.
I'm going to go on and lookfor vintage pocket knives.
My kids, I'm going to buy them toys.
It's been a difficult year.
Let's see if I can find some vintagetoys from when I was a kid, or maybe
I can find some toys on eBay that arestill in the package or barely used.
(30:41):
They're going to be a lot cheaper.
They're not going to care.
It's still in the package.
It's new to them.
It looks like it hasn't been used.
I'm going to save somemoney that way and get it.
So I sell a lot of toys.
If I get things at places likeRoss or TG Maxx or things like
little Star Wars action figuresthat was used to be sold for 19.
99 at Walmart.
And this one now it's only 3.
(31:02):
99.
I buy that up.
I snatched those things up all year.
And then when it comes Christmastime, Oh, look, here's a big lot of
10 action figures that, if you've beenlooking at the new ones, they cost
20 bucks, but here he's only sellingthem for 14 a piece or 10 a piece,
depending on how low I want to go.
I'm still going to makemoney cause I got them at 3.
(31:22):
99, but I know that they'llbe looking for those now.
Everyone's looking to buygifts for kids or their family.
If you have wrapping paper that youdon't think you're going to use,
what do people need during Christmas?
They buy wrapping paperto wrap their gifts.
There's a funny story in my family.
My wife's.
Grandfather maybe a little bit ofa hoarder, but he would get things.
(31:42):
And one of the things they jokeabout is that he had this wrapping
paper that he must've bought likein bulk on discount someplace.
And it was according to them, veryugly, very gaudy, probably old,
like from the fifties or sixties.
And every year they would get things andthey were always wrapped in the same rack.
And be like, how much of thiswrapping paper do you have?
But something like that, if you'vegot 1960s wrapping paper, that's
(32:04):
probably going to sell for a premium.
That's a vintage call it midcentury modern wrapping paper.
If you want to like whatever you needto do, but throw it out there because
people will buy that kind of stuff.
So selling Christmas oriented things.
Knowing the mind of the buyer.
What is the buyer looking for?
There's a lot more buyersin December and November.
And they're buying everything.
(32:25):
They're buying everythingyou can think of.
Some people like to, who make let'ssay you make your own custom t shirts.
You come up with your own designs.
We just had an election.
Is there some kind of funny t shirt youcan make that merges something about the
election and something about Christmas?
Something with the Donaldtrump as santa claus.
(32:45):
I don't know.
You know what I mean?
Something that some people would findfunny or appreciate there's all kinds
of things out there You don't have tothink super hard about it Typically
the end of the year is a better timeif you are still listening and I
guess that's the first thing Is whatcan you do to prepare for christmas?
Get a lot of things out there.
List a lot of things.
Because the more things youlist, hopefully the more
(33:06):
things you're going to sell.
Another strategy I takeis I run a lot of sales.
You can go into eBay, you can markdown things so that it shows up
as a discount on the buyer's end.
You can do an entire store discountwhere everything is now 10 percent off.
Everything in the store is 20 percent off.
(33:27):
If I find a pocket knife I want toget from you, Maybe I need to go to
your store and look at more of youritems because maybe you have other
knives and then they're going tofind something else they didn't even
know that they wanted something forthe aunt or the grandma that they
hadn't even started searching for yet.
They found in your store too.
Oh, good.
I'm going to try to buy both ofthese and I'm going to ask him if
he'll give me a shipping discountbecause I'm buying multiple orders.
(33:49):
That's another way people can save money.
The answer is yes.
Buy more things from me.
I'll put them in one box.
It's a cheaper shipping price foryou and it's less hassle for me.
I'm not sending out fivedifferent packages now and five
different boxes I had to pay for.
I'm sending one box.
And it saves me time too.
So you can run discounts.
You can give shipping discounts.
(34:11):
I would send offers out to people.
You can do things like write inthe description or in the title.
Christmas gift!
Great Christmas gift!
Gift for dad, gift for thekids, that kind of thing.
And if a person goes into eBay and theylook up Christmas gifts or Christmas
dad gifts, the search query is goingto pull up anything that has those
(34:36):
words in it, or most of those wordsin it in eBay and show it to them.
And it doesn't matter if it's, Idon't know, a new Patagonia jacket.
You didn't look up jacket.
You just looked up Christmasgift for dad and all of a sudden,
boom, Patagonia jacket pops up.
Oh, it's his size.
Great.
It's 30 percent less than thestore in town sells it for.
Those are some ideas I would say,get out there and really list.
(34:58):
I know it's busy.
I know you've got peoplecoming in and out.
I know that it can be a crazystressful time of year, but also.
Maybe it's nice to say, Hey family, I'mgoing to go take two or three hours.
I got to do some work.
You're really just needinga break from the guests.
And then you go and list some thingsand you're going to make some money.
So there's, it could be a win win for you.
(35:21):
So can I get some freeselling advice from you then?
Sure.
All right.
So this is my, we're testing thesubreddit, but on the show, as you know,
I've mentioned that we collect ornaments.
Is there a market for vintage ornaments?
And if I was going to say, if I wasgoing to do a reselling business,
it would be vintage ornaments.
I love them.
I think they're amazing.
(35:41):
But what's Specific brands or?
Oh, look at you throwing specific,I don't know anything about specific
brands, but I'm assuming that exists.
Does it exist?
Oh, absolutely.
In fact, It's you didn't know this,but I came back a little while ago
meeting up with someone that I sellthings for, giving them some money.
I owed them and they gave me atub full of Christmas ornaments.
They're all in the original packages.
(36:01):
Some have never been used, butthey come with the original
packaging, which is great.
Collectors like that.
And a lot of them are Hallmark brand.
Highly collectible ones.
The most collectibleof Christmas ornaments.
Certainly certain ones that are rare,like they only made, it's one of
five or something like that, right?
Those can be rare, but really antiqueornaments that are made out of glass,
(36:26):
hand blown glass ornaments thatare hand painted, things like that.
There's a brand, I think it's, itwas a German brand called Kugel.
K U G E L.
I don't know if I'm pronouncing thatcorrectly or not, but kugel ornaments
they're, a lot of them are very heavy.
You have to be careful because theydefinitely make fakes because they are
pretty sought after as collectible items.
(36:46):
But you can find websites and even YouTubevideos showing you how to identify.
Authentic ones or not, but those thingscan sell for hundreds of dollars.
Look up Kugel ornament or look up antiqueornament, glass ornament, go to sold items
and look at the ones that have sold forthe most, you're, you will be shocked.
Oh, I bet you it would be.
Every time I go to my grandmother'shouse and I look at her
Christmas tree, I'm like that.
(37:09):
Not the tree.
The ornaments on there areworth a couple thousand dollars.
Grandma.
And she's been using them for 65 years.
Every year, it's the same ones.
Probably were passed down to her.
Probably, yeah.
And that's great.
There's nothing wrong with that.
And keep them if you enjoy them.
You don't need to sell them.
But if, let's say, unfortunately,you had someone pass and
(37:30):
There are things come to you.
Don't just pitch or donate the oldChristmas ornaments because there's, there
can be some high values in that stuff.
Depending.
Do you think that if you got that legfrom like a Christmas story, the lamp
leg, that would be worth, if you gotthe original before the exact one?
Yeah, sure.
Oh, absolutely.
It feels like it wouldhave some real value.
(37:50):
You have to auction that off.
You'd have to run maybe throughan auction house on that.
Yeah, I think about the ideaof you just as i'm listening.
I'm thinking to myself How many times haveyou gone to I don't know a garage sale
tag sale yard sale Whatever you want tocall it and somebody's got a box of old
christmas stuff that they're like Yeah, itwas my grandfather's and I don't use it.
I'm like, oh man I'm gonnastart looking for that even
(38:12):
old christmas cards from the.
As old as you can get but up untileven like the 60s I would say 60s
maybe 70s had to have just a differentlook to them They portray Santa in
a little bit of a different way.
Maybe he's not wearing red.
He's wearing a different color, bythe way, old postcards of Christmas.
Now's the time to sell Santa postcards,particularly Santa postcards where
he's wearing green or blue or purple,not red, because we don't think
(38:36):
of Santa wearing things other thanred or green, really these days.
But back in the day, they had Santaportrayed in all kinds of different ways.
So old cards, even if it's signed, it'slike this from Mary to Chester 1948.
It doesn't matter if it'swritten in because people will
put those up on the mantle.
People will put those up on the table.
They're cool because they're vintagelooking because they are vintage.
(38:58):
They're authentic.
And it's paper ephemera.
You can buy that stuff in bulk lotsthroughout the year for next to nothing.
Pull that stuff out.
You sell some of the stuff that you wantto sell immediately, but maybe you hold
onto the Christmas stuff for a monthbefore Christmas, maybe you hold onto the
Halloween stuff a month before Halloween.
And that's when the peak interest inthose items will be, you'll make the most
(39:19):
money selling them in that time period.
So here's the deal, people,listeners out there.
I am searching for an advent calendar,one of those fancy wooden vintage.
I don't know if you know what I'mtalking about, where they actually
have the little doors you pull out.
Yeah.
Yep.
So I don't know how old it is, but wehave, I don't even need it to be old.
I just want it to be cool.
(39:40):
So if anybody has one of those outthere, this guy's look, hold on a second.
Cool is such an abstract term.
It's can we, it's very qualitative.
Can we, it has to be festive, festive.
Again, festive is not concrete.
How would someone know thatthey have a cool and festive?
I guess that's a great question.
I guess.
How's it, how about this?
(40:00):
Email us at the show.
Send me a picture and if it's whatI'm looking for, I will definitely
get back in touch with you.
If you need a consolation,there is a Lego Harry Potter.
I think it's Harry Potter,but if it's not, it's.
It's Lego, but they have a Lego one.
This is good for kids.
It's cardboard is paper, but inevery one of the little days,
there's a little, like maybe aminifigure or a little toy in there.
(40:23):
So every day that they go throughAdvent, they can pull out a toy.
Oh, that must be worth something.
They still sell them.
You can still buy them as of last year.
You could buy them brand new.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They're not somethingthat you reuse every year.
I think it's more like a one year.
We have one that we use, but I'vewanted to get something that I
could give to my daughter becausewe just love doing it every day.
(40:43):
She's excited.
We, Hershey's kiss outof there and whatnot.
, as we like the advent wreath andall that, we're very, again, like
I said, Matt, I'm not kidding.
We're very festive holidaypeople around here.
Frivolity of all kindshappened at this house.
That is for sure.
Remember though, if you don'thave a picture of a advent
calendar That you want to sell me.
(41:04):
You could still follow us.
You could like us and subscribe toany one of these different places.
Keep the emails coming.
It is awesome.
We are stoked.
We are all going to wish Matt right now.
Positive thoughts as he and his lovelybride head off to the beaches of Grenada,
hoping that their days are bright.
(41:24):
I'm imagining myself like in a vat of rum.
Do you float on rum?
I don't know.
I get like, I'm not a big, Iknow they make it from sugar.
That's about all I know.
But anyway, any last wordsfor the folks today, Matt?
It's a good time to be listing things.
There's a lot of buyers out there, but.
If it makes more sense to just spendthat time on vacation with your family,
do that because that's, you're notgoing to remember, I don't remember
(41:48):
three months ago, the things I sold.
If I saw it again, I'd be like, Ohyeah, but make those memories with your
family and your kids spend that time.
This work will always be herewhen you come back to it, but
have fun out there, be safe.
That's about it.
That is a good way to send us out.
We will have, like I said, we'll havea couple more shows before Christmas
(42:09):
before the holiday season is fullyupon us, but we are wishing everybody
a joyous season, take a break, enjoyyourself, spend some time with family.
Otherwise we'll be back with a brandnew show next week and we are looking
forward to our first conversation.
Yeah.
Can't wait.
The next couple of weeks.
So have a good one, everybody.
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