June 18, 2025 • 36 mins
In this episode of the What Sold podcast, hosts Brandon and Matt discuss the challenges of accuracy and fact-checking in podcasting, spurred by listener feedback. They humorously address past mistakes and the importance of being truthful while acknowledging occasional embellishments. The duo dives into their misadventures and stories surrounding jewelry and collectibles, with Matt offering expert insights into handling and valuing precious items. They also discuss the sentimental value of possessions versus their market value, providing tips for new resellers. Tune in for part two, where they'll uncover the treasures hidden in linen closets and yards.
00:00 Introduction and Podcast Hosts
01:16 Listener Feedback and Corrections
02:28 Jewelry and Fact-Checking
04:37 Selling and Valuing Jewelry
05:52 Personal Stories and Nostalgia
07:52 Reselling Philosophy and Practices
14:28 Consignment Business Insights
16:25 Weekly Sales and Updates
18:25 Shipping and Insurance Concerns
19:16 Recent Sales Highlights
19:46 Sweetheart Bracelet Details
20:11 Gold and Silver Market Insights
21:15 Selling a Giuseppe Armani Statue
23:43 Pricing Strategies on eBay
29:21 The Reseller Shark Analogy
31:41 Understanding Market Value
32:36 Sports Memorabilia and Value
33:54 Local Baseball Team Promotion
34:42 Episode Conclusion and Teaser
The What Sold Podcast Subreddit
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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 back to the What Sold podcast.
I am Brandon.
This is Matt.
I do that for the robot that need toknow our names because I'm always,
they always say Matteo, whatevername I give, that's the name that's
going to be in the robot mind.
We are not created byartificial intelligence.
We are real human beings.
As far as you know, as far as you know,and you know what robots are getting
(00:58):
so good that it's hard to tell quitefrankly, who is a robot and who isn't,
but I wanted to start the show today,Matt, if you would, Allow me, if you
would excuse me this, I don't know ifI have a choice, but go right ahead.
You could just leave the show.
You could just flick offand say I'm out of here.
We got a, so I finally figured out how toget on to Spotify and answer questions.
(01:21):
I frankly, I'll be honest with you guys.
I just never look at it andI'm like, Oh, this guy, Bill.
Our friend Bill out there, givenseveral comments, and he pointed
out something that I knew was amistake after the show got over.
Often times, you and I are riffing,and we'll say things that aren't
really true, but we're like, whatever,no one's listening, who cares.
(01:42):
Then I realized people are listening.
Oh, I am so intrigued now toknow what is about to come out.
So I said we talked about Corindianleather, and I said, Tully Sophalis.
So I said we talked about Corindianleather, and I said, Tully Sophalis.
Now, I knew immediately afterthe show, I'm like, oh, no, no,
no, that's Ricardo Montalblanc.
So, Bill corrected us Isaid, Bill, thank you.
Really important piece of that episode.
(02:04):
In fact, the entire episodehinges upon that one.
Absolutely.
Hey listen, to Bill, it did.
And I'm the kind of person that, like,Bill, would, it would stick in my craw.
I'm like, it's notTelly Zavalas you idiot.
It's Ricardo Montalblanc.
Okay.
De Plain, de Plain, it's the guyfrom Fantasy Island, that dude.
So anyway, we were talkingabout rich Corinthian leather.
(02:25):
I can't even remember that contact, butI do remember talking about Ricardo.
The other thing is I said, Ibought my wife a five carat
Sapphire for our wedding.
I did buy her a beautiful blue Sapphire.
When I told her, I was like,huh, you were talking about five
being too big and begotting.
And I, so I went to my wife and said,What size sapphire did I get used to?
It's like two and a third carat.
(02:45):
As I'm apt to do, I usedhyperbole and bombastic statements
to make myself seem cooler.
I will say that fact checking, Brandon,with regard to things that have to do with
Hina's wife, He's more often inaccuratewhen it comes to stories he's relaying
from her and things in my experience sofar, so maybe that's the Oh, totally,
(03:07):
and she's there to fact check me.
It's, I just like to just, I justlike to go off into the hinterlands
and she's like, no, it's not that.
It's this.
I'm like, wait, what?
It's not.
But, that's what 20 years ofmarriage and love will get you, Matt.
It will get you that sort oflicense to be able to be who you
are when you want to be who you are.
Man, I know, and we're going to say thingsfrom time to time when we're, that aren't,
(03:28):
we're not intending to be inaccurate.
And it's not that big of a deal, butat the same time, it is to some people,
because on the Rusty channel, I have beencrucified over little comments I made.
And in those circumstances,They were actually intentional.
It was like an inside joke, but peopleto this day are making comments saying,
(03:48):
if you don't know this, this little thingyou said was wrong, then I can't believe
anything you say I'm unsubscribing.
I'm out of here.
Okay.
Wow.
Wow.
That's going to make you a good thing.
We don't consider, we don't considerfact checking like, for example,
our politicians are the leaders ofour world, because I feel like every
single day you could probably picksomething out that someone says.
(04:11):
Here's the deal.
I hold true to this, that whenI give something that may, to
somebody seem untrue, all I'moffering is an alternative fact.
That's all I'm offering to you is analternative fact you could use it or not.
It's up to you, but it'san alternative fact.
So I did in fact, by my wife.
A beautiful Sapphire.
We did not want to buy a diamond,but we were talking in our show on
(04:32):
selling gold and jewels and everythingthat I may have misspoke people.
So in your defense, Ipersonally believe I've handled.
And sold thousands of pieces ofjewelry handled and sold thousands of
pieces gemstones, rough and facet cut.
And I will say in my opinion, the 2.
(04:53):
3 carat is like the perfect 2.
3 to two and a half is the perfect sizeof being large and show a lot of color
and attract attention, but it's generallynot considered to be too flashy or showy.
But once you start getting to threecarat or above, that's a statement piece.
If you're below that, it can stillbe very high quality, but it can hide
(05:16):
out under the wraps a little bit.
It's not going to drawa bunch of attention.
But I'm telling you sapphires,rubies, diamonds of those
carat weights are not cheap.
So you don't see them a lot becausegood quality, we're talking about like
a natural stone, not a synthetic stone.
You don't see it because they're,they cost a lot of money.
Yeah, right.
I imagine that Rusty got flow like a 0.
3. Yeah.
(05:36):
Carrot diamond in a, what's thelowest form of gold you can get?
No, Rusty's not cheap.
Rusty has a huge heart.
It was made entirelyout of old dental gold.
And, no, man, in all seriousness,Flo I, we got married very young.
I bought her when I got her aring, it was not a large diamond.
But I did, even back then,before I was doing this full
(05:59):
time, I actually had a jeweler.
Present me a variety of loose stones, andI got to look at them, and I picked the
one out specifically that I wanted, andI had that mounted, as opposed to say,
going to a jewelry store and just pickingsomething that was already created.
So, to this day, the quality of the stone,though it's not, as large as I could
have done had we married later in life.
(06:19):
Right.
It's still a very goodquality stone, luckily.
And also, luckily, she hasn't lost it.
I think I'm on my sixth orseventh wedding ring now.
I told the story about how Ilost my wedding ring for three
months when we first got married.
It was very traumatic.
So, but I did find it.
It was in a book.
I was doing research and I had takenit off and was flipping it around.
I don't do that anymore.
(06:40):
But the book that youhad carved out to stash.
It had a pistol carveout in it.. There you go.
And I just dropped the ring in thereaccidentally, but that's right now I yeah.
So it's funny because in all seriousnessabout selling things, jewelry and stuff
like that is such a personal thing.
So when you think, oh, no onewould possibly want that or
(07:00):
someone will totally want that.
It's not necessarily true.
I've learned a lot from you.
I'll be, I'm being sincere right nowin the sense that I don't look at
things anymore in the way I used to.
I look at them as someone out thereis going to be interested in this.
Maybe I won't find them, but there'ssomeone out there for everything.
(07:22):
That's a good way of looking at it.
That is.
Yeah.
And so it's, that's the way I,that's the way I think about it.
One person's trash is anotherperson's treasure and vice versa.
That really has rungtrue in my experience.
Thanks.
Things that I thoughtno one would care about.
Oh, not only do they care about it, butthey're willing to pay top dollar for it.
And the opposite, which is a bummerwhen I get something, I'm like,
Oh my gosh, people are going to belining up and it's crickets, sits
(07:46):
there for three months, six months.
What have I done?
Yeah.
What's going on with this thing?
Yeah.
Exactly.
Hey, so a little aside here is before welaunch into what you sold this week, a
long time ago, I might've mentioned thatmy brother Rick or people call him rich.
I don't get that, but they call itthe golf stuff and he's doing great.
It's a great side gig for him.
(08:06):
He's like, Oh, covers my green fees.
And that's all I care about.
I'm like, there you go.
So he had sent me a boxwhen my dad passed away.
He sent me a box of my dad hadthese, I don't know, like all of
us, he had a junk drawer type thing.
But.
He had like 20 old watches.
Oh.
Then I just didn't like, andI was like, oh, guess what
I'm gonna talk to Matt about?
(08:27):
So I had this box full of Walthams.
When am I coming over, man?
Yeah.
What am I coming overs?
It's crazy because I looked at it.
And also, the other thing ishe had this, all these antique
pins, like backs backing pins.
Oh no.
Push pins or, yeah.
INS push pins exactly In from like theUS Open in 1979 and all this stuff.
I was like, oh my gosh, this.
(08:48):
I'm not, I won't ever use it.
Are there attachments?
Are there personal attachmentsfor you with those things?
No, no.
I took all the things that I,my dad had bought a beautiful
chess board in Venice, Italy.
That was my fate.
That's how I remember my dad and Iwould play chess against each other.
So there are certain things thatI absolutely would never sell and
I'll give them to my daughter and ifshe wants them, she can have them.
(09:09):
But I was thinking aboutwhat you said about.
You're not a guy that getsattached to things very regularly.
Is it going to pay for mykid's college type thing?
And I was like, I'm going to sellthese watches and see what happens.
Just out of curiosity to see was there anyvalue or was my dad just buying tchotchke?
I'm sure there's value and there maybe more value now than there would
have been at the time he bought them.
(09:30):
Yeah, absolutely.
And I totally get nostalgia andbeing personally attached to things
that belong to family members.
Most people have, that's a biggerpart of their life than it is for me.
I think the fact that I, it seems coldand callous, but the fact that I am able
to detach myself from the items thatcome through is one of the reasons that
(09:50):
I'm able to sell things quickly and makemoney on them because I'm not motivated
to hold onto things for any other reason.
And I have to be that waybecause I've got bills to pay.
It's great.
If you load your houseup with valuable things.
But then you're past due on yourmortgage or whatever else, you got
to sell that stuff and move it.
I'm more attached to people.
People and experiences.
(10:11):
I'd much rather spend money ontaking my family to do something
or hang out with people.
I'm attached to the life,the present experiences.
I have to be looking forwards.
Obviously I have to be buildingretirement and stuff because I don't work.
I work for myself.
But when it comes to things now, aswe talked about before, art, some
artwork and instruments particularlyare harder for me to move quickly.
(10:33):
Especially if they are very good quality,because I can, they have utility.
I can play them and enjoythem while I have them.
So I might put it up for sale.
I might put it up at a higherprice than I really think.
Just to see if somebody will bite,but it's almost me saying, if you're
willing to pay this price, I will sellit to you, but I'm not in a hurry.
And I'm not looking to liquidate this.
I'm going to enjoy it while I have it.
(10:54):
And when people offer me, 50 percentoff of what I have listed, I just
say, Hey, thanks for the offer.
I'm not in a hurry and I thinkthat the price I have is already
below the the industry average ofthe average retail sale of this.
So if I get to a point where somethingchanges, I'll keep your offer in mind.
I once heard a thing called, itsaid, I can't remember if I invented
(11:16):
it or if I heard it somewhere, butnostalgia is the enemy of the soul.
I always, I was like, Ooh, that'skind of true because if you
hang on to things, just because.
I have wonderful little piecesof family nostalgia, and I'm not
denigrating that in any way sayingthe people who shouldn't do that.
But there is a case where youjust hang on to stuff and you're
like, what am I doing with this?
(11:37):
It's been in a box for 25 years.
No one's looked at it.
No one even has anyemotional attachment anymore.
Get rid of it, clear it out.
Cause then you savespace for other things.
So as a reseller, that couldplay to your advantage.
If you find people that are in that.
Place where they, Hey,I got all this stuff.
It has value to someone.
It just doesn't have value to me.
(11:57):
So sell it.
It's basically the point I'm making.
It's especially helpful when I sell forother people, because, if something really
awesome comes through my hands, it doesn'teven belong to me and I don't want to be
the kind of person that starts to havethis feeling like, maybe I should, start
strategizing, like maybe there's a wayI could buy this directly from them or
keep it and just pay them or whatever,that could complicate things drastically.
So I need to not.
(12:18):
I'll also say.
You may believe this or not, butit's true that if I sell something
by next week, I forgotten it, notexactly, but I'm already moving on.
There are things that I'll pop up.
If I look through, say my saleshistory that sold, if I hadn't
seen it again, I have forgotten.
I ever even had it.
(12:38):
And I can certainly tell you, I'vesold, I don't know how many, dozens,
probably at least a hundred guitars,let's just say acoustic guitars and
electric guitars in the last 20 years.
I probably remember 20 of those.
If I could go back, I tookphotographs, I'd be like, oh, yeah,
I vaguely remember that I had that.
But that's what it's like when you sellfor that long, or specifically I've been
(12:59):
selling full time for about five years.
I can't remember one time Ibought and sold around 50, 000
matchbooks, vintage matchbooks.
That's 50, 000 separate items.
I didn't sell them all individually,but I probably sold at least
half of them individually.
Yes.
I took photos and listed 25,000 matchbooks myself in about
(13:20):
a six month period of time.
And that's not talking about themultiples of thousands of postcards.
I've sold multiples ofthousands of pieces of jewelry.
It's just, it's staggering.
The volume of stuffthat has passed through.
What we refer to as the, Rusty'sBargain Warehouse down here.
It's just comes and goes.
So when you get on track and you do thatand you get into a rhythm, it gets easier.
(13:41):
But if you're say, wanting to startout and you're wanting to just pull
things from your house, it's new.
And the things that you're drawingfrom are things you've inherited,
let's say, or have some attachmentthat could be, you're going to face
this potential dilemma very early on.
And in a way that's good becauseyou can decide, you know what?
Maybe I'm just not the person for this.
(14:02):
Like personally, I've just have ahard time emotionally doing this.
Right.
And if so, it's a good thingto know before you get in and
get yourself in a tough spot.
But if you can do it, if you can do thatwith some things that you previously
wanted to hold on to, and then after it'sgone, you're not regretting it heavily.
You can probably doanything at that point.
It's funny.
It strikes me a little bit as youtalk about this as a reseller, you
(14:25):
really have to, disassociate or.
Detach, that would be the magic word,detach yourself from the emotion of
it, or don't do it because you'regoing to come across things I'm
assuming, and I'm curious abouthow your consignment business is.
I'm going to call it consignment business.
I don't know what else we would callit, but how your business is selling for
(14:47):
other people, because I got to imaginesome of them are attached to items.
Do they ever get into an argument with,not argument, but do they ever say, Ooh,
I don't really want to sell that now?
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
Sometimes they do.
And if I was smart, I would have,if it was going to be an issue, I
thought then I would need to setup some sort of situation that we
would agree upon ahead of time.
Because if I go through anddo work and I'm storing it and
(15:08):
stuff, and then they want it back.
How do I get paid for that then?
Because it's not going to sell.
I'm not going to get my percentage.
I just think things are things andthings do not have inherent value.
They only have valuethat we assign to them.
One thing that I got from my grandfather'swedding ring has a value to me, but
(15:29):
someone who doesn't know and never met mygrandfather, it's just a piece of metal.
And there's, and maybe it has valueonly because again, the consensus is
that we value this metal and we'regoing to set a price for it every day.
But otherwise that's why one thingcan be valuable to one person and
complete junk in someone else'sviewpoint, because we decide the value.
(15:49):
The way I look at it is if it served me.
I'm going to, I'm going touse it for how it serves me.
So a lot of these things serve meby allowing me to sell them and make
money for my family and pay my bills.
If it serves me in some other way,I'll use them in some other way.
But things are things.
And most things out there, if youreally decide you want it again,
you can go find it, you mighthave to pay more for it later, but
(16:10):
it's not like it's lost forever.
And you might surprise yourself.
You might sell something and Ithought I cared all that much about
it, but I've enjoyed the money andI don't think about it anymore.
Right.
And you won't know if that'sthe experience until you try it.
Once again, we've pontificated about ourlives in the life of a reseller, but I'd
(16:31):
love to know what you sold this week.
It is my favorite part of the show.
I always look forward to seeingwhat kind of magical treats you have
up your sleeve and what you sold.
Also, if you have any updates on thingsyou sold because I know there have
been some stuff you've put up latelyand there was that crazy, creepy.
Was that, I think it was a ring with agiant stone in it and are empty anyway.
(16:54):
So, any updates or any,anything you sold this week?
The, I have about three or fourpieces of jewelry, complete pieces of
jewelry that have gemstones in them.
And then some loose, aboutsix loose basica gemstones.
The hope is that later this week, I'llactually get through on the website
and put the details in and send theseoff to be certified by GIA, which is
(17:17):
the leading gym certification company.
The turnaround time is two to three weeks.
I don't think I have to pay forthat until they're finished and
they're about to send them back.
But that's going out.
So that's an update on those pieces.
I could sell them, but I will beable to sell them more once they're
certified, even factoring in the time,the shipping cost and the cost to do it.
(17:38):
I still stand to make moremoney doing it that way.
And I'm not a rush.
So that makes sense to do that.
Do you ensure them when you sendthem out to a place like that?
I do.
I do because I don'twant, here's the thing.
If I were to ship something to GIA.
Or this refinery that we've spokenabout, people who know what that
(17:58):
company does know exactly thetypes of things that are coming in.
And so if I send 20, 000 of gold to shipit in, to be processed, to get paid for
it, And it has the address and the nameof the company it's going to somebody
along the way who knows what that is.
Maybe it's somebody who's havinga tough spot in their life.
(18:19):
They happen to be a care,like working for a carrier.
They're a UPS driver.
They're a FedEx driver or something.
They're like, it's insured.
They're going to get paid.
I'm just going to grab this baggage.
It fell off the truck.
I'm going to empty it and re tapeit and it'll be nothing in it.
That's dangerous.
So I try to not do that, ship itif possible, but like GIA, I don't
know if they're in New York, I thinkthere's maybe one in New York, one
(18:41):
in California or something like that.
So I'm not going to drive it up there,but I am going to insure it because
I don't want to take a major loss.
That's lost income.
That's something I also have to factorin as a cost associated with getting this
done, and I still have to believe thator be confident that the sale down the
line will more than account for that.
(19:01):
Additional costs.
Cause that's just loss.
You're just paying as an in casesomething happens and most of the
time it doesn't, but when it does,you want to have that insurance.
We will wait to hear back from GIA and thetrillion dollar gems that you sent them.
But what sold this week?
A couple of things that sold this week.
I have this is one of the few examplesof a little gold filled bracelet.
(19:26):
And it's an expandable bracelet, itwill expand out so you can put your hand
in it and then it will come back in.
It is, it's got like a heartmotif all the way around it.
The links look like hearts andthen at the top is a larger heart.
Functions almost like a pendantfunction at the bottom of the
necklace, but it's the top part.
And it has a monogramletters BB on the top of it.
(19:46):
This is what is referred toas a Sweetheart Bracelet.
Oh.
And they were, have beensold for a very long time.
You could buy them from Sears andRoebuck out of the Sears and Roebuck
catalog back even in the late, midto late 1800s, you could buy these.
And they have a small amount of gold,like 1 10th, 1 20th, and or 12 carat
(20:08):
gold, a small amount on the outside of it.
The gold right now is atalmost like an all time high.
Yesterday, it was approachingvery close to 3, 400 per ounce.
An ounce is like 28.
3 or 28 and a half grams,something like that.
If you got gold now or silvernow is a great time because
it's really, really high.
This is not solid gold, but it stillhas value both as a functional piece of
(20:32):
jewelry and also if they want to scrap.
So this sold, it's small.
This is actually more likefor a child size wrist.
It's not really for an adult.
It's still sold for 68.
And this is one of two thatsold in the last couple of days.
I didn't buy this directly.
This came in a lot ofthings, a group of things.
One sold that I'd had for a while.
One I bought on a recent tripI just took this weekend.
(20:53):
I put it up for sale andit sold within 48 hours.
Oh, nice.
Do I know why?
Do they collect them?
Are they scrapping it for the gold?
It doesn't really matter to me.
It sold quickly and for a goodprice and that's what I wanted.
Yeah.
So even old jewelry, notreally fashionable, cool.
Cool.
Not even something youcan wear for some reason.
It's too small or whateverelse still can have value.
(21:15):
Another thing I sold reaching downhere to grab it is this statue.
So this statue sits about 14 inches tall.
It's got a wooden round base and it is asculpture of, a scantily clad young woman.
Her hair is very long and she's justputting her arms up and holding her hair.
(21:35):
It is made out of course, like ceramic.
It's a ceramic piece.
It's been hand painted and on the bottomit has a medallion and it says Florence.
And it says Dawn.
Dawn would be the name of thischaracter or this particular person.
And it's in a series called the comingof the new millennium and the artist
it's signed On this it has the name ofthe artist on the medallion But then it
(21:59):
also has as a part of the casting a handsignature and the artist is someone named
Giuseppe armani a r m a n i And it'sjust an artist That does these pieces.
I, this is something I'm sellingfor someone else on consignment.
When I got these, there weresomething like 10 of them,
(22:20):
varying sizes, different ones.
Initially I tried to sell them alltogether because that would have just
been a lot more money at one timeand easier to ship them all at once.
I say easier.
There would have been,challenges shipping a bunch of
delicate, heavy things together.
But this one sold for right around 200.
These sell generally in the 200 to300 range, depending on what they are.
(22:40):
How much are they new?
I actually don't know.
I actually haven't looked at that.
So it says for the new millennium,was that, are they, how old is that?
It's 1999.
So when it was saying new millennium,it was like ushering in from 2000 on.
So it's 25 years old.
Exactly.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
But it also comes with the certification.
It has a little plaque thathas a certification number that
kind of, it's like a collectiblelimited edition situation.
(23:03):
I think I only have one leftof the 10 that I originally
had two sold in the last week.
The other sold previously, I may haveone left and it's larger than this one.
And obviously will cost a little bit more,which is maybe why it hasn't sold yet.
But sometimes you just have to wait forthe right collector who's looking, they
don't have that particular one in theset, or they just like the particular
(23:24):
look of that one, what have you.
But this is the type of thing thatsits on a, an end table, on the
middle of a table, on a mantle or atall bookcase, something like that.
It's just artwork.
Yeah, it's cool.
I wonder if Giuseppe isstill doing his thing.
I don't know if Giuseppe is or not.
And part of the reason I haven't looked atnew costs is because it's clearly not new.
So I'm really interestedin what's the retail, the
(23:45):
secondary retail value of that.
So whenever I get on and research oneBay, for example, sold listings in
the last 90 days, and I look them up, Iwant to see what's the lowest one sold
for, what's the highest one is sold for,and what has this particular character
sold for in the past, if I can find it.
And it gives me the range, and thenI can either price that roughly on
(24:06):
average of what they're selling for,or if I want to sell it faster, if
I want somebody to buy mine versussomeone else's of the exact same thing,
I've got to undercut them on price.
That's essentially theonly way to do it quickly.
So let me ask you a question.
I'm going to resell nerdout a little bit on this.
Is that you always talk about lookingat what eBay has sold and whatever.
Mm hmm.
(24:27):
Number one, what if there is no pricethat you could find and is there ever
a time where the price is just wrong?
Like it's just way undersold or oversold.
How do you know?
That's why I don't look at just one thing.
One of the ways that other places likethrift stores or antique stores and
stuff get in trouble is they'll takean item and they'll look it up on eBay.
(24:49):
And they just look at the,they're going quick, right?
They just look at the top oneor like one, one or two sales,
one or two or three sales.
Now, some things out there can, forexample, costume jewelry, a lot of
times nicer costume jewelry is modeledon the exact same look of another
piece of jewelry that is made out of 14karat or 18 karat gold, but solid gold.
(25:12):
So one piece can, you could look up athing, let's say you Google lens it.
So Google lens doesn't knowwhat metal it's made out of.
It's just going on the image.
So if it pulls that up and yousee that on the results on Google.
You don't know if the one they'repulling up for you is an 18 karat gold
version of fine jewelry, or if this isa costume piece that's modeled after
(25:34):
the original, as you can imagine, thesales of those will vary drastically.
So all that to say, if you lookit up and it says this sold for 2,
300, you're like, Whoa, I've gota big, valuable piece of jewelry.
You throw it out for 2, 300.
And I pick it up and I'm like, This is a20 to 30 piece of costume jewelry, max.
(25:58):
How could they've gotten it wrong?
Just because it looks the same and theydidn't spend much time researching it.
The opposite happens.
And that's when it works to my advantage.
They put a piece of jewelry outthat looked like it sold for 20, but
they didn't pay enough attention tosee it's made out of 14 karat gold.
This is actually a 2,000 piece of jewelry.
And that's when I buy it and walk away.
To eBay and sell it andmake money very quickly.
(26:21):
So the answer to the question of howdo you know, you need to spend more
than just a couple of seconds lookingand you need to figure out, okay, if it
looks like one silver 20 and one silver1800, you need to do a deeper dive.
Why is that?
What is it about this piece?
That's so much morevaluable than this one.
And you will oftentimesfind it very quickly.
(26:41):
It's made out of a precious metal.
It's made by a specific artist.
It's a limited edition.
This is made by a companythat's sought after.
It's no longer being produced.
There's all kinds of reasons whythere could be a difference in price.
Oftentimes you don't see the actual sameitem selling for one selling for like
20 percent below or 20 times below thevalue of another one that's identical.
(27:02):
That just oftentimes doesn't happen.
But if I have somethingthat's rare, let's say.
And I looked it up and there's not asingle one that has sold or maybe just
one that's sold just one sale doesn'treally give you a good idea of its actual
value because who knows if there had beenan alternative one listed higher, maybe
(27:23):
that one would have been bought or lower.
Maybe that one would have been bought.
Maybe it would be worth.
Less if there were multiple ones, butsince it's the only one and a person
wants it, they don't have an option.
They just have to pay theprice that's available to them.
I, in those circumstances, Iusually do one of two things.
And it also depends onmy own circumstances.
Do I need the money quickly?
Am I selling it for someone?
Does it belong to me?
(27:44):
Yada, yada.
But I'll either list it for alarge amount of money, more than my
gut would tell me to list it for.
Because if I'm not sure, I don't wantto undersell it because the chance
you run is if you put it for a lowerprice and it sells within 10 minutes,
you know what that tells you, right?
You drastically underpriced that.
That shouldn't sell that fast unlessthe price was just too good to pass up.
(28:08):
And if that happens, youlikely lost out in that.
They got the value and you lost value.
But if I price it reallyhigh, you might get a bite.
And if not, you just then startto slowly lower it over time
till you get to the sweet spot.
The other thing I might do is startit at a kind of a high auction.
I would be comfortable sellingit for a thousand dollars without
really knowing, because I thinkit's got to be at least worth that.
(28:29):
I'll put it at a thousand dollarson auction and then I'll let the
public decide what is this worth.
If I get 20 watchers instantly, I've gotit already priced pretty well because
there's 20 people who are like, I wouldprobably buy this at this price, if
that's what it's at by the end of theauction, If it sits there for five days
on a seven day auction, you've only hadeight people see it and nobody's watching
(28:52):
it, then I clear, it's either not soughtafter or I've got it priced way too high.
So you learn about the value of thingsbased on what you see the response is
to a listing within a certain timeframe.
Yeah, it's funny I, as I map to do.
(29:12):
I like to personify you, Matt,when I think of your alter ego, can
you anthropomorphize me as well?
What kind of animal?
In fact, I'm gonna anthrop, , a shark
I like to think of youas the reseller shark.
Okay.
that a kind shark, maybe a happy shark.
Mm-hmm.
I mean, I don't think all sharkscan something from like a Pixar
movie, but like a, not the meanshark, but the nice shark of course.
(29:32):
And, maybe a bumbling shark.
But, so the average reseller of thethrift store is the guppy at the top.
Mm-hmm.
And they've got it.
And then you're waiting.
For the thing that the mistake thatwas made, like putting up a 18 karat
gold bracelet that was sold for 20.
So you smell blood inthe water a mile away.
You're like, you're the reselling shark.
(29:55):
That's what I want to thinkof you from this point.
That's the underpinning of the entireidea of of the reselling world is
that the only reason this can bedone is because there are things out
there available that are under the.
Typical market value.
And the only way you can take advantageof that is knowledge and experience.
(30:15):
Have learned about it, done yourresearch or had interactions with
that type of item in the past.
I think that I actually would say thatit's not the only way it would happen.
I'm going to argue withyou on this one, Matt.
And the reason I say thatis that I think that.
Resellers are the absoluteepitome of the perfect merchant.
And what I mean by that isif you think about a Mer.
(30:36):
Let's think about an old fashionedout on the Prairie dry goods store.
If anybody walked the last in the Prairie,there was like the mercantile and you
would go in there and they would haveflour and they would have these goods.
So people needed these, they needednails, they would get a barrel of
nails and come in and buy them.
They would purchase them at acertain price, they would ship
them, and they would store them.
(30:57):
So what they were really selling youwas the convenience of the item so
that you didn't have to go get it.
I don't think there's anything differentin what you're doing that the power
of the merchant is understanding you.
The value of thing.
So if you buy a barrel of nails,the market understanding the market.
Yeah.
(31:17):
If you buy a barrel of nail for 100,I'm thinking old fashioned and you sell
that barrel for, let's say 300 becauseyou part out each individual nail
and you make 300 over a year period,well, you've made significant money.
It took time expertise.
I think it's exactly the same thing.
With the thing.
So you are the shark.
(31:37):
That's true because it is the marketthat we're actually trying to figure out.
And it changes all the time because,as we mentioned earlier, Items
themselves have no value inherently.
It's only value that we assign to them.
And the value that somebody in 1898assigned to a 17 jewel Hamilton
pocket watch, That was, you was worn.
(32:00):
It was a fashionable thing.
That was the type of watcha lot of people wore.
It's not the same value today whenmost people don't wear pocket watches.
Right.
That's like a good exampleof just a shift in value.
If it's not made of a particularprecious metal, like a commodity that
has set prices or prices that aretraded on, then it really has no value
(32:21):
except for what we decide value it has.
A collector wants it.
So it has value simplybecause they want it.
If nobody wants it, if it, whetherit works or not, if no one wants it,
no one's using it, it has no value.
Right.
Yeah.
It's like sports memorabilia.
Ya.
At the end of the day, it's a baseballand a baseball serves a purpose in a
(32:41):
game, but if you're buying it becauseit has somebody's signature on it,
if that person's signature is notvalued, then it won't sell for much.
But if it is, if it's Mickey Mantlebaseball signed in 1958, I have
a lot of cards that are signedby someone you've never heard of.
And they don't have anyvalue because nobody cares.
Nobody wants them.
But if I somehow get Larry Bird to signa rookie card I've got or something.
(33:03):
Okay.
Now we're talking.
Because everyone's heard of Larry Bird.
Like last night, when I took mydaughter to the AAA baseball team
and she had the mascot, Mr. Moon,of the tour, sign her foam finger.
I'm not sure Mr. Moon has thekind of power of Larry Bird.
I'm just spitballing here.
But I think that themarket would bear that Mr.
Moon's signature is not as valuable.
(33:23):
As Larry Bird to you, but to but again,to a six year old, who's, this is their
first baseball game and they come inand Mr. Moon comes up to them and gives
them a high five and has a ball ordoes this and I'll sign something for
you that Mr. Moon signature has waymore value to that six year old than
Larry Bird that they'd never heard of.
And that's why I'm swimmingon top of the water.
(33:45):
And you're the shark thatis exactly what that was.
The shark literallysmelled blood in the water.
It's like Mr. Moon isworth a lot of money to me.
That's right.
By the way, the tourists this Friday,you know that they're having a game
and they're, they've, I don't knowif they've done this in the past.
I think they have some sort of promotionalfundraising thing where they're changing
the name of the team temporarily.
Have you heard of this?
(34:05):
They're now going to the snot otters.
Yeah, I bought a shirt.
And and that is apparently a nickname fora hellbender, which is a, for those of you
don't know, very interesting, super largesalamander type creature that lives in
the rivers of of certainly Western NorthCarolina and probably other places too.
They're super bizarre looking.
But I'd never heard thatterm before a snot otter.
(34:27):
I don't know if they're getting abad rap like Hellbenders can't argue.
They can't talk back.
We can just say what we want They'relike, I don't really appreciate
that name you've given me.
I feel like it's a defamationof character I'm not a snob.
I'm a hellbender.
I prefer hellbender.
All right.
Listen, we are trying to keep our showsat around 40 minutes We've gone way
long, but we're gonna So we've decidedI give my, the high five sign and we're
(34:51):
going to split this episode into twoparts again, because we want you to be
able to consume the whole thing, butwe are going to go into our main topic
in part D part two of this episode.
So we're going to stop right now.
Remember to follow, like, andsubscribe all the fun things.
We so appreciate everybody being partof this, but come back for part two.
Do you want to give theteaser Matt or should I?
(35:11):
And I will cram them bothinto the next episode.
I think I can do that.
We're going to go back to ourseries on things you can find.
This is for people who maybe arejust starting out and want to dip
their toe into the reseller world.
Things you can find at your own home.
We've already covered.
What have we covered?
We've covered the kitchen.
We've covered the garage.
And next episode we're goingto And the junk drawer.
And the junk drawer.
That's right.
The next episode we'regoing to talk about closets.
(35:34):
Like a linen closet.
Thank you Mary for thatsuggestion out there.
Shout out to Mary andother closets in the house.
And then also just your yard.
What could you find in your yard?
Not even in your home,but on your property.
Oh, I like that idea throughthe magic of modern editing.
We're going to sign off now.
We'll be back with a brand new parttwo episode of the what's little
(35:54):
podcast where we will be talkingabout these two different topics.
So we'll see you guys next weekwith the brand new part two episode.
Welcome back to the What Sold podcast.
I am Brandon.
This is Matt.
I do that for the robot that need toknow our names because I'm always,
they always say Matteo, whatevername I give, that's the name that's
going to be in the robot mind.
We are not created byartificial intelligence.
We are real human beings.
As far as you know, as far as you know,and you know what robots are getting
(00:58):
so good that it's hard to tell quitefrankly, who is a robot and who isn't,
but I wanted to start the show today,Matt, if you would, Allow me, if you
would excuse me this, I don't know ifI have a choice, but go right ahead.
You could just leave the show.
You could just flick offand say I'm out of here.
We got a, so I finally figured out how toget on to Spotify and answer questions.
(01:21):
I frankly, I'll be honest with you guys.
I just never look at it andI'm like, Oh, this guy, Bill.
Our friend Bill out there, givenseveral comments, and he pointed
out something that I knew was amistake after the show got over.
Often times, you and I are riffing,and we'll say things that aren't
really true, but we're like, whatever,no one's listening, who cares.
(01:42):
Then I realized people are listening.
Oh, I am so intrigued now toknow what is about to come out.
So I said we talked about Corindianleather, and I said, Tully Sophalis.
So I said we talked about Corindianleather, and I said, Tully Sophalis.
Now, I knew immediately afterthe show, I'm like, oh, no, no,
no, that's Ricardo Montalblanc.
So, Bill corrected us Isaid, Bill, thank you.
Really important piece of that episode.
(02:04):
In fact, the entire episodehinges upon that one.
Absolutely.
Hey listen, to Bill, it did.
And I'm the kind of person that, like,Bill, would, it would stick in my craw.
I'm like, it's notTelly Zavalas you idiot.
It's Ricardo Montalblanc.
Okay.
De Plain, de Plain, it's the guyfrom Fantasy Island, that dude.
So anyway, we were talkingabout rich Corinthian leather.
(02:25):
I can't even remember that contact, butI do remember talking about Ricardo.
The other thing is I said, Ibought my wife a five carat
Sapphire for our wedding.
I did buy her a beautiful blue Sapphire.
When I told her, I was like,huh, you were talking about five
being too big and begotting.
And I, so I went to my wife and said,What size sapphire did I get used to?
It's like two and a third carat.
(02:45):
As I'm apt to do, I usedhyperbole and bombastic statements
to make myself seem cooler.
I will say that fact checking, Brandon,with regard to things that have to do with
Hina's wife, He's more often inaccuratewhen it comes to stories he's relaying
from her and things in my experience sofar, so maybe that's the Oh, totally,
(03:07):
and she's there to fact check me.
It's, I just like to just, I justlike to go off into the hinterlands
and she's like, no, it's not that.
It's this.
I'm like, wait, what?
It's not.
But, that's what 20 years ofmarriage and love will get you, Matt.
It will get you that sort oflicense to be able to be who you
are when you want to be who you are.
Man, I know, and we're going to say thingsfrom time to time when we're, that aren't,
(03:28):
we're not intending to be inaccurate.
And it's not that big of a deal, butat the same time, it is to some people,
because on the Rusty channel, I have beencrucified over little comments I made.
And in those circumstances,They were actually intentional.
It was like an inside joke, but peopleto this day are making comments saying,
(03:48):
if you don't know this, this little thingyou said was wrong, then I can't believe
anything you say I'm unsubscribing.
I'm out of here.
Okay.
Wow.
Wow.
That's going to make you a good thing.
We don't consider, we don't considerfact checking like, for example,
our politicians are the leaders ofour world, because I feel like every
single day you could probably picksomething out that someone says.
(04:11):
Here's the deal.
I hold true to this, that whenI give something that may, to
somebody seem untrue, all I'moffering is an alternative fact.
That's all I'm offering to you is analternative fact you could use it or not.
It's up to you, but it'san alternative fact.
So I did in fact, by my wife.
A beautiful Sapphire.
We did not want to buy a diamond,but we were talking in our show on
(04:32):
selling gold and jewels and everythingthat I may have misspoke people.
So in your defense, Ipersonally believe I've handled.
And sold thousands of pieces ofjewelry handled and sold thousands of
pieces gemstones, rough and facet cut.
And I will say in my opinion, the 2.
(04:53):
3 carat is like the perfect 2.
3 to two and a half is the perfect sizeof being large and show a lot of color
and attract attention, but it's generallynot considered to be too flashy or showy.
But once you start getting to threecarat or above, that's a statement piece.
If you're below that, it can stillbe very high quality, but it can hide
(05:16):
out under the wraps a little bit.
It's not going to drawa bunch of attention.
But I'm telling you sapphires,rubies, diamonds of those
carat weights are not cheap.
So you don't see them a lot becausegood quality, we're talking about like
a natural stone, not a synthetic stone.
You don't see it because they're,they cost a lot of money.
Yeah, right.
I imagine that Rusty got flow like a 0.
3. Yeah.
(05:36):
Carrot diamond in a, what's thelowest form of gold you can get?
No, Rusty's not cheap.
Rusty has a huge heart.
It was made entirelyout of old dental gold.
And, no, man, in all seriousness,Flo I, we got married very young.
I bought her when I got her aring, it was not a large diamond.
But I did, even back then,before I was doing this full
(05:59):
time, I actually had a jeweler.
Present me a variety of loose stones, andI got to look at them, and I picked the
one out specifically that I wanted, andI had that mounted, as opposed to say,
going to a jewelry store and just pickingsomething that was already created.
So, to this day, the quality of the stone,though it's not, as large as I could
have done had we married later in life.
(06:19):
Right.
It's still a very goodquality stone, luckily.
And also, luckily, she hasn't lost it.
I think I'm on my sixth orseventh wedding ring now.
I told the story about how Ilost my wedding ring for three
months when we first got married.
It was very traumatic.
So, but I did find it.
It was in a book.
I was doing research and I had takenit off and was flipping it around.
I don't do that anymore.
(06:40):
But the book that youhad carved out to stash.
It had a pistol carveout in it.. There you go.
And I just dropped the ring in thereaccidentally, but that's right now I yeah.
So it's funny because in all seriousnessabout selling things, jewelry and stuff
like that is such a personal thing.
So when you think, oh, no onewould possibly want that or
(07:00):
someone will totally want that.
It's not necessarily true.
I've learned a lot from you.
I'll be, I'm being sincere right nowin the sense that I don't look at
things anymore in the way I used to.
I look at them as someone out thereis going to be interested in this.
Maybe I won't find them, but there'ssomeone out there for everything.
(07:22):
That's a good way of looking at it.
That is.
Yeah.
And so it's, that's the way I,that's the way I think about it.
One person's trash is anotherperson's treasure and vice versa.
That really has rungtrue in my experience.
Thanks.
Things that I thoughtno one would care about.
Oh, not only do they care about it, butthey're willing to pay top dollar for it.
And the opposite, which is a bummerwhen I get something, I'm like,
Oh my gosh, people are going to belining up and it's crickets, sits
(07:46):
there for three months, six months.
What have I done?
Yeah.
What's going on with this thing?
Yeah.
Exactly.
Hey, so a little aside here is before welaunch into what you sold this week, a
long time ago, I might've mentioned thatmy brother Rick or people call him rich.
I don't get that, but they call itthe golf stuff and he's doing great.
It's a great side gig for him.
(08:06):
He's like, Oh, covers my green fees.
And that's all I care about.
I'm like, there you go.
So he had sent me a boxwhen my dad passed away.
He sent me a box of my dad hadthese, I don't know, like all of
us, he had a junk drawer type thing.
But.
He had like 20 old watches.
Oh.
Then I just didn't like, andI was like, oh, guess what
I'm gonna talk to Matt about?
(08:27):
So I had this box full of Walthams.
When am I coming over, man?
Yeah.
What am I coming overs?
It's crazy because I looked at it.
And also, the other thing ishe had this, all these antique
pins, like backs backing pins.
Oh no.
Push pins or, yeah.
INS push pins exactly In from like theUS Open in 1979 and all this stuff.
I was like, oh my gosh, this.
(08:48):
I'm not, I won't ever use it.
Are there attachments?
Are there personal attachmentsfor you with those things?
No, no.
I took all the things that I,my dad had bought a beautiful
chess board in Venice, Italy.
That was my fate.
That's how I remember my dad and Iwould play chess against each other.
So there are certain things thatI absolutely would never sell and
I'll give them to my daughter and ifshe wants them, she can have them.
(09:09):
But I was thinking aboutwhat you said about.
You're not a guy that getsattached to things very regularly.
Is it going to pay for mykid's college type thing?
And I was like, I'm going to sellthese watches and see what happens.
Just out of curiosity to see was there anyvalue or was my dad just buying tchotchke?
I'm sure there's value and there maybe more value now than there would
have been at the time he bought them.
(09:30):
Yeah, absolutely.
And I totally get nostalgia andbeing personally attached to things
that belong to family members.
Most people have, that's a biggerpart of their life than it is for me.
I think the fact that I, it seems coldand callous, but the fact that I am able
to detach myself from the items thatcome through is one of the reasons that
(09:50):
I'm able to sell things quickly and makemoney on them because I'm not motivated
to hold onto things for any other reason.
And I have to be that waybecause I've got bills to pay.
It's great.
If you load your houseup with valuable things.
But then you're past due on yourmortgage or whatever else, you got
to sell that stuff and move it.
I'm more attached to people.
People and experiences.
(10:11):
I'd much rather spend money ontaking my family to do something
or hang out with people.
I'm attached to the life,the present experiences.
I have to be looking forwards.
Obviously I have to be buildingretirement and stuff because I don't work.
I work for myself.
But when it comes to things now, aswe talked about before, art, some
artwork and instruments particularlyare harder for me to move quickly.
(10:33):
Especially if they are very good quality,because I can, they have utility.
I can play them and enjoythem while I have them.
So I might put it up for sale.
I might put it up at a higherprice than I really think.
Just to see if somebody will bite,but it's almost me saying, if you're
willing to pay this price, I will sellit to you, but I'm not in a hurry.
And I'm not looking to liquidate this.
I'm going to enjoy it while I have it.
(10:54):
And when people offer me, 50 percentoff of what I have listed, I just
say, Hey, thanks for the offer.
I'm not in a hurry and I thinkthat the price I have is already
below the the industry average ofthe average retail sale of this.
So if I get to a point where somethingchanges, I'll keep your offer in mind.
I once heard a thing called, itsaid, I can't remember if I invented
(11:16):
it or if I heard it somewhere, butnostalgia is the enemy of the soul.
I always, I was like, Ooh, that'skind of true because if you
hang on to things, just because.
I have wonderful little piecesof family nostalgia, and I'm not
denigrating that in any way sayingthe people who shouldn't do that.
But there is a case where youjust hang on to stuff and you're
like, what am I doing with this?
(11:37):
It's been in a box for 25 years.
No one's looked at it.
No one even has anyemotional attachment anymore.
Get rid of it, clear it out.
Cause then you savespace for other things.
So as a reseller, that couldplay to your advantage.
If you find people that are in that.
Place where they, Hey,I got all this stuff.
It has value to someone.
It just doesn't have value to me.
(11:57):
So sell it.
It's basically the point I'm making.
It's especially helpful when I sell forother people, because, if something really
awesome comes through my hands, it doesn'teven belong to me and I don't want to be
the kind of person that starts to havethis feeling like, maybe I should, start
strategizing, like maybe there's a wayI could buy this directly from them or
keep it and just pay them or whatever,that could complicate things drastically.
So I need to not.
(12:18):
I'll also say.
You may believe this or not, butit's true that if I sell something
by next week, I forgotten it, notexactly, but I'm already moving on.
There are things that I'll pop up.
If I look through, say my saleshistory that sold, if I hadn't
seen it again, I have forgotten.
I ever even had it.
(12:38):
And I can certainly tell you, I'vesold, I don't know how many, dozens,
probably at least a hundred guitars,let's just say acoustic guitars and
electric guitars in the last 20 years.
I probably remember 20 of those.
If I could go back, I tookphotographs, I'd be like, oh, yeah,
I vaguely remember that I had that.
But that's what it's like when you sellfor that long, or specifically I've been
(12:59):
selling full time for about five years.
I can't remember one time Ibought and sold around 50, 000
matchbooks, vintage matchbooks.
That's 50, 000 separate items.
I didn't sell them all individually,but I probably sold at least
half of them individually.
Yes.
I took photos and listed 25,000 matchbooks myself in about
(13:20):
a six month period of time.
And that's not talking about themultiples of thousands of postcards.
I've sold multiples ofthousands of pieces of jewelry.
It's just, it's staggering.
The volume of stuffthat has passed through.
What we refer to as the, Rusty'sBargain Warehouse down here.
It's just comes and goes.
So when you get on track and you do thatand you get into a rhythm, it gets easier.
(13:41):
But if you're say, wanting to startout and you're wanting to just pull
things from your house, it's new.
And the things that you're drawingfrom are things you've inherited,
let's say, or have some attachmentthat could be, you're going to face
this potential dilemma very early on.
And in a way that's good becauseyou can decide, you know what?
Maybe I'm just not the person for this.
(14:02):
Like personally, I've just have ahard time emotionally doing this.
Right.
And if so, it's a good thingto know before you get in and
get yourself in a tough spot.
But if you can do it, if you can do thatwith some things that you previously
wanted to hold on to, and then after it'sgone, you're not regretting it heavily.
You can probably doanything at that point.
It's funny.
It strikes me a little bit as youtalk about this as a reseller, you
(14:25):
really have to, disassociate or.
Detach, that would be the magic word,detach yourself from the emotion of
it, or don't do it because you'regoing to come across things I'm
assuming, and I'm curious abouthow your consignment business is.
I'm going to call it consignment business.
I don't know what else we would callit, but how your business is selling for
(14:47):
other people, because I got to imaginesome of them are attached to items.
Do they ever get into an argument with,not argument, but do they ever say, Ooh,
I don't really want to sell that now?
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
Sometimes they do.
And if I was smart, I would have,if it was going to be an issue, I
thought then I would need to setup some sort of situation that we
would agree upon ahead of time.
Because if I go through anddo work and I'm storing it and
(15:08):
stuff, and then they want it back.
How do I get paid for that then?
Because it's not going to sell.
I'm not going to get my percentage.
I just think things are things andthings do not have inherent value.
They only have valuethat we assign to them.
One thing that I got from my grandfather'swedding ring has a value to me, but
(15:29):
someone who doesn't know and never met mygrandfather, it's just a piece of metal.
And there's, and maybe it has valueonly because again, the consensus is
that we value this metal and we'regoing to set a price for it every day.
But otherwise that's why one thingcan be valuable to one person and
complete junk in someone else'sviewpoint, because we decide the value.
(15:49):
The way I look at it is if it served me.
I'm going to, I'm going touse it for how it serves me.
So a lot of these things serve meby allowing me to sell them and make
money for my family and pay my bills.
If it serves me in some other way,I'll use them in some other way.
But things are things.
And most things out there, if youreally decide you want it again,
you can go find it, you mighthave to pay more for it later, but
(16:10):
it's not like it's lost forever.
And you might surprise yourself.
You might sell something and Ithought I cared all that much about
it, but I've enjoyed the money andI don't think about it anymore.
Right.
And you won't know if that'sthe experience until you try it.
Once again, we've pontificated about ourlives in the life of a reseller, but I'd
(16:31):
love to know what you sold this week.
It is my favorite part of the show.
I always look forward to seeingwhat kind of magical treats you have
up your sleeve and what you sold.
Also, if you have any updates on thingsyou sold because I know there have
been some stuff you've put up latelyand there was that crazy, creepy.
Was that, I think it was a ring with agiant stone in it and are empty anyway.
(16:54):
So, any updates or any,anything you sold this week?
The, I have about three or fourpieces of jewelry, complete pieces of
jewelry that have gemstones in them.
And then some loose, aboutsix loose basica gemstones.
The hope is that later this week, I'llactually get through on the website
and put the details in and send theseoff to be certified by GIA, which is
(17:17):
the leading gym certification company.
The turnaround time is two to three weeks.
I don't think I have to pay forthat until they're finished and
they're about to send them back.
But that's going out.
So that's an update on those pieces.
I could sell them, but I will beable to sell them more once they're
certified, even factoring in the time,the shipping cost and the cost to do it.
(17:38):
I still stand to make moremoney doing it that way.
And I'm not a rush.
So that makes sense to do that.
Do you ensure them when you sendthem out to a place like that?
I do.
I do because I don'twant, here's the thing.
If I were to ship something to GIA.
Or this refinery that we've spokenabout, people who know what that
(17:58):
company does know exactly thetypes of things that are coming in.
And so if I send 20, 000 of gold to shipit in, to be processed, to get paid for
it, And it has the address and the nameof the company it's going to somebody
along the way who knows what that is.
Maybe it's somebody who's havinga tough spot in their life.
(18:19):
They happen to be a care,like working for a carrier.
They're a UPS driver.
They're a FedEx driver or something.
They're like, it's insured.
They're going to get paid.
I'm just going to grab this baggage.
It fell off the truck.
I'm going to empty it and re tapeit and it'll be nothing in it.
That's dangerous.
So I try to not do that, ship itif possible, but like GIA, I don't
know if they're in New York, I thinkthere's maybe one in New York, one
(18:41):
in California or something like that.
So I'm not going to drive it up there,but I am going to insure it because
I don't want to take a major loss.
That's lost income.
That's something I also have to factorin as a cost associated with getting this
done, and I still have to believe thator be confident that the sale down the
line will more than account for that.
(19:01):
Additional costs.
Cause that's just loss.
You're just paying as an in casesomething happens and most of the
time it doesn't, but when it does,you want to have that insurance.
We will wait to hear back from GIA and thetrillion dollar gems that you sent them.
But what sold this week?
A couple of things that sold this week.
I have this is one of the few examplesof a little gold filled bracelet.
(19:26):
And it's an expandable bracelet, itwill expand out so you can put your hand
in it and then it will come back in.
It is, it's got like a heartmotif all the way around it.
The links look like hearts andthen at the top is a larger heart.
Functions almost like a pendantfunction at the bottom of the
necklace, but it's the top part.
And it has a monogramletters BB on the top of it.
(19:46):
This is what is referred toas a Sweetheart Bracelet.
Oh.
And they were, have beensold for a very long time.
You could buy them from Sears andRoebuck out of the Sears and Roebuck
catalog back even in the late, midto late 1800s, you could buy these.
And they have a small amount of gold,like 1 10th, 1 20th, and or 12 carat
(20:08):
gold, a small amount on the outside of it.
The gold right now is atalmost like an all time high.
Yesterday, it was approachingvery close to 3, 400 per ounce.
An ounce is like 28.
3 or 28 and a half grams,something like that.
If you got gold now or silvernow is a great time because
it's really, really high.
This is not solid gold, but it stillhas value both as a functional piece of
(20:32):
jewelry and also if they want to scrap.
So this sold, it's small.
This is actually more likefor a child size wrist.
It's not really for an adult.
It's still sold for 68.
And this is one of two thatsold in the last couple of days.
I didn't buy this directly.
This came in a lot ofthings, a group of things.
One sold that I'd had for a while.
One I bought on a recent tripI just took this weekend.
(20:53):
I put it up for sale andit sold within 48 hours.
Oh, nice.
Do I know why?
Do they collect them?
Are they scrapping it for the gold?
It doesn't really matter to me.
It sold quickly and for a goodprice and that's what I wanted.
Yeah.
So even old jewelry, notreally fashionable, cool.
Cool.
Not even something youcan wear for some reason.
It's too small or whateverelse still can have value.
(21:15):
Another thing I sold reaching downhere to grab it is this statue.
So this statue sits about 14 inches tall.
It's got a wooden round base and it is asculpture of, a scantily clad young woman.
Her hair is very long and she's justputting her arms up and holding her hair.
(21:35):
It is made out of course, like ceramic.
It's a ceramic piece.
It's been hand painted and on the bottomit has a medallion and it says Florence.
And it says Dawn.
Dawn would be the name of thischaracter or this particular person.
And it's in a series called the comingof the new millennium and the artist
it's signed On this it has the name ofthe artist on the medallion But then it
(21:59):
also has as a part of the casting a handsignature and the artist is someone named
Giuseppe armani a r m a n i And it'sjust an artist That does these pieces.
I, this is something I'm sellingfor someone else on consignment.
When I got these, there weresomething like 10 of them,
(22:20):
varying sizes, different ones.
Initially I tried to sell them alltogether because that would have just
been a lot more money at one timeand easier to ship them all at once.
I say easier.
There would have been,challenges shipping a bunch of
delicate, heavy things together.
But this one sold for right around 200.
These sell generally in the 200 to300 range, depending on what they are.
(22:40):
How much are they new?
I actually don't know.
I actually haven't looked at that.
So it says for the new millennium,was that, are they, how old is that?
It's 1999.
So when it was saying new millennium,it was like ushering in from 2000 on.
So it's 25 years old.
Exactly.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
But it also comes with the certification.
It has a little plaque thathas a certification number that
kind of, it's like a collectiblelimited edition situation.
(23:03):
I think I only have one leftof the 10 that I originally
had two sold in the last week.
The other sold previously, I may haveone left and it's larger than this one.
And obviously will cost a little bit more,which is maybe why it hasn't sold yet.
But sometimes you just have to wait forthe right collector who's looking, they
don't have that particular one in theset, or they just like the particular
(23:24):
look of that one, what have you.
But this is the type of thing thatsits on a, an end table, on the
middle of a table, on a mantle or atall bookcase, something like that.
It's just artwork.
Yeah, it's cool.
I wonder if Giuseppe isstill doing his thing.
I don't know if Giuseppe is or not.
And part of the reason I haven't looked atnew costs is because it's clearly not new.
So I'm really interestedin what's the retail, the
(23:45):
secondary retail value of that.
So whenever I get on and research oneBay, for example, sold listings in
the last 90 days, and I look them up, Iwant to see what's the lowest one sold
for, what's the highest one is sold for,and what has this particular character
sold for in the past, if I can find it.
And it gives me the range, and thenI can either price that roughly on
(24:06):
average of what they're selling for,or if I want to sell it faster, if
I want somebody to buy mine versussomeone else's of the exact same thing,
I've got to undercut them on price.
That's essentially theonly way to do it quickly.
So let me ask you a question.
I'm going to resell nerdout a little bit on this.
Is that you always talk about lookingat what eBay has sold and whatever.
Mm hmm.
(24:27):
Number one, what if there is no pricethat you could find and is there ever
a time where the price is just wrong?
Like it's just way undersold or oversold.
How do you know?
That's why I don't look at just one thing.
One of the ways that other places likethrift stores or antique stores and
stuff get in trouble is they'll takean item and they'll look it up on eBay.
(24:49):
And they just look at the,they're going quick, right?
They just look at the top oneor like one, one or two sales,
one or two or three sales.
Now, some things out there can, forexample, costume jewelry, a lot of
times nicer costume jewelry is modeledon the exact same look of another
piece of jewelry that is made out of 14karat or 18 karat gold, but solid gold.
(25:12):
So one piece can, you could look up athing, let's say you Google lens it.
So Google lens doesn't knowwhat metal it's made out of.
It's just going on the image.
So if it pulls that up and yousee that on the results on Google.
You don't know if the one they'repulling up for you is an 18 karat gold
version of fine jewelry, or if this isa costume piece that's modeled after
(25:34):
the original, as you can imagine, thesales of those will vary drastically.
So all that to say, if you lookit up and it says this sold for 2,
300, you're like, Whoa, I've gota big, valuable piece of jewelry.
You throw it out for 2, 300.
And I pick it up and I'm like, This is a20 to 30 piece of costume jewelry, max.
(25:58):
How could they've gotten it wrong?
Just because it looks the same and theydidn't spend much time researching it.
The opposite happens.
And that's when it works to my advantage.
They put a piece of jewelry outthat looked like it sold for 20, but
they didn't pay enough attention tosee it's made out of 14 karat gold.
This is actually a 2,000 piece of jewelry.
And that's when I buy it and walk away.
To eBay and sell it andmake money very quickly.
(26:21):
So the answer to the question of howdo you know, you need to spend more
than just a couple of seconds lookingand you need to figure out, okay, if it
looks like one silver 20 and one silver1800, you need to do a deeper dive.
Why is that?
What is it about this piece?
That's so much morevaluable than this one.
And you will oftentimesfind it very quickly.
(26:41):
It's made out of a precious metal.
It's made by a specific artist.
It's a limited edition.
This is made by a companythat's sought after.
It's no longer being produced.
There's all kinds of reasons whythere could be a difference in price.
Oftentimes you don't see the actual sameitem selling for one selling for like
20 percent below or 20 times below thevalue of another one that's identical.
(27:02):
That just oftentimes doesn't happen.
But if I have somethingthat's rare, let's say.
And I looked it up and there's not asingle one that has sold or maybe just
one that's sold just one sale doesn'treally give you a good idea of its actual
value because who knows if there had beenan alternative one listed higher, maybe
(27:23):
that one would have been bought or lower.
Maybe that one would have been bought.
Maybe it would be worth.
Less if there were multiple ones, butsince it's the only one and a person
wants it, they don't have an option.
They just have to pay theprice that's available to them.
I, in those circumstances, Iusually do one of two things.
And it also depends onmy own circumstances.
Do I need the money quickly?
Am I selling it for someone?
Does it belong to me?
(27:44):
Yada, yada.
But I'll either list it for alarge amount of money, more than my
gut would tell me to list it for.
Because if I'm not sure, I don't wantto undersell it because the chance
you run is if you put it for a lowerprice and it sells within 10 minutes,
you know what that tells you, right?
You drastically underpriced that.
That shouldn't sell that fast unlessthe price was just too good to pass up.
(28:08):
And if that happens, youlikely lost out in that.
They got the value and you lost value.
But if I price it reallyhigh, you might get a bite.
And if not, you just then startto slowly lower it over time
till you get to the sweet spot.
The other thing I might do is startit at a kind of a high auction.
I would be comfortable sellingit for a thousand dollars without
really knowing, because I thinkit's got to be at least worth that.
(28:29):
I'll put it at a thousand dollarson auction and then I'll let the
public decide what is this worth.
If I get 20 watchers instantly, I've gotit already priced pretty well because
there's 20 people who are like, I wouldprobably buy this at this price, if
that's what it's at by the end of theauction, If it sits there for five days
on a seven day auction, you've only hadeight people see it and nobody's watching
(28:52):
it, then I clear, it's either not soughtafter or I've got it priced way too high.
So you learn about the value of thingsbased on what you see the response is
to a listing within a certain timeframe.
Yeah, it's funny I, as I map to do.
(29:12):
I like to personify you, Matt,when I think of your alter ego, can
you anthropomorphize me as well?
What kind of animal?
In fact, I'm gonna anthrop, , a shark
I like to think of youas the reseller shark.
Okay.
that a kind shark, maybe a happy shark.
Mm-hmm.
I mean, I don't think all sharkscan something from like a Pixar
movie, but like a, not the meanshark, but the nice shark of course.
(29:32):
And, maybe a bumbling shark.
But, so the average reseller of thethrift store is the guppy at the top.
Mm-hmm.
And they've got it.
And then you're waiting.
For the thing that the mistake thatwas made, like putting up a 18 karat
gold bracelet that was sold for 20.
So you smell blood inthe water a mile away.
You're like, you're the reselling shark.
(29:55):
That's what I want to thinkof you from this point.
That's the underpinning of the entireidea of of the reselling world is
that the only reason this can bedone is because there are things out
there available that are under the.
Typical market value.
And the only way you can take advantageof that is knowledge and experience.
(30:15):
Have learned about it, done yourresearch or had interactions with
that type of item in the past.
I think that I actually would say thatit's not the only way it would happen.
I'm going to argue withyou on this one, Matt.
And the reason I say thatis that I think that.
Resellers are the absoluteepitome of the perfect merchant.
And what I mean by that isif you think about a Mer.
(30:36):
Let's think about an old fashionedout on the Prairie dry goods store.
If anybody walked the last in the Prairie,there was like the mercantile and you
would go in there and they would haveflour and they would have these goods.
So people needed these, they needednails, they would get a barrel of
nails and come in and buy them.
They would purchase them at acertain price, they would ship
them, and they would store them.
(30:57):
So what they were really selling youwas the convenience of the item so
that you didn't have to go get it.
I don't think there's anything differentin what you're doing that the power
of the merchant is understanding you.
The value of thing.
So if you buy a barrel of nails,the market understanding the market.
Yeah.
(31:17):
If you buy a barrel of nail for 100,I'm thinking old fashioned and you sell
that barrel for, let's say 300 becauseyou part out each individual nail
and you make 300 over a year period,well, you've made significant money.
It took time expertise.
I think it's exactly the same thing.
With the thing.
So you are the shark.
(31:37):
That's true because it is the marketthat we're actually trying to figure out.
And it changes all the time because,as we mentioned earlier, Items
themselves have no value inherently.
It's only value that we assign to them.
And the value that somebody in 1898assigned to a 17 jewel Hamilton
pocket watch, That was, you was worn.
(32:00):
It was a fashionable thing.
That was the type of watcha lot of people wore.
It's not the same value today whenmost people don't wear pocket watches.
Right.
That's like a good exampleof just a shift in value.
If it's not made of a particularprecious metal, like a commodity that
has set prices or prices that aretraded on, then it really has no value
(32:21):
except for what we decide value it has.
A collector wants it.
So it has value simplybecause they want it.
If nobody wants it, if it, whetherit works or not, if no one wants it,
no one's using it, it has no value.
Right.
Yeah.
It's like sports memorabilia.
Ya.
At the end of the day, it's a baseballand a baseball serves a purpose in a
(32:41):
game, but if you're buying it becauseit has somebody's signature on it,
if that person's signature is notvalued, then it won't sell for much.
But if it is, if it's Mickey Mantlebaseball signed in 1958, I have
a lot of cards that are signedby someone you've never heard of.
And they don't have anyvalue because nobody cares.
Nobody wants them.
But if I somehow get Larry Bird to signa rookie card I've got or something.
(33:03):
Okay.
Now we're talking.
Because everyone's heard of Larry Bird.
Like last night, when I took mydaughter to the AAA baseball team
and she had the mascot, Mr. Moon,of the tour, sign her foam finger.
I'm not sure Mr. Moon has thekind of power of Larry Bird.
I'm just spitballing here.
But I think that themarket would bear that Mr.
Moon's signature is not as valuable.
(33:23):
As Larry Bird to you, but to but again,to a six year old, who's, this is their
first baseball game and they come inand Mr. Moon comes up to them and gives
them a high five and has a ball ordoes this and I'll sign something for
you that Mr. Moon signature has waymore value to that six year old than
Larry Bird that they'd never heard of.
And that's why I'm swimmingon top of the water.
(33:45):
And you're the shark thatis exactly what that was.
The shark literallysmelled blood in the water.
It's like Mr. Moon isworth a lot of money to me.
That's right.
By the way, the tourists this Friday,you know that they're having a game
and they're, they've, I don't knowif they've done this in the past.
I think they have some sort of promotionalfundraising thing where they're changing
the name of the team temporarily.
Have you heard of this?
(34:05):
They're now going to the snot otters.
Yeah, I bought a shirt.
And and that is apparently a nickname fora hellbender, which is a, for those of you
don't know, very interesting, super largesalamander type creature that lives in
the rivers of of certainly Western NorthCarolina and probably other places too.
They're super bizarre looking.
But I'd never heard thatterm before a snot otter.
(34:27):
I don't know if they're getting abad rap like Hellbenders can't argue.
They can't talk back.
We can just say what we want They'relike, I don't really appreciate
that name you've given me.
I feel like it's a defamationof character I'm not a snob.
I'm a hellbender.
I prefer hellbender.
All right.
Listen, we are trying to keep our showsat around 40 minutes We've gone way
long, but we're gonna So we've decidedI give my, the high five sign and we're
(34:51):
going to split this episode into twoparts again, because we want you to be
able to consume the whole thing, butwe are going to go into our main topic
in part D part two of this episode.
So we're going to stop right now.
Remember to follow, like, andsubscribe all the fun things.
We so appreciate everybody being partof this, but come back for part two.
Do you want to give theteaser Matt or should I?
(35:11):
And I will cram them bothinto the next episode.
I think I can do that.
We're going to go back to ourseries on things you can find.
This is for people who maybe arejust starting out and want to dip
their toe into the reseller world.
Things you can find at your own home.
We've already covered.
What have we covered?
We've covered the kitchen.
We've covered the garage.
And next episode we're goingto And the junk drawer.
And the junk drawer.
That's right.
The next episode we'regoing to talk about closets.
(35:34):
Like a linen closet.
Thank you Mary for thatsuggestion out there.
Shout out to Mary andother closets in the house.
And then also just your yard.
What could you find in your yard?
Not even in your home,but on your property.
Oh, I like that idea throughthe magic of modern editing.
We're going to sign off now.
We'll be back with a brand new parttwo episode of the what's little
(35:54):
podcast where we will be talkingabout these two different topics.
So we'll see you guys next weekwith the brand new part two episode.
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