People all over the world collect postcards and they are often prepared to pay very high prices for new items for their collection. Just recently I've seen postcards catalogued about 30 cents fetch hundreds of dollars on eBay.
Not every postcard offers such spectacular mark-ups but with careful planning you can guarantee that every postcard you buy will sell at a profit, sometimes just a few dollars, and once in a while they'll make hundreds of dollars.
These tips will help you get a head start in this profitable market:
* Of a great many different collecting themes within the overall postcard collecting hobby - called 'deltiology' - it's far easier for newcomers to make money selling topographical postcards, namely views of geographical locations, large and small.
Most high price postcards view cards, preferably pre-1939, of small towns and villages. The smaller the place, the fewer people visited those places so the fewer cards were created of the area, and the rarer those cards are likely to be compared to postcards depicting larger towns and cities with high tourist traffic. So a postcard of a tiny village in County Durham is likely to fetch much more on eBay than an everyday view of London, Glasgow, Edinburgh.
* Two words guarantee everyone interested in buying your postcard will find you through eBay's search engine. Those words are 'Postcard' and the name of the area depicted. Miss either from your title and you rely on potential bidders picking you out from amongst potentially thousands of postcards in any eBay sub-category. Because sub-categories contain so many items, most people search by keyword, using eBay's search engine, especially for topographical postcards. Without their collecting area in the title, potential bidders are faced with thousands of descriptions to open and read which few if anyone will actually do!
* Apart from place name, collectors also like to know about age, whether card is postally used, publisher name, condition, production process such as photographic or artist drawn. If space permits in the title, after 'Postcard' and place name, the date is the next most important feature.
* You should avoid buying 'unknown location' postcards, that is without place name clearly indicated, unless some other clue exists to the location, such as shop and street names, publisher address, message from the sender, postmark area. Many cards long ago were posted locally so the place on the postmark is often also the location of the view. Much the same goes for publishers who were usually local.
* Carry a magnifying glass with you to auctions and flea markets, often the sides of a photograph blur a little or margins become stained and place names are invisible to the naked eye but can be clearly seen through a magnifying glass.
Avril Harper is an eBay PowerSeller and author of BANK BIG PROFITS SELLING VINTAGE TOPOGRAPHICAL VIEW POSTCARDS ON EBAY which you can read about at: www.sellpostcardsonebay.com and MAKE MONEY TEARING UP OLD BOOKS AND MAGAZINES AND SELLING THEM ON EBAY which you can read about at: www.magstoriches.com. She has produced a free guide - 103 POWERSELLER TIPS - which you can download with other freely distributable reports and eBooks at www.avrilharper.com
