Previous Total: $55.50
Current Total: $98.36
Inventory: 1 book, 8 photos
I've received a number of emails asking me exactly what I'm selling. I'll likely write a post later on explaining exactly how I got into selling Japanese collectibles, but currently my main focus is on pre WW2 collectibles. For those that are interested in seeing what I sell,
It was an interesting day listing items on eBay and I did manage to get up over 50 fixed price auctions, but of those, only 6 are for the $20 Challenge. This is what happened.
I've haven't done a lot of selling of WW2 photos in the past, but when I saw a group of photos and book for $20 -- and knew the book itself should sell for more than that -- I figured the photos were a bonus. Trying to price them was the challenge since I don't have a lot of reference in this area from past experience. I decided that I would list then for a minimum of $24.95 each with a couple at $99.95. The higher priced photos are probably a bit over-priced, but the subject of both of them is pretty unique and I didn't want to under-price them. I can always adjust them later if they don't sell.
One listed, two of the photos sold right away: Japanese Soldiers Marching In Singapore and Empire Dock Japanese Soldier Banzai - for $24.95 each. After expenses of placing all six on auction and the final value and paypal fees, it leaves me with a profit of $42.86 and my current earnings look as follows:
Since the sale of those two photos more than paid for the entire purchase, any sale from now on will be pure profit. In addition, there is an extremely interesting twist with the photos:
What surprised me was that the 4 additional photos I didn't put on are photos of Pearl Harbor and I'm pretty confident that they are original Japanese Navy issued photos (from the way I obtained them to the differences I've seen from other photos posted online). Looking on eBay, there are a few people selling reproductions of these photos for $5 - $10 each. So the question I'm faced with on these is whether to make reprints and sell them at a cheap price, but that can last forever, or sell the originals that could probably command several hundred dollars if not more.
Another reason I'm fairly confident that they are original is that although the photo above is well documented on the Internet, some of the other photos I purchased I have not been able to locate at all on the Internet. If they were reproductions, I would assume that they would be easily found. The photos that are not well documented on the Internet especially have the potential at being being resold over a long period of time - a different type of passive income. I will definitely have to consider how I want to approach this to maximize the profit from this lucky find.
Although I'm a bit wiped out from listing all the items, it looks like the effort was well worth the time. 10 of the items I placed up have already sold and it looks like this one day will generate enough so that I don't have to worry about auctions for the rest of March if I don't want to.