> I dropped-out of the "system" a long time back & for the last 20+ years I've been playing around with the buying & selling of Antiques, anything art-deco, some pre-1940's furniture, old kitchen stuff, really old drug bottles, old radios, phones & phonographs especially wind-up, a few jukeboxes & especially Pop Culture Collectibles... Collector Cards, Comics, Coins, Vintage Magazines, 1930'-40's Sci-Fi & Hero Pulps are my favorite, Old Toys of every kind from board games, Barbie & GI Joe, Aurora monster models, battery & wind-up tin toys especially Robots & Space Toys made in Japan in the 1950's & 60's, Records & Rare Books, learned a lot from reading them before they had to be sold!
> For many years I spent all my time looking for just about anything old or unusual ( sometimes after you drive 10 hours, set-up at 5;30 in the morning, buy & sell & haggle with people over prices till dark, it almost seems like "real work" ).
> I Started out at Flee Markets, worked in an Antique store, hung out with a few "pickers" helping them ( usually moving really Heavy furniture ) for free to learn the ropes & buy their rejects ( I knew more about the pop-culture stuff. Example; A 1962 Beany & Cecil vinyl lunch box I bought for $1, sold for $225 at toy show, the "expert" walked right past it at garage sale ).
> I Bought my Own Antique store in 1997 and kept it going till 2007, drove old chevy van with a 16 ft, trailer cross country to swap meets, collector shows, garage sales, thrift stores, friends houses & shops to Buy Large Collections of whatever seemed cool & could be sold at a profit ( Mr. Capitalist, that's me! ).
Of course I had to really Like anything I bought, cause I might be stuck with it a long time.
> Got into ebay back in 1997, when you could make a killing, before prices became "rationalized" for the cool old stuff & ebay was flooded with millions of people selling brand-new stuff you could most likely get cheaper at Wal-mart! ( I'll admit I don't think very highly of those who only sell on the internet & never had to "pay their dues" & learn the Antique biz hard way ) .
> the old ebay did make it possible for me to pay for store in less than 2 years! Ended up selling store ( toward the end I mostly used it for storage ) & got lazy selling off left over stock on the net. Of course, there is no-way to replace any of it now-a-days, everybody has a computer & can look-up exactly what something is worth & tries to sell it for Twice as much! ( I always cut people deals as long as I didn't lose out, lots of them made good money off my finds ).
> So when the last few collections run-out, not long now. I may be faced with finding a "real-job". Oh Well, it was Fun while it lasted.
I put my faith in the good old American Free-Market Capitalist system for a long time & did OK. I guess.
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
> For many years I spent all my time looking for just about anything old or unusual ( sometimes after you drive 10 hours, set-up at 5;30 in the morning, buy & sell & haggle with people over prices till dark, it almost seems like "real work" ).
> I Started out at Flee Markets, worked in an Antique store, hung out with a few "pickers" helping them ( usually moving really Heavy furniture ) for free to learn the ropes & buy their rejects ( I knew more about the pop-culture stuff. Example; A 1962 Beany & Cecil vinyl lunch box I bought for $1, sold for $225 at toy show, the "expert" walked right past it at garage sale ).
> I Bought my Own Antique store in 1997 and kept it going till 2007, drove old chevy van with a 16 ft, trailer cross country to swap meets, collector shows, garage sales, thrift stores, friends houses & shops to Buy Large Collections of whatever seemed cool & could be sold at a profit ( Mr. Capitalist, that's me! ).
Of course I had to really Like anything I bought, cause I might be stuck with it a long time.
> Got into ebay back in 1997, when you could make a killing, before prices became "rationalized" for the cool old stuff & ebay was flooded with millions of people selling brand-new stuff you could most likely get cheaper at Wal-mart! ( I'll admit I don't think very highly of those who only sell on the internet & never had to "pay their dues" & learn the Antique biz hard way ) .
> the old ebay did make it possible for me to pay for store in less than 2 years! Ended up selling store ( toward the end I mostly used it for storage ) & got lazy selling off left over stock on the net. Of course, there is no-way to replace any of it now-a-days, everybody has a computer & can look-up exactly what something is worth & tries to sell it for Twice as much! ( I always cut people deals as long as I didn't lose out, lots of them made good money off my finds ).
> So when the last few collections run-out, not long now. I may be faced with finding a "real-job". Oh Well, it was Fun while it lasted.
I put my faith in the good old American Free-Market Capitalist system for a long time & did OK. I guess.
