Do you ever joke about putting leftovers into the refrigerator and keeping them until they turn green so you can throw them out. Some of our collectibles feel that way.
For example, I collected Mainzer Comic Cat postcards. When I was buying them three or four years ago the good ones would always bring $5 and sometimes more. I think they are funny and enjoyed collecting as many as I could.
Unfortunately, the Google keyword tool wasn't invented yet or I would have known they are so specialized there are only about 30 searches per month for the term and no advertisers will pay anything to advertise with that phrase. Since I didn't know that, I registered MainzerCats.com and also registered that user name on Ebay. So I am well equipped to make the most of the Mainzer Cat Comic Postcard business. To bad it's such a small business.
It's not all bad. I built a website using the information about the the cards and pictures of the ones I have. The site gets low but steady traffic and earns six or seven dollars each month. That's not much, but the site doesn't take much work either.
The harder question is what to do with all the cards I collected. My guess is that I probably have $1,200 tied up in cards that will sell for about $350. That is based on an estimated value of $1 for each card and I have about 350. However, that is a lot of auctions and fulfillment. It will not make any sense at all unless I can make the sales process very efficient.
I have sold a few of these cards in the past and took the time to learn how to do it right. I bought hard plastic sleeves to hold the postcards and envelopes that are a tight fit. I can actually send three cards in one envelope without going to the next weight limit.
Many sellers never bother to figure out these shipping considerations. They just charge more for shipping and handling. Thanks to them I can offer a competitive shipping charge and make a small profit from it. Or I could keep my prices lower because of it. I will probably need to try both ways to see if one is more profitable than the other.
The difficult question is if selling these cards creates enough profit to pay for my time. That depends on what kind of hourly rate I will work for. It obviously places quite a premium on developing an efficient work flow to speed the process. It also depends on what else I want or need to do with my time. If I am bored and looking for things to do it works. If I am short of time and have more expensive items to sell I might want to wait with these.
Based purely on these financial considerations, I should dump the cards for what I can get or leave them stored for some other time. However, the website development aspect of this collection muddies the water considerably. Adding value to your collections with a website is another discussion.
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