Welcome back to another episode of the Resellers Mindset Podcast.
My name is Mike, also known as the used book guy on YouTube,
along with my friend and fellow full-time reseller, Johnny B.
We help people start and grow their reselling businesses
from the ground up.
We also have a weekly Zoom call and private Discord
for all YouTube members.
Head on over to youtube.com backslash used book guy
to join the channel and gain access
to the full-length podcast, Zoom call, and private Discord today.
Let's get into this week's episode.
What is up, everybody?
Welcome to another episode of Resellers Mindset Podcast.
Mike next to Johnny and sitting above,
Carl today, special guest, antique collectible guy.
He runs the antique and collectible call over in tech
and sports group as well.
So Carl, welcome to the show.
Give us a little bit of insight on who you are, what you do,
how you got started, and me and Johnny
will pick on you along the way.
Well, that's great.
First of all, I'm always thankful for any opportunity
to talk about antiques and collectibles.
It's been a fascinating journey.
I've been blessed.
I call it God's blessing on my life
that he's allowed me to do this for 41 years now.
And in July, July 14th will mark the start
the 42nd year of selling.
I've actually sold before.
I got into tying trout flies when I was first married
and tied thousands and sold thousands of trout flies.
But in 1983, I have two sons older than you guys, 45 and 41.
And they needed a college fund.
I had $70 at the time in 1983.
And I said, well, if I put $70 in the bank,
and the bank was paying on savings accounts 5%,
so I'd have $73.50 at the end of one year.
And then at the end of two years, I'd have $77.
And then I got paid for college education.
And at the time, baseball cards were really starting to take off.
And I go back, and I'll try, in my old man mind,
I'll try to get back to this part of the story.
But when I was a young boy, I was growing up on Long Island.
And baseball cards were always part of our life.
They were a nickel a pack.
And so my grandfather would always
support us pennies and change during the week.
And we'd go see him.
And I have a sign up above me here that I keep money in,
because that's where my grandfather threw our stash
cash for the weekend.
And always would buy a pack of baseball cards.
And living on Long Island, you hope
you pulled a Mickey mantle.
And I can't tell you how many Mickey mantles that I had
on my bicycle spoke.
You don't put a trashy card in your bicycle spoke in 1961, 62.
You put Mickey mantle in there.
So why not?
I can only think of the tens of thousands of dollars.
And I probably put a grade of 10 cards only in there.
So that's something to think about.
But I collected baseball cards and stuff like that.
But I would say the turning point in my collectible experience
was my grandmother was a postmistress
of a small Long Island town called Sound Beach,
and which is like a one room post office
in a small strip mall in the center of the small town.
And she had a neighbor named Abe Cohen.
And my grandmother and grandfather
lived, they both immigrated from Denmark and Sweden
to Brooklyn.
And their dream was the American dream to own a house.
And they bought property out in the middle of Long Island
on the North Shore.
And they were living the life.
And they had this neighbor Abe.
And my grandmother said one day while we
visited her over the weekend, hey, go see Mr. Cohen.
He has something for you.
So I walked up and over the hill to Mr. Cohen.
Mr. Cohen was always a friendly person, knew him well.
And he says, Carl, I'm going to give you something here.
And I don't know if you'll want it, but yeah, no problem.
And he gave me this big box of stamps.
And I've never been good in mathematics.
I could do arithmetic.
But when you start putting letters and numbers together,
it's all over.
Does that make no sense to me?
Arithmetic, no problem.
Do everything in my head real quick.
Science, yeah, I understand the basics.
But I'm not going to send anyone on the moon.
But I loved history.
And my parents were very in love with history too.
And so stamps were just a natural thing
because they had a date on it.
And usually it was a centennial something.
So I know dates based on when a stamp was minus 100,
minus 200 years.
And it's really helped me a lot.
But I just started collecting stamps.
My Danish grandfather had been a stamp collector.
I still have one of his albums here,
which will die with me or given to one of my sons.
But it's always fascinated me.
But high school came.
I was still collecting.
I'd go to a farmer's market.
I'd buy what's called a cover, which
is a mailed envelope with a stamp on it,
celebrating something, commemorating something.
And I always liked air mail stuff,
airport dedications, first flights,
just interesting things that happened.
Also at the time, I loved books.
I'm not a reader.
I have read the spine of every book I've ever bought.
But the contents, not too much.
But loved books.
And I remember my father used to have
to go to a plumbing supply house.
And right next door was this old antique shop
this guy had, which is long gone,
south of Quaker Town on the old 309.
And boy, I'd go in there.
And I found a book that I actually did read.
It was Heroes of the Ancient World.
And I remember one in particular I was fascinated with.
That would be Hannibal, anyone that could take elephants
over the Alps.
Just fascinating.
But I loved books and would always
have an affinity to heading to a book section.
My parents were, we weren't poor,
but we certainly weren't rich.
But we went to the library.
And we had our own library card.
And we had summer reading contests and stuff like that.
And I've always loved being around books.
If there's a pile of books somewhere, I'm in it.
But getting back to the story of 1983, so I had a choice.
I had to make a choice with how we were going
to get my son through college.
And baseball cards were really taking off.
And in Quaker Town, Pennsylvania,
there's a place called the Q Mart.
And the Q Mart is a giant, long farmer's market.
And if you go to the Q Mart today,
it's nothing like it was when I first walked in in 1967.
It was a rat hole.
And it had little vendor spaces.
And you had guys that were making sausages.
You had the Amish making stuff.
You always had Yackel's Bakery making sticky buns
or great donuts.
You had the cardboard pizza guy.
The crust tasted like they forgot to take the pizza
off the bottom.
And just little things like that, a snow cone for a dime,
ancient pinball machines before digital, just a great place.
But there was this guy named Jerry.
And he had a stamp and coin place.
And I'd go by there.
And then this guy had a baseball card stand.
His name was Dick.
He's long gone.
I started looking at cards.
And I actually, excuse me, I actually
have the Mike Schmidt card and Steve Carlton card.
These are not the cards because I didn't think I just sold them.
But these two cards started everything in 1983.
And so where am I going to sell it?
Well, one day I decided, let's just get it all together
and just take it to the flea market.
And I go to this flea market, which
was in La Haska, Pennsylvania, across the street
from Peddler's Village.
It's no longer there.
They decided we don't need this flea market here.
We need the millions of dollars that the land is worth.
Pretty much that was the decision about Saturday's market.
The old man died.
And the family's there.
Do we want to run this market every Saturday?
No.
We're going to sell this property for a multimillion dollars.
And that type of thing.
So anyway, I did the flea market on July 14, 1983.
And I made a whopping $35.
Now, I was taking in just a little over $200
at the time on my paycheck.
A week?
A month?
A week.
And I was working at Penn Reels, the maker of Penn Fishing
Tackle, the saltwater reels and all that.
And so I said, hey, this might be a good way
of supplementing my income.
And I did the next one.
I made close to $100.
Well, now I'm kind of hawked.
Because now I realize, now I've got to go out and find
better stuff to sell.
And all of a sudden, it just started multiplying.
So I did that through 1983.
1983, only eBay is like Flash Gordon.
You know?
It was like, there's nothing like that.
So 1984 comes, and the weather changes.
And I start really heavy in the baseball cards.
And now I am hiring young guys from my church
to go to the flea market during the summertime.
I get them set up.
I go to work.
And I call them later on that evening to find out
how much money we made.
Because in 1984, there were no cell phones to find out,
hey, Carl, what do I sell this for?
Or how do I do?
We just won it.
And it was a great thing.
And so everything was going OK.
In 1987, my father passed away.
And a friend of mine, who was him and his brother,
got together and started buying Hook and Loop Fastener, which
most people will call Velcro.
But there's only one Velcro brand.
So we were selling Hook and Loop Fastener.
And he said, hey, you want to come on board
and just run the warehouse?
Now, the warehouse was 2,000 square feet.
You know, it was nothing.
But that's what I did.
I made a job transition.
But I never stopped doing flea markets.
And that was the understanding.
As long as I could do flea markets, I was fine.
And so we just kept selling and selling and selling.
And 1995 comes along.
And Velcro USA in Manchester, New Hampshire
decides they want our company, because we
had a company in Costa Rica making it.
And they wanted that.
And they wanted to get rid of the competitor.
And they bought it.
And they made me a job offer to come to Tucson, Arizona.
And I moved there with my family.
And although I wasn't doing as many flea markets,
I did a number of them.
I would do shows.
I'd set up and just set up postcards or whatever.
And then one day in 1997, I have it here somewhere.
But my youngest son wrote me a letter and said, dear dad,
do you wish your children to be stupid forever and ever?
Please buy us a computer.
OK?
All the other kids in school have a computer.
But your stupid sons do not.
You know, that type of thing.
OK, so he laid the guilt trip on.
And we bought a rocket 8-meg Gateway computer at 8 megabytes.
And we were on.
In fact, we upgraded to 16.
We were smoking.
And one night after the boys were done,
yeah, they weren't going to use it for school.
But all I saw was games all the time.
One night, I'm there looking.
And I come across this company called Auction Web.
And that was eBay.
And I said, well, I'm going to post some stuff.
Now, mind you, no photographs, didn't have a digital camera,
just explained what I was selling.
And no labels.
You mailed.
I got money.
I would get $13.54.
Some guy would send me $13 and change in an envelope.
You know, and all the money rattling around.
And he just trusted me.
Or they just trusted me to send it.
And that's how it started.
Well, I'm a firm believer in God's leading.
My wife goes to a church ladies function.
And she's away.
I go to what's called the Tanko Verde
swap meet in Tucson, Arizona.
I'm walking around.
I need some white baseball card boxes.
You know, kind of like they store baseball cards in.
I see this guy has these white baseball card boxes.
I said, hey, how much are they?
Oh, they're like a quarter a piece.
Or I sell you a whole bundle.
I said, well, how much is the bundle?
The bundle was really cheap.
He said, in fact, I've got a couple bundles here.
I said, oh, wow.
He said, in fact, you see all this stuff here?
He said, some guy owed me $250.
And he didn't have the money.
So he gave me all this stuff.
And I'm out here selling.
And he said, if you give me $250 for it right now,
you can have it all.
Well, I had $260 in my pocket.
I had a Dodge Intrepid.
Mike, Johnny, I swear that after I loaded that thing up,
this is all I could do to drive home.
I mean, every it was like a Thomas.
I've been there, man.
I've been there.
Every nook and cranny was full of baseball cards.
Yeah, you can see out the windows.
And you're hoping to God nobody see your left.
It's like, hey, OK, I can see out the side rear view mirror.
I couldn't see out the rear view mirror.
I could see the side.
But I got home.
Fortunately, my wife wasn't home.
Speak too loud because she might find out this story.
But I got everything into my home office.
And so I had stock.
I said, you know, I'm going to throw some of this stuff up
on eBay.
I found two Jeff Gordon gold embossed autographed cards.
Now, mind you, I had $250 invested in this.
They both sold for $150 a piece.
I'm in.
That's it.
Time flies.
That's over.
And by the way, I'm living in Arizona now.
Do you know how hard it is to fly fish in Tucson, Arizona,
in the rivers?
There are rivers in Tucson, Arizona.
Unfortunately, they're running 30 feet below the ground,
except for the rainy season.
So I was in eBay.
And I would do that.
Then I found an antique mall where I got an antique booth.
And I started selling there.
We just started selling.
In 1980, no, 2001.
Yeah.
In 2001, my oldest son graduated from high school.
And I said to my sons, I said, hey, listen.
I'll give you five years to finish your college.
And then your mom and I are going
to do something really crazy.
I just made that statement.
2006 comes.
I come home on a Friday night.
My dear wife is sitting on the sofa.
She's crying.
I knew I did something wrong.
That's the way it is.
I said, what's wrong?
She says, when are we going to do that crazy thing you
talked about?
What crazy thing?
Don't you remember you made this big announcement?
Well, the boys are now out of college.
What crazy thing are we going to do?
We had just gotten a brand new president at Velcro USA.
And she just tore the place up.
Just tore it up.
I mean, like dozens and dozens of middle management people,
they just said, I'm out of here.
So I decided, hey, I love the flea markets
back in Pennsylvania.
Let's move back to Pennsylvania.
But let's move to Upper Lancaster,
where Reddingers and Shupps Grove and all the flea
markets in Adamstown are.
And let's do it.
Let's live there.
And then I can shoot up to the various flea markets.
So Middletown wasn't an hour from me.
Leesport on Wednesdays was 45 minutes.
And Rutz on Tuesdays was 35 minutes.
And Perky-Omenville, I don't know if you've ever
had the joy of going to Perky-Omenville,
but that is a great Monday market, especially
Memorial Day coming up.
That's the day.
Just for people that are curious,
basically 30 minutes outside of Lancaster.
So we're basically in the same kind of areas.
We've been in the same flea markets.
And that one he's talking about on Tuesdays,
I used to go do my library pickups on Tuesdays.
And it would take me right through the market.
You can't even get anywhere near it.
So now whenever they're like, hey, we
got stuff at the library, I'm like, I'm not coming on Tuesday
because it is a mess out that way.
And it's so weird, right?
Because you want to think a Tuesday,
like a flea market on a Tuesday, indoor, outdoor.
This town is packed.
You can't get in and out of it for the whole duration of it.
So yeah, what he's talking about is basically my backyard.
All the places he's talking about currently in Pennsylvania
are within a drive.
And a lot of these places are, I'm sourcing out
in Lancaster every single month.
I'm sorting out towards Reading every single month.
So it's pretty cool to have somebody
on that is basically local and familiar with all the spots.
And it goes to show.
We were talking before we started recording.
We've probably been to some of the same flea markets
and just never even knew.
He probably pointed to you when you were like, no,
he's going to be a reseller someday.
I knew it.
Yeah.
Mike, could you just give me a side profile real quick
of your face, please?
Hey, you were the guy that was shoplifting from my,
you were stealing books from me one time.
I remember.
OK.
Now I got, now I was wondering.
I said, I've seen this guy before.
Back then, I didn't even mess with books.
I was an everything eBay seller.
So when I was at the flea markets,
I was just looking for anything to flip.
I was a much more kind of chaotic reseller.
But it is funny that stupid Tuesday market, man.
I'm just like, because I went like two or three times
for the library pickup.
And I'm like, this is nuts.
I'm done coming out here on Tuesdays.
Because it's just, there's a lot of it.
And it's not a huge area.
We're not talking about a major city.
But for these markets, it is packed to the gills.
People from all over, because like you said,
it's an hour from Reading.
It's an hour and a half from Philly.
Lancaster has a huge antique Amish market.
It's just nuts.
Oh, yeah.
And then, I mean, you would see like church vans
full of senior citizens coming in for the Tuesday.
Hey, let's go to the flea market.
And yeah, it's really something else.
But it was there.
I've always loved going to auctions
since I moved to Pennsylvania in 1966,
especially around Quaker Town.
We had an old Pennsylvania Dutchman named Jimmy Moore.
And I just love to watch him just, you know, just.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And a lot of it was blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
You know, you didn't know where you were in the account.
But I think he was using it.
But I just enjoyed collecting.
I had a classmate in ninth grade do a oral report.
And you had to do oral reports on things that you love.
Let's put it this way.
I was in high school so long ago that a guy brought an M1 carbine
to school and took it apart for his oral book report.
Now, that's ancient history.
You don't even go like this on the playground anymore.
You got a psychotic killer here.
But this guy, he said, my hobby is antiques.
And I looked at him in ninth grade and said, oh, what a boring guy.
This guy, Kurt, you got to be kidding me.
You should see his collection.
Unbelievable.
Just his workroom, all the spare parts
that he has collected over the years of if he needs something, he has it.
And it's fascinating.
But anyway, getting back to the flea markets,
I started going to a lot of auctions then because I had to gain a lot of stuff.
I had a Jeep Cherokee Laredo.
And I literally had almost 19 banana boxes in there, smaller boxes.
And I mean, everything was, it wasn't like this driving.
It was more like this.
But I couldn't see out the back.
I could, for safety's sake, see out the side window and in front.
And my goal was empty banana boxes are a beautiful thing.
And when I'd pack up at the flea market,
I made sure I could get as much stuff in each box
so I'd have more to take to the flea market.
And walks were always nice because you could put them spine up in a banana box.
You could also tilt the box up and make a display.
So you're not really taking that much room.
And if you were creative enough, you could put one banana box on top of two
in the middle and have maybe a pyramid with three base, two on top.
And you're now showing well over 100 books.
And that's why I love books.
I had a few books that I sold for more money.
But my gimmick was a buck a piece because I'm buying these for next to nothing.
I'm not buying them for five cents like some people are if you know some people.
But anyway, it was cheap.
It always got people into the booth.
And I always found that people love books.
I've never had anyone come up to me and say, hey,
would you like to see my Kindle library?
Not yet.
Who cares?
Do people even have Kindle anymore?
Or I've had some great opportunities.
When I was in college, there was a really rich couple
that had me come over on Saturdays and do yard work and cleaning.
And they had a 5,000 volume library.
And the lady said, Carl, would you dust the library?
I said, what do you mean dust it?
She said, I want you to take each book off the shelves
and dust the shelves in the back and then put each book back and dust each book.
Yeah.
Hey, she's paying me two bucks an hour at the time.
You know, that was more than minimum wage.
I'm in.
And feeding me good at lunch?
Yeah, I'm in.
So I've always loved books.
And at the flea market, books were great.
I'm going to auctions all the time.
I'm buying.
And many times, I would buy a big load on Friday.
Excuse me.
On Monday morning in Adamstown, Brad Wolf,
whose grandfather, Art Pennebacher, had an outside auction
underneath the pavilion in Reddingers.
And they'd have like 150 tables full of stuff people brought.
And I'd fill my Jeep Cherokee up.
I'd go to Rooks on Tuesday, Leesport, and then
Saturday's market on Saturdays.
And when it came around to getting rid of stuff,
I would just take like eight banana boxes to the trash over at Leesport.
And people would say, hey, you can't dump your trash.
I'm not.
I'm not dumping it.
I promise.
I will take it.
If there's anything left over.
In come the flying vultures, people looking for new stock for free.
You know, walking by me, taking back banana boxes.
So long, so long.
I couldn't sell it.
Good luck to you.
And so that's pretty much it.
I met an auctioneer.
And he told me, I said, so did you apprentice under somebody?
Because in Pennsylvania, there's two ways of doing it.
You can apprentice under an auctioneer for, I believe, it's two years.
And then you can take the test.
But the test is pretty difficult. There's a lot of apprentice auctioneers
that cannot get past it because there's a lot of information.
Or you could go to one of three colleges, one in Clarion State
in the Northwestern part, one at Harrisburg Area Community College,
and one at Redding Community College.
Well, I got in the class of 2012 at Redding Area Community College.
240 hours of classroom work.
I mean, they had a lawyer come in and teach law for 32 hours.
My mind almost exploded.
I told my wife, I said, if I put as much time into my regular college
and high school, I'd be a nuclear physicist today instead of what I am.
And I passed the test, flying colors.
And we just recently, on my podcast, on the Reseller Greatness Group,
I highly, highly recommend that group.
If I could just give them a plug, Mike?
Of course.
I've already given them a plug.
But I've been a member of that group for over two and a half years now.
And I was a member of the old group, which is no longer,
well, is in existence, but I'm no longer associated with.
But Tech's group, the vast amount of knowledge.
And even on Wednesday nights during the media call,
there is knowledge to be gleaned by Johnny B. I just
enjoyed the collection of people and their expertise
in so many different categories that you can just glean from
and I'm really thankful to be part of that group.
But anyway, getting back to the auctioneer.
Oh, one second before you do.
Yeah.
You're one of my favorite people in that group, just because, again,
you just hit the nail on the head.
The vast amount of knowledge you've accumulated over the years.
I'll pop into your call every now and then just to listen.
I don't plan to ever do antiques or collectibles,
but I like knowing the knowledge that you guys share.
And yeah, it's probably the best collection of individuals for just,
they're specialized, they have all the knowledge in the world
about these couple of things and it's a beautiful thing.
There, my plug, Mike.
And that's fine.
The link will be down in the description
because we're going to have Carl's eBay store down there
and we'll throw in the Reseller Greatness link.
Since he is a coach over there and we have had a bunch of the coaches
from Tech's group on here.
So yeah, that group's great.
And Mike, the last name, first of all, the first name is spelled K-A-R-L.
The last name is H-E-L-L-M-A-N-N.
Don't forget the last N.
It would be like Johnny Barhouse, you know, if you forgot the N.
So just two N's there.
Thank you.
But anyway, hey, Johnny had a stamp album.
He didn't know what it was.
My expert, you know what?
It was a book, but it had stamps in it.
I had one too, but I didn't know Carl was in it.
I don't know what to do with this.
I know nothing about stamps, but I know a guy who does and his name is Carl.
Yeah, well, thanks for letting me in on it because the one I had,
I had to find like a local coin and stamp guy.
And then like it was only open one hour a week.
And I want to be in a waste of time.
But now I know I got Carl next time I fall into a big book of old stamps.
But the greatness of the group is that I get on in the regular chat room
and I just say, hey, I got a question.
And I just give them the question within 10 minutes.
My question is answered because somebody has expertise.
And I think this is the thing with collectibles, antiques, whatever.
We gain knowledge over our lifetime.
I've been blessed to do this for 42 years.
And I intend to keep doing it because there is no way in the world
that I want to go back to working a full time job at 69
and having some 28 year old know it all kid tell me what to do.
I won't last.
Come on.
I want to say, hasta la vista, baby.
I'll get my job back at CVS and I'll hire you on, Carl.
Oh, wow.
Tech worked at CVS.
I know.
See?
Yeah.
Oh, I'll tell you what.
But then the auctioneer thing, it didn't pan out exactly
because most auctioneer houses have, oh, ching,
my favorite sound in the background.
Most auction houses have a staff already.
It takes a lot of money.
So I would basically rent out my voice for calling and stuff like that.
And I did that.
But I got all my money back.
But I got two unbelievable estates for being an auctioneer.
And that paid the ticket, one being a 100 year old woman's house
that had lived in the house for 71 years.
And she had her parents' stuff.
She had a fellow nurse as a roommate.
And she had all her stuff when she died.
And it was literally a treasure hunt.
Every room, every drawer, it was unreal.
So it's all part of the hunting and stuff like that.
Unfortunately, I got sick.
Now I live in Arkansas.
There are really no flea markets like the Saturdays market here.
And I set up last September.
And my hard flea marking days are over.
So I just have eBay now.
And that's what I'm concentrating on.
And it's going well.
I am an everything seller, unfortunately.
I can't niche down.
If I find something cool at the Benz or an antique store, I'm buying.
I have some good markets to go to.
I'm still looking for that one Mickey Mantle rookie
card worth $7 million.
But in the meantime, I just keep buying and selling.
That's pretty much my story.
I'm going to dig into your eBay business here.
So how many listings do you currently have on eBay?
Just right around 800.
All right.
Collectible wise, do you like to focus on stuff?
Are you still looking for cards?
Do you have something that you'd rather sell over something else?
Because you think antique collectible, to me,
like somebody who's not on the outside looking in, I'm thinking,
does this guy sell lamps?
Does he sell rugs?
Does he sell?
What's your spectrum here when it comes to antiques and collectibles?
Even though you said you're an everything seller,
if you see a lamp, are you going to buy a lamp?
Here's Carl Hellman's rule.
An 8 by 6 by 4 box.
If it fits, it ships.
That's a good rule.
If it don't fit, don't buy it.
I love it.
I can't put a lamp in here.
OK?
I can't.
I could put a 70 pound bar of machinist grade steel in here,
but I can't put a lamp in here.
I can't put a VCR in here.
There's a lot of things.
Now, I do have a little bit larger boxes for books,
but I sell a lot of baseball caps, hats.
99% of them fit in this box.
What doesn't with the wider brims fits in just a little bit larger box.
I think this is one of the great tests.
We have people that come on the antiques and collectible calls
on Thursday nights, 8 o'clock Eastern Standard Time.
See, I even got a plug in for my show there.
But they say, I got this.
And this lady had quite a large lamp.
And the lamp is usually not the problem.
It's the lamp shade.
And she's there, how do I ship this?
Well, to be honestly, perfectly honest with you, I don't know.
And Jimmy cracked corn and I don't care.
I don't want to know.
Find a niche or find smalls.
In the antique world, anything that is tiny that fits in this
is basically called a smalls.
And smalls are beautiful.
Smalls can be very valuable.
My best eBay sale came.
Leaseport opens basically up at 4.30 in the morning.
It's all flashlights.
And I get there one day at 9 o'clock.
For some reason, I couldn't go that day.
But I got there at 9 o'clock.
And one of the vendors has a whole bunch of garbage
laid out on a table.
There's no rhyme or reason.
My favorite type.
And on it was a pinback button.
Not this one.
This is my favorite pinback button.
It says, I'm the guy that put the junk in the junk shops.
But it was no bigger than this pinback button.
And it had a flower on it.
It had the head of Herbert Hoover on it.
And it said, who but Hoover?
And I said, how much?
He said, a buck.
And I said, well, I'd probably get $20 for that.
So I decided to put it on auction on eBay.
Started out at $19.95.
Three minutes later, I get four messages.
Hey, I'll give you $100 for that.
Give you $50 for that.
Give you it.
No, I only have ended one auction early.
I said, I'm going to let it ride.
Well, seven day auction of $19.95, $19.95.
Oh, $40.
And it got up to, on the seventh day in the morning,
it got up to $200.
I'm, wow, this is great.
This is great.
Well, in the last minute, my wife and I are sitting there.
And my cell phone is literally going like this.
I mean, it's vibrating.
It's singing and all that.
And when the dust settled, $1,512.
And here, it turned out that this particular button
was made for Herbert Hoover's wife
during her campaign stops to give it out.
And because it had a poppy on it, they were from California.
And that's what she wanted, something special.
And that paid, man, did that pay the mortgage?
Plus, that sale did.
But I love stuff that's small.
Yeah, dude.
Easy to sell.
A lot of pinback buttons, coins, small jewelry, tokens,
and stuff like that.
I ship them in an old cassette box.
I just, you know, Longines, 40 most romantic tunes.
Pull a cassette and a thing out, throw that away,
use the box to send it in a bubble pack mail.
I've never had any complaints and all that.
So I love small stuff.
I think a lot of resellers would benefit if they just
decided, like, I'm not going to mess with stuff that's
above this certain size, right?
Because you would literally, like, I would say,
here, take the 8x6x4 box.
And then you know when you're at the thrift store,
if it don't fit in there, you're leaving it behind.
I never heard of that.
And I think it's like, that's like an instant level up.
If you can control kind of what, you know,
as an everything seller, you almost
have to, because all of a sudden, you got lamps,
you got all this other kind of wacky crap.
And then it just eats up too much of your time.
I love the idea of taking an empty cassette tape
to the flea market.
If it can't fit in here, I'm not going to buy it.
That's a beautiful thing.
And that's another thing.
If you even downsize the concept of 8x6x4 down to a cassette
tape, you know, number one, that it probably
is going to be four ounces or less.
So now with the ground advantage,
and living in Arkansas is a beautiful thing,
because 1,000 miles to the east, west, or north,
I'm in the lowest tier.
And I'm charging $4.95 for shipping,
but I'm only paying $4.25.
So I'm making, even though there is some,
I'm making $0.50 here, $0.45 here, and that all adds up.
And so yeah, you got to just say to yourself, hey,
I've got to watch when I'm buying.
And if you are a seller, the worst thing you can do
is say, hey, what do you have?
I'll sell stuff for you.
Let someone come up to me one day and say, hey,
I hear you sell on eBay.
I have a dining room set.
Oh, yeah.
I'm your guy.
It's only two letters.
And oh, you've got to learn to say that.
And you've got to learn to say it with a smile.
So yeah.
Well, even in me and my books, I took in the size and model.
That's why I love these things.
They're all under a pound.
Every single one will never be above a pound,
unless they buy multiple.
But that's OK if they do.
But most of my shipping supplies,
just like here, are the same size.
If I stuck to larger books, you could do the same model
if you did larger books, sure.
But you're not going to do the gigantic,
takes two armed, open style books, those coffee table
books.
No, I mean, even in my niche, what you just said very much
applies.
Oh, absolutely.
Although, there are certain books
that you have to maybe do special packaging,
like your Nora Roberts books that you're so fond of.
I'm sure the $4,000 magician books
that I'll make exceptions to.
It ain't sold yet.
So it ain't for you.
Like the guys that they got their own garage,
shall I do it for $4,000?
Until it's sold, it ain't worth nothing.
Johnny, what a hater Mike is.
Wow.
I got this million dollar item, but it never sold.
I would say that has been the secret to my reselling,
is learning to say no to bigger things,
unless I know I have a customer that I could deliver it to.
And that was the beauty of the flea market.
When I was doing flea markets, I would
buy things for particular customers
that were always looking for the same stuff all the time.
Because their question is, when they come into your booth
at a flea market, do you got anything for me this week?
If I had 15 items that I hand selected for people up
in a box in the front of my Jeep,
and I could sell 13 of those items, even 10 of them,
I would have a great day at the flea market.
Because I know they were sold with somebody in mind.
And that's another thing.
Yes, you could be an everything seller,
but you don't have to buy everything.
That's a good point.
Yeah.
You already kind of got yourself in hot water
saying you make money on shipping on eBay.
Now I'm going to try to get you in more hot water
to all the resellers out there listening to this.
Are promoted listings necessary as an eBay seller?
I sell hats.
I've started selling hats too.
If I did not do promoted listings of at least 6%,
I probably wouldn't sell too many hats.
But I buy my hats at the bins.
I pay $1.59 a pound.
Depending on the weight and fabric of the hat,
I get anywhere between 6 and 7 hats per pound.
So you can see my cost is way down.
If it's going to cost me another $0.80 to sell it,
I'm still close to a dollar cost.
So yes.
Now I do use promoted listings on the majority of my antiques,
but only like 3%.
I'm a cheap guy.
I will spend money if need be.
But I like little things that don't cost too much money.
And I love piles of ephemera that I can sort through,
sell the bulk off in one lot, get all my money back,
and then have all the cherries.
And so yes, no.
I don't have to have a 99% promoted listings.
But you have to have a reasonable one.
I do stress this.
If you're going to have a really strange thing that you're
going to put in an auction.
And I believe in the auction for strange things.
Because there's no way a lot of this stuff you could just say,
hey, I think it will sell for this.
I had two real photo postcards of the Icehouse for Armor Meat
Packing Company in Round Lake, Illinois
that I bought for $3 a piece.
I had $6 in.
Now I could have said, hmm, these
are really strange looking.
These are great cards.
Maybe I can get $50 for it.
Well, I could have put $50.
Someone could have knocked me down to $30.
I would have taken it.
I put it for auction.
I promoted.
eBay's promoted auctions.
Usually, if you start out low, it
will cost you $1.99 to promote it for the whole week.
I'm in $1.99 when I'm spending that cheap.
Those postcards went for $410.
So you know what?
Did the promoted listings help?
Number one, if you look at your sales,
you'll find a lot of things don't even
sell for promoted listings.
So yeah, promote it.
But that doesn't mean that you're going to pay the fees.
So that's my answer on.
What about best offers?
You a best offer guy or no?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
If I have something for $19.95, you hit me up around $13.
I have less than $1 in it.
I'm in.
Smart man.
You have $1.
I have $19.95, and you offer me $2?
Come on.
And you'll notice one thing.
Their feedback is usually really small.
And then I had a guy one day.
He offered me $4.50 on something.
I said, no, I need $7.95.
So he sends me back an offer of $4.24.
How in the world did he come up with $0.24?
It's beyond me.
But do you think that's a good idea?
Hey, I worked out the math, Carl.
I worked out the math.
I had my reasons, OK?
Yeah, I guess so.
I guess so.
Anyway, yeah, I do.
Yeah, no problem.
Because you know what?
I don't want to be a warehouse.
I just want to get rid of this stuff.
Because one day we're going to die,
and guess what they don't do at the funeral home.
They don't hitch up a U-Haul truck to dump all the crap
in your grave or put it in the crematorium with you.
You've got to get rid of it.
So yeah.
Yeah, I agree.
Turn and burn to your inventory.
Don't feel offended by offers.
Promote your stuff.
I mean, we're into this stuff for nothing as resellers.
I don't care what you sell.
Like, you got the margin.
So I like to throw in all the eBay sellers out there
just because it seems like so far we've
had a clear, concise agreement here.
Everybody we had on that sells on eBay,
they're like, promote best offers.
And it's just, I don't know, but the majority of people
sometimes out there in the social media world,
especially in the YouTube realm, it's like, hey,
it's just eBay trying to get more money out of us.
And if we all promote at 3%, Carl,
then there's really no promotion because we're all
promoting at 3%.
So we're basically promoting at 0%.
But I do think it is important to get yourself out there.
Yeah, you know, the other thing is I love, years ago,
I joined a number of these groups on Facebook.
And you hear, oh, all the fees that I had to pay on eBay.
You know, as an auctioneer, there
were fees that you don't see.
Number one, if I'm going to hold my auction in a fire hall,
guess what, I just paid between $500 and $1,000
just to rent that hall out for two days,
to bring my stuff in, and to have the auction the next day.
There are people working, $20 an hour.
There's a lot of fees.
There's a lot of people working for eBay.
I had no idea what their computer room looks like.
Or better yet, their computer building looks like.
All the fucking storage alone, man.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's got to be fantastic.
And then to have somebody send it right
to your phone in your house.
And by the way, I can't help myself.
I just got a look here.
It's just real quick.
All that kachinging.
Bingo.
Hey, just talking to you guys.
I made $20.
Just great.
We do take commission.
It's an hour to talk to us.
I love it.
No commission.
You guys are crazy.
Yeah, it's too late.
All sales made during the podcast
were entitled to 50% of the sale.
Yeah, well, come get it.
So what's Antique Collectibles?
You're at 800 listings.
Do you want to grow?
Do you want to stay where you're at?
Do you have a listing goal?
Because a lot of eBay people are like,
hey, I'm going to list 10 items a day, or five items a day,
or what's that look like for you and your business?
That's where I am right now at the 10.
And I really see it's not how many items you have in your store.
It's how many good items you have in your store.
I have some items that I just put for sales, 40%.
Days in the queue of 800 days.
Last time I did my arithmetic, that's over two years.
I've got to do something.
But I've done the work.
You know what?
It's not hurting to have.
But I would rather love to have a 500 of store and just easy,
small stuff.
One of the beauties about postcards,
and excuse me for a moment.
Yeah, it's probably like 200 listings right there.
Here's all my postcards listed on eBay.
There's 450 postcards.
Staff of his inventory.
You know what?
This is a beautiful thing versus 450 lamps.
Common sense, dude.
I feel like the big takeaway so far I've gone from this
is everything you're talking about,
it's just common sense the way you should actually
operate an eBay business or just have a business in general.
It's so eye opening to have somebody like you on.
It's like you've been doing it for longer than me and Johnny
have been alive.
And it's the same common sense practices
we still talk about every single day for people
or people that are in rough spots
or they want to be more successful.
These are the things we tell people day in, day out.
Be smart.
List desirable items.
I know that's the most hardest thing to do
is to find desirable items.
But there's a large group of us that actually can do it.
And you actually sell the stuff you list.
You don't waste your time.
Yeah.
We're not going to, if I use a baseball analogy,
we're not going to, that Herbert Hoover pin
was an out of the park home run.
No doubt about it.
And I've had home runs.
A few triples, many doubles, but tons of singles.
But guess what?
You get a man on base with a single
and you get another man hit in a single
and you can move that guy over to third.
And the next guy could get, you start getting runs in.
And I think that's the thing is buy smart.
Learn to say no to yourself.
And this is what I've been doing more and more.
I got away from what I was doing and started getting into clothing
and I realized I did not want to do clothing.
In fact, one of my rules on the antiques and collectibles call,
we do not use the word clothes unless they came off
the back of George Washington or Paul Revere's trousers
that he was wearing.
Bullions hat.
Saddle bruises on the side.
We're not going to do that.
But the important thing is just to find good stuff day in and day
out and just know if you've sold it before.
That's the other thing.
There are books that you guys and I have sold.
I have an antique mall booth.
If I can get Rush Revere by Rush Limbaugh books,
I know I've sold them every time I put them on in my booth
for six bucks a piece.
Boom.
I put another one up.
Some homeschooler family is going to come by.
Oh, Rush Revere.
Hey, and we're going to come back to this guy's booth
to see if he has any others or Bill O'Reilly's killing series.
Oh, people love the killing series.
They just, at least in my antique mall booth.
But just look for things that are good.
It doesn't have to be expensive all the time.
But look for good things.
And if the thing's a dog, call it what it is.
And say, I'm not going to do that again.
So my last question I got for you, Carl, is sourcing.
I mean, on the topic of finding good items,
you've mentioned the flea markets, obviously,
and the thrifts.
Are there other great places to get what you're dealing in?
In Pennsylvania, Johnny, I used to go to a lot of auctions.
In fact, I was in my antique mall booth yesterday pricing
stuff.
And this guy had a t-shirt on, and he's walking away.
He says, see you at the auction.
I said, whoa, buddy, are you an auctioneer?
He says, no, I work for one.
And there's one about an hour and 20 minutes away
from me in Oklahoma.
And they have, and I've seen it as I'm passing it,
going to Tulsa to go to a flea market there.
I've seen hundreds of people in this field, early morning
hours.
And they have 80 acres.
And they have rows and rows of literal who
knows what's in those boxes.
The first Saturday of every month,
it's called Chupps, C-H-U-P-P, Prosser for Yes.
Who knows that I would be giving Chupps a plug.
But it's the first Saturday of every month.
It's on Route 412 on the way to Tulsa between Arkansas.
I can't remember the name of the town.
It starts with an I. But stuff like that.
I just love auctions.
Unfortunately, COVID wiped out a lot of auctions or the style.
Now, most auctions are done online.
And there's no personality there.
One thing in theology, they call it
the Fall of Man, man's original sin, his total depravity.
As an auctioneer, I've seen a total depravity of people
where they just say, I don't care what that guy bids.
I'm going to bid it up and make him pay.
And oh, it's a beautiful thing as an auctioneer.
And you just keep going back and forth
because two people hate one another.
But I just like the auction.
If you can find an auction, here's
what I would suggest doing.
Introduce yourself to the auctioneer.
Tell them that you're a reseller.
Tell them that you are looking for certain things.
One of the things I have, and I don't really have it here,
and I don't wish to stand up to show you
my shorts and my hairy legs.
Oh, I have one right here.
So this is the business card that I use here.
It says wanted to buy.
And it basically just says, hey, antiques and collectibles,
all unique and interesting items.
I have my phone number, my email address, my PO box number.
But the most important thing I found on a good business card
is what you're looking for.
And there's about 40 subject matters,
anywhere from antiques, collectibles, coins, tokens,
silver, gold, stamps, comics.
Yeah, silver and gold to my business card.
You're right.
Books, game calls, fishing, lures,
or as they would say in Oklahoma, lures.
You've got to tell people and tell the auctioneer, hey,
this is what I'm looking for.
Did you ever get this stuff?
When that auctioneer sees you for the first time,
he knows who you are.
That's the guy they talk.
He's interested in buying something.
And you establish a relationship.
You can establish a relationship with an auction house
to the point where they usually like to do everything in order.
But you could just say, hey, can I leave an absentee bid
on something?
Or better yet, is there any way that earlier in the sale
you could sell that particular item to me?
Or no, no, you don't say to me.
You say, could you put that up on the block earlier?
And they will.
99% of the time, if they know that you have bought from them
again, don't ever march into an auction house
and say, hey, I want you to do this.
Guess what?
You could be going like this, and they're not
going to see your bid.
Be a decent person.
Be a decent person, and people will just love.
We'll just keep coming back to you.
That's my sourcing thing.
I haven't done too much sourcing online.
I like to look at the stuff.
Because in my world, condition is everything.
Hey, you could buy 100 books, but when you open them up,
the whole content falls out because the spine's broken.
Or it's water damaged and highlighted.
Yeah.
So yeah.
I think that is a good, and we talk about it all the time,
the days of just being a reseller
and going to a thrift store and not talking to nobody
about what you do.
I think they're very numbered here.
I think you have to have conversations regardless
of where you're at, whether that's a thrift store or a flea
market, and have business cards.
I mean, I feel like we talk about business cards
every other week as well, Johnny.
But it's something so simple that can instantly,
all it takes is one or two of these connections,
and your business is just, boom, it's gone.
Like all of a sudden, you have more inventory.
I only have three sources these days.
And they're the same sources I had when I first started
after I got established.
I got my walk-in customer short.
But I was a decent guy like he was talking about.
I was fair with my pricing.
They were happy to see things go,
and they just repeat with me.
It's a beautiful thing.
Time and time again.
It doesn't cost anything to be decent to people.
You know, at the bins, I have a number of customers,
when they're on the other side of the bin,
and they see hats, and they know I'm the hat guy,
they're flipping hats over to me.
And I look at them if I want them.
Thank you.
No, but thank you.
But thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah, it goes a long way, a thank you.
It does.
How are you?
You don't even talk business.
How are you doing?
You listen to whatever they say, and then you relate back
to them just a little bit to show that you're
an actual human being, and not just a jerk or a reseller.
I would say one of the big disappointments of my life
is when I was working for Velcro USA, living in Tucson,
I would go down to Mexico every other week for 11 years.
What an ignorant, ignoramus I was for not
trying to learn Spanish.
Seriously, if I would have learned Spanish
working in the field that I was, I
would not only learn conversational Spanish,
but I would have learned business Spanish,
industrial Spanish.
And when things got rough in 2008,
and I was out there, if I could have gone to some big
manufacturer and say, I can't even pronounce it right.
If you could even just learn pleasantries in Spanish
and learn how to say gracias, or denada,
or the common greetings for holidays and stuff like that.
What is this?
A lot of these people, all of a sudden,
you have brought them up from a despised,
what these people despise me, to we're equals.
Guess what?
Equals work together.
And they won't forget you.
It takes years and years and years to build a reputation.
It takes three or four words or fleeting seconds
to ruin an entire lifetime.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's so true.
Hola, mi nombre is Johnny B., el pastor de libros.
Hi, I'm Johnny B., the book shepherd.
Dude, you just Googled that.
You didn't pull that off the top of your head.
I mean, you're not wrong.
But it sounded good.
It does sound real good, like you were fluent.
I mean, pull for a second.
I don't speak Spanish.
I live in Texas.
I probably should take a minute to learn.
I'll share a story with you.
I would always go out and I would walk the floor.
And I noticed a lot of people in my position
would walk the floor and never say anything to anybody.
I would introduce myself.
I'd speak in broken Spanish.
I'd find out, hijos?
Do you have children?
See it and take pictures.
I didn't understand what they were saying, but who cares?
I took time.
At Christmastime, hey, Feliz Navidad, Feliz Navidad.
So New Year comes.
Hey, Feliz Ano Nuevo, Feliz Ano Nuevo.
The fifth person goes, Don Carl, do you know what you're saying?
I said, yeah, most of everyone, happy New Year.
He says, no, that's Feliz Ano Nuevo.
You're saying Ano Nuevo.
So I go, Latin based language, Ano, Ano, Ano, Anus.
Oh my god.
I said, am I wishing everyone a happy new a-hole?
And he says, see.
I said, then why didn't Fernando tell me?
All he did was go.
Yep, yep, send you on to the next one.
And he said, because he respects you too much to say
anything.
And I just said, OK, well, the last few years at Velcro Max,
I would always get the greeting at the beginning of the year,
hey, Don Carl, Feliz Ano Nuevo.
Yep, yep.
It is an interesting thing about treating people
the way you would expect to be treated
and how it can go lengths in a reselling business
and the different opportunities and relationships
it can create for your business.
I think a lot of people go in and say,
I got to be a secret service reseller.
I went to see President Ford one time at the airport.
And I got probably within five people away from him.
But when he came out in the crowd,
there was a chauvinly dressed guy, like two guys over.
And I realized when Ford went to the crowd,
this guy was a secret service agent.
And I didn't know it up until that moment.
But we got to let people know what we're doing.
So what, somebody doesn't.
What if you had 95%?
I was a high school teacher for three years.
95% in my class was an A every time.
I'd rather have the 95% than the 5% people
that are going to hate you for being a reseller.
Yeah, I agree.
Yeah.
All right, Carl, we're going to wrap it up here.
We appreciate you hanging out with us today and spending
well over an hour of your time.
It's super insightful to hear.
I mean, I don't want to say you're an old man, dude.
But it's insightful to hear these types of business
practices from basically a different generation
than the one we're currently in and reselling.
And I do think there is something
to be said about the differences in generations of reselling.
So yeah, Carl, we can find you.
You are a coach over in Tech's Group, Reseller Greatness.
The link will be down below along with Carl's eBay store.
If you want to go check out and make sure
that he isn't selling anything that is over the size of 8
by 6 by 4, because then we can just message him like, hey,
this is too big.
Maybe that's what we should do after this.
Johnny will just go into his eBay store
and we'll measure everything out.
There are some blocks.
OK, there are some.
Uh-oh, he's back cracking already.
Here we go.
I'm in my territory, man.
I don't like this.
You know, Mike, Johnny said you were a nice guy.
But I've seen you attack several times.
And now you're attacking the guests.
And you're right.
I don't have to.
Johnny brings the guests on.
He's like, oh, Mike's super nice.
We're not going to run you into the ground.
And then everybody gets here.
And I'm just like, so what's going on?
Yeah, but Carl, we appreciate you hanging out.
And yeah, you can find him over in TechsGroup.
And yeah, I mean, you got any final thoughts
for a brand new reseller or somebody that's
been doing it for a while that's looking
to gain a little bit more traction in their business
before we wrap this up?
If you have $35 a month to spend on TechsGroup,
you will not regret one moment.
The information that's out there is so vast
that if I would have had that information back in 1983,
it would have been a totally different life, totally
different life.
There are people that just have started with nothing,
but implore or use the wisdom that's out there from not only
him, but a couple thousand people.
You'll go, well, treat people right out there.
Tell them you're a reseller.
Don't always beat people up over price.
If it's a fair price, pay it, because they'll
remember that you didn't beat them up, and they'll be back.
They'll call you time and time and time again.
And you know what?
Enjoy it.
Always buy quality, not quantity, quality,
and you'll go well.
So thanks for having me.
All right, everybody.
Yeah, we appreciate you hanging out,
and we'll talk to everybody in next week's episode.
Thanks for listening to another episode of The Reseller's
Mindset podcast.
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