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 use book guy to join the channel and gain
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Let's get into this week's episode.
What is up everybody? Welcome into episode 28, Resellers Mindset Podcast.
Special guest today, Caleb Antique Book Collective.
We're going to talk everything related to selling antique books, basically books
that, you know, don't have a scannable barcode.
As we know, my whole business revolves basically around going in, scanning
a barcode of an item, a software telling me whether or not it's worth it.
With Caleb down here, you know, he kind of has an eye, a knowledge base where
he can go in and take a look at a shelf and kind of say, Hey, let me check this one out.
Let me check this one out.
You know, he's not looking up every single book, so we're kind of going
to just throw it over to him.
He's going to introduce himself and we'll, me and JB will just, you know,
roll with it, ask him some questions and, you know, see, see where he's got to today.
Let's go.
So, hi, as he said, I'm Caleb, Antique Book Collective.
I do antique books and, um, you did say I have an expertise.
I call it being a nerd.
I'm a nerd for antique books, but yeah, I've been doing this for quite a few years now.
I started out with Amazon KDP, uh, doing the entire, sorry, not KDP, Amazon
FBA and started out with that whole thing and then, uh, slowly progressed.
And I kept on seeing, Oh, antique books, antique books, let's see how they do.
And eventually I decided antique books are my entire business.
So that's where I am now.
It's pretty funny to think about like antique books.
When I, uh, when I first was doing books and I was doing bulk buys, I can honestly
admit that if it didn't have a barcode, it was going into the donation pile.
I didn't even think twice about looking up a single one of those books.
I know, I know it pains both of you.
Sorry.
I know it, I know it hurts, but listen, there's really, there's not a huge, like,
you know, a huge following out there for antique books.
There is because there's a lot of money in it, but it's not as I guess,
mainstream as just scanning barcodes and having a business that way.
No, absolutely.
And we're going to set the record straight here.
Cause I spoke out of turn because I mentioned you in the last episode,
Caleb and specifically how old you were.
And I probably misspoke.
I said you were 19, maybe 24 somewhere in there, but the comments, I noticed that a lot.
Oh my God, he's only 19.
So how old are you?
So I'm 24 now, but I did start around when I was 19.
So I was right on all accounts.
I'm just saying.
Um, so you're, you're fairly young.
What got you into this at an early age?
Outside the moment.
Yeah.
Well, outside the money, I mean, why'd I get in?
So for me, I'm a, I'm a history nerd.
I've always liked history.
That's sort of my thing.
And, um, antique books.
I mean, I've always had a couple of things.
And, uh, one of my first antique things that I got that was like paper related was we
lived in a really old house and back in the day, the house was renovated.
And when we were re renovating it, we were tearing down the walls.
And back in the day, they actually used to use newspaper as installation.
So I got all these old newspapers from, uh, world war two.
And it's like, this is really stinking cool.
So from that, I collected all those, keep them all.
I actually have them in my room.
I display them sometimes I used them for so many school projects, but one
thing led to another, and I just learned how much I loved antique books.
And that's one it's I'm here now.
So, yeah,
I'm a topic of a history in world war two.
I even find in my vintage category, Mr.
Difference folks, he's antiquarian.
I'm vintage.
Um, the world war two era era, it's history, fiction, nonfiction.
Doesn't matter.
It does fairly well for myself and I'm assuming it does fairly well for you.
Yeah.
World war two is sort of my cutoff point.
Like after world war two, things get a little less valuable for me.
So, I mean, I do buy some, but I try to keep it world war two and older.
Right.
And I've also found in the fiction category, everybody loves Nazis for whatever reason.
It doesn't really matter if there's a swastika or a Nazi on it, it'll sell.
Um, just for allies and fighting Nazis, that whole Captain America kind of vibe.
People still love that.
I don't know why, because that war is long gone.
It's been a minute, but I guess the older guys are still digging it.
So, yeah.
Well, on the topic of Nazis, I don't know if you guys have heard this one yet,
but I actually bought a copy of main comp Hitler's book, a first edition.
Yeah.
The first American edition.
I got that.
I actually got it over in a town called Beaverton, which is just south of the city.
Which is just south of Portland.
So let's see for you guys.
So here's Portland Beaverton's like right here ish.
So yeah, I got a copy of main comp there and I was like, really hope this does not go to
any Nazis that try to murder anyone.
Fingers crossed.
Yeah.
When it comes to that kind of stuff, I kind of put that out of my mind because I don't
know who it actually is going to.
Maybe it's a history person.
Maybe it's a, well, I just want to learn about this period of time in general and
read stuff from that period of time.
But that's an interesting concern as well.
I've thought about the same thing like that, but I just kind of put it out of my mind
hoping it's going to a well-good person, I guess is the best way to put it and not Mike.
Dude, I sell books about guns and making ammo and I don't think twice about it.
Where's that going, right?
I mean, I don't know.
Listen, there's lots of hobbyists out there for different things.
So I don't even think twice about just going to some lunatic out there.
But I mean, I guess being passionate about books, you have a little bit of different
mindset than I do.
I just want to sell them and make money and collect maybe a specific set of 10 books my
whole life.
But it's a little different.
I'm curious when it comes to sourcing, what does your sourcing look like?
How much are you willing to pay per book?
How much are you looking to make per book?
And do you have like, are thrift stores good for you?
Libraries good for you?
Do you have a specific genre of thrifting style you like to do?
Yeah.
So for me, I like to spend like $2 and less per book.
Obviously, less is better, but I like to go up to $2.
Sometimes if I know the book's really, really good, I will go a little bit above that.
But by and large, I try to keep it like $2 and under.
For sourcing books themselves, I find that libraries are fan-stinking plastic, like Frenzel
Library sales.
I love those and I can get the books for really low prices.
And then estate sales are my other big go-to.
But I've said this in videos on my channel.
The best book I've ever gotten was from Goodwill Outlet.
So I do go to Goodwill Outlet every now and then.
And the best book, guys, it was the first edition of The Time Machine.
So $18.95, I want to say, which was totally awesome and it was worth thousands of dollars.
So that was very cool.
Now, for those who don't know, how often do you travel to source, like distance-wise and frequency?
So I'm not doing the business quite as hardcore as I used to be doing it.
Now I'm just more like the past year or so, I just go to like one or two really,
really, really big sales and I buy a ton of things.
But when I'm really doing this business in a hard, hardcore sort of way, I will drive
800 miles plus and I would do that at least once a month, sometimes several times in a month,
just to make sure that I have all the inventory I could want and need.
So funny story.
I watched a video of yours like three weeks after it aired.
I was like, darn, because you were in my area.
You were up in Mineola, Texas and I'm like 15 minutes away from there.
Yeah.
So I don't actually drive these places.
I just check out all the estate sales around those areas and tell people what I would do
if I actually go there.
So I did not actually go in your area, I promise you.
Well, fantasy is broken now.
So on these eight-mile treks, are you shopping along the way or
are you just going straight there to that particular sale?
Not eight mile, 800 mile.
And oftentimes for the really, really long ones, I'll go straight there, but there were times.
So for one of the trips that I went down to Redding, so I have driven all the way down
to Redding, 800 miles there and back a little over that, I think somewhere in there.
But I actually went from Portland area, went down to Primeville, went over to Bend,
and then I went all the way down.
So I do hit a lot of places along the way just because it really helps me ensure that I'm making
money the entire way.
And in case that one spot doesn't make money, I still make money for the entire rest of the trip.
So I like to cover my butt on stuff like that.
But by and large, nowadays, I do just hit like one or two spots just because I get such a volume
of books, it's not too hard to stay on top of things.
So yeah, that would be my concern that I get there and they're all gone and I wasted 800 miles
of gas money or 1,600 miles.
So I think I would have to shop along the way too just to make sure I come back with something,
right?
Yeah, definitely is an issue.
There's been one estate, sorry, not estate sale, there's been one Frenzel Library sale
that I went to.
So I went from Portland area all the way over to Milton Freewater and I went to one sale out
there.
And that was the closest I ever was to having nothing worth buying, which was a little bit
like, oh, this is not good because I was going to hit another Frenzel Library sale in Pendleton
that same week, that same day actually.
And that one they decided to close down because of lockdowns and all that sort of stuff.
I was like, oh, cool, thanks for not telling me here.
But by and large, I have not had that be an issue, not even once because the places that
I go to that I drive all this way for are places that have thousands of books.
Otherwise, if they only have a couple of hundred books, then odds are I will end up high and dry
and not have anything there.
So I like to cover my bases there.
So do you do private collections like Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist?
Do you go combing through those lists at all or just now?
When I first started with the FBA business, I did check that out a little bit because I did hear
that that worked pretty well for people.
But at the end of the day, there was enough people that are book resellers in my area that
those entire listings were all just flooded with people that actually knew the value of
their books.
So I just got to the point that I was like, that's not my business, not my niche in this
area because again, there's just so many other people reselling around here.
But it is something that I do check in on every now and then.
But by and large, estate sales, friends of the library sales, more of the larger things
and estate sales do very well for me though.
Do we think there's more competition in antique books than scannable barcode books?
I definitely think that there's a lot more competition in the scannable books because
when I go to all these different sales, I get there and there's a huge line of other
book sellers and I'm chatting with them because I always like talking to people.
I like talking to people.
I'm a people person, but I also am like, what's the competition?
What are they doing?
So I get in line.
There's 20 of them.
I'm like, hey, so what are you here for?
And they're all scanners.
Every single one of them.
Maybe one of them might like vintage books like Johnny B over here.
But I'm the only person that a lot of these sales that actually looks for the antique
books themselves.
So it's really nice.
The guys that sell this stuff on eBay, they do it in lots.
They don't do singles like I do that I found for the most part.
So I'd say yes and no.
I mean, yeah, they're selling the same stuff I am technically.
So they're skipping that up too because they're in the buy it all bulk market like I am.
But I don't think there's any competition when it comes to listing per listing, at least for me.
All right.
All right, Kale.
We got to know.
So you sell on eBay.
People got to know what's your lowest, what's your minimum profit you're shooting for?
What's the least amount you're going to list an antique book for?
Is it $5, $10, $15?
Or you're a 1999 person like myself on eBay?
So for me, I'm actually incredibly picky now that I've done the business for so long.
So if I have the book in my possession and it's actually worth something,
I will probably list it almost no matter the price because it's like, I have it.
I might as well.
But when I'm actually shopping for books, when I'm doing the business like full scale,
like I like to do the business my exact way, I like to shoot for a low end,
absolute low end of 35 bucks now to $45.
That's what I normally try to shoot for.
That's pretty healthy profit margin there.
Now, when it comes to like, you sell antique books different than me,
you know, selling a book with a newer barcode and just throwing it in a poly bag.
How do you package like all of your orders?
So when I package my orders, a lot of these books, excuse me for a second,
a lot of these books, I mean, they are older than everything.
I mean, they show their age and because of that,
sometimes they're pretty brittle, that sort of stuff.
So sometimes I even have like leather books that the leather is even cracking.
So whenever I'm doing these sorts of things,
I try to make sure that they are going to be as perfect as possible.
So I actually individually wrap all the different books, especially with antique books.
When I sell mass market paperbacks, I normally just shove all those in a box,
make sure they get there nice and pretty.
But for the actual antique books, I will literally wrap them.
I will do all that stuff, make them look real pretty.
But for the ones, the books that have like the crumbly leather,
actually, I actually have some card stock cardboard going on over there.
And I actually cut that out around the shape of the book.
And I actually use that as sort of like a hardcover for the book,
just to make sure that it's super safe.
Because again, I mean, antique books, they can be quite brittle.
I mean, I so far haven't had any issues with shipping and storage and that sort of stuff,
because I am careful enough.
But I have had some people complain on my YouTube videos of,
oh, you're not careful enough.
And it's like, I understand I'm not nearly careful enough for you guys,
but trust me, I'm plenty careful.
Don't come to my channel.
Yeah. I mean, so your buy cost is much like the East Coast buy cost.
You guys around the $2 mark these days.
Over here, it's like 50 cents to a dollar still.
I'm sure we're going to see that inflation on buy cost in my area within the next year or two,
honestly.
But on the note of buying goods, what's the most, because your sell cost is way higher.
What's the most you're willing to pay up to for a single piece?
So what I will go like on the absolute high end for, for a single book is like maybe $10.
But that's if I know that I'm going to make like $800 on that book.
So I did a recent video on a set of Shakespeare books that I sold, 650 bucks for that.
I paid $10, but that was for three books.
So technically I paid 333 each, but I try to keep it as low as I can because at the end of the day,
I mean, I'm trying to make really, really good multiples of my money because there are just so
many other things that I can put the money in.
I don't want it all sunk into one giant boat.
Now, here's the interesting fact that a lot of people that do media don't do that.
I know you do.
You charge for shipping, which is a little different than most people can you see?
He don't like it either.
What, what can you explain your methodology on charging for shipping?
So yeah, so for shipping, there are a lot of good reasons to not charge for shipping.
I mean, a lot for a lot of the lower end buyers, sellers, sorry, no offense, Mike,
can use book guy.
A lot of the people selling lower end books though.
I mean, it's you are expected to say it's worth $5 and that includes shipping because that's what
everyone else is doing.
So you have to stay with the pack or else someone's going to be like, you're charging five bucks plus
shipping.
I can get it for five bucks less from this other guy.
So that's one of the reasons why I do it.
I also charge a $1 handling fee on top of all that.
The $1, it helps cover the new stupid eBay fee where they charge you for the shipping expense.
Because why not?
But it also helps like in case I ever am like, oh, the book weighs one pound and actually comes out
weighing two, once I get in the box and all that sort of stuff.
So that's why I charge all the stuff I do.
Makes perfect sense.
And I think both models actually do work at the end of the day.
I just know I'm a lot more volume heavy and the free shipping's whatever, especially when you're
dealing with multi-quantity, it doesn't matter at the end of the day.
It's just one of those, well, it's that's my bottom line, but my sell through is higher.
So speaking of volume and non-volume, how much volume are you outputting on eBay on a weekly or
monthly basis?
So I don't quite do as much as I know I ought to because I have so many other businesses going on.
But the way that I'm normally trying to keep things going is I try, at least when I'm focusing
on the business to list, at least $100 to $200 worth of books every single day.
So a lot of the times with the books I'm doing, that only equates to like one or two books.
So on those days, I might add a little bit more.
Like one or two books, so on those days I might end up listing like 10 books, which is a good
amount.
So I list as much as I can as often as I can just to try to keep things spicy on the store,
keep the store active.
But for sales volume, I get between a few hundred dollars, like 500 on the low end to a couple of
thousand dollars on my business.
Obviously depends on how much work I'm putting into the business.
So like when I'm totally laid back and I stopped listing, stop sourcing for a few months, it will
get down to the $500 range, but when I'm going hardcore, it's going to be 800, 900, 1000,
1200.
And in the case of the giant awesome book that I got, The Time Machine, I mean, when
you're selling one book for like six grand, that definitely does help your bottom line
there.
So yeah.
Now, dealing with these high dollar books, do you have a insurance thing you do with
your shipping or signature?
Or how do you do that?
So I know someone's going to hate me for saying this, but 99.9% of the time, I don't do anything
special for it because I've had no issues thus far.
And end of the day, let's be honest, I'm putting $2 into the book.
I'm paying $3 for shipping or whatever.
I'm actually $3.
That's like three years ago.
I'm sorry.
Doing five bucks now.
So it's like, okay, they lost it.
That stinks.
Let me refund the buyer.
Do this, do this.
At the end of the day, I'm out like six bucks.
So I'm not concerned about that.
But yeah, it is something that I'm like, maybe these really, really high end books, I might
do a thing or two for.
Do they go out priority or do they go out media mail?
Media mail.
I'm with you.
Yeah, I'll ship $300, $500 books and silly media mail.
And I don't insure it.
I don't do signatures either.
I've never had a book lost.
And even, well, I'll take that back.
I've had two books hit the lost and found and never to be found from USPS.
Refunded the buyer.
They gave, it was fine.
Nobody's really mad at the federal government not doing their job.
They really aren't.
That's just part of the course.
Pretty much.
So I don't think it's worth doing insuring or shipping up a higher mail class to have
some kind of at least $100 insurance thing.
I think what priority mail does, but everybody's welcome to run their business how they see
fit.
If you want to pay for fancy insurance and ship priority mail, more power to you, I guess.
I'm going to run a YouTube poll next week.
It's going to say, I sold a book for $6,000 and I shipped it media mail.
Am I a criminal?
And I guarantee you 95% of people say yes, but I do agree.
I do the same thing as you, Caleb.
I would ship it media mail and wash my hands of it.
Media mail, no insurance, no signature.
That was that one.
Listen, that's why we look so young.
We don't worry about that kind of stuff.
We just keep doing our normal stuff and send it out the door and hey, you know, whatever
happens, happens.
That's pretty interesting.
I have a question though.
Sorry.
Is there like a certain book or maybe even like a certain set that you have sold multiple
of, right?
It's different for us.
We kind of can see if we know we sold something for 50 bucks, we probably, I have items, I've
sold multiple CDs, the same CD for 50 plus dollars.
And I know if I'm out and about and I see it, it's a little bit different with what you're
doing because there's different editions for the stuff you do.
And the edition makes a huge difference in the price.
So I'm curious.
Do you have any items, like any books that you have sold multiple of that were really
profitable that just somehow just keep turning up while you're outsourcing?
So it used to be the case that, yeah, I'd keep on finding the same book.
And I still do have a couple that I find.
I'm like, oh, I know that book.
I'll grab that book.
I do have that happen quite often.
But when I first started my business, it was actually the Encyclopedia Britannica books.
If you guys know about those, the 30 set books that weigh like 80 pounds when you ship them
all out.
When I first started my business, I actually just kept on finding those left and right
and all over the board.
So I'd keep on buying those.
I keep on flipping those.
But for the past three years, I have not found a single set.
I actually had my grandma, she was clearing out her library and was like, hey, you want
an Encyclopedia set?
I'm like, sure.
I haven't had one of those forever.
But besides that, I don't get many of the same books that I used to, which is so funny
because it's like what changed in the past three years that no one has this book anymore.
But besides that, I do have some books that I've sold several of.
But when you're doing antique books, antique books encompasses most of history.
And when you encompass most of history, that's a big variety of books.
So I come across some and I'm like, oh, I remember you.
I'll take you and you and you.
But by and large, a lot of times it's like all foreign to me and it's all, oh, I've never
seen you before.
What are you worth?
Nothing, nothing, nothing.
Oh, this one's worth $500.
OK.
So there's a particular boutique set.
I'm going to mention that.
Whenever I mention it, nobody knows what the hell I'm talking about.
But are you familiar with the limited edition club books, like their 20s on up?
How often do you find those?
Because me, I find them hardly ever, at least in my area.
So when I first started, again, this is something that's changed since I started.
And now when I first started, I saw like one or two.
But since then, I have actually gotten to the point that it's like a lot of places I
go to, I find a couple of them.
So it's like, oh, I know this one and this one and this one.
And it's fun because sometimes those limited edition book club edition books, sometimes
they're worth a good chunk.
And other times it's like, this is worth 25 cents.
What's wrong with that?
What's wrong with this one?
Right.
I've noticed that there's huge swing and they're from the same period, time period.
I think it would sell for more, but you're like you, it's like a quarter.
It's like, why?
What happened to this book to be so not valuable?
Who hurt you as a child, Mr. Book?
Right.
What did you do wrong?
Just for those who aren't familiar, these are equivalent of Franklin Library, Easton
Press, but way on back, 20s on up probably, maybe even earlier.
They're highly collectible because people try to collect the more boutique type publishers,
I guess the best way to put it.
And they like imported paper from Italy and they got gold from France and all this crazy
nonsense and they're really pretty.
They're really well done better.
Well, I'm going to say they're better than the Easton, the folio societies.
They really are.
So whenever I find one, I always pick them up, but unfortunately sometimes they're worth
a quarter.
Sometimes there were several hundred dollars.
It's just kind of a dice roll.
But back to the eBay side of things.
So how long did it take you to really get in the swing of eBay?
Were you off and on kind of dabbling at it or did you just go balls to the wall with
it when you got into eBay?
A lot of the stuff I do when I do it, I try to do it as hardcore and as like thoroughly
as I can because if I'm trying something out, I want to make sure that I gave it the best
effort I could.
So when I started in on the eBay, I was like, okay, I'm not just going to buy one or two
books.
I'm going to buy most of the antique books, if not all the antique books from this first
Frenzel Library sale I hit and started buying antique books at.
So that's sort of how I like to do my business.
I like to be like, okay, if I'm going to test this out, I'm going to test out as hardcore
as I can.
And was there another part of your question?
Sorry.
Well, I guess the second part of my question was on the listing part, how long does it
take you to do a listing?
Because I think you're like me and you put a lot more detail into your listings.
Yeah.
So as you said, I do put a little more detail into it than a lot of people actually recently
had a customer, not a customer, a YouTube viewer who was like, yeah, when I'm buying
an antique book, a nice book, I'm not going to buy a book that has just one photo.
So for me, I know that I'm catering to that sort of crowd.
I mean, when you're selling an antique book, an antique book is not like a brand new book.
So Mike, I mean, you can take one photo and it's good because it's a new book.
It's not going to be like really terrible, but an antique book, just for an example,
let me just grab a random one.
You have special stains on the cover that are a little weird that someone might want
to know about.
You have the sun bleaching on the cover.
So I mean, it's going to be a different color.
You have the, it might be an X library book.
It might have some writing in it, all that sort of stuff.
So I like to mention all those things that I can so people know what they're getting
in a lot of the times I am willing to do that.
I am capable of doing that with my whole time, put into it the time investment because a
lot of these books are worth a good chunk more money.
So that's why I'm able to do that.
And in addition to all that, again, I just try to cater to the more boutique sort of
crowd.
And that's why I wrap all of my books.
That's why I ship them out in boxes as opposed to padded mailers.
I want people to feel like they are dealing with someone that is a little more prestigious,
if you will.
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, don't be talking about us, padded mailer people.
Like we live under the underpass or something.
All right.
You know, I got a question for you.
You just showed the book and it had like that sticker on the inside.
Now say like, say you have two copies of the same book and you're listed those and one
has the sticker inside or like a lot of the antique books I see, it'll have like the pencil
mark and like somebody is trying to sell it at an old bookstore and it'll have like a
dollar or whatever.
Does that affect the price?
Like, and if so, like how much?
So I find it really matters upon the book itself.
So there are some times that I will actually go in and erase the pencil marked in price
because a lot of the times people didn't press really hard on the paper, like a complete
psychopath.
I press when I write really hard.
So I'm one of those psychopaths.
But a lot of times I will actually go in and erase it because people, if you can have the
difference between a brand spanking new almost looking book where it has no writing, people
generally will pay a premium for that.
But at the same time, with some of these books like this one, you might not have any other
copies like anywhere out there or if there are there's like one or two other ones.
So it can be really rare.
Like this one, there wasn't a whole lot of other copies.
In fact, I don't know if I could find any comps on this one.
So I just picked it up for like a buck.
But a lot of the times it just is all over the board.
It's like, okay.
So I, when I first started, I thought because I was doing the Amazon FBA side of things,
you know, I thought, okay, it's an X library book.
Here you go.
It's only good condition.
No one wants a good condition book.
So I used to be a little more skeptical of these things.
But now that I've done it a long enough time, it's like, okay, this one might be X library.
And it actually is worth the same exact amount of money as this brand new book.
So as another example, I actually just sold a book from 1791 for $30, which was absolutely
pitiful.
But there was only one other edition of that book anywhere out there that I could find.
And I actually priced my book basically the same price as them and it ended up selling.
So that's sort of all over the board like that.
You've sold a book without a cover, correct?
Yeah.
I have quite a few books that sell without covers.
I don't sell them quite as often.
People are a little more particular on that because I mean, when you're buying a book,
you want it to look like a book, not like a random staple pamphlet.
Anyone can get that from the office, you know?
So I do find books without covers are a little harder to sell, but that doesn't mean that I
overlook them all the time.
I will still do all I can to look these books up because sometimes some of them can be worth
dozens or even hundreds of dollars.
I've not had any be worth in the thousands territory though.
So here's one question.
Even in my vintage area, I find nothing about the book, no pricing, whatever.
It's up to me to make up the own price.
I have a general idea of doing this for a minute of what it'll probably go for.
If it can go for more, whatever.
If it could go for less, whatever.
But there's none on there.
So scarcity methodology applies.
So for you on your price point, because it could be the only one in existence, right?
How do you do it?
You get to make up whatever price you want.
You can off-bass for a million dollars if you want it.
So how do you come in line with the market?
Is it kind of like me where you have just a general idea or do you have a different way
to go about it?
So for me, I deal with a lot like you.
It's like, okay, I have a general idea and then I also deal with some of the gut feeling
sort of thing and I do have a lot of people who are like, hey, you should price based on
this one website that has all the data that ever existed and usually doesn't have all
the data that ever existed and it's not worth the price in my opinion as well for a lot
of these things because at the end of the day, it's like, okay, this is a book from,
let me just open this one up.
This is here is a book from 1885.
It's a book on Christianity, which is one of my better selling things, my better profiting things.
Since it's so small, a lot of these smaller ones are worth less than say a full-size book.
So it's like, okay, this book right off the bat, just looking at it, if I can't find any
comps, I'd say this book's worth 40 bucks all day long.
So it's like, I do get the general idea and then sometimes, so like 90% of the time, I'd
say I do the entire thing of it's worth about 40 bucks and then sometimes though, there
will be the book that's like, it's got a little bit of a gut feeling going on.
So I'm actually going to ask like 260 for this one.
So it's a little all over the board, but once you do this long enough, you do get a little
bit of that bookseller gut and you get to the point that you're like, hold up, I think this
one's worth this.
Yeah, it's the same in my field except lower prices.
But yeah, it just comes naturally.
You've done it for a minute and you just have, okay, I should look this one up.
It has a lot of good points going for it versus nah, this is a dime a dozen kind of thing,
just generic price point it.
So on that, on your pricing point, do you charge more for the way you list things?
Are you above market, at market, below market with competitors in your field?
Again, that's one of those answers that I got to answer.
It depends.
By and large, I'd say 90% of the time right now, I'm trying to undercut everyone else,
especially with like recession fears, that sort of thing.
I'm trying to make sure that my stuff sells before all then because I'm like, I'm not
going to get stuck with bum steer here.
I want to make sure that I'm making good money.
But when I am doing the business, I really just base things on the book itself.
And when I want to get rid of that book, I think the book is worth $1,000 and no one
else is charging $1,000.
They might be charging $700, but my book is so much prettier.
I will happily charge more than the market because again, it is the entire scarcity sort
It's like, okay, I know that 15 other people have this edition of this book, but no one
has one that doesn't have any writing in it.
No one has one that doesn't have any like STDs rolling around in it because it just
looks nasty as everything you guys have seen some old books.
I mean, it's like, what did you do to this, sir?
So it does depend, but by and large, I do try to undercut people.
Now, I got asked this recently and I told him, no, I don't do it.
So I'm curious what you would say to this.
Do you look up every signature you find in a book?
It really depends on the signature itself.
It's a really fancy looking one.
And it's like, there's something special of this.
I will look it up.
So I'd say 50% of the time, I will actually get the signature actually being something
cool.
It doesn't really affect the value very much, but it is fun to be able to look these things
up and be like, is this person like important enough that this book's worth $7 million or
is that are they important enough that it's just like, that's cool.
So it's not really worth my time to look these things up, but I'm hoping eventually I will
find one by like Franklin Delano Roosevelt or something.
Be like, hey, look, it has this guy.
Now, when you have somebody of note, do you put in the listing that it's signed or do
you have it authenticated?
What's your process?
What do you find?
Oh, somebody of note signed this.
They're important.
They're related to the book somehow, some way.
Yeah.
So as you guys know, probably from the shipping side of things, since I'm not paying for
insurance on the shipping, since I'm not paying for the signature, I'm not going to pay for
the authentication, but I will go out and authenticate it as best I can on my own.
I mean, I will look up all the different variations of this person's signature.
If they are really important, I will mention it in the listing.
I'll even say like signed by Bob Ross, you know, and I'll be like that.
And then I'll make sure that I have a photo like of the whole page that the signature's
on.
Then I'll get like an up close shots and see the pin strokes, see that it actually is a
legit sort of thing going on.
But yeah, I'm not going to pay $300 for a certificate of office authenticity or anything
like that.
Sorry.
So that's just how I do it.
And I haven't had anyone complaining so far.
And one of the things about since I'm not charged, not sorry, since I'm not paying for
that certificate, I'm not going to charge them like $7 million for it.
Like if I'm charging $7 million, I might go out and do that.
But by and large, it is like, hey, this is signed by this person.
Here's this.
I'll charge 15 bucks more, 30 bucks more.
Depends on the book.
I might just charge 20% as a baseline more.
It really depends.
So for me, when I find somebody and I find a lot more artist signatures in my field
because of the cover arts and my paperbacks than I do author signatures.
But I always say in there, I presume it is signed by such individual.
Use your best judgment.
I don't even put in the, for those that don't know, there's an item specific where you can
say it's signed.
I don't do that.
I put it down in the description that, hey, it may be signed.
There's a photo of it.
See photo blah above for signature verification on your end.
I have this maybe crazy fear that I can get dinged and it's fake because forgery is whatever.
Or just some guy wrote it in just copying the name because whatever reason goes on human brains.
Who knows?
So I kind of play it safe when it comes to that.
I've thought about getting them validated before, but I found even in authors, it doesn't
affect the price that much.
Maybe an extra 15, 20 bucks.
Unless it's like somebody, the thing with signatures folks, they have to sign rarely
for it to really be valuable in most cases.
So the less they sign, the more valuable it can be kind of deal.
But that's just how I do it.
I got two signature stories.
Right?
So first one, dog, the bounty hunter.
I'm a fan.
All right.
Deb hates dog, the bounty hunter, but like whenever I have it on TV, she's like, turn
this off, whatever.
I actually found dog, the bounty hunter book signed and listen, whether a 10 year old signed
it or not in my heart, it's signed by dog, the bounty hunter.
Right?
But then like what Jib is saying, I also found one of Trump's older books signed by him.
And the book alone is like a $4 book, but with his signature, it's like, you know, close
to a $200 book.
But these are things that I don't really like.
I don't look for it was just by chance.
And I know some people like, oh, I checked books for autographs.
Well, if I'm sending stuff into Amazon, the last step is me flipping through the pages
before I put it in the box and send it off.
If it's signed, I don't care.
It's still good condition, still the same condition though.
I don't go back and change anything or try to target Primo.
So I've sold probably, you know, hundreds of books that were signed and it really has
no effect.
I mean, it would be cool to, you know, a book signed by like Ben Franklin or something,
you know, that'd be like awesome to have, but think, I mean, I don't know.
I got some rapid fire questions for you, Caleb.
This is going to be the lightning round here.
All right.
Give me three tips, a person who never really, you know, a scanner like myself.
I walk into a bookstore, a thrift store, and there's a lot of antique books.
Give me three tips to kind of three newbie tips that are going to make my life a little
bit easier.
Maybe not easier, but it will help you with the selling of the antique books.
But the first thing, guys, I say this on my channel, look every single book up.
I know it sounds time consuming, but that's tip number one is look everything up.
Tip number two, to look it up, just title, author, and the year it was printed.
That's all you really have to do.
Some people get like off into the weeds and they save the edition, all these sorts of
things, but you get a good ballpark idea based on just the title, author, year.
That really is a good thing.
And the third thing, honestly, I would say if you are new to this whole thing and you're
trying to get into the business, don't just like scan one or two books and be like, oh,
no, these antique books are worth anything or actually look it up, not scan it.
Sorry.
Don't just do one or two.
I find that I like to do at least 15 books before I'm like, okay, none of these books
here are worth anything.
So like I don't go through every single one and check every single one once I get through
15 that are just all trash.
But a lot of people I find do end up quitting after just going through like one or two books
and like none of it's worth anything.
I'm washing my hands of this.
It's not worth anything.
So I would recommend look everything up, do it as quick as you can, obviously, just type
in the info that you really need and try to get through as many as you can before you
decide this is bum steer.
I don't want to do it.
I definitely when I have my bulk buys and my bulk pickups from the library, I look up
every single one that doesn't have a barcode just because I know there's money in it.
And yeah, I mean, it's really we consider and say it's time consuming.
But once you have the app figured out eBay, like you said, it's so easy to just type it,
filter to sold listings, see if there's anything listed.
And you're making decisions basically within 30 seconds per book.
So really isn't that time consuming?
Next one I got for you is, OK, antique book collective.
All right.
Are you a collector?
Is the room the rest of the room we can't see full with books from your collection or
do you sell primarily and collect secondary or is it vice versa?
Yeah, so I actually chose the name collective instead of collector for my channel name,
not only because I wanted it to be ABC and be funny, but collective is not really a collection
of books. It's actually supposed to be like a collective of people.
So I'm trying to find all the other booksellers I can out there and all the people that want to
be booksellers. So that's where collective came from was I just want to make sure that I get as
many people as I want. That way we can get as many books as we want.
As for collections myself for books, I don't really collect a lot of the antique books that I
have. I know I sound like even for doing that. I mean, I'm selling all these antique books that are
so collectible, but at the end of the day, it's my business.
And it is really fun to be like, yeah, talking to all these other collectors. Yeah, I actually
had that book a couple years ago. It was totally awesome. It's beautiful. I mean, you should have
seen it. It's really fun to do stuff like that. It's like, yeah, a lot of the rush, you know,
like having a collection for me is just like saying that I had it at some point, you know,
so for me, it really works for being a seller because it's like, yeah, I had that book and
that book and that book. And I've mentioned other videos that I have on my channel that
the first edition of The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, that's one of the first science fiction
books that I read. And I'm a science fiction nerd. And so to think that I even owned that
thing at some point, it's like, that is stupid. Cool. So a lot of that is the end of endomorphin
or whatever it is hit for me. It's like, oh man, did you guys know that I actually had that book
at some point? Isn't that crazy? So that's sort of that for me. Is there some crazy like antique
book out there, like if you came across, even though it's worth five thousand dollars, if you would actually keep for yourself?
I really thought that I was going to keep that Time Machine one, honestly. There are a lot of
books that I've actually bought and sold over the years that I'm like, OK, I do list all the ones
that I buy for the business, honestly, just because that is my business. I mean, I do need to make
money. Money is a thing. Money does exist, believe it or not. But I don't think there's anything that
would actually be like, I'm not going to sell this no matter what. But that isn't to say if I do like
a book a whole lot, it's like I'm going to charge an extra hundred bucks onto this one because I
would be happy to hang onto this book for like three more years just because it looks really cool
because it is really cool, that sort of thing. So there are some books that it's like, no, that one's
mine for now. You can get it off me, but it's going to cost you. I'm going to interject that bike here
real quick. So do you sell on any other platforms other than eBay, like A-Books? That's what people
also think of when we say antiquarian or vintage. We go to Abe's, Connadeal versus eBay.
I don't. I know I sound like a bad eBay, especially a bad antique bookseller. I do check out
A-Books when I'm doing price comps, but I'm eBay only. It has worked so well for me on the
price structure for fees. I know a lot of people complain about the fees, but when you're paying
$2 for a book and you're selling a book for 40 bucks or whatever, actually, guys, my average
sales price when I'm doing the business, like I really like to do it. My average sales price is
about 70 bucks. So when you have the eBay fees on all that, it's not really going to ruin everything.
Whereas with Amazon FBA for me, I was losing for a lot of the books I'd be selling. I did go for
lower and better things. I did have a lot of things that were like, oh, I'm losing like 60%
of the money between all the different things. It's like, that's not really worth my time.
Promoted listings or no promoted listings?
I promote all my listings. When I first started a couple of years ago, I didn't do it for anything
except for the higher end books that I wanted to make sure sold. But eBay, they change things. A
lot of other people have pointed this out as well. If you don't promote your listing, it's like
a lot less likely to sell, which really stinks.
All right. So I got another one for you. What's the future here of the collective?
I know you have a lot of different things going on in the background. You're not just a bookseller.
You have a lot of other businesses. You're working on your KDP, things like that. What's the future
of selling books for you? Is this something like you're going to continuously do over the next
50 years? It might not be at the scale you want it to be, but you're always going to be selling
books here and there, or are you planning on just doing something else?
It's something I'm planning on doing until I kick the bucket. Hopefully, my descendants will
end up continuing doing it because it's just such a fun business for me. It's very fulfilling to be
like, yeah, I just found this book from 1700s that was going to get thrown away. This is amazing.
It is something that's just really fun on that point. I actually did have a period. I did this
business hardcore right out of high school. I did it hardcore for two years, and then I almost
basically stopped. I didn't buy basically any books for a couple of years so I could just focus on
all the other business ventures that I'm doing because I am in a lot of different business
ventures doing all these different sort of things. I actually did stop, more or less,
buying a lot of these books. I did go out every now and then and buy a couple,
but I did basically stop for a long time, but I did keep the eBay store going. I did keep fulfilling
all the different orders that I did get. That is something that I do see myself doing potentially
again in the future. There are times that it's like, okay, so I need the next two years potentially
for this specific project because there are a lot of bigger projects that I do work on in my life
that's like, okay, this is not just something that's going to take a couple hours here and there. This
is something that's going to take every waking hour of my life for x long. For me, that's something
that I do do, but it is anti-book selling is something I plan on doing forever, just not at
the hardcore scale that I might do every now and then. Outside of book sets, do you do book lots?
Yeah. I do lots of books for generally the lower end books that I sell because as I mentioned
earlier in this thing with the recession fears, that sort of thing, I do study the economy. That's
a big area of my study. I'm a big nerd, as I mentioned already. I saw this coming, I want to
say about September of two years ago, I actually was like, okay, we are getting into a recession,
so I'm going to diversify into the lower level books, the lower cost books. I actually bought
a boatload and a half of mass market paperbacks. I do sell the mass market paperbacks as lots
because a lot of those don't sell as sets. I'm like, here is a lot of 20 different Star Wars
mass market paperbacks. Here's a lot of different ones that are just, let's just say, broad thrillers,
if you will. That's sort of what I do, but by and large when I'm doing antique books,
it's sets 99.9% of the time. The 1% of the time that it's not, with the lots, it's usually the
books are quite similar or maybe it's a lot of cookbooks, but by and large, it's either going to
be sets or it's going to be the individual books for me. That was the first video I ever watched
on your channel was your mass market paperback, lot them up and sell them videos, which is pretty
crazy because antique book guys selling Danielle Steel mass markets and that's how I stumble across
them. I'm curious, do you ever have any intentions on coming back to the dark side and being a book
scanner? I will admit it. I was using the eBay app, but I was scanning just the other day back on
the last big group of books that I bought from a university. I was actually scanning the textbooks
and that sort of thing because it is so much faster to scan just a barcode as opposed to typing in
textbook, algebra two by John. It takes a long time. It's really nice just be able to be done.
So there is still a little bit of the dark side inside of you somewhere. We just got to pull it
out and bring you back to the... Now it is a good point though because you hit on it,
right? The Amazon fees are just insanity now and they were insanity back when you decided that
it was insanity back then and it's insanity times two now. So I do like the idea of your whole
business model, antique books. Personally for me, I thought they were all junk when I first started
selling books. I didn't think there was any money in any single book that didn't have a barcode.
I'm sorely mistaken now. I only want to know how much money I just donated to a thrift store or
book bin just because... I don't know. It's one of those things where if you don't know or there's
really not a lot of content out there around antique books, right? There's you, but who else
really focuses on antique books when it comes to YouTube? I don't think there's anybody that just
solely focuses on antique books. So hopefully it's eye opening for people out there. You can just
walk in and nobody's really going to look at those books and you could find a whole bunch of money.
Sure, right? If you're on Amazon, there's probably not even a listing for a first edition,
Stephen King this or Stephen King that, but that's even a more common one where if somebody sees a
Stephen King book, just flip it open and see if it's first edition and boom, right there is a
$40 bill it's going to sell the same day listed on eBay. So it's not even like you got to have the
huge knowledge base that you have because even some of the newer stuff, if you get the first
edition, it's going to be worth a nice good amount of money. Yeah, for sure.
All right. And I mean, the fees is the reason I pulled out and the amount of what I'd have to
find out in my area would be a lot less than last year, honestly, just for that adjustment.
So that's why I pulled it out. Go ahead. And to go off that stinking, not just the fees,
that's an expense for your business, but stinking Amazon. Like people are like,
oh, eBay scammers, I'm going to lose my money. But it's like, guys, have you seen the Amazon
scammers? Those babies will like, oh, I bought this $40 book. Oh, I'm returning it. Here's a rock.
Now, what I thought about doing for funsies, because we've had the OA discussion and I'm
thinking about going the reverse, Amazon to eBay. I think that'd be fun to do because I've sent some
older stuff in there and some more boutique type stuff like Easton did not do well at Amazon.
So I'm wondering if there's a way for me to OA it to eBay and make it justifiable cost wise.
That's just one of those crazy ideas I think of because everybody goes the reverse, eBay to Amazon.
So that should be fun. Yeah, yeah, experiments.
So like, somebody wants to start getting into antique books today. Because personally,
for me, at least at my thrift stores, I don't see a lot of antique books out there. Like,
what would be like, all right, I'm brand new to antique books. You said, you know,
you love libraries. Would that be like, say, would you tell me, hey, go to your local, you know,
five libraries and check out their for sale section. And like, kind of what expectations
would you kind of put on somebody that was brand new to antique books when it comes to just getting
started with it? So I obviously for people that are brand new, I try to give them option,
optionality, you know, for being like, if you're going to source, I'm not going to say just go to
this one store. So I actually have a list of three places that I recommend people go to for buying.
First one is estate sales. If you go to an estate sale, there's a good chance that the books are
not only going to be older, because a lot of the people that are doing estate sales, it's because
someone older passed away. So these people have books from their entire lifetime. Sometimes it's
their grandparents, grandparents old books, you know, so it's going to be an antique. So that's
a great place to get them. And a lot of times those books are going to be well cared for because
someone's owned them all this time. Another one is friends of library sales. I find those are really
good, you get some really good prices at those. Problem is sometimes when it gets donated, it
might not be great. But a lot of these friends of library sales will donate and sell the nicer
books that they do get donated, which is something that's nice. And finally, Goodwill Outlet is
probably one that I recommend more often than not, because again, that's where I got my first
edition of the time machine, people were asking 30 grand for that book when I bought it, and I
bought it for 229. So it's like, that's a good multiple. I didn't, I didn't sell it for 20. I
sorry for 30. I sold it for about six grand, I believe, but it is something that is definitely
a good option for people. And at the end of the day, I do sort of also say be like, hey,
maybe antique books aren't your thing. So maybe you should just go to Google Outlet, look around,
look for something that calls you and see what it's worth. I mean, some people go to Goodwill
Outlet, and they just do jeans. I mean, it really depends. So yeah, kind of he brings up all the
time, right? If you're not like a specialized or interested in something like, if Caleb lived
around me, I'd be like, yo, I got all these antique books, come take a look, whatever you want to buy
for a buck, two bucks, that's fine, take it off my hands. So even if it's something that really
isn't like your interest, like, you know, I'm not really big in the books, right? Sure, you know,
I did, I did walk into a lot of all first edition Stephen King's and that kind of open my eyes a
little bit, but maybe, maybe look out in your area, local bookstores, you know, somebody's going to
appreciate those antique books, just because there's no value in our eyes, because it doesn't have a
barcode doesn't mean there's no value in anybody's eyes, it's probably worth a whole bunch of money.
So I think we're going to wrap it up there. Caleb, thanks for hanging out. You want to find him,
he's over on the YouTube, great channel, everything about book selling. And even, you know,
like he said, he's real into the economy. He has some, you know, two hour long videos of talking
about what's going on out there and just the market of books and things like that, and how,
how basically coincides with his business, antique book collective over there. Any final thoughts, Johnny?
Final thoughts would be, when you don't know anything about a book or just have a funny
feeling as Caleb was saying, that this could be worth something, take the time, learn it,
and you'll have that knowledge going forward. Yeah, leverage Caleb, comment on his YouTube
channel, you come across, you know, first, second edition book, all you got to do is comment,
he'll tell you if it's worth anything, or if you know, just if it's just trash, and you know,
kind of lean on somebody that has the experience. Caleb, final thoughts will let you wrap it up
here and take it away. Yeah, honestly, like you don't even have to ask a cool expert. I mean,
I don't see myself in it as an expert whatsoever. But I mean, guys, the internet is a powerful thing.
I mean, you could literally can just look up. Here's this book. And like, you can literally
be like, I don't even know the year, you can just look up the book, and you can look for a similar
photo and you can see what it sells for. I mean, the internet is so powerful. Like if you guys
started this business 20 years ago, you might not have the internet, but nowadays we do. So it is
something you can leverage and should leverage. So yeah. All right. Thanks for hanging out. We
will talk to everybody next week. Thanks for listening to another episode of the resellers
mindset podcast. Today's full episode and all previous episodes are available to all YouTube
members, along with the weekly zoom call and private discord. Head on over to youtube.com
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