BUYING VINTAGE

1. BUYING
   * How to buy vintage items
   * Researching vintage items
        ** Less Is More hint
        ** Keyword hint
   * Proxy Bidding
        ** Bidding Hint

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HOW DO YOU BUY VINTAGE ITEMS?

This section is almost the same as researching and selling vintage items. You most certainly want to do your research when buying a vintage item! You don't want to pay more than it's worth (but of course that's also dependant on what it's worth to YOU); I've paid more than something was monetarily worth, simply because I really wanted it. To me, it was worth that amount because now it's mine and I LOVE it!!
The 'Less is More' theory really applies here, when looking something up! Too much information and you won't come up with as many listings!

~~~ I found the greatest aqua colored Taylor Smith Taylor (TST) coffee pot to go with a vintage TST dish set I bought, by simply looking up ‘Taylor Smith Coffee’; it turned out to be listed as turquoise (Someone didn't do their research when listing that because AQUA is the 1950s color, not turquoise!) Anyway, after weeding through everything from clothing to coffee mugs I found this pot, which incidentally is worth quite a bit of money! I bid and won it for, are you ready for this?……. $9.99!!!!
~~~ The same is true for an aqua covered casserole dish that I bought. It was listed poorly; 'Taylor Smith' wasn't in the title or description anywhere because the casserole dish wasn't marked and the seller didn't research the pattern. I found it by searching under 'Aqua Casserole' and then going through all the items that the search had came up with. I got that one so cheaply that I almost felt guilty! That is until the seller crossed my item with someone else's and we had to go on our own and switch items through the mail! I looked up what she had sold and found the man whose item I had, then emailed him and sure enough, he had my coveted casserole dish! I paid for the shipping for both of us and I got my incredible 1950s TST covered casserole dish! The lesson here is this: It was a lot of trouble to find the casserole dish and even more so to get it here, but to me it was all worth it because I have a rare piece that matches the rest of my vintage dish set!

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RESEARCHING VINTAGE ITEMS

The information in this section can also be found on my
"Everything Vintage -Find, Buy Sell & Authenticate" Guide *
To find out about an item I would say there are two main sources, which have led me to many other sources.
Ebay: The first of course is Ebay! All you need to do is type in the item name and look around. At first this can be quite time consuming, if you don't know anything at all about what you are researching, but in time you will learn little tricks that help you reach the information you need more quickly!

1) You click on the link UNDER the Search box (located on the upper right hand of your Ebay screen) titled 'Advanced Search'.

2) You type in what you are looking for in the ‘Keyword or Item Number' box.

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** LESS IS MORE hint **

Less is More HINT: Here is a HUGE hint when it comes to doing this: When researching an item, LESS IS MORE! What I mean by that is, if you are trying to find out about let's say a groovy looking, psychedelic colored, mini dress with a Bleeker Street tag, DO NOT type in "psychedelic groovy Bleeker Street mini dress"! Chances of finding that are very slim because it is TOO specific! However, a great place to start with vintage items is a label name, if it is clothing, or a maker name, if it is something like furniture, pottery, glass or kitchen gadgets. Obviously, books would be looked up by the title and copyright date. Now, once you have your 'less is more' information in the Keyword box (for the psychedelic dress stated above, 'Bleeker Street' would do for possible information about the era it was made in or where it was made), you can fine-tune your search even more!

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3) Choose an area for the Ebay search engine to look in, by clicking on the downward pointing triangle to the right of the ‘In This Category’ box, a drop down menu will show (for the dress above, I would have chosen 'Clothing, Shoes & Accessories'). If it is pottery, glass or a set of dishes, this can get tricky because it could be in 'Home & Garden' or 'Pottery & Glass' or even antiques! You get the picture... anyway, if you're not sure, leave the Category box set to 'All Categories' to have the search engine check ALL of Ebay.

4) Click to check off the 'Completed Listings Only' box; this is how you see HOW MUCH something has sold for. This is a very very very important thing to do!! When the listings pop up, you can see what category they were listed under (vintage clothing shows up in the vintage and regular sections) and how much they sold for! If you have something that you think is worth $100 dollars and you see it selling for just $25-$50, it would be foolish to start the bidding or make a reserve for $99! You'll end up paying higher fees AND your item won't sell! Remember, this information is only for you to get a roundabout figure to help determine what your item is worth. The ‘Completed Listings’ box only lets you see items that have sold within the last 30 days, which is good! You don't want to sell something out of season, if at all possible, so you want to see what has sold recently. If a bathing suit sold at the beginning of August for $300, chances are you won't sell it for that much at the beginning of October. So always keep the seasons in mind too!

5) Go to the very bottom of the page, left hand side, where it says 'Sort by' and click on the little downward triangle to choose 'Price: highest first'. We do this because we want to emulate the listings that sold for the MOST money, not the least!!!!! (I have even gone so far as to set my Ebay preferences to show the highest priced items first whenever I do a search –which of course I manually change whenever I am looking to buy something!) When the listings are shown, you'll see the items that sold for the most money FIRST! (You'll also see the items that didn't sell and this is important too.... so you DON'T emulate those listings!) The items that actually sold are shown with green prices, items that didn’t sell are shown with red prices. Just look at the GREEN ones! It does you no good to check out how the red priced items were listed, because they didn’t sell! Those listings are not something we want as our example!!

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** KEYWORD hint **

 Once you have the list of sold/unsold items in front of you, look for keywords in the titles. -Using the psychedelic dress listed above as an example again, I learned that it would be foolish to use the limited character space in the title by placing 'Bleeker Street' there! However, if I had a really well known name brand, like Pucci, then definitely I would use that. If it's a lesser-known name brand, then you have to make the call. For mini dresses, I found that it's more important to use keywords like 'mini dress scooter go-go 60s & psychedelic' than a name brand, if your item wasn't made by a famous designer or design house. Also, if you're not sure, try looking up a few things. For instance, 'Bleeker Street' showed listings going for $3.99 to $19.99. However, 'Mini Dress' showed listings in the $100s! And $100s is obviously what we are striving for! Also, the ‘Title’ section of an item also gives you the ‘IN’ words that people are using to describe things. An example: Cropped pants were called ‘Clam Diggers’ in the 1960s; today they are called ‘Capri’ pants! Another example” Hippie, Cool, Groovy, were all acceptable terms to call the clothing from the 1960s to the 1970s; now that time period’s clothing is referred to as BOHO (bohemian)! If you want to sell your item, you need to cater to your buyer and that includes the language that they understand! In the end, look for what sold for the most money, what category it was listed in, and at what price the auction started (Start your auction too high and you’ll scare off a lot of potential bidders!).

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* * You can also look to see if something is selling currently on Ebay by entering in your 'Less is More' information into the Basic Search window. This won't show you a final sale price but it will show you what types of things are currently selling. HINT: Look for things that have bids.

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PROXY BIDDING

A nice feature that Ebay has is its Proxy bidding: this allows you to place a bid UP TO the maximum amount that you are willing to pay and Ebay will bid and counter bid for you, should someone else come along and try to win your item! AND the greatest part, NO ONE sees what your maximum bid amount is except you! It’s like Ron Popiel’s Rotisserie… Set It and Forget It! Put in the amount you’re willing to bid and you’re done. I would of course still keep an eye on it from time to time though; there’s nothing more frustrating than loosing an auction by a dollar!

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** BIDDING hint **

* Research it, decide what it's worth monetarily, and then decide what you're willing to pay and bid with confidence! HINT: Even if you are the high bidder until near the end of the auction, WATCH IT CLOSELY! There are lots of people that wait right up until the last minute, even until the last few seconds, to bid!

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Check out my GUIDES
FINDING & AUTHENTICATING Vintage Items
SELLING Vintage Items
BUYING Vintage Items
(as of 10/10/06: I should have these Guides up shortly)

See my BLOG of VINTAGE ERAS in
Everything Vintage -by Delbodacious
This will help in determining whether something is authentically vintage,
as well as helping you find out when it was made.