|
Make Money
Selling Fine Art on eBay – Even If You Can’t Spell ‘Van Goff’ or ‘Piccasoe’!
I have something so good to tell you today, based on
my own very profitable experience of recent days, which I owe entirely
to a hunch I had at auction and one Internet site that helped me make
more than the equivalent of four thousand dollars from a tiny fraction
of an auction lot costing me just under a thousand dollars with lots of
bits and pieces still left to list on eBay.
I told you recently about my love of buying big
bundles of products at auction; most recently you heard about a huge lot
I bought containing prints and engravings alongside original
watercolours from the early 1900s. I should say, apart from forty or
fifty prints from famous postcard artists, I had no idea at all who the
other artists were or whether they were collectable. I bought the lot
because I like a challenge and I really did think I’d recoup my
investment quite fast, but mainly because there were at least 20 prints
I wanted for my own collection. Less than one quarter of the
remaining items I listed on eBay and tripled my investment and I’m
confident I’ll double that once the remainder are sold.
How?
Well I have to say I was prepared to spend at least a
few days researching artists featured in my stock, especially the
watercolour paintings, and I began by keying literally one artist’s name
into Google alongside the title for one of his paintings. But
rather than waiting hours or days to locate sites to help identify the
majority of my artists, I got that information in less than 15 seconds,
from the very first site returned by Google. That site is
www.findartinfo.com and it’s absolutely amazing; a bit slow but
absolutely amazing.
The site has a search box that allows you to key in
the full name or just the surname of various artists of which there are
many thousands listed at the site and pretty soon you’ll find your
artists’ dates of birth and death (great for knowing if something is in
the public domain), alongside recent auction prices for most artists’
work.
It took me less than one day to study artist names
for more than 100 watercolours and to know if any might fetch more than
a few dollars and are therefore worth special care when listing on eBay.
I found many watercolours from artists whose work regularly sells for
double figure sums and others worth just a few dollars.
This meant I could quickly illustrate and describe
items worth very little and take a bit longer uploading potentially more
valuable items to eBay. All in all my 100 or so watercolours took
two days to list and seven days later more than twenty sold at prices
ranging from £5 (less than ten dollars) to a whopping £67. I made
more than £1,500 on those few watercolours alone and I’m convinced those
that went unsold on their first outing will sell sometime soon.
I still have many prints, engravings and paintings
left to list, and I owe it all to that free search box at
www.findartinfo.com. You can sign up for a paid-for membership to
the site and I’m sure that will be worthwhile, but for me the search box
was all I needed to describe my paintings for pretty decent profits!
For the record, by signing up you get more extensive
information about your artists, including illustrations of their work
and facsimile signatures to compare against those on your paintings.
One day’s access costs $4.95, one month is $14.95;
six months costs $69.95
Now that I’ve decided to become an international art
dealer (!!!) I’ll definitely consider signing up!
|