My Mission

[Colleen Smith]

Currently, I'm buying, not selling. With the economy being what it is, it's not a bad time to be a buyer. I'm finding some great pieces and great prices. But the economy isn't why I quit selling.

So why do I keep buying? Because I can, I want to, and at a point in the near future I'll go back to selling full time.

Right now we're in the process of preparing to move.

No, we haven't bought a house yet, but we will (it's also a fairly good time to buy a house), and when we find the right place, I want to be ready. We're looking to move to a more rural area so I'll be a bit of a distance from any city, let alone a city of any size. And we'll move our family and my "finds" into a seller-friendly home.

We may end up in a small town, with rows of quaint and mostly forgotten, yet fantastic antique stores just waiting for me to plunder. Or we'll share the land near heritage-rich family farms with old barns full of English bone china, German metalwork and French linens all waiting for me...(que the Bill and Ted Scooby Doo music). But I digress.

I quit selling online nearly a year ago and since then have filled up a large storage unit and most of my smallish house with my finds. And I've acquired two more cats (total of three), one more dog (totalling two), my mother in law passed away (leaving us a houseful of furniture) and I keep shopping. It's time to move!

What I learned about online selling in my 10 years of it, is that it's hard. It's something I love to do - but make no mistake, it's a back breaking, heavy lifting, computer and printer malfunctioning, irritating, can-be-stressful, labor of love. I've spent hours with my nose in books, rampaging the library when I didn't have the right books, doing online research and asking anyone, anywhere for help to figure out what some garage sale find is, who made it, and when was it made?, just because I had a "good feeling" about it. (Did you ever notice how, more often than not, those good feelings really do turn into a nice profit? Even when you start with having little or no idea as to value.)

All this has led me to believe that I am a seller . And because of that, someday soon, I'll have a place where I can wrap, pack and ship an item without having to dig for the bubble wrap because it's stashed behind the winter coats, hats, gloves and the vacuum cleaner in the front closet. That I can store a few shipping boxes without having to present a serious fire hazard to the neighborhood. That I can keep a large bag of packing peanuts without having to worry that the wind might sweep the bag off of the sun porch and now it looks like an off season snow storm blanketing the cars parked on the street, and I've gotta do the clean-up...again. That I can have inventory that, once listed and sold, I can actually FIND again, without having to tear open box after box because it's all stacked six boxes high and I wrote down the wrong box number. (I never did find that McCoy cookie jar)

This is my mission, and my husband shares in my mission. We have a home-buyer's dream and an online seller's goal.

Ahhhh....someday.

[Colleen Smith]

Thanks for the encouragement, Vince. I envy your set-up - I could only hope to do so well, but I'm willing to try. I had thought we might end up living in a storage garage, but I think there might be a better possibility out there. I'm going to keep looking.

[VinceJ]

Collen, beat you to it !

have a peek at my page, see the building there (the one with the funny mocked up antiques signs? )
that's now ours.

After many years in a good home with a huge workshop , and doing markets with a large retail store, we have settled here in this quiet neighbourhood.
The stupendous part is we have 24,000 cars a day passing our front door (for the biz), get to live upstairs in a spacious 1200 sq ft apartment, back door leads into my workshop, stairs down to the store, a barn behind for storage and fun, and a large 1500 sq ft covered 18 foot high carport to boot. I plan to die here (well, not plan, -- I just follow orders)

Our sales, living, storage problems all solved, and we are about 500 meters from downtown at the river bridge.
Hope your search provides the same number of solutions in one. It's a good feeling when all done.