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How I Run My Vintage Reselling Business From My Phone

picture of man holding dollhouse

I have an online business where I sell vintage toys games books and other odd collectibles from the 90s and earlier.

  • One reason I do it is because I love collecting these things. But I can't justify going out and buying a bunch of this stuff. So the compromise is that I buy them and sell them online. 
  • It's actually kind of fun and I get to go out hunting for this stuff every week. 
  • I run my entire vintage business from my phone
  • How I take photos of items, write detailed descriptions, and set prices.

I can pretty much run my whole business reselling straight from my phone. Here are all of the things I do for selling vintage items each week directly from my phone!

So where do I sell this stuff? 

My main places to sell these vintage items are on eBay, Mercari, and Facebook marketplace. 

Every weekday I try to post at least six items. I found that this helps keep my store's items in rotation in the algorithm.

Taking photos

I don't use any special cameras or anything I just take pictures with my phone. I feel like it does a pretty good job.

I only edit the cover photo

The cover photo or main photo is the only photo people see when searching. So I will spend some time editing editing that first product pic.

screenshot of photo editing app
Editing the cover photo in Google Photos

I make it square and then I run it through a filter in Google Photos called West. It just brightens it up a little bit without altering the colors or anything like that.

Then I take more photos of the item but I don't edit them. I just try to show it from different angles or try to show different things that are included.

I can add up to 12 photos of each product on eBay and Mercari.

I heard somewhere the best thing to do is to take photos like you can't describe it, and describe it like you can't take photos.

Write descriptions

After I'm done taking my photos I create a description and the title for the item in an inventory spreadsheet that I've created for all the items that I sell.

I heard somewhere the best thing to do is to take photos like you can't describe it, and describe it like you can't take photos. I'm not sure where I heard that but it seems to make sense right?

screenshot of spreadsheet phone app
Inventory spreadsheet with titles and descriptions

I put the descriptions in a spreadsheet then I copy those and just go through each one of the apps for Mercari, eBay, and Facebook Marketplace add the photos, and paste the information. 

Pricing

As far as the price, I kind of just set them at what I think is reasonable. Or at the very least if I think I have something that might be rare I look it up and see how much it's sold for in the past 90 days.

Most of the time it's not as rare and valuable as I think it is. So when I'm out hunting for items each week to sell online, my thought process is -- do I think I can get double what I paid for it? If so, then take it! 

Shipping costs

The other thing too is I have it set where the buyer pays for shipping so I don't worry about adding those costs to my item price. Because all the places where I'm selling my products provide the shipping labels for me. So I don't have to deal with figuring that out. This includes eBay, Mercari, and even Facebook Marketplace.

If I Were Thinking About Getting Started Today

If I were just getting started today knowing what I know now about selling vintage items online (or any items really), personally I would start out with Facebook Marketplace because there are no fees or complicated setups.


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Location: Madison, WI, USA

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