Round 3 of Antiques

Here are the figures for the third batch of antiques bought (the pearlware coffee cup moved from round 2 to round 3 since it failed to sell last time)

The Antique Bought	Total Price paid	Item sold for	Profit or (loss)
Walnut Box	£42.25
Bow Tureen	£180.00	£297.00	+£76.70
Pearlware coffee cup	£33.86	£22.43	-£14.65
TOTALS:	£44.95	£256.00	+£219.31

• The total price paid includes postage costs
• The “Item sold for” is the price received for the antique, less costs. (doesn’t include postage received)
• The profit is the “Item sold for” – “total price paid”

Sold – Bow Tureen

The Bow tureen sold and made quite a good profit!

I paid £180 for this in total and it made £297 on eBay, which after costs leaves £256.70 which is a profit of £76.70 – yipee!

Sold – Antique Pearlware Cup

The antique pearlware cup or mug has sold, and unfortunately it made a loss – drat!

It went for £22.43, which after costs leaves me with £19.20, a loss of £14.65.

Lets hope the rest do better!

How to get great prices when you sell on ebay

Today I wanted to pass on another top tip for achieving the best possible prices for your items that you sell on ebay auctions.

I often find when I’m looking at items to buy that the sellers give very vague and not very descriptive information about their antiques, and this is usually coupled with quite poor quality photos. Read more

Walnut Cigar Box

The antique walnut box is now listed on eBay as probably a good cigar box or a collectors box, here.

I’ve gone a bit mad with this one and rather than just listing it for 99p, I’ve started it at 99p, put on a reserve, and a buy it now of £125 which has added listing costs of £5.89 on top of the £42.25 I originally paid for it and before any final value fees!

Will it sell or am I going to regret that choice – keep calling back to find out!

Antiques Hunt Round 3 Update

Hi all,

heres a quick update for round 3.

The Bow tureen is listed, and the pearlware mug is also relisted.

I got a full refund for the firewood box (antique rosewood writing slope), so that will be added back into the kitty, and the walnut box will be added shortly.

Keep watching to see what happens.

Bow Tureen

I went to a fantastic ceramics seminar this last weekend at Ironbridge and took the “antique Derby tureen” with me for some second opinion. Before I get onto that I’d like to say that I highly recommend going to one of these seminars if you get the chance.

Apart from the fact that the incredibly beautiful and historic Ironbridge Gorge is well worth a visit by itself, these ceramics seminars stand alone as the best possible way to learn about early English ceramics.

Not only do you have experts there to help you, like Geoffrey Godden, Harry Frost (ex curator of the Worcester museum for 16 years), Maurice Hillis (well known expert on Liverpool porcelain), authors like Michael Berthoud, Pat Preller, and a whole host of other extremely knowledgable people like Roger Edmundson, Barry Lomax, and lots more, you also get to handle lots of pots up close and personal, and have help to identify them, AND it only costs £40 per person which includes a very good lunch!

It’s brilliant and you’ll learn so much it’s well worth the money, we always try and have a couple of extra days there to enjoy the museums too.

Anyway, the concensus of opinion was that the tureen is definitely Bow rather than Derby, and as such I’ve listed it – starting at just 99p – on eBay here.

Now, I have high hopes for this antique tureen since I have some history with it!

I first bought it off eBay when it was wrongly identified by the seller as a Staffordshire tureen, and I snapped it up for maybe £100 (I honestly can’t remember it was so long ago, but it wasn’t much).

I then sold it back on eBay for £390 correctly identified as Bow.

Last week I bought it back of eBay wrongly described as Derby for £180 – so really I’m already £100 in pocket and I have the tureen again before I even think about selling it!

I’ve made sure that I have taken lots of very clear photos, that I’ve given a good description, and I have high hopes that it’ll sell again for around £300 to £400, which would give me a great profit.

Will I make a profit from it this time around? Well you’ll just have to keep coming back to find out, won’t you!

Early Pearlware Mug

The early pearlware mug has been relisted for round 3 of my antiques hunt, you can see it on eBay here.

It’s only been listed for 4 hours and has 3 watchers, so hopefully it’ll appeal to some of them this time and will make more than the 99p that I’ve started it at – I must be CRAZY!

Keep watching to see how it does!

The problem with buying off eBay

My antique porcelain tureen (the antique Derby tureen) and the antique rosewood writing slope have both arrived (I’ll be listing once the walnut box arrives), and whilst the tureen is wonderful and exactly what I’d expected, the rosewood writing slope is something altogether different, and really highlights the problems with buying from eBay, or online in general.

The problems (and there are a few!) are that the description really didn’t explain the damage enough, and amazingly (thats sarcasm) all of the photos omitted the true extent of the damage.

The listing on eBay said that it had “some losses” to the veneer – try huge swathes of it missing, a huge bubbled bit that needs ripping off, missing mother of pearl inlay, and the top of the lid has been walloped at some point with a steam hammer or similar meaning that it is about a 1/4 of an inch out of skew with the rest of the lid.

Obviously this can’t be easily repaired, since the veneer has also been seriously damaged at this point (as if the rest of the veneer damage wasn’t enough), which renders this box to be little more than firewood.

On top of that the lock wasn’t a Bramah lock either – so all in all it’s a disaster of a buy and I just don’t see how I’m going to get my money back from it.

I’ve contacted the seller to inform them of my dismay, we’ll see what happens on that front, but otherwise I’m not even going to bother listing it – I’d be ashamed to put my name to it – and I’ll just have to write off the expense as a loss if the seller won’t refund the money.

I’ll let you know what happens, but I could have done without this setback!

Round 3 is underway!

I’ve bought 3 items for round 3, and will also be relisting the pearlware “drinking mug” that didn’t sell in round 2.

For round 3 I have bought yet another piece of antique porcelain, an “antique Derby tureen” (which might actually be an antique Bow tureen), an antique rosewood writing slope, and an antique walnut box.

I’ve spent a total of £251.09p on these 3 items, hopefully they’ll help to get my profit to over £500 by the end of this round!

Call back to see how they do!

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