What is Antiques Hunt?

So the first question you’re probably asking is “what’s this all about?”

Well, I’ve decided to set myself a challenge to make as much money as possible from buying antiques on eBay, and then reselling them on eBay, hopefully at a profit, starting with just £300.

My idea for this came after watching a new BBC show called “antiques road trip” where a group of antiques experts travel around the UK for a week buying antiques that they then sell in auction.

The format for the show is explained on the antiques road trip page, but essentially they start with £200 each and then travel across the UK visiting antiques shops and antiques centers to try and find hidden gems that they can make a profit from when they sell them in auction.

They get 5 days each, with antiques bought on Monday going into an auction on Monday, antiques from Tuesday going into auction the same day, etc.

At the end they buy 1 big lot and put it into auction in London and see who’s made the most profit.

Well the idea is pretty simple and is great fun, but it is also a little bit silly too!

Firstly the presence of cameras and a film crew seems to hypnotise antiques dealers into accepting ridiculously low prices that no one would have a cat in Hells chance of getting them to accept if you just walked through the door under normal circumstances.

Secondly, although they do remove auction costs in the program, they don’t take the costs of petrol, hotel rooms, or food and drink into account at all!

If you actually tried to do this for real then I think you’d lose quite a chunk of money, unless you were really lucky and managed to find something really special – which isn’t entirely likely.

Anyway, I thought it would be great fun to do the same thing online, specifically using eBay, since you’re up against dealers from around the World, you’re not going to get “special” prices because you’re making a TV program, and any profit is a real profit since there are no travel and other costs.

I’m not really sure how this is going to go, since I’m going to buy things on eBay that I’m then going to put straight back on eBay to sell them again!

I guess I’m going to have to be really on the ball, and probably a little bit lucky too!

Because buying and selling on eBay is going be completely different to physically buying antiques I’ve had to tweak the rules a bit, which you can find on the rules page.

The main difference is that if I see something on eBay today, I’m going to have to wait for up to 7 days until the auction ends, and then I’ve got to wait for the goods to arrive before I can list them on eBay again. Then of course my auction will last for 7 days too!

Of course I also have to wait until I’ve been paid from anything I sell before I can go and buy something new.

Because of this I’m going to need to have 3 weeks for each stage, rather than the 1 day that the experts in “antiques road show” got, which means my “5 days” is actually going to take around 15 weeks!!

At least this gives me plenty of time to update the site, to answer questions, to explain why I’ve bought any particular thing, and it gives you the opportunity to watch the auctions live and see how well – or how badly I do!

Well, that’s just about the gist of it, and I hope that you enjoy going on this journey with me to see whether it’s possible to make money buying and selling antiques on eBay!