Another thing to consider is that every hobby business that I've seen be siccessful -defined as lasing more than a few years- Has taken advantage of a great deal of networking and making smart moves.
The stamp guy I did some work for aimed at turming most stuff quickly, hopefully in less than a month, occasionally in less than a day. As long as he had profit he was happy, even if he left a good deal of money on the table.
Closet full of stock certificates? Sold before he got them back to the shop.
Much postcard? Turned in a week for a nice profit, eventually sold through a couple other people and ended up going at auction for 10K! And he wasn't bothered by that. His customer had the one contact to get from $500 to $5000 and was a regular.
He also would buy a collection at a show and sell it before he got back to the table. That takes a lot of general knowledge plus mentally keeping track of who will buy what.
The local card shop sells lots of memorabilia too, current posters and penants type stuff.
But they also use internet contacts very well. The day Curtis Martin went to the Jets they sold their entire inventory of his cards to a NY dealer. Not for full price, but they unloaded what would soon be dead inventory and the NY guy got an instant inventory of what would be that weeks hot cards in his area.
More business happens at stamp shows before the doors open than after. Same for coins. I haven't seen that the couple times I did a show, but I was new and didn't have much money or inventory. (Always seemed to have the wrong sort of stuff. Just one reason I didn't get into it full time.)
Steve B
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