Thinking of opening a shop

[steve B]

One thing that the stamp guy whose shop I hung out at said was

You don't have a shop to sell, you have a shop to buy.

He got many good deals and even more that were a bit profitable from people who brought stuff to the shop to sell.

And he worked a lot of angles on stuff that was usually not wanted by other dealers.
Like discount postage - Lots of people saved full sheets as an "investment" but like junkwax cards, only worse. Nearly all US stamps made since the 1930's have minimal value. People would bring him stacks of sheets a relative had "collected" and he'd do a quick look through and some even quicker rough math. 100 sheets of 50, mostly 8 cent... $400 face value he'd tell them to use it as postage, but people couldn't be bothered. So he'd ask what they wanted. Nobody ever did the math, so most stacks like that were around $100 And he would buy anything similar that was under around 200.
The sheets were sold bulk to a convent near his house that needed lots of postage, at usually 20% less than face value.

He made most of his money during the hour and a half setup before a show. All dealer to dealer.