Vintage Beats Crafts

Rock, paper, scissors. 

Rock beats scissors, scissors beats paper, and vintage beats crafts.

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So, I mentioned I was attempting my third market this past Saturday.  A tell tale market for my attempts to sell items, since the two previous markets I've done were unsuccessful.  This market was going to determine if I should continue, or get it out of my system.  Hmmm?  I don't know if this will get certain things out of my system, like vintage sheet sewing, but I will say it will keep my desire to thrift garage, and estate sales and of course thrift stores. 

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This market was at a super cool restaurant/bar/bowling alley, The Highball, definitely a place I'll go to again to eat and drink.  Some vendors here were vendors I've seen at the big craft shows, so to me it was like I was playing with the big dogs.  They were with their nice displays, store sign/banners, spinning racks, and tiered shelves.  I'm not all fancy like that yet.  I had a letter card stock page with my logo printed on it; viola the extent of my fanciness.  :-)

So, regarding vintage "beats" crafts, my setup lack(ed)(s) the showing of my crafted items, purses & aprons.  Meaning my purses were off to the side in a non-trafficked section, but pretty much the only place I could display them.  However, my vintage items were a BIG hit.  Yay! At one time I had people waiting to see if items were going to be bought when they were in the hands of others.  I even had someone ask me if I price what I sell, since my prices were SO inexpensive.  Silly question. 

Purses are in the top left corner, not visible from people walking this direction.  My bad.

Yes, I do compare my prices to Etsy and Ebay.  However, going off of prices on these venues, or any venue, is not always a guarantee.  With Etsy, yes, something may be priced lets say for $45, but that doesn't mean it will sell at that price, and the same goes for Ebay.  I check Ebay's completed listings, and identical items sell at a variety of different prices.  One listing will sell for $20 and the other for $50.  It all depends on who saw these listings at the duration of the listing.  Right?

.10 cent pack of post cards sold $2

Ultimately, I know what I buy my items at, and depending on the item cost I either doubled or even get 20x my money back.  For example I buy something at a garage sale for 10 cents, and sold it for $2, or I bought something for $15, and got $32 for it.  These are used items, that are 20+ years old.  I'm happy that I've gotten my investment back, the extra is a bonus.  That's not something you can do with big box store purchases...even if the item is new and unused.  So sure I could max out a price on what something "could" be worth, but that means I'm taking the chance on it not selling, right?  Granted I did do that on one set of snack plates I have, but it was because I really didn't want to sell them, but figured if they did sell it would be money in my pocket (they didn't sell so I'm happy). 

The snack set I really didn't want to sell, and didn't.

I'm not sad that my purses or aprons didn't sell.  It would be disappointing if I saw people look at them and not buy them, but honestly I saw maybe one person look at them.  So if/when I do another market I just gotta figure out a way that they are seen, but now I have new inventory for Etsy.  The more listings I have will just increase the odds to get more traffic to my shop.  So, it's all good.  :-)

Here are a couple of aprons available on Etsy.  More will be added soon.