Ebaying again. I have been repairing a damaged station platform (over 2 feet long in N gauge) and it’ll need a good clean-up yet before I can put it up for sale. The one I put up on Sunday has generated some interest and even a couple of early bids (it ends next Sunday) so I have been encouraged.
I expect whoever buys it will rip it apart and use the bits to make something new but that’s okay. I’ve done the same with ‘spares or repair’ things many times, in fact some butchered ex-buildings went into this very station. At least some of it will get used rather than all of it being binned.
The next platform isn’t ready to put up yet but here’s a sampler:
I like to try to represent all professions, even the old ones.
You don’t see many service lifts at the ends of model platforms. That’s because nobody makes them as kits, you have to start from scratch. Giant spiders are, of course, everywhere.
My current eBay activity is not taxable. The rule is simple, I looked it up. If you bought it with the intention of selling it on eBay then it is a business and is taxable. If you bought it to keep, used it, and are selling because you aren’t using it any more, then it’s not taxable. The attic clearout is not business, it’s happening because a) I am skint and b) I can’t deal with these tiny models any more. If I still had good eyes I doubt I could bring myself to sell them.
However, it occurs to me that selling on eBay could become a business. Yes (sigh), another one. It would then be taxable but if I can find the right range of products at the right prices, it could still be profitable.
Well, nobody wants to employ me so my only course of action is to employ myself.
To make it a business, you need a “sustainable” supply. You’re using “fossil” items, and you need something “renewable”.
You need to perfect the art of buying cheap, before you can be sure that you’re selling expensive.
I’m doing the other half. Buying stuff which I think is cheap, with a vague belief that I can sell it for more, later. Everybody is starting to worry about me.
Your method has the advantage of leaving increasing storage space. (And money.)
But shiny things make it all better.
I wouldn’t be able to do this in N gauge any more, but in OO or even O gauge I could buy in crappy junk rail scrap, repaint it, repair it, add lighting and/or moving/working parts, and put it back on sale as a ‘one-off’. It’s model-making but without all the hassle of finding somewhere to keep them all. I’ve been watching some crappy busted wagon sales on eBay, and you can often pick up a job-lot for under a fiver. I already have all the tools I need and a huge range of colours.
I doubt I’d get to be a millionaire (unless I outsource the whole thing to a cheap factory in China) but I could make enough to live on and have some fun at the same time. It’s also something I could set aside when a real-job contract comes up and take up again when the contracts go quiet.
For now, that fossil seam still has a good amount of fuel left in it
I like the design of the old Southern Railway concrete utility-huts. I take it that the station was somewhere in the land of the Sassenachs then…or did the hut get dismantled and sold north of the Border…lol
I built it while in South Wales, late 1980s. Plenty of slab-concrete prefab buildings around there, but not on the railways so much. They were on the housing estates. I think some are still around.
One trick that could pay if done in bulk is to buy and sell bullion-grade coins. One-ounce silver coins currently fetch thirty-odd quid on ebay, but contain only about twenty quid’s worth of actual silver. It is probably best to stick to actual British coins with a face value, rather than round coin-shaped things, as one is then trading in a different legal zone.
If I could get hold of silver, I’d be keeping it