Buying For The Sole Purpose of Selling - My First Flipping Efforts Of This Challenge

I am a collector at heart. Trust me. When I buy something, it is because I think it will "fit" nicely in my collection. My passion: Vintage Star Wars toys. Why you ask? Let me answer a question with a question. Why not?

My wife hates it. I have a hole garage full of my "collection." Sometimes, however, even I have to admit that I am a packrat first, a collector second. I would like to start focusing on quality over quantity. For me, that is a very tall order. One of the purposes of this challenge is to force me to clear out my garage and narrow my collection down to a true collection.

However, my daily searches - ok, I will admit it - my hourly searches of eBay yield so many things that I can (or at least I think I can) flip for a profit. My problem is that when I purchase an item to resell, I usually stick it in a box in my garage only to open it months down the road and think Christmas has come early.

In any event, I ran across an auction on eBay the other day that I just "had to buy." It was advertised as "Star Wars Card Backs Darth Vader Han Solo Leia Organa." For those of you that do not know, the cardboard packaging that came with the vintage Star Wars toys (from the years 1977-1985), even without the action figures, is in itself collectible and highly sought after by die hard Star Wars collectors. Up until about a year ago when my areas of interest changed, I had one of the largest and best (at least in my humble opinion) cardback collections around. [For those of you who are interested, my new passion is Star Wars bootlegs].

The auction description stated: "This auction is for a mixture of Star Wars card backs. Card backs in this set are from the Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, Star Wars, a few Tri-Logo card backs, and a Jawa Meccano card back. There are over 200 card backs in this lot. There are no action figures included, just the card backs."

Here are the pictures that were included. See anything interesting?





I did. That is why I did what it took to win the auction. :)

Final purchase price, including shipping and handling: $384.51. Yep, you read that correctly: Three Hundred Eighty Four Dollars and Fifty One Cents. Assuming there are 200 cardbacks included in the auction, each cardback cost me approximately $1.92.

Anyone (besides my wife) think I am crazy? Well, at least it should be fun. The package came in the mail today. Let the flipping begin!