What's Hot, What's Not

Collecting and selling is heavily influenced by which items are hot, and surrounded by either hype, demand, or pure interest. Knowing why an item is HOT or NOT, puts you ahead of the game, and behooves you to do some research.

There are couple of ways to help you disseminate this information. A well known source is the eBay called What's Hot, which eBay makes readily available to sellers with the url below:
http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/catalog.html

A major drawback on this, is that there is no preview to what's selling well. Primarily, its a hindsight tool, and by the time you find out, the market is flooded with items at top price. So whether you are interested in collecting or want to source your inventory, you'll have to pay what the market demands now.

Here are a couple of ways to determine top sellers in your collecting market before its too late:

• Subscribe to trade magazines or price guides (Beckett, Tuff Stuff, Wizard Magazines)
• Subscribe to collector's e-mail newsletter (www.scoop.com)
• Read discussion boards online. Some even have digest emails that get mailed daily
• Subscribe to RSS Feeds to your favorite seller's or collecting web sites.
• Find out what items dealers are looking to buy. You can either ask them in-person or thru e-mail and some even post it on their web site.

Just like in the stock market, capitalizing on items when they are low and unknown is the secret to high profits. So take your time to do your research.

Please add any information sources that you believe help you find valuable items in your specific collecting market.