I am a mother of 3 who is unable to work at this time due to health
reasons. The holidays are quickly aproaching and I am beginning to
feel a bit worried; money is short and I am considering selling a few
items either among my friends and neighbors or on E-bay. I have been
looking around but have come with no results, so I am hoping someone
here will be able to help me.

I found some beautiful porcelain dolls that I think will sell pretty
good among my friends; and E-bay is not terribly saturated with them
yet. I also know that they don't sell them in the local swap meet
(where the people in this town usually go for porcelain dolls).

The dolls I am looking for are the "Porcelain Fairies, by Florence Maranuk".

I did a search on E-bay and found the most affordable of this at just
$13.99 each, which makes me think that at wholesale they will be more
affordable right??

So I tried to look for a wholesale supplier of these dolls and came
empty handed, and something else that threw me off was that in some
places to even look at their prices they request a Business ID # or
something like that, and I don't have one of those. Are they hard to
get and expensive?? How can I get one?

Also, I saw some beutiful "Tassel Dolls" & "Angel Tassel Dolls" and
they seem to be from the same designer (Florence Maranuk), those are
also very pretty and affordable, but again, I haven't been able to
find anyone who sells them wholesale. One thing got me a bit confused:
I found some other fairies that are also very pretty and look almost
exactly as the Florence Maranuk ones, but they say that those were
from the "Olympia Garde Collection" & the "Artistic Collection"

As a reference, I found these images:

http://www.doddiesdolls.com/Merchant2/graphics/00000001/lgchaya.jpg
http://www.doddiesdolls.com/Merchant2/graphics/00000001/lgpixieofearth2.jpg
http://i16.ebayimg.com/02/i/02/39/b0/71_1.JPG

Sellers on E-bay who currently have auctions for the dolls Iam looking for:

casper-n-wendy
klutter*up

If you are aable to help me find someone who sells both this beauties
at a very affordable wholesale price, please let me know! My kids and
I will be very grateful!

Thank you so much in advance for all youer help!!

Midcat.

I've just gone through some of this, so I hope this helps.

1. You need a Sales & Use Tax License (that's what they call it here
in PA at least), so go to the website for your state and find out how
to get one. In PA, it costs no money, and you have one in just a few
days.

2. When looking for suppliers, call them "distributors". That'll get
you better results on Google searches.

3. Go for it!! All you've got to lose is a little money, and even that
is unlikely. So...you break even...at least you tried!! Good luck!!

Thank you so much for all that help!!  You are a real angel!!  I will
set to try and get it right away!!

I have renewed hopes that this will help my family this year!! Thank
you for giving us some hope!

Since you are going through the same I wish you all the luck in the
world and hope all goes well with your new business!!  Let me know
where you are and maybe we could even be your customers! :)

Hugs and all our best!!

Well, my ebay name is spiceheaven.

I am currently trying to get rid of some things that really just
clutter up the house, in hopes of building up some funds to buy some
product.

Listen...get a paypal account, if you don't already have one. Then,
get the paypal credit card. Then, you can pay for your product with
the credit card. All the money and bookkeeping stays with paypal.

Know this: If you ship Priority Mail with the USPS, they will give you
free shipping supplies, and believe me, boxes are expensive!! Go here:
http://shop.usps.com/cgi-bin/vsbv/postal_store_non_ssl/home.jsp and
put "shipping boxes" into the search. You'll see all the boxes that
they'll send right to your doorstep absolutely FREE. Priority mail
envelopes can be used too--ONE SIZE fixed price. Get to know the
shipping stuff. For me, USP is worthless. You have to pay for anything
you use. The post office used to have tape, too, but I can't find it
now. Go ahead and get some priority mail stickers. Go here:
http://www.usps.com/homearea/sitemap.htm?from=home&page=0075sitemap
and click on Prepare Mail and Packages, then click on Get Shipping
Supplies. (It's almost like they're making it difficult to find on
purpose!) Then click on Personal Products. Make sure you get Priority
package products. I ordered, and when I received it, it was Express
Mail. I'm sure I'm the dummy who picked the wrong one. So, I just took
them to the post office. Your local post office MAY NOT BE ABLE TO GET
THESE SUPPLIES FOR YOU. Ours will NOT. In particular, you may want
this item # O-BOX7 for dolls.

If you're cutting corners, buy some clear tape too (wide). Then,
instead of using expensive avery labels, print the labels onto paper
(I should make that template I need, and upload a copy for ya). Hubby
and I always put tape over the labels so they don't smear if they get
wet and such anyway, so why pay for the special label paper? Plain old
2" clear tape is fairly cheap. Get the Priority mail labels and use
them to seal the edges of the boxes.

When putting your email address on your auctions (and DO that, because
letting people easily contact you gives them the warm fuzzies), make
sure you put something like "Click here" with your email address
underlying it so that the stupid spam bots don't pick up your email
address and start spamming you to death.

Get your own web hosting for your photos so you don't have to pay ebay
for it. And, you can get an email address too, that is lots more
professional than @hotmail or whatever. (Of course Gmail is good, if
you can get one.) Here's something that looks inexpensive, but you can
increase to a bigger plan if necessary:
http://www.mymarkdown.com/solutions/cpanel/
I have a cpanel account through a 7.95/month provider that I love, and
cpanel is really easy to use.

You'll want an auction template, and if you give me some ideas
(colors, etc.), I'll even make you one, 'cause I do that for a living
and it would be sooo simple for me, and maybe very difficult for you.
My own template is very blah right now, so don't be thinking I'd make
yours like that. :) We'll give you something with a little fluff, more
like this: http://www.vbaexpress.com/ebay/midnightcat.htm

As far as I'm concerned, you can keep up the dialog here...I'll be listening in.