Three Hot Selling Items to Copy From the Public Domain and Resell on eBay

If you thought the public domain offered just books, films and a few vintage photos for you to copy and resell on eBay, think again, take a look at these hot product ideas, and grab them fast, copy them, get them selling on eBay, do it now, before someone else beats you to it:

*  PARTY GAMES

Party games are hugely popular subjects, especially from very early times, notably Victorian and pre-Victorian times.  Vintage party games might appear printed or inserted in early publications and they are often found at boot sales and flea markets.  You can copy and sell these items separately on eBay and enjoy regular buys from repeat customers.

You could start a range of reprinted party games and add them to a membership site where members pay monthly to download the latest additions.  This membership idea also works well for other monthly downloadable items from the public domain, such as magic tricks, knitting and other craftwork patterns, recipes, and so on.

*  FAMOUS EVENT NEWSPAPERS

Reprint early newspapers, especially special headline publications.  These are always popular at particular anniversary times, such as 100 years since a fire at the warehouse in some specific location (sell illustrations and text to local newspaper editors and after a few weeks sell copies through local tourist outlets); 50 years since some well-known person died, and so on.  You’ll find these newspapers available for low prices at auctions and flea markets, purely because most traders buy them to sell soon afterwards and don’t realise the enormous potential of actually recreating saleable products from public domain texts.

*  PAPER EPHEMERA

Ephemera describes items with a short shelf life, such as newspapers and theatre programmes, tickets and invitations, which were usually used once and discarded immediately afterwards. 

Original items sell well to collectors on eBay but there is another type of collector who doesn’t mind if the items are old or new, recent or vintage.  That person simply wants information about specific subjects or places and might pay handsomely for copies of early paper items relating to his special interest.

I know this for certain because a year or so back I obtained a large number of early newspapers, from the 1830s and 1840s.  The originals sold at high prices and many disappointed non-winning bidders emailed to ask if I’d copy the item for them before sending it to the winning bidder.

I did this and found people happy to pay a minimum five or ten pounds for a paper reprint or for the item to be recreated as a download or on CD.