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new shop
The wife might be made redundant from her job soon , so was thinking of opening a shop on here. Question is how much Lego do i need to make money , not taking lots just enough to make it pay.
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I personally started selling off my personal extras and busted up some older sets into parts I didn't want to display anymore. I realized though it was too few parts to be noticed among so many great sellers, so ended up buying a massive local used lot stupidly cheap off of Craig's List, opening TWO YEARS LATER (a lot of up-front work goes into this) with roughly 12k unique lots (you do NOT need that many, I just lucked into an amazing investment) and 120k parts (again, ya don't need THAT many).
Or do you want to specialize in sets (new parts)? Or is there a theme or part type (such as minifigs, or Bionicle) you want to build a niche in?
I think the big lesson I see from everyone that I cheerfully agree with is that LEGO resales is NOT generally for income replacement (though some awesome folks on here are pulling it off, which is terrific!) - it's a massive personal time investment if you are dealing in used parts. New parts busted out of sets is definitely less time (no cleaning, at least), but still a LOT of work to sort, bin, calc your cost per item (if you're in the US due to IRS rules, as you are entering a venture to make a profit), etc.
You are very likely not going to see any sales until you have enough unique parts variety and in enough quantity to start popping up in folks wishlist... I don't think there's a magic number, as you could have a rarer item someone stumbles on and buys other stuff while there.
You then have to have a spreadsheet or something to calculate your cost per ITEM you sell (if you're in the US) as the IRS only allows you deduct your cost for products you actually sell, vs. what you buy - so you need to know your cost for a single pin if you're doing used parts, that's where you get to become an expert in weighted averages, etc., as diff lots you buy will make your cost vary... then you get to figure out an accounting system such as FIFO, LIFO, or go weighted average like I do)... and of course a lot of cleaning and sorting just to get to data entry...
And then you get your first order. Oh what a feeling! :-)
You may see orders that take 30 seconds to pull and pack and are worth $20, with your cost (once you aggregate in fees, etc.) at a scant $0.08 or less, followed by a $6 order that has 200 lots and takes you a couple of hours to pull.
Objectively, I suggest you ask yourself if you're prepared for this kind of time investment. It takes a true love of the brick to invest so much personal time for so little return, in my respectful opinion. That's just me, of course! Fortunately, we do well enough to offset my personal LEGO habit plus donate to charity, but we could never live off what we make here, even if I worked at it full time. No employment benefits (outside of getting to handle awesome LEGO all day! <s>).
If this hasn't scared you then you have found a home of highly like-minded people and are very welcome!! Not trying to scare you, I just think expectation management is a great thing. If it was as simple as "if you have X lots/sets you can make $X per week), a lot of us would just be doing that. :-)