Sedalia man makes living selling valuable postcards

Mike Hawk doesn’t consider himself a collector.

Three years ago, he “lost everything” in a fire at his home.

“After you go through that,” he said of the house fire, “it changes your perspective. There is no reason to accumulate stuff anymore.”

So it makes sense that Hawk, former owner of the State Fair Restaurant and later Mike’s Restaurant, will auction off anything on eBay.

He has lived in Sedalia since 1979 and worked in the restaurant business for 25 years until he retired. About 10 years ago, he sold his first item on eBay.

“The first thing I sold was a Beanie Baby,” Hawk said. “It was some kind of bear with a flag on it that sold for $200. After that, it didn’t take long to get hooked.”

Selling stuff on eBay started out slowly enough for Hawk.

“I just had some stuff that was around,” he said. “I would go to auctions regularly and would be one of the last guys there cleaning up the junk. I’d pick up Beanie Babies and collectors plates.”

He said he used the collectors plates in his restaurant, then when he tried selling some on eBay and found they could be sold as much as $50, he took them out of his restaurant.

Since then, Hawk has sold anything from collectors plates to Beanie Babies to baseball cards, but he found challenges with each new item he sold — until he started auctioning off postcards.

“There was a little problem with all of those. Plates are hard to ship; once you sell Beanie Babies, they are done and not easily replenished,” Hawk said. “And with baseball cards, you are dealing with immature people who don’t pay or adults that shouldn’t be doing business.

“Then I saw another guy doing well with postcards, so I figured I’d give that a try. I bought a box for $10 at an auction, and they sell great. They’re easy to ship, easy to scan, easy to list, and I can store 10,000 of them in a very small space, so that’s what I’ve been doing.”

Skurfan Postcards, the name of Hawk’s auctioning business, specializes in selling vintage and photo postcards, and his collection numbers in the thousands. At his store through eBay, prices for his postcards range from a few dollars to $100. There are nearly 1,000 items at auction on the Web site, and nearly 7,000 postcards listed in his eBay store.

The postcards Hawk auctions contain a little history through the pictures that are printed on them. According to the International Federation of Postcard Dealers Web site, the first picture postcard went on sale May 1,1893, at the Colombian Exposition in Chicago. The U.S. government granted private printers the use of the term “postcard” Dec. 1, 1901, and thus the Postcard Era was born, lasting until 1907. During this period, U.S. citizens began to take black-and-white photographs and have them printed on paper with postcard backs.

Hawk said sometimes he’ll have postcard dealers come to him and other times, he’ll buy them by the boxes at antique shops and garage sales. Occasionally, he’ll hit the road in search of postcard, once going as far as York, Pa., to buy some. He’ll stop along the way, too.

“When I go somewhere, I stop at every po-dunk shop in between, and that’s where you get your gems,” Hawk said.

The gems can be street scenes, black and white real-photos and railroad depots.

“Pretty much anything that has detail and history on it,” Hawk said of postcards that are valuable. “If you can look in a card and you can see down a street, and see a Dr. Pepper sign, more people will be interested in it.”

The black and white real-photo postcards are some of the most collected because they show the most detail.

Sometimes the writing on the card is the valuable part of it,” Hawk said.

One postcard Hawk sold had writing on it that told of a person’s demise and the person who ended up buying it happened to be a family member.

He said he always lists names on the postcards, who it was sent by and who it was sent to.

Hawk has become a veteran eBay dealer, known as Skurfan because he’s a Nebraska native and Nebraska Huskers football fan. Also as part of his business, he has started helping people get set up as dealers on eBay for an hourly rate.

He’s even shown members of his family how to sell stuff on eBay; he didn’t charge his mom an hourly rate.

Not having much attachment, Hawk said he will sell anything. With postcards, even if he does like a particular picture he can always save a copy.

“If I really love the image ,I may save the image, but after I sell the postcard, I’m done with it,” Hawk said.

He says he sells about 50 postcards a day, depending on how hard he wants to work.

For Hawk, who enjoys playing basketball and golf, and eating with his breakfast and lunch cronies, being an eBay dealer is a hobby that he would prefer not be a full-time business

“You could make a living do this, but I made my living in the restaurant business, so this is just like a side business,” he said.

“A guy could really get on there and work it hard, and I did for awhile. But I list maybe 50 to 60 items a day and spend about four hours a day at it, but that’s if I want to. If I don’t, then I don’t, but it sure beats working and having a business. You don’t have to worry about employees showing up.”

The priciest post card he sold was for $1,007. It was a real-photo postcard of a man standing next to horse in Topanga Canyon, Calif.

The oddest thing Hawk ever sold on eBay was a broken golf tee. He was golfing in Sedalia behind “that patriotic country singer,” Toby Keith, when he came across a tee Keith presumably broke. He listed it on eBay and sure enough, someone bought it.