If you are a picker who buys what you like dirt cheap at garage sales from people who don’t know what it is, you will do all right. The trick is to collect genuine items, and not stuff that was made for the sole purpose of being collected.
Right now you can get good buys on many types of items, such as solid-wood furniture from the 20s and 30s.
In my life as a record collector, I have found quite a bit just by looking. Anything off the beaten path, 99.999% of the people don’t know what it is or that it’s valuable.
I watch that ‘picker’ show on TV and am amazed at the prices they pay for worthless crap
Some of it is interesting but they pay more than I would pay retail for it
they must have hundreds of thousands of dollars tied up in inventory