Tiny Pieces of Paper can Turn Into Big Bucks!
If you have a small collection of old receipts from school, maybe from your days as an art student, then you might be able to turn these in to cash. If you're like me, and need quite a bit more cash than this for various reasons then consider selling them on eBay or selling them on Amazon.
Most importantly though, remember that old pieces of paper are not created equal. Save the really good ones for scrapbooks; the crinkly ones with stains on the back have a history that's worth saving!
In order to make money off your old papers it's important that they are in complete and perfect condition.
Don't bother saving whatever is on the back, because NO ONE is interested and NO ONE will buy. Plus it's worthless anyway because it's easily replaceable. I know this from personal experience, as this was my first effort to cash in on my old papers. I had only collected a few papers over the years and some of them were in pretty rough shape. I thought it would be a great idea to get these in to value.Â
I remember how excited I was when I found some very old, crinkly, slightly worn on the edges and from what appeared to be an art college. It was more than $5 because it was worth more than that, but I just wanted it for my scrapbook. In hindsight I realized this was not the smartest thing I could have done. I tried to make a profit off of this by posting them on eBay, but it was not a success. Selling something that no one really wants can be hard because there are hundreds of these posters out there.
The big lesson I learned from this is that you shouldn't just sell anything online no matter how much it might be worth! I managed to get pretty good at getting the prices up, even up in to the thousands for some papers, but when it came time for selling the bids would never go very high and my potential profits were wasted time after time.
This made me realize that there's no point in saving something if you're not going to get anything good out of it. It's not like there's a specific market for old papers, it's really just a matter of luck.
I still had all the rest of these old papers and they were taking up space at my house so I figured I might as well try to sell them on Amazon. Well, Amazon is pretty much the exact opposite of eBay. There is a very large market for this type of thing and you can get several thousand dollars for a few pieces if you have  the right stuff. If you can imagine what it would be like to get $1 for each piece then multiply that by 10,000! It's almost impossible to conceive but that's what some people are doing with their old papers.