I consider myself a chronic collector. By far, my most prized collection is that of my Broadway Playbills (to you laymen out there, a Playbill is the booklet the usher hands you when entering the theatre). Though some Playbills I saved date back to my middle school years, I have been seriously collecting them for the better part of a decade. It started by keeping one Playbill per show I saw on Broadway, then the collection snowballed until I was grabbing extras on my way out of the theatre when the ushers weren't looking. I saved these extras for years because I thought a time might come when I will need some extra money, and I knew there was a market out there for Broadway Playbills.
Sure enough, my intuition was correct. Enter 2020.
It started innocently enough. Last January I was living my best life at BroadwayCon in New York City, trading Playbills with other collectors and fanatics. I was in way over my head; some people were bringing in suitcases full of Playbills! Nevertheless, I had a blast. I went home and joined quite a few Playbill selling and trading Facebook groups. I decided I was going to get serious about selling Playbills, something I always wanted to try!
Of course, we all know what happened next. The COVID-19 pandemic hit and everyone's world turned upside down. Theatres were (and still are) closed indefinitely. We started hoarding Clorox wipes and hand sanitizer instead of collectibles. Friends and colleagues were furloughed or lost their jobs entirely. I myself was put (and as of the publishing of this post am still) on a reduced work week. Normal life as we knew it was obliterated as we grappled with the new normal.
Over the summer I started clearing out old clothes, shoes, and toys to donate to the local thrift store or sell on Facebook Marketplace. One late night as I was going through my belongings, I had a realization: what better time to try and make some extra cash than during a pandemic and subsequent economic crisis?! Thanks to COVID I've been home a lot more and I finally had the time to get organized to start selling my Playbills! I stayed up until about 1am that night pulling the shoeboxes full of Playbills out from under my bed and alphabetizing them. The next night, I stayed up late again creating an Excel document cataloguing each one and determining which I'd be interesting in selling. When all was said and done, over 300 Playbills were examined and catalogued.
All that was left to do was to actually start selling. I made the decision to start small and stick to Facebook at first; I wasn't keen on paying seller fees on eBay when I didn't even know if I would make a sale. Within 24 hours of my first listing, I had sold eight Playbills to five buyers across the United States. A couple days later, I scored my first international sale. Within a couple weeks, I opened up an Instagram shop (SHAMELESS PLUG! Go give me a follow! My handle is @hillsplaybills), and the orders kept coming in. These are tough times in which we're living, and this was the type of escapism I desperately needed.
As of the publish date of this post, I have been actively selling Playbills for almost six months. I lovingly call it my "side hustle." One thing that surprised me as I began navigating this online adventure was the wonderful community of both buyers and sellers I found. I have bonded with so many Playbill collectors who are kind, enthusiastic, and incredibly supportive of each other. You'd think when we're all trying to sell our inventory on the same platform that there'd be tough competition, but there is so much love that I never expected. When one seller announces a sale, all the other sellers share that sale on their pages, encouraging their followers to go take advantage of the sale. I learned that it was commonplace to ask questions and advice of more experienced sellers; everyone is more than happy to help out! There are group chats, giveaways, surprise contests, games, and Secret Santas. Sellers work swiftly to warn others of identified and proven scammers; there is even a Facebook group and Instagram account solely dedicated to identifying Playbill scammers on all platforms. In October when one particularly nasty scammer left eight reputable sellers with over $800 lost between them, the rest of the community pulled together to promote the affected accounts.
Through my listings, I have interacted with Broadway fans of all ages from all over the world. In a time when we are unable to turn to live theatre as an escape, it's been nice to have an outlet to shamelessly geek out a little bit. I was warmly welcomed into this community and it has made this experience all the more fun.
I am proud to have self-started a side hustle. I am thrilled to have found this community. I am proud of myself for finding the motivation and drive to sell Playbills when the world seems to be falling apart around me. The community is far from perfect; the occasional scammer shows up from time to time and I sometimes get frustrated when a sale falls through, but at the end of the day I'm making some extra money from a longtime hobby, and that's a pretty exciting thing.
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