Is there a map?

Making a six figure income and working 50-60 hours a week seemed like where I would sit for the rest of my life.  In my 40's, I was the VP of Sales at a technology company and started to notice some strange accounting and business practices happening at our corporate headquarters.  When these discrepancies were questioned I was accused of "hostile backtalk" and suddenly found myself questioning my 8 year investment in this company.  I forged ahead for a couple of months and witnessed mass employee exodus and continued hostility from the one guy above me and his "investors".  I was offered a "package" of sorts and It was mutually decided that it was time for me to go.  It was time to reinvent myself.

The sensible core of me networked and sent out resumes and scoured job boards, headhunters and existing industry contacts.  Admittedly, the effort was a halfhearted attempt because I really wanted to buy and sell other people crap and turn a profit.  I always had the "sickness" (more on that later).  I wanted to wear shorts, spend time with my wife and kids and be in 100% control of my income.  So, together with my wife we jumped off the cliff to see if we could fly.  My wife Amanda, a licensed auctioneer with a background in estate liquidation gleefully was my partner in business, life and thankfully also had the "sickness".

We owned and operated a cool little place called GC5 Vintage & Gifts, we specialized in vintage items from the 1950's and 1960's.  We would sell some items on ebay but mostly they would be offered for sale in our retail store.  We would buy the contents of homes and also buy at auctions and sell at the store.  Some folks would want us to buy the contents of the home but it was just too much stuff to pack up and move, so we started doing onsite Estate Sales.  We made more money on that estate sale that we made at the store in 6 months.  Don't get me wrong, retail is fun, it becomes a second home, it was more fun than profitable and we enjoyed it.  Here is what we found to be the #1 problem, a great sales weekend resulted in a busy week of hunting down merchandise to fill the holes.  Buy a table for $100.00, sell it for $200.00, dance, celebrate and then realize you need to get another table for the spot on the sales floor, so you take the 100.00 profit and search for a table, you find your table and it is 60.00, so your profit is now 40.00, but you spend 1/2 a day getting it and had to drive to get it, so at the end of the day you made 1.87.  We realized that the best way to make money with a retail store was to close it and have an auction and not replace the merchandise. So that is what we did.  We decided to focus on ebay and estate sales and evolved GC5 Vintage into GC5 Estate Services.

Oh yeah, the "sickness", this does not relate to health at all.  The sickness is when you cannot look at something without thinking about who will give you dollars for it.  It has nothing to do with hoarding, because someone with the sickness does not want to keep it for more than 10 minutes, buy it, and make a few dollars on it fast.  When it accumulates, get rid of it.  This is a very broad GC5 interpretation of "the sickness".

So if you are interested in catching the sickness or have the sickness and want to share your "ailments", come back, visit and Enjoy!