RECESSION-BUSTING: Strapped for cash? Look in the mirror: you'd be surprised what you can get for a lock of hair, a gold tooth, your nationality or an embarrassing episode from your past, discovers Michael Freeman
BACK AT THE beginning of the boom, the possibilities seemed limitless. Like a conquering explorer, Ireland climbed the rocky crag of economic growth and surveyed the lush, verdant plateaux of easy credit. It was ours, all ours. And we plundered it. “Three-decker garage conversion with sauna room!” we cried, or, “Champagne breakfast, anyone?” gleefully putting it on the house as bank managers – jolly, smiling Santa figures – merrily converted large tranches of our seemingly limitless equity into hard cash.
Now, however, the housing bubble has burst. And all we’re left with is an embarrassing damp patch on our national trousers. But we all have lives to live, and it’s widely acknowledged that consumer spending is the best way out of recession. So how, in these difficult times, might you maintain the lifestyle that 10 years in economic la-la-land has led you to believe you deserve?
Well, your house may be worthless, your bank account an icy void, and your HR manager might have taken to avoiding your eyes in the corridor. But you still have your own sweet self. Think of it this way: you possess an as-yet-untapped stash of personal equity – which, with the right information, can be easily converted into fresh, crisp banknotes. Here is a comprehensive guide to cashing yourself in.
1. Your Stuff
First off, you need to trim your worldly goods. Look around you. Do you really need all this stuff? When was the last time you used a foot spa? Or employed a specialised device to slice an egg? Or enjoyed the fact that your desk lamp is shaped like Betty Boop?
People have been pawning their possessions to keep up appearances ever since the first bewigged aristocrat found that rental income from the peasantry wasn’t equal to the demands of his decadent lifestyle. The difference these days is this is no longer restricted to items of value. Your cast-offs are a goldmine.
Carey Maguire is the PR manager at eBay.ie. “A lot of people think that they don’t have things to sell,” she says. “But they absolutely do. One man’s tat is another man’s treasure.” Publicity campaigns have been staged by eBay to encourage hard-up householders to look at their possessions with a cold, appraising eye. “The recession is biting really hard in Ireland at the moment. Everything counts right now. And this is a real opportunity for people to actually make some money.”
What sort of things might fly off the average householder’s shelf? “Most houses have a goldmine of saleable items,” she says. “We advise that people start off with something small, just to get into the swing of it. I’d suggest something like a CD, a DVD, or a book.” Then you can work up to larger, garage-calibre junk: “Things like gym equipment and DIY tools are good sellers.” It can even, she suggests, be something of sentimental value. “Watches and jewellery are huge on the site.”
So, on a day-to-day level, how much money could you expect to earn for your unwanted possessions? “It depends from seller to seller,” says Maguire. “Some people are making a hefty amount of cash, and others are just making a tidy piece to add to their weekly wage. But research has found that 24,000 Irish households are earning €10 a week.”
Not exactly a springboard to the K Club, then. “It might not seem like a huge amount,” she concedes. “But I think in this recession, everything counts. It’s people’s lunch for a couple of days, it’s a meal, or whatever.” The message: even the most intrinsically worthless second-hand clutter can be transformed into a delicious focaccia sandwich. Get selling.
2. Your Hair
This is really one for the ladies (and unreconstructed devotees of heavy metal). It might seem surprising; it might, in fact, seem like something out of a particularly melodramatic Dickens novel; but there are people who will pay you for your hair.
“The buyers predominantly tend to be from the wig and extensions business,” says Jacalyn Elise, founder of website TheHairTrader.com. “There’s also a small thing with antique dolls, as far as that goes.”
But hold on. The actual business of hair trading seems to be almost disappointingly mundane. “The site is a location online where buyers and sellers can connect for the purpose of buying and selling hair,” says Elise. “For your listing, you give a full description – the more detailed the better. You have to list the length of the hair, the thickness, the volume, the condition of the hair. Then you can upload images.”
Prospective buyers can then e-mail you with offers on your lustrous locks. But wig-makers, she warns, are a fussy bunch
. “It’s quite helpful if you mention your regime with your hair – your daily haircare, your diet, that type of thing. Then the buyers know that you’re taking good care of it.”
What colour sells best? “It’s supply and demand. Sometimes we’ll see red selling for a bit, and then all of a sudden black. It goes all over the place. It just depends on the buyers’ needs at a specific time.” Hair, like mortgage-derived securities, is subject to the whim of the markets.
And it can come from anywhere. “Our predominant market is the US, but we have several postings in Italy, several in the UK. I’ve seen a decent amount in Ireland, Poland, in South America, China and so forth. It goes all over.” Once a seller has got an offer, they go to the barber’s for the chop, package the results up, and send them to the buyer, wherever they might be. “We advise people to check the customs laws,” Elise says.
What kind of money are we talking here? “On my site, hair tends to sell for $150 and up. Of course it goes up depending on the length, the volume of hair and of course the condition. We’ve had hair sell for more than $2,000 .” The main thing that determines the price is the length, she says. The site’s record sale is $2,600 (€1,910) – for 37 inches of dark blonde hair.
What’s more, the hair market has been boosted by the recession. “We have seen a surge in postings due to our current economic condition,” says Elise. “We’ve had many more people enquiring about ways to earn extra money and so forth.” And, if imagining your hair flowing from the head of a glassy-eyed antique doll doesn’t spur you on, I don’t know what will.
3. Your Humorous Life Episode
Has your canary ever rescued you from an active volcano? Do you have a birthmark in the shape of Daniel O'Donnell? Everyone, they say, has a story inside them – a bit like the extra-terrestrial larva in Alien. And if that includes you, this could be your lucky day. Lisa Murray is the spokesperson for Famous Features, an agency that specialises in transforming everyday, oddball anecdotes into cold, hard cash.
“Whether they recognise it or not, most people do have a story they can capitalise on,” says Murray. “A lot of people are looking to make a little extra money at the moment, and going in a magazine is absolutely perfect. It’s easy, not very time-consuming . . . It’s a great way to make money.”
Famous Features are story-spotters. They will take your life’s narrative and package it in such a way that the my-true-story magazines may be clambering over each other just to pay you for it. So what sorts of things sell? “Basically, there are just endless variations,” she says. “Interesting relationship stories – quirky relationships or just heartfelt stories of how people got together with their partner. Unusual health complaints. Also just really stupid, quirky stories. So if a pet saved your life . . . that’s very positive and uplifting.”
The trade-off here, of course, is that you’re looking at ending up as an object of ghoulish curiosity or (at best) ridicule. Murray suggests, for example, that people might have lost a lot of weight, in which case, “It’s essential that they have really good ‘before’ pics of them looking . . . not very glamorous. At their biggest. So we can contrast it with the makeover shot.” Really, it’s a straight-up swap: pride for cash.
But let’s say self-esteem is no obstacle – just how much money might you make from your crooner-shaped port-wine-stain? “Stories can sell for anything from £100 , up to absolutely thousands if someone’s got an amazing scoop,” she says. And what are the biggest earners? “The stories that go for thousands of pounds usually either have a celebrity angle, or something amazingly extraordinary,” she says. “Like a pregnant man or something like that.” Hmm. Next!
4. Your Appearance
Let's face it. When it comes to physical perfection, you may not be all that. Chances are that you're not accustomed to eliciting inadvertent gasps of admiration in the gym changing rooms, or having people in the street stop and gawp at your cheekbones. But fear not. If The Irish Timesreadership statistics are anything to go by, you are likely to be a person. And even that, my dumpy little friend, could be your passport to a handy nixer.
"About 90 per cent of the roles that we provide would be your everyday background roles," says Derek Quinn, director of extra casting website Movieextras.ie. "If you look at McCoy's pub in Fair City, it's just a group of average people in the background. Or if you walk down Grafton Street, say, you'll see a total variety of people. And that's what we try to represent. The whole idea with the extras is that you don't stand out too much."
The road to stardom as Muddy Villager No 3 starts with a single step: registering on the site and creating a profile for casting directors to view. Then, you simply sit back and wait for the offers to roll in. What form might the work take? “Well, it could be a big variety,” says Quinn. “Recently, we had 200 people running around Dublin in tight-fitting red Lycra outfits. They had to run up Grafton Street shouting ‘It’s coming! It’s coming! It’s coming!’”
Sounds great. So what qualities might it be handy for an extra to have? “The main thing is just being available,” Quinn says, pitching his whole enterprise neatly to victims of the recession. “But another important thing is just being up for a laugh. We’d one guy who had to wear a nappy on the set of Podge and Rodge. So if you don’t mind being ridiculed, it certainly helps.”
Is there any chance that you might be valued for something other than your forbearance of ritual humiliation? “The odd time you’d get a specific requirement for a role,” he says. “At the moment, for example, I’m looking for a Chinese man who has a Dublin accent. Also for a Hungarian musician. You just never know what’s going to come up.” Quinn once had to locate a hand model with four fingers.
And what’s the money like? “Generally, it ranges from about €80 up to about €150 or so for a day’s work,” he says. “But we sent seven people along to audition for a TV advert the other day where, if they were successful, they’d get paid €3,600 each.”
5. Your Teeth
“America is in the midst of a NEW GOLD RUSH,” screams the website sellyourgoldteeth.com. What it seems to be suggesting – on a gold background beneath a picture of some diamond-encrusted golden gnashers – is that your most valuable assets might be in your mouth. “Now, more than ever, gold is the most valuable and secure asset,” the text continues. “Selling your gold teeth and crowns is an excellent way to bring in extra.”
The site’s focus is “grills” – the removable, bejewelled tooth caps favoured by hip-hop fans. (The rationale? “I have to have a nice mouth if I’m going to say nice words,” says grill-sporting rapper Samraw.) It’s probably fair to say that these aren’t as common in Ireland as they might be in, say, Atlanta, Georgia. But Sell Your Gold Teeth does make concessions to the more conservative oral-jewellery wearer. “There are two types of gold teeth: removable teeth (caps, grills) and gold dental crowns,” says the website. “Both are sellable and very valuable.”
So, how much could you make by selling off a lifetime’s shiny fillings? A call to the website’s owners, Porcello Estate Buyers, meets with scepticism. “I wish I could help you right now,” says the manager, unconvincingly, “but I can’t discuss our buying practices.”
Time for further inquiries. Niall Marren, of Galway-based gold buyers ForgottenGold.com, is initially a little puzzled by my question. “Well, our business is recycling old gold jewellery,” he says. “Probably the one thing that has never come across our desk is dental gold.”
But he can help me out. “You wouldn’t put less than 18-carat in dental gold, because the alloys would cause problems. And for 18-carat gold, your recycle value is somewhere north of €10 per gram.” How much is a gram? “A gram is quite tiny – your Malteser will weigh three or four grams.”
He doesn’t know what a filling might weigh in at. But for gold in general, he says, business is good. “This is a good time to sell gold. Prices are about four times what they were 10 years ago.” Which is to say, your mouth has quadrupled in value since 1999! Now that’s an investment.
6. Your Nationality
Ever since Michael Flatley first tippy-tapped his way across the Point Theatre stage – an act which, scholars acknowledge, single-handedly rocketed the nation into 15 years of unequalled prosperity – Irishness has been selling and selling. Stag parties flock to christen Dublin’s streets with their gastric juices. Towns in remote provinces of Africa install Irish-themed superpubs. Whole cities dye their rivers green in fealty.
Being based on the Emerald Isle, then, puts you in pole position to ruthlessly capitalise on this diasporan sentimentality. To take just one example: Joannes Berkery, from Tipperary, runs a company with her partner, John, that has succeeded for 13 years by marketing what is – and let’s be honest here – basically, dirt.
“We went to the US in the mid-80s,” says the co-founder of Irish Turf Peat Incense. They brought some raw turf with them to remind them of the Auld Sod. “But there are very few fireplaces in America, certainly in the apartments we were in. So we’d be there with cigarette lighters, trying to get the smell going.”
This bizarre pastime, however, led to an idea. "We came back in 1990. And towards the end of our stay, somebody said 'God, I'd pay for the smell of this turf'. And I looked at John, and John looked at me, and I said 'If you can make it, I'll sell it.' We launched it on The Late Late Showin 1996, with Gay Byrne. And we were in business straight away."
The incense, which comes in the form of a tiny turf block, is calculated to dew the eye of any nostalgic ex-pat. “It’s in a little cottage box. And there’s a stone burner that looks like a little slate hearth.” When you burn a piece, says Berkery, “you can see people dropping into their memories. It’s almost uncanny.”
And people all over the world are falling over themselves to buy the stuff. “The US makes up about 50 per cent of our market,” she says. “We sell a lot to Germany. We sell it to a priest in Boston for Irish funerals. There’s a leper colony in South Africa where there are nuns, and every Christmas they get some turf incense.”
Berkery says that this year her sales are up, recession or no. And if selling the mud that others scrape off their boots doesn’t seem simple enough, we might also remember the case of Galway man Tom O’Connor, who featured on the radio in 2006 promoting his new business idea: Pure Irish Air.
The invisible gas, which Tom would collect from a county of your choice, and which came neatly packaged in a souvenir jar, retailed at €9.99 a pop.
O’Connor wasn’t responding to interview requests, so we can only assume that, having made millions, he’s now sitting on a beach in Guadeloupe enjoying a frozen daiquiri.
Recession, pah!. What are you waiting for?
