Behind the Scenes with Crazy Lamp Lady: A Candid Discussion with a Youtube Influencer

Jocelyn Elizabeth, known as the Crazy Lamp Lady, was struggling financially after the birth of her son. One weekend, her father brought home an old and grubby-looking lamp.

Jocelyn was surprised to discover his five-dollar investment was worth seventy dollars on eBay.

This moment sparked the idea of thrifting for a profit with Jocelyn-which would resonate for years to come.

In the years to follow, her passion for discovering and reselling undervalued items has evolved beyond lamps. The Crazy Lamp Lady now runs a successful online business, selling to buyers across the globe.

In addition to buying for resale, Jocelyn produces daily video content and shares her shopping adventures on Facebook and YouTube.

With the camera at her side, the Crazy Lamp Lady invites viewers to join her in the search for treasures. She regularly interacts with her audience, reading their comments and taking their feedback to heart.

Her family calls it her “superpower”-to see value in things other people overlook. She is often accompanied in her videos by friends, her boyfriend, or her kids.

Crazy Lamp Lady explores thrift stores, antique shops, and flea markets, searching for treasures. She lists her finds in her eBay shop or at whatnot shows.

When she is not aggressively hunting for forgotten treasures and vintage valuables, The Crazy Lamp Lady enjoys metal detecting and spending time with her family.

Why do you call yourself the Crazy Lamp Lady? How did that even come about?

I’ve been picking for about twelve years. I had a metal-detecting channel before I started filming my thrifting. When it started to get cold and I could no longer film metal detecting, I relied on taking my viewer’s thrifting, and my viewers seemed to enjoy the videos.

The positive reaction to the thrifting videos gave me the idea to start a second channel that would be all about thrifting.

I talked with my friend, Brandon, who currently edits my sold videos on Youtube and Facebook. I told him that I considered starting another channel but didn’t know what to call it.

At the time, I was buying and selling a lot of lamps. This was about five years ago-before shipping went through the roof.

He said, “What about Crazy Lamp Lady? It’s like Crazy Cat Lady, but Crazy Lamp Lady.” And I said, “You know what? I like that. It’s got a ring to it. Let’s do it.” And that is how the Crazy Lamp Lady came about.

Where did you start, and where should someone start if they wanted to get into this?

I’ll never forget my first experience with carnival glass. That was my first really exciting experience. I went to a yard sale, and a carnival glass bonbon dish caught my eye because it was ruby red and not your typical marigold. It was behind the table with the cash box and sitting on top of a refrigerator.

I asked them if it was for sale, and they said yes. I ended up paying $5. After a little research, I found out it was worth $300-and that’s what it sold for. That sparked my interest in buying and selling glass.

Before finding that carnival glass bowl, I paid to learn a lot-meaning I bought something thinking it was worth money and found out it wasn’t worth much at all. I think this is the most important lesson.

Everyone pays to learn. You pay for your education in picking. The carnival glass bonbon was such a positive lesson. They aren’t all that way. Fortunately, the longer you go, the fewer lessons you have to learn.

What would you say your best flip was?

I think one of the most exciting ones that really sticks out in my head-and I’ve talked about this before when people have asked-is the Hickam Field restaurant ware teapot.

It had been sitting around forever, and I didn’t think anything of it. I finally decided to list it. I listed it right at the anniversary of Pearl Harbor without even realizing the timing.

I started the auction at $4, and at the last minute, it just started going off like crazy. Cha-ching, Cha-ching. It sold for $670. I’ve had things sell for a lot of money, but I also invested more in them.

What’s one of the craziest interactions you’ve had with a buyer?

I sold a double egg cup. That means one side is smaller, and the other is larger-both sides are intended for eggs. I sold it, and this person wrote back and said, “This is not an egg cup. It’s too big to be an egg cup unless it’s a dinosaur egg cup.” I replied, “It’s a double egg cup. You turn it over.” And their response was, “I’m from England, and I know what an egg cup looks like.

This is not an egg cup.” They insisted that I knew nothing about egg cups, and they wanted to send it back because they were from England and they were experts on egg cups.

You mentioned metal detecting, so how did you get into metal detecting?

Juliette is to blame. We were in the woods at my Uncle Bob’s. It was Fall, and the leaves had just fallen. She was a little, and I thought letting her play with my keys was a good idea.

I think you know where the story is going. After a nice walk through the woods, I looked down and realized she no longer had my keys. So I put out a plea on Facebook, “Somebody with a metal detector, please come and help me.”

This lady showed up, and she had a metal detector. So I started asking her questions about it, “What can you find with this thing? What does it do?” I was curious because I always thought it would be cool.

She told me, “You can find coins and old stuff.” Of course, I like old stuff. So I decided to try metal detecting.

I went online and joined metal-detecting groups on Facebook. I got a Garrett ACE 250. The first few times I went out, I wasn’t really finding a whole lot, but I was having fun. I think that’s what matters.

The first thing I found was a pie tin, and then I found a crowbar. It was great. But then I started to find cool stuff like old coins and buttons.

At the same time, I was taking a college course in public speaking. It was my greatest fear. It took me ten years to get my associate’s degree because I didn’t want to take public speaking.

After ten years, they offered the course online with the option to talk in front of a camera. So I took this course and thought, “Talking in front of a camera isn’t that bad. I can do that.”

That’s when the YouTube channel was born. I started the metal-detecting YouTube channel Relic Recoverist. I grew that to about-I’d say 70,000 or 80,000 subscribers before I started Crazy Lamp Lady.

And then Crazy Lamp Lady just took off. I have to admit, I’ve put Relic Recoverist on the back burner because Crazy Lamp Lady is a full-time job and pays the bills.

Do you miss Relic Recoverist?

I do because I enjoy metal detecting. It’s a fun hobby. You go out into a field with your headphones, and you’re just out there.

Finding something in the thrift store, it’s the same as finding something in a field for me. The problem is I’m more likely to find something in a thrift store than I am in the middle of a giant field, so there’s more reward in thrifting.

What was the craziest thing you found while metal detecting?

When I was metal detecting, I was sponsored by a few companies. Whites Metal Detectors sponsored me, and then I was sponsored by Garrett Metal Detectors.

When I was sponsored by Garrett Metal Detectors, I had the opportunity to travel around the world. I went to Italy, the Netherlands, Canada, and England. I traveled to England a few times.

The one time I was in England, I found a really cool French Teston from the 1500s. That was my favorite find on the entire trip because it was one of the very first milled coins. Before that, they were all hammered.

Do you think any one moment caused your YouTube channel to explode like it did?

I had originally been posting my reselling videos on Relic Recoverist as filler content. But the videos were killing it on views, and I was gaining a ton of subscribers.

I had one video go viral on Relic Recoverist that wasn’t even related to metal detecting. That’s when I decided to start another channel, Crazy Lamp Lady. I started posting a few videos there. I didn’t really take it seriously for a while, but then I had another video take-off on the Crazy Lamp Lady channel.

That was about the same time that Curiosity Inc. started posting their Hoarded House series. I think that what happened was when their videos took off, my videos somehow were in their suggested, and together it boosted my channel.

So I gained about 30,000 subscribers in the first month or two of posting.

You upload every day. How do you do that?

Coffee, and I’ve gotten to a rhythm. I usually shop once or twice a week. It just depends on how well I do and the shops that I go to.

If I strike out, sometimes I have to go on a third day. I’ll plan my trips in a way that I can go to multiple places. When you see me go to Maryland, it’s because I can go to five different Goodwills in one day.

That’s potential to film five videos and source at five different places. When I go to Adamstown, there are about 17 antique malls.

The other days, like Tuesday, I do all my listings for eBay. If I can spend one-day editing, I can get multiple videos edited.

It usually takes me 30 minutes to an hour to edit one video. My whole process is streamlined at this point.

Talking about YouTube and Crazy Lamp Lady, what’s on the horizon?

I felt like we were stuck in the same places, so I really wanted to branch out. We are going to be taking a little monthly trip here and there to explore new places and check out new things because I enjoy going to new antique malls and seeing what they offer-even new Goodwills.

What are some of the biggest challenges that you face as a reseller?

I think one of the biggest challenges is that I have a YouTube channel, and people discount me as a reseller. Most people don’t realize that I have been reselling for 12 years.

I’ve been doing this for a while, and I was making money before I had a YouTube channel; granted, the YouTube channel brought more success, and I went from doing it part-time to doing it full-time.

If you could tell your old self, “You need to look out for this or don’t pick that,” what advice would you have given yourself?

I would tell my old self, “Don’t fall for that, don’t get the collector plates.” And don’t bother with the Hummels. They’re not worth it. You pay to learn, and I learned that lesson.

How do you keep up with the trends and what people want because things come and go? Hummel figurines were popular at one point, but now they’re not. How can you keep up with that?

Even the carnival glass story I told you guys about the bon-bon dish, which was 10 to 12 years ago, it’s not worth that now. Carnival glass price-that was the tail end of when they were going down, but I heard that they’re coming back, although I don’t know if they’ll ever come all the way back.

But one of the ways that I keep up with trends is through eBay sold. It’s a great way to know what the market is doing and see how these things are selling. You can go through and sort highest to lowest on “sold,” and you can learn about the different trends and see what’s selling and what’s not. eBay solds are a really great tool.

What goes into making one of your videos? From start to finish, what exactly do you do?

When I go out to the thrift store or the antique mall, my intro is filmed in my car. I sit there and say, “Hey, so today we are at the Goodwill.” Then we go in, we film. I like to edit as I film. So if I mess up what I’m saying, I restart the clip. I don’t edit on the back end but on the front end. When it comes to editing, I put all the clips in, and then I have less editing to do.

I try to be very careful about how I identify things. So if I say something, I want to double-check it before I put it out there. And, of course, the outro. Really, that’s it.

I use Final Cut Pro to edit. I would say that you don’t really need Final Cut Pro. The reason I wanted Final Cut Pro is because I wanted to be able to blur things if I needed to.

I also wanted to put floating text and be able to move the text around. But iMovie, if you have a Mac, you can do all the functions with iMovie, and it’s free.

How did you learn about glass?

I am in a bunch of Facebook groups dedicated to glass. The Empoli Murano group is one of my favorite groups. They’re always posting pictures of some of the most amazing Murano in that group. When they post it, people comment on who has studied it and who are experts in Murano.

And they’ll talk about who made it and the techniques that were used to make it. They give you all this information about it.

That’s been really valuable to me. Granted, there are people who aren’t experts. But when you’ve been in a group for long enough, you begin to identify the people who are experts, and then you can learn from those people.

Do you have better luck with eBay, Buy It Now, or live auctions for selling?

My situation is different because I’ve cultivated a following for my items, what I buy, and what I sell, and they follow me because we share a passion for art, glass, or pottery. They see what I’m picking up in my videos, and they know I’m going to be offering it for sale. So they follow my eBay and Whatnot or my Buy It Nows. I personally have better luck selling most of my items at auctions. Occasionally, when I have an item that I know is higher-end, I will sell it as a Buy It Now.

For anyone else selling similar items to what I sell, I would always advise them to either sell at Buy It Now or sell at Auction at the least amount that they’re willing to take for that item.

That’s always been my advice. I think we have 54,000 followers on eBay, so every time we list something, they get notified that we’ve listed an art glass vase or a figurine.

That helps us get more sales, and our auctions get more attention that way.

To watch the entire interview video, click here.

Originally published at https://www.vizaca.com on June 18, 2023.