John,

>I've built a bit of a pottery collection in the UK and New Zealand, buying from live auctions in the US and the UK and from Ebay.

Same for me with books and camera equipment.

>And people often pay peanuts for filthy old trash out of barns and make an easy $500 profit or even more by cleaning it up (I saw one console listed at $3000; he bought it as part of a load of junk for $150).

I once bought 30 boxes of books from the back room of a junk dealer, who had bought out the abandoned contents of a self-storage unit to get the piano inside. The $100 I paid for the batch turned into over $1,500 eventually, plus lots of great books to keep.

Unfortunately, some of the ones that weren't collectible or sellable stayed in my basement until we recently sold the house. I just carted away the last of them last weekend (after buying more to take their place). :-)

>For about $200 you can buy the encyclopedias and quickly get good at recognising pottery.

Yes, if you know what to look for, you can do quite well. The seven years I spent doing computer work for a collectible book store gave me quite an education on the subject of identifying first editions.

Actually, last Saturday, I thought I had found a first edition of Stephen King's "The Shining." Everything looked right, so I paid the 10 cents for it, but found later that the special code in the inside margin of p447 should have been R49 to be a true first -- mine had S14, indicating a later printing.

>If the worst came to the worst, I'm absolutely certain I could easily make $100K a year spending a few hours per day at my desk buying and selling antique pottery between Europe and the US. It should last for another few years before the markets internationalise.

You'd better strike while the iron is hot. (Is that a blacksmith's slogan, BTW? - I just realized that I don't know the origin of the saying).

>If you are interested, I can point you to items currently on ebay that are going to make at least 100% profit for a buyer who recognises what it actually is and knows where to onsell it.

I'll leave that to you, to start your own race to a million. I'm staying in with the domain knowledge I already have.