It's almost five years now since I began tearing up old books and magazines and selling their separate pages on eBay – and making very good profits! In fact those separate pages can fetch much higher prices than I might make selling the complete book on eBay, for reasons I'll tell you about now.

The main reason is that many buyers exist, on eBay and elsewhere, for pictures or articles, maps or drawings, how-to guides and advertisements, and so many other products from vintage books and magazines. Some items are for research purposes, some just to read, others are for decorative purposes which framed or unframed look far nicer than any modern day poster or print.

We're talking very early publications here, not recent ones, most profitable of all being heavily illustrated books and magazines from Victorian times which can be quite rare today and their contents worth a premium over those from modern day publications.

Advertisements, for example, were often created by highly collectable artists and printed on thick paper, unlike their modern day photographic counterparts on thinner paper and available in their hundreds or thousands. Because magazines in particular were, still are, created to be read and usually thrown away soon afterwards it's unlikely many from Victorian times remain in good condition today. Pages from publications that have survived the years unscathed can fetch high prices on eBay, sometimes much more than the book from which they came, mainly because few end users know how or where to find those original publications containing their particular favourite pages. So they will pay hefty prices to purchase loose pages in preference to spending hour or days, weeks or even years locating their original publications.

That makes this idea one of the very best and most profitable arbitrage opportunities available today, especially for buyers at book auctions and boot sales, also on eBay, who hunt out books containing highly collectible pages to remove and resell on eBay.

A major benefit of this business is that most popular items from old books and magazines can attract double or higher bidder numbers and culminate in plentiful Second Chance Offers for every eBay listing. So, once you know what titles to look for, namely those fetching the highest prices per page on eBay, all you do is search on and off the Internet and replenish your stock as often as possible.

These tips will help you grow a stock of books and magazines to literally tear apart and sell their pages on eBay:

* Look at other sellers' high price listings for items extracted from early books and magazines and make a note of any titles mentioned by sellers which you then add to your ‘wanted' lists with on and offline book sellers. It goes without saying you should not give product sources in your own listings for fear of passing your secrets and sharing your market with other sellers.

* If sellers give titles of prints or pages or even dates and artists' names, but not actual publication titles, then try searching Google images for those pages. For a print by George Studdy, for example, creator of Bonzo Dog, and a print entitled ‘Ball Boy', you might search Google images for ‘Studdy + Bonzo + Ball + Boy' where you'll almost certainly discover the print was published in several different publications which you can then search for via online auction databases or add to your ‘wanted' lists with on and offline book sellers.

That's just two tips, but very important ones, and they'll help you grow a stock of publications which you can buy for a few dollars apiece and break into ten, twenty, or many more pages all potentially worth at least as much as the book or magazine from which they came.