I appreciate your friendly message. We at Oldcarpet.com try to be a knowledge warehouse for Persian Rugs and Carpets in near future. The information regarding rugs, origin, visage, quality, texture, foundation, number of knots and price are just starting points. In near future, we will be adding new interesting subject to Oldcarpet.com.
Bobby, Your question about buying a rug for $500 and resell it for $2500 is doable. There are many good deals in online auctions such as Ebay. You should be smart and do your homework before bid on any items. Make sure, you check the seller feedback and the type items that he or she had been sold. Make sure, you know what are you buying and if you do have enough time check your local rug dealers for similar rugs to get good understanding of the price differences. I bet you get amazed.
Although the price in local dealers is higher, but some they do have very high quality rugs that barely you see on Ebay. Local dealers are like community colleges go there are look and touch the rugs and get feeling about texture (missing in internet) for free. We do have price page in our site that allows you to have better understating of the current price of rugs per square feet on Ebay and other online Auctions sites.
Regarding buying a rug at wholesale price? As far as I know none of the rug dealers go to ebay and start buying huge number of rugs as wholesale price. If you are looking to buy one or two pieces then you can find very good bargain price sometimes cheaper than wholesale price!
I hope I answer your question.
Thank You
Afshin Nejad