I’m sorry if it seems I crapping all over you and your dad but I absolutely hate this old chestnut (though not as much as I hate ‘you get what you pay for’). Has this saying ever helped anyone value an item? Most things have established value ranges. It may change a bit for a different area (big city vs small town) or sale venue (gallery vs auction vs yard sale) or different characteristics (the red ones are worth more than the brown ones) but there’s almost always an established history of comparables for collectables. Just because you or I don’t know the going rate for a given ray gun doesn’t mean there isn’t one.
[smug]It’s worth as much as someone is will to pay for it.[/smug]
[curious] Ok, how much is that?[/c]
[smg]Oh, I don’t know, I only recite sayings.[/smg]
To expand on what @jnglmassiv said the other problem in the context of this thread is your inclusion of the word “today”. @DocCathode does not - I assume - need to sell “today”. So yes it’s worth what someone will pay for it, but you need to check the market to see what over a period of time people have been willing to pay, and make sure you are reaching those people.
Something that people usually pay $100 for is not - in any useful sense - worth $1 because that’s all the one guy who saw your ad today will pay for it.
I also suggested checking auction prices to see what something similar has sold for recently. That should give him a good idea of what it’s “worth” because that’s what someone actually paid for it. It doesn’t mean that’s what he can sell if for until he goes out and tries to sell it. He may find it’s worth MORE than it has sold for in the past, or it may be worth LESS depending on the buyers at that time. In other words, it’s “worth” what someone is willing to pay for it when he finally tries to sell it. Everything else is speculation based primarily on what it sold for in the past.
Yes, if only one guy sees it. On a site like eBay, over the week or two the listing occurs, assuming you have listed it properly, it will be thousands if not more.
And I did suggest checking eBay completed listing where sales have been completed to find out some idea of what the toy guns have sold for. And that will be FMV for a toy gun in that condition.
Thousands of which may not be interested in that item at that time. You are assuming the numbers are such that you are always safe to assume that over the life of the auction of an item that extremely few people may be interested in bidding on at that time, those people will see it and bid.
That is not an unreasonable assumption but nor is it definitely safe.
Just a suggestion, post the photos on r/whatisthisthing? They should be able to tell you exactly what you have and often supply a link to a listing of a professional auction house that has/had the item up for sale. It’s amazing what gets identified in just a few hours.
A little off topic, but I’m curious:how did these guns work?
What did they do, when 1930’s kids played with them.?
I thought that in the comic strip, Buck Rogers’ guns shot futuristic,imaginary death rays, (wasn’t this before lasers had been invented?)
What did these toys shoot?
If it was plain ol’ lead bullets like a cowboy’s 6-shooter, that seems kinda dull and boring.
“There were 3 issues of this ray gun; the first in 1934 is at the bottom {the one ‘in the white’} and is like the one used in the movie serials. The handle cocks the gun and it makes a ‘pop.’ The copper plated one is 1935 and is called the Disintegrator; pull the trigger and it pops and the window flashes like a cigarette lighter. The gold painted one is after the war, 1945 and is called the Atomic Pistol.”