I’m always the first to be pessimistic when somebody tells me their collectible is worth a bunch of $$$ and prefer the adage “It’s only worth what someone’s willing to pay you for it.”
But I got a few items from my dad that I though would be worth more than what I found I could get for them.
I always heard how much old baseball cards were worth. So my dad gives me a box of them from his childhood. 1948 Bowman series. I looked through them to see if any names stood out. Yogi Berra, Stan Musial, Warren Spahn, Phil Rizzuto. All rookie cards of hall-of-famers. I thought I had struck it rich. So I look into what they might be worth. What a letdown. In non-mint condition I could maybe fetch $100 a card for the big names. Whoopie! I can pay my phone bill for April.
I also got recently two Confederate States of America $20 bills. They are from 1864. Almost 150 years-old. “Wow” I thought “I’ll be conservative this time and hope to get maybe a couple hundred bucks for the two of them.” Look em up on e-bay to see what they’re getting for them. Multiple hits for the same thing with $40 buy-it-now prices. Lame.
Lastly I got a stack of dad’s old comic books from the 40s. True Crime and Disney comics mostly. Let a couple of local dealers look at them. One guy picked out the 3 he deemed most valuable and offered $70 for the three. I passed.
So, any disappointing old stuff you’ve run across?
Being in the coin business for a living these last 35-40 years, I’m aware that age has nothing to do with value. But certainly the average person tends to equate them. When someone comes in with a Roman bronze coin the size of a dime, but decently struck, they’re so disappointed when I tell them it’s worth $5-10. Things are worth money because they’re scarce or rare, not because of age.
When I was in college in Richmond VA in 1963, one Sat. morning I went to a coin store downtown where I knew the owner. He told me that he was gonna close and lock the door, but I was welcome to stay since he knew me. A short while later, a gentleman came in the back door with stacks—stacks of sheets(four notes per sheet) of 1864 Confederate bills, uncut. They were from an attic and I’d conservatively say he had a thousand sheets. At that time, I’d estimate, they brought $5/sheet. By 1974 or so, Confederate $20 notes from 1964 were selling for about $5. each.
Not really inherited, but it was own collection I have since lost. Sad story about the baseball cards my brother & I collected religiously one year. It was the 1987 Topps baseball cards with a wood-grain pattern. We carefully cataloged and preserved them in plastic sheets. We got the entire set (and enough extras for a third set, probably). If only Mom hadn’t thrown away those 20-year-old cards, we’d be zillionaires right now.
Or not.
eBay has the complete set of 792 cards offered for $8.95
So much for that money-making scheme.
There were 17 cards in a pack for 40 cents each. 792 divided by 17 equals 46 packs minimum to get the whole set (assuming no duplicates).
Those 46 packs from 7-Eleven would’ve cost us $18.40 in 1987.
Your main problem is you picked the wrong time to sell. The market for old sports cards and comic books has been in freefall since the mid 90’s and it’s just not because they’ve fallen temporarily out of fashion as investments. Demographics appears to be going against both hobbies since most collectors are older than 30 and nobody below that age seems interested in picking up card and comic book collecting. Thus, there will soon be nobody to sell or pass on old collections to.
My father in law collects and deals ancient coins. My kids will show up in show and tell with a coin struck before Christ was born. We’ve had to write notes to the teachers saying “yes, this coin is that old - no it isn’t worth much - maybe $5.”
Ancient coins are apparently often sold in lots - he’ll buy a lot of twenty for the one coin in the lot he thinks he can eventually resell for more than the entire lot - and end up with nineteen coins worth almost nothing - that he lots up and sells to someone else who thinks there might be one coin in there worth more than the entire lot…
My brother, my cousin and I each inherited a dozen or so pieces of Mary Gregory glassware. Some of the pieces are beautiful. All of them are essentially worthless.
I have come to the conclusion that something is only “worth X amount $” if you have someone willing to give you that amount. I’m a bit tired of people bitching about selling stuff on ebay and getting less than they “thought” it was worth.
I think generally, material stuff is worth less now. Everybody has so *much *stuff. For people who grew upbefore the sixties, getting and owning any material posession, exclusively to themself, was a big deal. Now, not so much.
What is worth a lot now is time, money, and time spent on you by any highly trained professional, whetether a doctor, lawyer, tax advisor, etcetara. Also, anything (a thing, zervce or emotion) that bestowes status. That could be a Rolex watch, but it could also be having donated a lot of money to a charity, an invite to an exclusive place, etcetara. In a way, status has grown less materialistic, now that having materialistic posessions has gotten too easy and too common.
What can be tough is watching the Antiques Roadshow, where they have filtered through THOUSANDS of folks who approach each table to find the few that make the final cut of the episode. It can be easy to think some aunt’s quirky something-or-other is worth thousands - isn’t everybody’s? That’s what you see, right? Oy.
My parents were antique dealers so I have been “in the life” ever since I can remember. I can’t think of how many collections I have helped build and sell - that’d how they (Mom and Dad) worked: they’s take an interest in something they found cool AND undervalued, build up a collection until the values caught up and it wasn’t as fun and easy to find good deals, then sell off the collection except maybe for a few choices pieces (he says, glancing over at the 150-year-old Japanese woodblock print in his office that he forbade them to sell ;)) and then they’d re-load and start again.
999 times out of 1,000 the stuff that looks worthless IS worthless and the stuff that you think might be valuable HAS value, but very, very little. Every area of collectibility has its little hierarchy of scarcity and value - and the main reason stuff gets to the top of that pyramid is because there are so few examples. So you can increase the likelihood that the scarce stuff will cross your path if you get yourself out there, networking with other collectors, dealers, etc. But if you are just a random person and something lands in your lap? Well, if it turns out to have real value, either your friend/relative knew *exactly *what they were doing or you got very, very lucky…
I have several comic books that were worth a few hundred dollars each back in the late 80s, and a full collection that added up to a few thousand easily. After the comic trading market tanked, I don’t have a single issue worth more than $20, and my collection as a whole is barely worth the original cover prices.
From a Brian Regan bit about the Antiques Roadshow:
*
Well I found this old spatula in the back of my kitchen drawer, so you know I thought it might be from . . . Babylon.
Uh huh. Well, do you see on the handle here where it says, “K-mart”? Would it surprise you to learn that this is absolutely worthless?
. . . . . . Nah.
*
Seems to me that that program (the American version of it anyway) used to show the occasional dud item, but when I’ve watched it recently that isn’t so. All the items end up being treasures. Perhaps it was finally thought too cruel — or just bad television — to show people’s hearts being broken when they brought in their equivalent of an old spatula.
She’s still alive and well but my mother gave me an old 1935 Philco Model 18b radio she used to have in her attic. It seems like it should be worth more but working cathedral radios from that era can be had for $100-150 on eBay. The power cord on this one is ripped off and the speaker membranes are dry and broken so I can’t check if the tubes work. By the time I sent it to someone for restoration, I’d probably be selling it at a loss.
On the other hand, I do want to restore it just because I think it’d be cool to have a working radio from that time but the wife thinks it’s a stupid idea.
Yes. Had quite a few. I think you’ll be very disappointed when you see it. The diameter is W-A-Y less the the original. Rather thick to make up for it.
