I was pretty certain that the diameter was going to be much smaller. But I am looking forward to seeing the high relief on the sculpture. I ordered one that should get here in June or July. They would have to use a lot more gold to make it regular diameter. I’d go for one the diameter of a silver dollar even if it cost 10k, provided that the tiny ones look good.
I’m REALLY sorry. I wasn’t intending to have ago at anyone in particular and I apologise if it appears I did.
I know someone who put an item on ebay for a starting price of 99c who then chucked a wobbly because the item sold for 99c. He refused to complete the sale because the item was “worth at least $100”. I am still a bit sore over the matter.
Sadly I can say yes to this topic, but it seems more a common problem in the last few years (even before the recession). I can remember a time when eBay was first starting, and you could literally walk into an antique store, buy some random piece of crap, throw it up on eBay, and some dude on the other end of the planet would be in a bidding war for it with five other people. I can remember selling off old lunch boxes and toys from my childhood for way more money then they could possibly be worth. Fast forward to about five years ago when my parents started clearing out a lot of crap from their house. I received a Sumter telephone in perfect shape (or so I thought) that actually worked. I figured I’d get $500 for it easily. Meanwhile, after I listed it, I got all kinds of savvy collectors asking for more photos and next thing I knew, it was a bastardized phone with parts from several other 1800s models and was worth less than $100. Great…
My family has an old Colt revolver from 1870, along with a holster. The gun is not really worth that much ,although it’s in good condition. The holster on the other hand (and especially the buckle on the holster belt) is worth quite a bit…
We had the reverse situation in about 1998: my husband had inherited a box full of Hummels and I researched online to find out what they might be worth. A local antiques dealer bought the lot for about three times what I’d expected. In particular, she was much more willing to pay for slightly damaged pieces than I’d thought.
Thanks. I probably overreacted a bit calling you on it like that; it just felt very pointed at the time.
In 1999, I cleared out my cabinet in an antique store and put the contents on ebay. Items I had had for years sold immediately and in some cases, for five times the amount I had priced them at. Now, buyers are savvy. With the exception of very rare items, collectors know that the same thing will be along again in a few months and the end prices are therefore lower. Three years ago, I started to sell again through another store and it seems things have gone full circle - I sell items quickly and for two to three times the amount I would get for them on ebay. I’ve even bought items on ebay and sold them through the store, something that would have been impossible ten years ago.
I suppose if collecting and making money out of it were easy, every-one would do it but my (very broad) tips would be to pick something that is obviously attractive, not mass-produced, learn everything you can about your chosen item and look for the unusual examples of its type.
It seems like kind of a two-fold problem to me. There’s that and also the glut of material stored away nowadays.
One reason that comic books and baseball cards from the 40s, 50s and 60s were worth so much to begin with is because back then nobody thought they would one day be so valuable. A lot of people didn’t hang on to their collections, and those who did usually didn’t take very good care of them.
Fast forward to the 80s when the price for these collectibles began to skyrocket, and all of sudden everyone’s making a concerted to save their stuff, thinking they might one day be able to make a mint off it. The Death of Superman comic is probably the classic example of this. The reason it became the best selling comic book of all time is because a lot of people rushed and bought a copy thinking they had the next Honus Wagner card on their hands. Many comic fans also bought two copies, one to read and one to put in a safe somewhere. Ironically all they did was depress the potential value, and that book, even in mint condition, probably isn’t worth much more today than it was when it first came out.
I know when I was a kid my best friend were fanatical about taking care of our comic books, putting them in plastic sleeves, laying them flat in a cool dark place. Sometimes if one of them got too big a crease in it, we would actually go out and buy another one just to save, thinking that we were going to get rich off them one day. Again I doubt I can get more than a few bucks for anything in my stash these days.
Me too (sort of). My mother wanted to get rid of some Hummel figurines, and asked me to sell them on eBay for her (and told me I could keep the proceeds). I did some research, and thought they wouldn’t sell for much, so foolishly put “buy it now” prices on them that were apparently too low (judging by the fact that they were snapped up within an hour) :smack:.
Never had to confess my folly to Mom, as she died a couple of days after the last one shipped out. I wound up donating the proceeds to a church she had some connections to.
My rather large silver collection started when I inherited some old silver coins. But they aren’t worth much more than the silver (as is most of my collection.)
Not everything common is cheap. Luger pistols have always sold for more than they objectively should, despite there being a hell of a lot of them made and a lot surviving.
The wartime Jeep is not cheap, either, despite the thousands of them that appear at vehicle rallies (here, at any rate, thanks to the many European nations that have disposed of their reserve stocks of them in recent years)
My aunt passed away last October, and I priced some of her stuff, thinking her old knives, harmonicas, and marbles would be worth something. Not so much. Now I need to unload a fairly large doll collection, and I’m not looking forward to messing with it. I have to sell it, though. I have no place to keep all the stuff.
I have a box made from wood from the Titanic, I had assumed it would be worth a small fortune, but not so much, a guy offered me a thousand dollars for it. To this day I have no idea of it’s value as it is hard to find info on it, and I assume that it because it is quite rare.
How do you know the wood came from the Titanic?
Guns are an odd one. A bog-standard SMLE Mk III* rifle, in decent shape (Not collector grade, but not a rusty heap of shit either- perfectly serviceable, but nothing to write home about either) was worth about $150 to buy until fairly recently. Now, the same rifle is going for $500. They made millions of them- literally. They’re one of the 10 most common longarms on the plant (along with things like the AK-47, SKS, M91/30, M-16, FN-FAL, and the Winchester Model 94). They are, in short, Not Rare.
But for some inexplicable reason, they’ve suddenly become a lot more expensive to buy. A lot of it can be attributed to internet gun auctions- “Well I saw a similar lookin’ rifle for $500 so that’s what mine is worth!” (overlooking the fact the “similar lookin’ rifle” was a rarer variant and not the “standard” version). And two or three years from now you may not be able to give them away- a lot of it depends on things as silly as whether or not a Major War Movie will get made in which the rifle features.
As Mk VII says, Lugers are definitely not rare and yet they’ve always been worth silly amounts of money. Ditto GI-issue Colt M1911A1 pistols, for that matter.
As a comparison, Arisaka rifles- the Japanese service rifle in WWI and WWII- aren’t that common (most of them ended up in Tokyo Harbour in 1945) but they’re worth nothing because you can’t get ammo for them.
My great grandfather was the first mate on the Minia, the second ship to arrive to recover the bodies. The box was built by the ships carpenter William Parker, he also built some other things from the wood collected, including two pencil cases for my grandmother and her sister, which have been lost over the years. Apparently it is easy to authenticate, as to the style of work, and I have his sea book and photos to go with it.
I’m looking forward to inheriting my folks’ collection of authentic Thomas Kinkade paintings. I’ll be RICH!
Fortunately, I kid…
The myth of the valuable old collectible will exist as long as family members continue to need reasons to feel ill-treated and misused: “Carla got Granny’s china and you KNOW that was worth thousands, at least. How is that fair?”
I quietly dread one day cleaning out my grandmother’s house for this reason. She has several large collections of “valuable” items. Such as the complete set of beany-baby knockoff dolls. That’s right…imitation beany-babies. And ooh, hunting dog mugs. Crystal bell thingies, dolls, etc. etc.
I think the fight in my family will be who has to take all this garbage.
That’s an excellent provenance. Make sure you keep the book and photos with the box. Items made from materials from the Titanic are rare and even though the Titanic market has already peaked, I could still see a serious collector being willing to pay a lot of money for the box. It’s almost impossible to put a value on such an item but it’s probably a lot more than $1000.