Newbie With A Huge Early Postcard Collection

Absolutely. You can also ask for disposition advice.
Don

Very good.....thank you so much Don. My goal is to get some of these in the hands of folks who will appreciate them. My life at this stage is paring down the hoard. :)

I have a value question for "paperhistory" On the Weissport CO card you had commented on the first page.....what would be a fair market value of such an example?

I think a lot of folks - including myself - would definitely be interested in various cards. When you are ready to dispose of perhaps you could lets is all know. You could organize them in several ways, including by topic, geography (the "from" is best), etc.

It seems you have a very interesting group there. Amazing you found in the waste!

centerstage,
Which, of course, cannot happen until he reaches 50+ quality posts.
Don

Thanks folks.....will organize.
Any requests that I might have? Specifics....

On the Weissport....if I had it in a show retail stock, I'd mark it at $400. If I was selling it on ebay, I'd start it at $250. Needs the right buyer of course, and that is probably a postal card or precancel collector.

I will advocate for selling via ebay again No collector will ever know enough to exactly price every piece of postal history as every collector has a different set of important facets they look for. The auction format will come as close as possible given good descriptions, detailed images, and modest start-bid levels with the least number of sale cycles..

Second, it is fairer to all of us here. Otherwise net-price sales to individuals here will result in griping of lost opportunities and hard feelings. It is far better to post some ebay lots and then post to a thread that newly posted lots are available for bidding, etc.

The amount of time to bring you up to perfect expertise would occupy your hobby time from here onward.

Yes, a lot of this depends on how comfortable you are with some auction uncertainty. Yes, some lots go higher than you ever dreamed, some will do average, and some will dissappoint, but overall a typical stack of cards sold individually will bring fair collective price if one doesn't try to micromanage each lot to death.

The easiest way I have found to make mulpitle ebay listings is to sort by some common feature (like Scott #) so that I can make a template to cut/paste multiple times and just fill in the blanks with the unique specifics. Then a description template can read "Scott UX_ postal card used 189_ from _ with preprinted ad for _". The more commonality in the sorting, the faster the listing process without diminishing the number of important key words, but this may already be obvious.

Or one could consign the lot to an ebay dealer to sell it for you.

Thanks John, for all your advice. On the ebay issue, my reluctance to post these there (for now anyway) comes from many years of experience on the site. I've been buying and selling on ebay for decades, not as a business per say, but a fun way to make a few extra bucks here and there. 32 years at an Ivy League school was my "real job". I do know the ins and outs of ebay, that's for sure. I totally agree on your selling strategy as it is also mine. Most of the time I start my auctions at a low initial bid and let the bidders set the price. With that said, the reason I'm here is to educate myself on this subject and perhaps offer up some examples to folks or at the very least, have a ballpark idea of what I have, like I've have stressed in previous posts. What I didn't know was the sites rules and Don, graciously let me know and the 50-post trigger on conducting business. If I do post some of these on ebay, I'll let everyone here know, but I'll also entertain some sales to members, when that time comes. I'm open to all avenues. It is important to me either way, to learn as much as I can so I can be an informed individual in this hobby. There are so many nuances to this subject, its mind boggling yet fascinating. Don

P.S I've been following "paperhistory" auctions "sold and completed" sales on ebay for some kind of idea on what to look for. The same with other sellers. That's been a practice of mine for all kinds of things. Some folks look at the asking price....not always a reality.

Of course, if you allow the group to be 'cherry picked' of the best items you may end up with a group of remaining items which may have to be discounted to sell. Additionally, you will be looking at more logistical costs such as packing, shipping, your time, and runs to the post office.

Since you mentioned you have thousands, I think one method might be to split them into 'sets' of the same size for sale. Once you had equal size sets, you could then ID the best cards and put equal amounts of the better cards into each set. The objective would be to end up with a number of sets that are approximately equal in quality material. I would then recommend to not post/list them all at once, but rather one at a time.
Don

Thanks Don, I'm not too concerned about ending up with a bunch of common cards. I'd rather sell off "the cream of the crop" and I'd be happy with that. One thing I have not mentioned is that about half of the collection is glued to paper sheets as a kind of organizer. Here is an example. Many cards were glued right at the cancel. Some were not, so there are cards I can't really see what kind of cancel there is but many you can as seen in the scan. I can "float" these off the paper, but then I have to dry them and make sure they don't curl. I've done it a few times, but unless I'm looking at a unique card, I'm not doing it. I'd be happy to let some others venture into that one and sell them stacks of cards at a fair price, whatever that might end up being. I'd say I have about 2 or 3 thousand in all. I hope this gives you an idea of what I'm looking at here.....

"I've been buying and selling on ebay for decades...the reason I'm here is to educate myself on this subject"

That puts you far ahead of most, but a real education takes years, however a partial education is better than none.

"One thing I have not mentioned is that about half of the collection is glued to paper sheets as a kind of organizer."

Yikes.

"Many cards were glued right at the cancel. Some were not, so there are cards I can't really see what kind of cancel there is but many you can as seen in the scan. I can "float" these off the paper, but then I have to dry them and make sure they don't curl. "

By "glued right at the cancel", I assume you mean cancel side down and by "float" you mean soak them free. Besides the fact that a soaked card might look soaked (which probably won' show well if you try to post a photo), I agree with your choice of not doing so and letting a buyer do it if they so choose. Unfortunately, gluing cards and covers to black pages was somewhat common. Being glued down will reduce the value, but a particularly desirable cancel or advertising will still have some value.

I second the 'yikes'. In my mind if they are glued down and/or removed, value is cut greatly (could be a decease anywhere from 50% - 90%?).
Don

Yes, I figured gluing them would do some real damage to a value. But.....does that mean to the ones that are glued at the cancel, as opposed to say, the ones I've shown above that were not? I've also detached some cards by just lightly dampening at the point of the glue, and being a water-based mucilage glue, can be removed without immersing the whole card in water. Again, I'm concentrating on possible scarcer cards.

Don