Posted By:
warshawlawHow fast do you really need the money? If yesterday, you need to go to Rosen or a big dealer and wholesale it. If you have a couple of months, the big auctioneers are good. If you need money in a couple of weeks, ebay is probably better than wholesaling the set.
A lot of this depends on what you define as high grade. No offense, but most collectors overgrade their cards. You will only pull top dollar on ebay or at auction if the key cards are slabbed and high grade. If you have 9s and 10s for the registry crowd, I'd sell those individually. As long as those folks are paying through the nose for them, what the heck.
I'd also consider breaking out rare variations and selling them individually and selling the base set as a stand-alone base set.
Ebay is good to start and for a quick cashout. If you want to move the whole set at once, maybe you should do a listing for it with a reserve or a minimum bid reflective of what you minimally want to get. That shouldn't take much time or effort. If it doesn't sell, consider other routes and/or breaking it up.
If I really needed some cash, I would pull an advance on a credit card rather than wholesaling a significant set. I would probably sell via ebay if it was me because I am a cheap bastard and I hate the idea of giving away 30%-40% between the consignor and bidder fees, plus I am a control freak and do not want to give someone else the ability to set my minimum price. Ebay runs on average about 7% of the transaction (saw a show on one of the cable news channels the other night about ebay and that is what they found). So, even if the set pulled in 20% less than the combination of auction price and hammer fee, you would still win out overall.
If you go the auctioneer route, remember that everything is negotiable. Check out the different auctioneers. Some offer lower or even no consignor's fees for significant lots.