What are the pros and cons of consignment?
 

As a lifetime collector, I am within sight of my 70th birthday. I am feeling the need to reduce my collection to 10 or 20%, if not totally liquidate. My collection does not rank amongst the elite of this site. However, there is relatively significant value. I have always been a set collector, but also have lots of odd lots. Lots of vintage including 1933 Goudey complete set , a stack of Obaks, lots of memorabilia... I 'll stop there or everyone will lose interest in a hurry.

One alternative is consignment. I have no exprience with this method of selling. Please share you thoughts on consignment relative to selling here or eBay, auction house or selling to a dealer.

What is a reasonable per centage to pay for consignment?

I assume that you would be required to hand over the cards prior to sale. How do you protect yourself from well, anything bad?

It is amazing that I feel confident asking for advice from people I have never met. Net54baseball rocks! Thanks everyone.

This will surely come up almost immediately, so I'll put it out there. Since there are so many like-minded collectors here, have you thought of listing things for sale in the B/S/T section? No consignment fees is a huge plus. Something to think about.

^^THIS^^ Sell as much as you can easily for full in your pocket money on here and then consign the rest. Everyone has different rates and those rates change by what you have. If you don't mind doing a litlle work shipping you can save a ton of money selling youself. At the typical 10/20 rate. Say the hammer price is $100. The seller really paid $120 and you really get $90 for the $120 item.

I have a friend around your age also getting out of the hobby. He is doing the slow sell it himself way to get way more cash in hand. He is in no hurry and has a bigger collection. He has sold off most of it in the last year.

If you have a Weed, Spokane in that Obak pile I am your Huckleberry.:)

I have consigned items to a handful of auction houses and never had an issue. If you have been on this board for any period of time you know who is widely respected.

Selling here is fine, but maybe you don’t want to be in the business of packing items, getting to the post office, etc. I have sold stuff here as well, but you have to handle the leg work yourself and some people might not care to do that. When you consign all you do is mail off and wait.

There are also a lot of collectors who, believe it or not, are not on this board regularly or at all.

I would give Al Crisafulli a call at Love of the Game auctions. When I first started consigning he was kind enough to take the time and explain the process to me, there are things in your collection that would be best to sell at auction and items that would be best sold through other venues like the BST thread here. Al is also a member here and a great guy to talk baseball cards with.

I always say it comes down to 3 things: time, money, and effort. Pick which two mean the most to you.

Sell yourself - greatest control of time and how much money you get, you get funds immediately, but takes the most effort scanning, packaging, going to postofffice, answering questions,, etc

Consign to an auction house - little effort, the ah takes care of most of the tasks, no control of sale price and there can be fees. Takes the longest from when you give the AH your stuff to when you receive payment

Sell to dealer - little effort, likely smallest cash, but you get all the money quickest

For fees with an auction house, everything is negotiable. The better your stuff, the better the deal. Many today will give 0% sellers fees. As long as you stick with a reputable company that has been around for a while, i believe there is little risk. Just make sure you get everything in writing on your contract.

It sounds like your biggest issues will be what if anything should be submitted for grading, and what should be sold as sets vs. broken up. I think, as was said, that Al would be a good person to start with to get his take.

Agree, and Al will give you honest takes and you won’t be committing to consign if you don’t want to. But knowledge is power, and Al will give you a ton of great advice on how the process works.

Sad to hear that you want/have to sell your life long collection. Why not just keep it?

Thanks for your comments, Ben. As Leon says, "Every post needs a card." I might be old, but I'm still a fourth grader at heart.

I have bought and sold on B/S/T without any problems. Here is my favorite B/S/T buy. I will certainly continue to use it.