[JLange]

If you have already made a reasonable offer and the seller has declined, your next best alternative is to wait it out, taking the rarity into consideration. With time, one of the following tends to occur:

1. You get more and better information over time that helps establish the price. If you come to realize that similiar items or other suitable comps when they finally do come up for sale will go for about the same higher price, you can go back and pay the seller’s number with confidence. If the opposite is true you can feel good about sticking the seller with an unsellable item (at their higher price)

2. The seller may grow tired of waiting to sell at the higher price and either offer to you eventually because you expressed interest or put the item up for auction to see what the market price really is, and you can win it at a lower price possibly

3. You find another copy of said item at a more reasonable price, and buy it!

I have learned to trust my own eyeballs, having looked at so many items up for sale or auction over the years. If I see something I haven’t seen before, I tend to buy it right away. The likelihood that ten more examples are around the corner is low, or else I would have seen it over the years. This is my personal gauge of rarity, largely based on the frequency with which items come up for sale. I recently bought a beat up PC of Bob Feller because the last one I saw available for sale was over 10 yrs ago. Of course I want a better copy but my experience tells me I might need to wait another 10 yrs 😀 to find it. Who wants to do that?