How to Buy a Collection

[insidethewrapper]

I don't buy collections very often. What is the art of buying a collection ? Any advice is welcomed !!!
Do you offer a specific percentage based on ( current market, book price or other factors etc ) ? Do you base it on what you plan to keep vs sell ?
If a card is near mint and book price is $ 100 and you know if you grade it , it will become a $1000 card, what do you offer ( show them the book) ? What do you carry with you ( I can't memorize all the prices ).

Any advice is welcomed !!!

[rhettyeakley]

It depends on the situation. If it a rare collection you may have to pay pretty strong relative to the value of the items, on the other hand if you are buying somewhat common or low-demand items then one does not expect to sell them at or anywhere near market value. Often times collections like that will take a long time to liquidate will sell for only a small fraction of what any book may tell you.

At the end of the day a collectible is only worth what someone is willing to pay. Without knowing more about the situation and the types of items being offered it really makes it tough to give a good opinion in this case.

-Rhett

[Bkrum]

Great topic....will be interesting to see the responses. I’ve always wondered what math dealers use when formulating a buy price

[Bieg]

Deleted

[Republicaninmass]

To sell one, shamelessly plug it in this thread


To buy, takes a lot of research, and depends on the result you want.


I've bought collections for one card, and sold the rest. I've bought 90s junk and grad the best, dump the rest. I've bought lots to build sets and sold over time.

[clydepepper]

Easy as pie, just follow these steps:

1.)
Send me One Million Dollars and your mailing address.

2.)
Enjoy!



=

[bmattioli]

Do your homework, study and know what the hell your buying. Knowledge is key..

[jfkheat]

Have you seen the collection? How big is the collection? Do you know what key cards are included? Would you be buying to keep or resell? I would base my offer on the value of the key cards.

[Bieg]

Originally Posted by Republicaninmass

To sell one, shamelessly plug it in this thread


To buy, takes a lot of research, and depends on the result you want.


I've bought collections for one card, and sold the rest. I've bought 90s junk and grad the best, dump the rest. I've bought lots to build sets and sold over time.

Sorry you are upset about that. Back in 2015 lots of people on this forum were excited about a previously undiscovered collection being found and wanted to know more about it.

I promised to let the forum members know when they come up for sale. And so I have. Those 90 cards are from the Antique Roadshow find. I was lead to believe this was of interest to some folks here. Sorry if it was the wrong place to mention it. If it violates some rule I will take it down.

[kmac32]

Originally Posted by Bieg

Sorry you are upset about that. Back in 2015 lots of people on this forum were excited about a previously undiscovered collection being found and wanted to know more about it.

I promised to let the forum members know when they come up for sale. And so I have. Those 90 cards are from the Antique Roadshow find. I was lead to believe this was of interest to some folks here. Sorry if it was the wrong place to mention it. If it violates some rule I will take it down.

Actualy posting it here is fine in my opinion. Are the other T205 AB cards in the REA auction from the same collection. Fabulous group of cards!

Kmac

[Orioles1954]

I'm always honest and up front with folks. I usually offer 50% of what I could sell the proceeds for after fees. Some people decline. More accept.

[Leon]

Members get a little edgy because, generally speaking, promoting your own sale is not allowed on the front page *unless it's a paid ad. That said it's not a big deal but please don't do it anymore. There is a place in the BST section to promote your auction sales. It says Ebay and other auction venues....or something like that and that is where this kind of plug should go. Good luck with the auction.

As far as buying a collection, I like the 50% value rule. It just depends, as was said, what is in the collection. But knowledge is key no matter what.

Originally Posted by Bieg

Sorry you are upset about that. Back in 2015 lots of people on this forum were excited about a previously undiscovered collection being found and wanted to know more about it.

I promised to let the forum members know when they come up for sale. And so I have. Those 90 cards are from the Antique Roadshow find. I was lead to believe this was of interest to some folks here. Sorry if it was the wrong place to mention it. If it violates some rule I will take it down.

[Bkrum]

When buying a large collection it isn’t possible to price out every card so there has to be some sort of rule of thumb. I’m guessing price the key cards and apply some sort of metric to it (50% has been quoted) and then some sort of per card metric for commons (ie: $1/card for 50s,etc). Pricing sets I’m thinking attach an average grade to it and apply the metric to that. Seems like a daunting process but tons of fun

[bbcard1]

I would chime in but I virtually always overpay.

[Bieg]

Originally Posted by Leon

Members get a little edgy because, generally speaking, promoting your own sale is not allowed on the front page *unless it's a paid ad. That said it's not a big deal but please don't do it anymore. There is a place in the BST section to promote your auction sales. It says Ebay and other auction venues....or something like that and that is where this kind of plug should go. Good luck with the auction.

As far as buying a collection, I like the 50% value rule. It just depends, as was said, what is in the collection. But knowledge is key no matter what.

Deleted and reposted on the appropriate page.

[Republicaninmass]

Originally Posted by Leon

Members get a little edgy because, generally speaking, promoting your own sale is not allowed on the front page *.

It had absolutely nothing to due with the thread title.

[swarmee]

Exactly, if he had bumped his own thread from three years ago where everyone clamored to know when they were coming to market, no issue. The issue is doing it off-topic that screwed up an interesting start to a thread.

Back on topic: Most of my large purchases are "port sale" buys on COMC, where the normal rate for buying collections is 15-30% of the initial list price of the cards on COMC. My best buy was a collection of 5,000 cards that were initially listed at $10,000 individually that I negotiated the seller down to $1,100. However, many of those cards listed for $1 each originally were actually $2-5 cards that I repriced even higher once I got them.

That port buy is what made me so interested in COMC and started my collection of cards this past couple of years.

[conor912]

Originally Posted by swarmee

Exactly, if he had bumped his own thread from three years ago where everyone clamored to know when they were coming to market, no issue. The issue is doing it off-topic that screwed up an interesting start to a thread.

Back on topic: Most of my large purchases are "port sale" buys on COMC, where the normal rate for buying collections is 15-30% of the initial list price of the cards on COMC. My best buy was a collection of 5,000 cards that were initially listed at $10,000 individually that I negotiated the seller down to $1,100. However, many of those cards listed for $1 each originally were actually $2-5 cards that I repriced even higher once I got them.

That port buy is what made me so interested in COMC and started my collection of cards this past couple of years.

What's a port buy?

[swarmee]

https://www.comc.com/Promotions/Port_Sale

These are sales of groups of cards from 100-5000 at a time for a single price. All cards are already listed for sale by one person, and you can browse through all of them and make offers for the whole kit and kaboodle. Then if they accept, they all get loaded to your inventory and you can choose to reprice them or have some delivered to you.

Some ports (portfolios) are worthwhile, some are highly overpriced looking for a sucker.

[insidethewrapper]

Thanks for the input. Interesting ideas. I still wonder how much would you have offered if you ran across that Michigan find of auto cards that were recently offered for sale in the REA Auction ? The one card of Ruth Goudey alone sold for
$ 132K with buyers premium.

[ibuysportsephemera]

I have purchased many small and large collections over the last 20 + years. Remember to add the cost of selling the items into the equation when making an offer. Your purchase price is not just the acquisition cost of the items but the time and expense in marketing and selling the items as well.

Good luck.


Jeff

[Laxcat]

My rule of thumb is always be honest. In my experience there is no standard metric to use on pricing. If I can flip it fast, as in I already have a customer for it, I’ll pay very strong. When it comes to more common things and post war stuff I’ve found the best bet is to ask what they want for it. You can usually get things cheaper that way IF they just want to sell.

I think most people want to be treated fairly. Let’s face it, the trope of the “card dealer” is not a flattering image. Ex. Simpson Comic Book Guy.

[clydepepper]

Originally Posted by bbcard1

I would chime in but I virtually always overpay.

+1

[CurtisFlood]

Originally Posted by bbcard1

I would chime in but I virtually always overpay.

LOL, I'm glad I'm not the only one who does that!

[Exhibitman]

There is no one approach. It all depends on what is offered. You can make money on just about anything as long as you get in at the right price. For that you have to know the market and get in at no higher than 50% of realistic retail value, adjusted for grade and transactional costs, of course, and further adjusted based on how fast and how little work it will take to turn out the lot. Otherwise you are just treading water.

My rule of thumb for average stuff, the usual mid-grade postwar big 4 sports collection, is to try to pay no more than a third of my anticipated gross sales. I just bought a collection of about 10,000 cards. 75% were 1988 or later. I accorded those zero value: I told the guy, truthfully, that I will basically take them to the local card store and trade them for whatever store credit I can get or toss them in a recycling bin if the LCS doesn't want it. I like modern cards but they are junk as far as resale goes. The other 25% of the collection were partial sets from the 1970s. I knew I would sell those on eBay as partial sets at a discount relative to single card prices. I geared my offer to that. Since I couldn't take the time to go through everything I had to sample the cards. If my sampling of the cards doesn't show much in the way of major stars, the price goes down further, to cover my downside risk of the collection having been picked. In this case, while it was clear that the cards hadn't been disturbed in decades, it was also clear that someone fished out the major stars back in the day. The remaining cards were nice but the real value was missing. I ended up paying a penny a card for the whole thing. I could have paid more but with stuff this common I really did not feel the need to offer more.

[kmac32]

Score for me.....5 Cubbies in the lot. Kroh and 4 upgrades. Can’t wait to get them then I have to price and decise what to do with the rest. All AB backs and look nice.

[ibuysportsephemera]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

My rule of thumb for average stuff, the usual mid-grade postwar big 4 sports collection, is to try to pay no more than a third of my anticipated gross sales.

I agree here with Adam...I call it the rule of 3.


Jeff