vintage Ruth wire photos

[thecatspajamas]

Originally Posted by Shoeless Moe

Ben, not to be a d-ck, but I'm confused on this thread you state "Go with Hank Yee", but in the other HYEE thread for pickups, you compliment people on getting them at great prices.

That kinda conflicts don't you think.

If peep are getting them at great prices not sure u'd want to go with HYEE, yes I know he gets lots of exposure, thus increasing the chance for a higher take, but if u are giving some dollars to Ebay, some to Paypal, some to PSA to grade/Encaps, and some to HYEE to list, seems like u be better off going with an auction house, so u don't have to go through PSA or sell them yourself on EBAY with BIN.

I hope that I'm not stepping on Ben's toes with this response, but I think if you look at any major auction, be it auction house or individual, on eBay or otherwise, you can pick and choose and find high and low water marks for different items. Henry Yee's auctions are no different: there will always be some "good deals" had among the 1000+ lots offered. (I know of at least 2 instances where the very photo that I sold previously turned up in one of his auctions and wound up selling for less than I had gotten for it). The difference I think is that, if you averaged out all of those prices over the entire auction, in the category of sports photographs in particular you will see a much higher average than typically realized through any of the auction houses.

The difference between Yee and a major auction house in the category of photos is the attention to detail he gives with his descriptions, his knowledge of the subject matter, and his willingness to offer them as individuals or small groups with the same attention that most auction houses would reserve for their "key" photo offerings. Typically when you see photos offered through an auction house, you will see a few scattered individual photos that may or may not have very detailed descriptions, and then a handful of "lots" of photos with generalized semi-boilerplate descriptions that don't give a full (or often accurate) depiction of the photos included. In a group of 30 "vintage photos" you may see front scans of 5-10 of them, MAYBE a back scan of 1 or 2 (if you're lucky), and a generalized description giving a range of decades represented, the Hall of Famers appearing in them, and throwing around terms like "wire photo," "original," "Type 1," "vintage", etc with varying degrees of accuracy. How they can expect to get top dollar for a lot of photos and not show most of them is beyond me.

Don't get me wrong, I actually like it when auction houses fumble with their handling of large lots of photos like this as long as I'm on the buying end. That's where I like to pick them up to re-sell individually, because that's what I do. If I were consigning though and wanted to get the most bang for my commission buck, I would be much more likely to go with Henry. I don't know how many times I've said to myself (as I'm entering a bid with an auction house), "Man, I would be ticked if it were my collection being presented this way." I've never found myself saying that with Henry's offerings. More often with him it's, "Man, I would love to have that, but I can't afford to keep it and I would just lose money trying to flip it."