Imight be out of line here, but in the past few days there has been a lot of coments about our stashes. Is it worthwhile putting to the moderators, and ultimatley FSM, the idea of a swap and sell segment between forum members?
I believe this has always been prohibited by forum rules here.
It has long been the position that FSM does not want a sales page, for multiple reasons including (but not limited to)
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postings ‘see my sale’ will dilute real topics/threads
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FSM does not want to be caught in between two warring parties when there is a dispute over the sale
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FSM sells ad space to commercial model sellers. Giving free ad space to online sales undercuts their paid clientele and a revenue stream
There are other websites in the interweb which do supply sales info. Check them out. FSM has chosen not to.
http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/feedback_help_and_testing/f/10/t/184755.aspx
http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/feedback_help_and_testing/f/10/t/168555.aspx
http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/feedback_help_and_testing/f/10/t/164560.aspx
This topic has come up before. As Chuck pointed out, current forum rules prohibit sales. However, there’s no reason that you can’t propose it, including likelihood that the suggestion would be accepted or not.
What I’ve seen quite a bit of is subtle suggestions to be followed up back channel.
FSM doesn’t care about that.
Bill
GM, your post struck my funny bone…ya kinda make it sound like a black market for model kits. Brings the question to my fuzzy mind, if I back door dealed a poor fitting kit would that make me a…crack dealer?[:P]. Sorry but I thought it was funny and wanted to share.
As to Dodgy, I have made deals via PMs and or personel e-mails. Keep it on the down low and IF problems arise keep it off the forums.
There was a fella a few years back that pulled me into a trade deal, his approach was kits are just a commodity to be bought and sold without regard for what the kit means to the other party. I finally squelched the trade by ignoring his repeated inquiries. I NEVER reported him to the moderators nor called him out in public however all trace of him disappeared from the forums shortly there after.
You Know;
This isn’t really the place to buy and sell, or trade for that matter. I have always told someone if they might have an idea to trade then E- Mail me or message me on the side. Then we can " Do the Deal" If we are happy with the outcome then keep it to myself as does the other party.
Trading is not bad. Now there is selling.This is not the place EVER!
Sometimes it’s pretty obvious.
First time poster writes:
“My neighbor just died and his wife found a huge stash of kits in the garage. Write me and I can send you a list of the kits and what I told her think they are worth”.
I do a fair amount of gifting and swapping of kits by PM. Nothing really transactional.
Bill
Hmmmm;
What you do, is only being a good neighbor, Bill. The sad part. I went to help a friend do this after his Dad Passed. Boy, he had his head filled with B.S. from others. I had to get another Vendor/Collector of trains involved( I do this for the Museum as President anyway). He found out real quick his stuff had NOT the value he’d been led to believe. I felt bad and used the Museum Discretionary funds and bought most for our sale table, letting him know the money would definitely be used for the good of the Museum!
This seemed to mollify him. I have a lot of up to date model pricing guides and I sometimes am shocked as to what they suggest! Most private stashes sometimes are not worth a quarter of what the folks have been led to believe. This is to me a shame, But the market is what it is. I have even traded small, car trim parts someone needed for a couple of models they wanted to get rid of!
I think the silliest thing I had happen was a fellow came upp to me at our last Train Show. He states he has something concerning OLD car models I would have interest in. It was a pile of carefully preserved Model Car Boxes! Now, I do know there collectors of Lithography Items, But come on now. Forty Bucks a BOX !
Yup. A local armor modeler died with a large stash. Friends did the widow a favor and went through the stash and set prices. Now, several years later she is still showing up at area shows, buying a table or two and trying to offload the stuff
yes, if she had gone to one of the kit disposal operations, the ones who advertise in mags like FSM, and sold the lot she might not have gotten the fortune her late husbands friends estimated. Rather she would have saved years of hassle, storage, mileage, hotel costs, and show fees.
She’s never going to get the money back that was originally spent on the collection
Maybe it’s not about the money, but insted it is about keeping his memory alive and connecting with a part of him still through the show attendance and dealing with other interested people where she can talk about him and his love for the hobby. Not all people are motivated by greed. Some are motivated by love.
True love, or at least compassion, is doing it for the widow. The local model club has an outstanding fellow who is motivated and organized, and has handled the liquidation of several deceased members’ stashes. It is hard work though, and it can drive one crazy. What he did was set fair prices, let the club guys take their pick, then fire sale the rest. Being that we are on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, lot sales to mainland operations are generally not economically feasible due to shipping costs. And he never took a cut of the proceeds - a truly honorable guy.
Talking with the spouses and families, it was pretty clear that they just wanted all that stuff out of the house. Short of a roll-off dumpster, they had no idea how to get rid of the kits. So I would suggest having your local clubs pitch in and sell off the stuff for the families. It’s hard work, but it would be a huge help.
As ever, thank you all for the advice and feedback. I think I will let sleeping dogs lie.
Are these guides available publicly for download or does one have to order it somewhere? Culling my own stash and would like to see a baseline for pricing.
I would look first at eBay, if I were you, to get a general feel for asking prices and prices realized. Printed price guides can be obsolete as soon as they’re published. Online guides are marginally better, in that they can be updated and the info shared on a running basis. But they’re still a little bit behind the market.
Also, be careful to distinguish between prices for collectors, ie, people who want to buy a kit, for the box art, for the kit’s rarity, etc, with no intention of ever building, and prices for modelers, who may not care about those things, or even if the kit is in a box, but who want to build it (stashes notwithstanding). Is the kit still in production and available at retail prices, or is it out of production? And do you want to sell as quickly as possible, or do you want to get the most money that you can? Those things will all influence the prices you ask.
And in the end, for items sold on a secondary market, the price comes down to what the seller and buyer agree on at the time.
Something else good you can do on eBay besides seeing what people are currently trying to sell a kit for, is that you can search completed sales of that item over the last few months as well. That will give a sense of what something is actually selling for, not just what people want to get for it currently.
Printed guides are near worthless; obsolete as soon as they are printed/posted. As noted, beware of collector sites. There is one very prominent collector site that probably has your kit for sale. However, his prices border on the ludicrous, and will give you a false sense of wealth! In the real world, you might get a quarter or third of what he’s asking.
Agreed. That’s what I meant when I said, “prices realized”. [;)]
Ah Baron;
You are so right! The one guide gave me a price of over Four Hundred for Revell’s 1/25 scale Country Squire Station wagon! I missed one on the Bay by a Dollar!!That one sold for $129.00!