Here is my quandary: My father in law passed away a month ago and left a huge amount of models. He collected them over some twenty years. My mother in law is planning on putting the kits individually on Ebay but there are hundreds. They are still boxed and in perfect condition. I looked over them and will be cataloguing them.
They mostly consist of Armor and Planes. My mother in law (Ma’am) was kind enough to let me go through them and pick any I’d like to assemble. But most of them are Bradleys, Pattons, Abrams etc.
He also has a huge amount of planes, jets etc. They are Academy, Tamiya, Revell, Monogram and a couple of others that I can’t remember at the moment (there are hundreds of models)
Okay, here is my plan - I’m going to list all of them on a personal website and would like to put a “want ad” on Finescale.com. Is that a feasible idea? Since Ma’am is good at doing the Ebay thing regarding pricing and shipping, I’m wondering if we can sell more using this method.
Thoughts? Advice?
Thanks in advance,
Mike
PS My father in law was a Vietnam Vet who served with 3-5th Armored Cav and he loved to do dioramas. We had many discussions about armor and he was always right. He was the one who gave me the best gift you could get for Christmas - Armor!!
You might consider advertising them in the FSM Magazine classified section or now that a lot of modlers know you have items for sale leave you e-mail address and selling would be done outside the forum. Using the forum for selling is something I don’t think they want you to do. To that end, you might send an e-mail to one of the admin guys and see what they recommend.
Your Mother-in-Law has the right idea. You will get the best return on Ebay. List them individually and let the collectors fight over them. It may seem capitolistic but if your are looking to get the best price that is the way to go. If you are looking for the fastest sale and not interested in the best price then list them as a package. Ebay will give you better coverage than any personal web site could possible get you.
I still type with a New Jersey accent. I didn’t mean to make it seem that I would be using this forum to sell anything. I was just gathering ideas and garnering some advice. Since you all seem to be demi-gods in modeling while I am merely a speck of flea offal on the sidewalk of life, I knew that you would have some wisdom to impart.
Thanks for the help!
My lovely and talented girlfriend/fiance/better smelling half and I will still be doing the grunt work and listing all of the models and Ma’am is a guru with Ebay.
I work in a newspaper and you could run an ad in your local area. That way you wouldn’t have to box and ship it. Most papers have a hobby/collectables section in their classifieds.
I think everyone is right that you’ll get better sales on EBay, but if you decide to go the web site route and need a place to put the list let me know. I’ve got some room on mine and plenty on the one for my office [:)]
You’ll generally probably get better results on eBay, so go with that. Whatever you decide, please let us know, as I’m sure enough people, myself included, would be interested enough to take a look.
Shoot! I’d probably be interested in taking quite a few armor kits off your hands, but I refuse to use either eBay or PayPal. Both of these…entities (for want of a better term)…are notorious for blatent privacy act violations, spam, and extremely poor customer service (IMHO). If you’re planning on putting any of these kits up on a regular web site, please let us know!
Very sorry to hear about your family’s loss but I’ll try to answer your questions regarding placing Classfied ads with FineScale Modeler. As was mentioned, we do discourage the use of the Forums for buying, selling and trading. However, we do offer Classified ads both here at www.FineScale.com and in the Magazine for an extremely reasonable price.