Anyone With Experiences Selling Complete Sets on ebay?

OK, ended up submitting everything to Huggins and Scott. Well, not EVERYTHING as I still have a ton of modern crap to deal with but this is the stuff I figured would work best in an auction house. One person anyway asked for updates/links so I posted the links to the three listings below which won't actually start for a few weeks but they are posted. Once again, many thanks to [MENTION=3417]Liberate Baltimore[/MENTION] for the assist on this one.

http://www.hugginsandscott.com/cgi-bin/showitem.pl?itemid=65470&catid=100&lotno=81

http://www.hugginsandscott.com/cgi-bin/showitem.pl?itemid=65471&catid=100&lotno=38

http://www.hugginsandscott.com/cgi-bin/showitem.pl?itemid=65474&catid=271&lotno=92

RiceLynnEvans75 said:

Just looking to see if anyone has had any experiences selling complete sets on ebay before and if you had any particular issues once they received the cards. Have a '55 Topps complete set, mostly raw but the key cards graded by SGC aside from the Clemente RC which is PSA. Ideally I had thought about selling it off piece by piece but really, just don't want to deal with the time it'll take as I've got a bunch of other stuff to do individually. I've looked at past completed listings for ideas and seen feedback but that doesn't always indicate if there were any other issues that went down. The set is primarily VG to EX/MT with a few outliers as well. I plan on doing front scans of all the cards which are currently in pages (scan of whole page) and obviously front scans of the graded cards.

Any and all insight is appreciated. Thanks!

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Why sell on ebay when you can consign to a major auction house? You usually will receive a higher price realized, a competitive if not better consignment rate and would only be dealing with pre-screened high-end bidders. Plus, the auction house would do all of the scanning, descriptions, shipping along with the customer service aspect. Selling an item like that on ebay and you're just asking for problems!

Liberate Baltimore said:

Why sell on ebay when you can consign to a major auction house? You usually will receive a higher price realized, a competitive if not better consignment rate and would only be dealing with pre-screened high-end bidders. Plus, the auction house would do all of the scanning, descriptions, shipping along with the customer service aspect. Selling an item like that on ebay and you're just asking for problems!

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That thought has run across my mind as well. Huggins and Scott is only about a 45 minute trip from me so might be a safer option.

Plus you're talking to the person who would write the set! I'm the Head Writer at H&S.

Liberate Baltimore said:

Plus you're talking to the person who would write the set! I'm the Head Writer at H&S.

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Ha!

I just got off the phone with them. Thought I missed the deadline for February but was told I can bring it in anytime this week up until Friday. Probably best to just avoid the potential headaches.

Don't auction houses take 30% off the top though?

SINFULONE said:

Don't auction houses take 30% off the top though?

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According to the H&S form, it's 15-20%. For them doing all the work and dealing with headaches I think it's worth it. For me anyway.

It is 15% that sell for over $1000 and 20% under $1000. You can also bring anything else in that has a "fighting shot" at $500.

RiceLynnEvans75 said:

According to the H&S form, it's 15-20%. For them doing all the work and dealing with headaches I think it's worth it. For me anyway.

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OK.Sounds like good deal then.Can you set reserve?If so, are fees higher with reserve?

We don't encourage reserves as if they're not met we lost money on our printed catalog costs. If a consignor absolutely requires a reserve, we ask they pay $250 if that reserve is not met.

Liberate Baltimore said:

It is 15% that sell for over $1000 and 20% under $1000. You can also bring anything else in that has a "fighting shot" at $500.

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A few other things in the $200-$300 range so no go there. Already dumped my T206 cards a year ago.

Just wanted to give a shout out [MENTION=3417]Liberate Baltimore[/MENTION] with the assist on this one and popping up in this thread for the advice.

Was out of work early today as my son had school cancelled so we took a drive up to the House of Cards in Silver Spring, MD and spoke with Bill Huggins of Huggins and Scott auctions. Ended up dropping off the '55 Topps set, an 11 card lot of modern graded RCs from '80-'01, and a large mixed lot of vintage graded cards that included HOFers so they took everything I brought in. After speaking with Bill, sounds like I might be dumping off all my signed baseballs/photos with them as well in the near future for another auction. Hoping the collection dump continues to go smoothly and Bill was a great and friendly person to deal and talk with. I highly recommend stopping by the shop if you're ever around the Silver Spring area.

And for those wondering, they are only taking a 10% commission fee so for me anyway, this method is by far superior to ebay for anything like this.

What were the rookies you sent them?

Sounds like you scored a great consign deal. Keep the thread posted w results if ya can I'm curious. Do you have a number you trying to hit w/ the set or the other items ?

Ryan

I don't think I'd ever sell a nice set in complete form. Odds are good you can probably top out the full set price by selling all of the key cards separately, if there are enough "keys" and they are nice. Have no experience with an auction house, but it seems these days you probably have a lot of the same buyers as an audience either way. I can't imagine an auction house buyer would discount ebay as a source for items they want and I presume many ebayers also participate in auction house sales. Sounds like for 10% though, it may be worth it to avoid the headache of selling.

I wish they would have told me you were there so I could say hello! Thanks for everything and I will be writing your lots tomorrow.

James

RStadlerASU22 said:

Sounds like you scored a great consign deal. Keep the thread posted w results if ya can I'm curious. Do you have a number you trying to hit w/ the set or the other items ?

Ryan

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Yeah I'm hoping it turns out well, don't really have anything in mind that I'm trying to hit. I'll update the initial post with links to the lots once they have them up.

mrmopar said:

I don't think I'd ever sell a nice set in complete form. Odds are good you can probably top out the full set price by selling all of the key cards separately, if there are enough "keys" and they are nice. Have no experience with an auction house, but it seems these days you probably have a lot of the same buyers as an audience either way. I can't imagine an auction house buyer would discount ebay as a source for items they want and I presume many ebayers also participate in auction house sales. Sounds like for 10% though, it may be worth it to avoid the headache of selling.

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Oh I definitely agree that it can be pieced out and get more money for it but I just don't feel like using the time to do so and I just want to be done with cards and move them on. With the amount of time I'd take scanning/listing/shipping I feel confident that I'd rather have that than the little bit extra I'd make dollar-wise. It's just a mid-grade set anyway, nothing spectacular.

I've run into quite a few people that refuse to use ebay for purchasing and stick with auction houses. For what reasons exactly I don't recall but to each their own. For my tastes anyway, there are just too many games that can happen on ebay and I'd rather have the much better security of the auction house as opposed to ebay.

Added links to the listings for those interested.