Mike H Mottler posted:Selling trains yourself (as with e-Bay) is time-consuming -- photographing every piece, writing descriptive text, posting the listings on line, monitoring the auction process, packing and shipping the stuff to winning bidders, dealing with "bottom feeders" who may offer bids that are an insult to you, and handling an occasional discontented bidder or buyer.
An auction house would do all that work for you -- for a fee. Expect to get about 33% of current market value from an auction house, such as Stout Auctions. They'll drive to your location and pick it all up. After the auction sale is done, they'll send a check. Because of my medical situation, I decided to sell my entire Rock Island O-gauge collection through Stout -- to spare my wife/widow the agony of the transaction. The Stout team sold eight pages of inventory in a weekend!
Afterwards, my medical issues cleared and (with 20/20 hindsight) my decision to sell may have been somewhat premature. But the "de-collecting" would need to be done sooner or later.
Mike Mottler LCCA 12394
mottlerm@gmail.com
Good breakdown Mike.
So you get about 25% of purchase price. If it was bought for $1,000 new and now it is worth $750 a third is $250. Guessing local stores would give you only between 10% and 15% IF you could get them to purchase them?
