My opinion presented absolutely scot free here and surely....worth everything you are paying for it!......I am President Of the Pittsburgh Antique Radio Society and that market is in the EXACT same condition. So I suspect that this is a generalized condition for all the men's hobbies.
A consignment store charges 50% of the actual sale price--that's standard. Big-lot buyers plan to pay 25% of the estimated current street value. But they don't want the lot if it has been cherry-picked. The cherries are KEY to reimbursing them for their risk. For radios, I send large estate folks to an Oho auction house that specializes in radio estates. A family can realizes 30-35% of current market value. in one of their auctions.
As a general rule you can count on, the hard goods resale markets in any geographic area all follow the local real estate market. If it's up, then hobby sales results are up. If it's down, then hobby sales results are down. BUT and however resale values for hobby goods rise slowly and drop VERY FAST. So it's useful to be ahead of the real estate curve if you can swing it.
A recent issue of MR magazine had a last-page Tony Koester article that talked about putting a USE BY date on our hobby purchases. I found that very persuasive and I plan to pass that along to my radio club as a good idea for radios too.
Last note....the top-line "collector gold" stuff will remain gold. The value of that stuff will remain strong. But even just below that line, stuff in the "almost gold" category will quickly become unsellable at prices that you would want to accept if the market turns down. All of us need to get our money's worth in FUN or just pleasure in looking at our collections or in the hunt for something elusive. Because it seems unlikely that we will get our money back out of most of our hobbies.
All the best!
Don
