I also think you need to separate the sentimental value of it Completely. I know it took you a ton of time and effort to a amass everything, but nobody is going to pay you for your perceived effort value.

Selling off entire collections is one of the hardest things to do in this hobby. A year or so ago I had about $3000 retail in games (desireable, popular games) that I was trying to sell as a lot for much less and spent about a month with tire kickers and bullshitters Before I ended up parting it out. It wasn't as difficult as I thought it was but it was time-consuming, I did end up getting very close to retail but I was planning on letting it go for about $1200 as a lot. Just some context on how difficult it can be to sell large amounts of games at once. It

Ad seems to be gone so guessing either your re-doing it or it sold ? I did not get a chance to read the ad so hard to give advice but from the sounds of what everyone else is saying it seems to be market + sentimental value. The long and short of it is this:

1) Bulk sales your going to take a hit, 50-60%, depending on amount your selling / good vs bad stuff

2) Sentimental value will work against you. What someone paid for it previously and how much they love it does not factor into it, "its nothing personal, its just business". Sentiment does not = dollarydoos. Have to see what the market value is dictating on the items, and even if its lower than you want, accepting that is what the value is currently

3) Only list stuff your going to sell, trying to buy from someone and they keep back and forth and swapping around items and what not is just frustrating and tiring. I have had a few people do that where every time I talk to them its something else "well im keeping this, but I guess I can sell that...Well now I dont want to sell that but heres some other stuff". Figure out what your selling and commit to it, skip the crap, only talk about / show what your going to sell, if its in a photo its for sale

4) Parting down does not necessarily mean splitting it ALL down to singles, smaller bites are easier to swallow especially when its similar things. If your selling signs, games, merchandise etc, your catering to multiple markets. Someone who collects signs wont necessarily want games so they are going to offer more for the signs but less for the games. If you had it split it as signs, games, merchandise. Someone might look at the signs and go "ya I want that!" and pay closer to 70-80% because they dont have to sell off extras they dont want. Also its alot easier for someone to come up with 5-10k than 40k

Statues are only worth something on the internet. They aren't worth anything in real life. This is due to the fact that it takes literally 50 million users to find the few people willing to pay "market rate"

I've got some bad news for you if you think a bulk sale of $40k in cash (that you then have to deposit in a bank to conduct a real estate transaction) is going to lessen your tax conerns or visibility to the government...



 

Agreed.

Even the World of Nintendo cabinets probably have the vast majority of their value tied up in the notion of them being a single distinct transaction separate from the rest of the collection.


I can understand trying to bulk-sale by system, but trying to sell everything at once (including large items like statues and retail fixtures) seems like misplaced effort.

 

Someone flagged my posting. I now understand that almost everyone thinks 40k is too high, as do I. I have changed it to 30k, but really I would rather keep everything than come way off this number. I know I should edit the listing to make it more appealing and easier to read, and I know some of my photos are misleading. Literally yesterday I decided that I would attempt to put this up, and within an hour I had photos and a listing made, so it was a real rushed effort in which I will mend within the next few days hopefully.

Overall, I thank everyone for their input. It all kind of tells me what I already knew, but it's still good to hear.

edit: the new CL posting is now in my original post so it should be all gravy again

One thing I will add, is that selling something like this requires a lot of effort. TONS of effort.

Its easy to say " I will just throw a price on it, and if someone is interested THEN I will go in-depth" but if you don't take the effort, I doubt anyone else will.

If I was going to drop 10k plus on a collection, I would want it fully cataloged with condition issues noted (or I would want to go through it with a fine tooth comb, in person) and I would probably walk past a group of photos of games stacked on a shelf with a price tag of 30k.

As a side note, I am working a deal right now with another member for a significant amount of my disc based stuff (over 1k, shipped cross country) and I will be taking photos of everything and noting condition of 150+ items so he knows exactly what he is purchasing.

I didn't see your ad before it was flagged, but what I can say is I never understood the idea of trying to sell an "entire" big collection at once for a single huge price.  I think aside from a small niche minority of collectors, the only people who might be interested are retro game stores and big resellers, neither of which would pay anywhere close to market value.  

In my opinion, there's no easy fast way to do it unless you wanted to just dump it for pennies on the dollar.  If I were to sell my collection and I didn't want to part out each individual item, I'd at the very least separate it based on system and then a number of smaller lots.  Its much faster and more profitable to move several smaller lots than one big lot, but of course you need to put in more effort.  Make lots of 30-50 games (of the same system) and throw in a few big ticket items among commons to move them.  But if you have real heavy hitters ($100+), sell those alone to maximize revenue.

But honestly if you insist on selling it all at once to one buyer, keep expectations realistic and in check and don't think sentimetal value is a thing.  It absolutely is not.  I do know quite a few local collectors that have sold their collections in the past couple years and in the end none of them got over 60% of what they were originally asking.  There are big resellers that specialize in buying collections, they are typically your only real buyer, and you'll take a huge hit for convenience of ditching it all at once.
 

Sounds like a pain. I would have significant trust with you given your reputation as a memeber here. Unless there was anything significant of note I would just go for the deal on a general discussion.

Its about 2 hours worth of work for me, which I am ok with for a sale worth a couple thousand dollars. I dont mind a bit of extra work to make sure the buyer knows exactly what He is  getting. There is a lot to be said for putting forth some extra effort, maybe thats why all my stuff sells within a day or two of me putting it out there. 

I agree with the people saying to split things up. You don't have to sell EVERY item individually, but you should at least put them into groups that make sense. The more niche items like the WON cabinets and the Zelda statue (and boy, would I personally love to own that if I had the funds) would be really hard to move with the rest of your collection, but would sell a lot quicker as individual listings. So breaking it down to things like full N64 set, XBox collection, Nintendo Power collection, vinyls, strat guide collection, Nintendoage collection [this one you're probably going to want to sell here, I don't see the appeal being there elsewhere] would probably be the best way to list them. The etsy things seem like they would be a really hard sell tbh. You would probably just want to bundle them in with something else, but I don't think it's realistic to expect much money or demand for those items even though they are cool.

In all honesty it seems like you'd have a really hard time trying to sell all of this in one sale, especially at the price you're looking to get for it. If you break it up into smaller lots you might not sell everything at the same time, and it might be a bit more effort, but you're probably gonna get more money and at least get rid of a lot of it instead of sitting on all of it looking for one person to take everything.

Cool collection, and good luck with the sale!

I see the purge has begun, good luck!

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Nintendo...

PS - Pack the hell out of that thing if you do ship.  I got a SNES Superbrite a few weeks ago and I'm not sure if it would have made a cross country trip.  Made it from NJ to MD but I was having a heart attack opening the package.

Pretty much this. There are only two possible people who would buy a $20-40k lot, and that is an extremely serious collector or a reseller. No casual collector has that kind of money around to drop on a hobby. Both of these are going to want a stellar deal.

According to VGPC/GVN, there are a bunch of games in the N64 set that are worth $2-5. However, no one is going to pay you $2-5 for those games, especially in bulk. A serious collector already has all of those en masse, and a reseller isn't going to pay even 50% market value for something that almost no one will ever buy. So take everything $5 and less, and assume it's value is $0, because that is what it is worth to both resellers and serious collectors. When I was pricing out what I would pay for lots back in the day, I'd even say anything less than $10 was worth $0, because by the time I took photos, shipped, paid fees, etc, I felt the effort to get $5 out of a $9 item wasn't worth it.

Here is a really old guide I wrote on how to evaluate lots: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamecoll...

In short, what GVN/VGPC say is the "going rate" for an N64 complete set, isn't what you'd ever get. That isn't being negative, it's just the economics of any hobby.

Meh I just threw this up there for a crazy price because, who knows.  I figure that was a way to get the imgur images circulating as well.  I'll defiantly be shipping it super safely though... full insurance and whatnot as well on it, if I did have to ship it.  Even if someone is a few states away I'd much rather just drive the sign to them to assure a safe arrival as I know shipping this thing is risky and scary haha

Just so everyone knows, I told myself I'd give it at least a week or two to try to move the lot, as unlikely as it may seem.  After that I will begin splitting stuff up.  I already have a line of people inquiring about signs and cases, and a few other items, so when that time comes I am just going to let money talk.  Again I appreciate all the feedback thru this thread.
 

You'd be surprised about Detroit. There is more to Detroit then the inner city. The inner city looks like a bombed out warzone but the metro Detroit area spans 50 miles and it's 3 counties surrounded by suburbs. There are some pretty rich areas around here. You can litterally cross the street from an area that has multimillion dollar homes to the hood within a block. We're still home to a large portion of the auto industry. The cost of living here is pretty high too. Because of the auto industry and the high wages they pay the standard of living is still high. It's not what it used to be though we got slammed in the mid 2000's. We lost a ton of manufacturing to China. I live 2 blocks from the Detroit city limit and if you've ever seen the movie 8 mile the trailer park is at the end of my street. Detroit once had the 3rd largest population in the US. It's still a pretty big place.

Heh. Pretty fun eBay postings.

Super Brite RARE
Pokemon with no label RARE
Perfect Dark RARE (well... Ok. Technically correct..)

What, no blue Chip holy grails?

Seriously though, cool signs, glws.

If I recall correctly, Paypal only reports your earnings if they exceed 10K. Theoretically, one could have multiple accounts. Or a spouse or friend could. Ya know. 




 

All most of us know about Detroit comes from Robocop, 8 Mile, and True Romance.  (and maybe Detroit: Rock City)

Let us have our dystopian fantasy    

That has been changing over the past couple years, and varies from state to state. 

For example here in MA its now a limit of $500 in Paypal transactions then your earnings get reported to the IRS for state tax.
 

I just remember when the Giants Slaughtered the Tigers in the world series, people in Detroit were trading houses for world series tickets. It was on the news around here a lot. 

I left out the housing-bust news reports (where you could buy city lots for $1/each) because that just dovetails in with the Robocop reference   
 

ditto this, it never ceases to amaze me how much of the country this detroit is a poor rundown forgotten city.  The city was mismanaged to death and now has literally made people who owned condos and property millionaires overnight.  It is a major city centrally located with access to the SL seaway and great lakes right on a central shipping hub with Canada and the big 3 american auto makers in the backyard.  Pretty much the only major city in the us that has large chunks to build up and out on and it really  sucks going downtown now compared to 5 years ago.    Crawling with people and new developments.

Good news is everyone else around the country thinks its a massive shithole and lucky for us we have all the sports/theatre/entertainment for a cost of living that is much more palatable. 

Good Luck with the sale bud!  i am sure you will find someone close by that will want this, lots of memories probably collecting that over the years
 

You know what... I did forget that Gross Pointe Blank happens there.   

(for a moment thought Heathers did, as well, but that is somewhere in Ohio)
 

Hahahahahahahaha


 

Seriously, I don't like to come into a thread to smash the OP, but the fact that you put "RARE" on literally every single one of your 100+ listings is quite maddening to me.  You make eBay worthless to shop with that keyword because sellers like you use it for everything in the hopes of getting extra eyeballs.  Unfortunately, the overuse means people like me just stop using it as a search term.  To paraphrase Syndrome from The Incredibles "If everything is rare, then nothing is."