Auctions any auction is a game of chance...if you didn't want to sell it low then you should have put a reserve on it. A card of that calibre would have sold easily at a fair/event for $150-200 however there are people canny enough to be on ebay and get a bargain and there are idiots on ebay who gloss over such items.
But an auction is a game of chance and when you have a low reserve you have no outcome but what it has sold for. Unless you do what other dealers do and if it is going to low you have a bidder you know bump the price up and if you or your buddy wins it you just pay the listing fees. -----Original Message----- From: Zeev Drach <lobb...@rogers.com> To: MoPo-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU Sent: Fri, 2 Jul 2010 14:35 Subject: Re: [MOPO] Is there something wrong with this hobby? Channing, Yes, $11.50 for that card is a real bummer. Yes, of course it’s worth a lot more, and you would have also gotten a lot more for it, had it not been on eBay. I would have paid a lot more for it, but I simply don’t have the time to look daily through the endless mounds of ebay auctions. I think that is true for a lot of people. I go through some of Bruce’s and Rich’s auctions, just out of habit, and because I know them. That’s about it. Maybe a couple of other dealers as well, from time to time. But the obsessive habit of sitting day in and day out and watching for bargains on ebay is long behind me. Who’s got the time for it? A few years ago it was still a novelty, but nobody can keep up with the sheer avalanche of posters and lobby cards heaped upon us daily via ebay and other on line auctions. In other words, what I’m saying is there is so much stuff on ebay that people simply are tuning off. Zeev From: MoPo List [mailto:mop...@listserv.american.edu] On Behalf Of channinglylethomson Sent: Friday, July 02, 2010 12:53 AM To: MoPo-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU Subject: [MOPO] Is there something wrong with this hobby? Is there something wrong with this hobby? I ask this for the following reason. Today, I had an auction closing on EBAY for an original 1941 lobby card -- a beautiful linen-paper portrait card of Rita Hayworth and Fred Astaire in a tuxedo from YOU WERE NEVER LOVELIER that I've had for years. I started this auction low because I was conducting a sort of test. I wanted to see if a card like this would reach its real value at auction on EBAY or not. Well, unfortunately, the lobby card sold for a closing amount of $11.50. 15 years ago this card would have sold for between $125. and $200. You probably could have made a phone call and sold it for that. Now it sells for $11.50. I posted the auction announcement on various sites including two separate ones on MOPO. It ended up selling to a man in NYC for $11.50. Now as you may imagine, I was disturbed that it sold for so little. In the future, I will probably only start one of these low opening bid, Bruce Hershenson-style auctions if the piece is something like a lobby card or poster for a major 1950s science fiction film or a classic movie or obviously collectible poster or card. I think a lobby card like this one is still of value despite changing tastes. Maybe I'm wrong but I think there are still people who know who Rita Hayworth is and who Fred Astaire is and admire their work and their films. However, since no one in MOPO found this worth bidding on, even if they could have gotten the card for as little as $12.50, maybe I'm all wrong. Thoughts please? Channing Thomson P.S. One other consideration -- I live in a major American city (San Francisco) where I routinely see elderly Chinese people digging through trash cans all over downtown trying to find cans or plastic bottles for recycling. Sometimes they carry big plastic bags of these balanced on bamboo polls over their shoulders. These are men and women who are often as old as 70 or 80. You really can't go more than a block without seeing them digging through the trash. Nobody seems to think there's anything wrong with this here but it disturbs me and makes me think we may actually be in a depression rather than just one the typical recessions. The economy definitely BLOWS! Visit the MoPo Mailing List Web Site at www.filmfan.com ___________________________________________________________________ How to UNSUBSCRIBE from the MoPo Mailing List Send a message addressed to: lists...@listserv.american.edu In the BODY of your message type: SIGNOFF MOPO-L The author of this message is solely responsible for its content. Visit the MoPo Mailing List Web Site at www.filmfan.com ___________________________________________________________________ How to UNSUBSCRIBE from the MoPo Mailing List Send a message addressed to: lists...@listserv.american.edu In the BODY of your message type: SIGNOFF MOPO-L The author of this message is solely responsible for its content. Visit the MoPo Mailing List Web Site at www.filmfan.com ___________________________________________________________________ How to UNSUBSCRIBE from the MoPo Mailing List Send a message addressed to: lists...@listserv.american.edu In the BODY of your message type: SIGNOFF MOPO-L The author of this message is solely responsible for its content.
