Subject:
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Re: Sets vs. Parts
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.market.theory
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Date:
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Wed, 9 Jun 1999 20:58:27 GMT
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Viewed:
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510 times
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In lugnet.market.theory, Frank Filz writes:
> Bill Katz wrote in message ...
> > I've recently bought a huge collection (600+ sets, 100,000+ parts), and
> > I'm planning to sell 90+% of it off. I'm curious about people's opinions
> > of how old a set has to be in order for it to be worth more as a
> > whole set than as parts. As Todd has proven time and again, you can
> > make money (if you don't value your time :-), maybe if you do)
> > breaking up relatively recent sets, bought either at full retail
> > or 20-50% off. We've also seen realatively small 10 year old
> > sets sell for $2-$4/piece (6011, 6023) as sets.
>
>
> Small sets that don't have much more than 1 or 2 special parts (counting a
> mini-fig as 1 part here), probably will net close to the same amount of
> money either as a set or as pieces.
When considered with the above consider these two questions:
1) are those 1 or 2 special parts no longer made?
2) are the rest of the parts fairly uncommon? (include color as a
rareness factor)
> One thing which might help is to bundle
> several small related sets. One problem is that if a small sets best value
> (when considered as parts or complete set) is less than 10 bucks or so,
> people may not be willing to bid much higher than a few bucks, because the
> postage cost if you only win one small set becomes a significant additional
> cost. This problem may end up trapping most small sets to the few dollar
> price range.
Percentage-wise per set, sometimes the small sets contain more of one piece
than any other kind of piece: for instance, a small AquaRaiders set has 2 dark
grey macaroni bricks, which are somewhat rare: therefore it would be worth more
together a set. You could part out that set and get a lot for the macaronis
(and not very much for any of the other parts) or sell whole versions of the
set, which you could probably sell successfully because it's not that expensive
as a set especially if a bigger pirate set had only eight macaronis, but cost 8
times as much to purchase. Buying 4 of the small sets might be a considerably
cheaper way to get 8 macaronis than one big set, assuming those are the only
parts you wanted, hence breaking up bigger sets. No trade secret there, just
common sense.
> > These sets are all mixed together. And since many are buckets, window
> > packas and roof packs I'm going to have to have some big parts auctions
> > anyway. Is it going to be beneficial to sort out all the sets, or
> > do the equivalent of "breaking up" older sets and selling them as parts.
Breaking up the bigger sets is the way to go.
> > As an example, there are ~10 copies of 6265 Sabre Island. WIll I do better
> > auctioning the white walls and blue guards, or making up the sets? Or
> > some of each to appeal to both the builders and set collectors?
In this case, the set is not that big, but has special pieces: the walls with
brick prints, bigger pirate flag, bendable palm tree (not as valuable YET),
good little island baseplate, etc., as you know. But while these in addition to
the minifigs are all great pieces, the set is still small enough to sell whole,
which will attract more bidders.
> If there are that many copies of a set, consider some as sets and some as
> parts. One thing to do also is keep the parts bundles to reasonable sizes
> (though I suppose in some ways, a small number of large bundles may net a
> higher dollar amount because some of the bidders want SOME parts at any
> cost).
If accumulated profit is not the prime motivator, but rather the study of how
to make more (which is often worth $ in and of itself), perhaps your auction
doesn't have to be entirely one way or the other. Sell half as sets as half as
parts. Lots will be more manageable, and you can track whether sets or parts go
faster and which command more $. You'll get good info that some of us can only
speculate about.
> The other reason to consider selling much of the collection as sets, is look
> at Todd's reflections on parts auction sizes. Granted, you may not be doing
> continual parts auctions like Todd, but it sounds like there's an incredible
> effort to run a parts auction for huge numbers of pieces, and he's had
> several years of practice.
That's one reason I haven't dived headlong into this further. The other being
the lack of good sales fodder and good garage sales around here.
-Tom McD.
when replying, don't speculate on spamcake futures.
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Sets vs. Parts
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| (...) Hey, by the 10 cents per piece rule, thats... a lot. (...) In the case of 6011 and 6023, which sell for high prices as sets, they would do nearly as well, possibly better, broken down. I think a record price for 6023 was $175 (with others (...) (25 years ago, 12-Jun-99, to lugnet.market.theory)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Sets vs. Parts
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| Bill Katz wrote in message ... (...) Small sets that don't have much more than 1 or 2 special parts (counting a mini-fig as 1 part here), probably will net close to the same amount of money either as a set or as pieces. One thing which might help (...) (25 years ago, 2-Jun-99, to lugnet.market.theory)
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