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English Pen Collection For Sale


northlodge

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I have been approached to give some guidance on how to sell a small collection of 40 - 50 mainly English pens from the mid 20th C. Too near to home for me to purchase the collection, so the main options would appear to be ebay or auction house.

 

Ebay would probably mean listing them separately or in small batches, some time spent with the camera, and perhaps 15% costs.

 

Auction house = 1 poor picture on the saleroom website, chance of breakage / theft whilst being available to paw, and costs that might amount to 35% (buyers premium / sellers premium / listing / VAT etc).

 

Am I being too jaundiced in my views of the English auction house set up? are there any alternatives I have overlooked?

Edited by northlodge
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Many places also sell pens on consignment. I'm not familiar with those in the UK but check around and see what is available.

 

My Website

 

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Have you considered setting up a webpage or blog - if you have to photograph anyway, you might as well save eBay costs.

 

You could also promote batch or bulk sale on penboards like Pentrace Greenboard or Fountain Pen Classifieds, even WES.

 

Finally, consider selling in bulk or batch to pen dealers directly or at/through pen show. Also consider any pen clubs nearby - I have been able to sell batches of pens to other members of my pen club.

 

The returns will vary depending in large part on how much effort the seller is willing to spend.

 

If I'm going to go to the trouble of taking good pics of everything, I would go the webpage/blog route and take advantage of promoting on pen boards.

 

A few free thoughts - whether they are worth much more than that is for you to decide.

 

Best of luck!

MikeW

Edited by MikeW

MikeW

 

"In the land of fountain pens, the one with the sweetest nib reigns supreme!"

 

Check out the London Pen Club.

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Any Uniques among the, Paul?

 

No idea.

I am trying to avoid getting involved any more than I have to..... I would be obliged to pay way over the odds so as to avoid any accusation of taking advantage.

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Am I being too jaundiced in my views of the English auction house set up? are there any alternatives I have overlooked?

 

Every country has its own special website for selling fountain pens. So, if you are interested you could sell them in every country separately.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Where did you get 35% from? The buyers premium and sellers premium are separate - you don't pay both unless you are buying and selling at the same time. I used to work for a good provincial auction house and we charged 15% + VAT on sales and that included lotting, pictures, insurance, listing and advertising. If the auction house knows what they're doing they will take good photos and advertise them well. After all, the more you get paid, the more they get paid. Bear in mind also that Paypal will nibble at your profits as well as Ebay if you go that route.

 

Good luck!

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Where did you get 35% from? The buyers premium and sellers premium are separate - you don't pay both unless you are buying and selling at the same time. I used to work for a good provincial auction house and we charged 15% + VAT on sales and that included lotting, pictures, insurance, listing and advertising. If the auction house knows what they're doing they will take good photos and advertise them well. After all, the more you get paid, the more they get paid. Bear in mind also that Paypal will nibble at your profits as well as Ebay if you go that route.

 

Good luck!

 

I think the seller is going down the auction route (Johnson's in Nottingham I believe).

 

However to answer your question. If I am buying at auction, I would value something at £100, so will limit my bid to £80 so as to account for buyers premium / Vat etc. If I bid £80 then the auction house will charge a sellers premium / vat etc before passing on £65 to the seller. Hence (as a rough estimate) the seller will receive 65% of the value, with the auction house taking 30-odd % and a bit for vat.

 

Similarly selling on ebay is 10% plus 5% paypal - hence the approx 15% I quoted.

 

You only have to look at the photography of pens on the saleroom site to see that most (not all) auction houses are hopeless with their photography.

 

I once saw a lot in a Wiltshire auction of "2 cased parker pens" - the picture was of a hard cased 51 box closed.

I took the trouble to ask for additional photos, and the contents were two platignum pens. (an extreme example perhaps)

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Yes, in that sense, the auctioneer takes a nibble from the buyer and a nibble from the seller but the more provincial salerooms try to keep the commission down to compete with the larger houses who, in spite of their reputations, don't necessarily offer a better service. I've seen an entire warehouse of Sothebys 'lost' items - things sold and unsold that are unclaimed or mislabelled. Perhaps I was lucky managing a saleroom for one of the better small auctioneers. Our photographer (who was also one of the directors) set up everything with lights, background, reflectors etc and took excellent pictures. For 500 odd lots of an antique sale, I really didn't envy him, especially as he was also one of the auctioneers!

 

The Platignum pen example you gave is pathetic! Makes you wonder if they were interested at all...

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