A local gentleman brought me a collection he inherited. I reviewed it. There was nothing special. It was worth in the few tens of dollars.

He declined my offer. He had an old catalog with all of these prices. He wasn’t taking condition and demand into consideration. He said that he thought that he could use eBay to sell it to another collector and get more for it. Yes, chances are a collector will buy it for more since they aren’t worried about making a profit. I wasn’t upset that he didn’t accept my offer. It’s a normal part of business.

A few days later, I start getting multiple emails from him with questions about how to sell this collection on eBay. Should he sell the entire collection or would collectors want to buy individual stamps? What categories should he use? Are photos of whole album pages OK or does he need to taking close-ups?

Wait a minute Charlie! You decided to sell it on eBay and not take my offer. I accept that. But I’m not going to invest hours of my time giving you tips on how to sell on eBay. Getting you a better price doesn’t bring any money in to me for my time involved. And the questions he asked are things that dealers consider every day. There isn’t a single formula on how best to sell a collection. That is the job of the dealer/seller to determine.

I didn’t want to be ignorant with him. So I emailed him back a short reply that he should do some research by looking over completed listings that sold and see what bidders seem to like. Maybe it’s single stamps? Maybe it’s whole collections? What kinds of photos did they use? How extensive was their description?

He was sadly mistaken if he thought I was going to basically walk him through the steps on eBay to sell this collection.

Note to future sellers. If you turn down my offer, that’s fine. Its business and I understand your desire to get a higher price. But don’t expect me to give up working on my business to help you sell your collection. If you want to get a higher price for it, figuring out how best to do that is part of your job, not mine.