Selling at Auction Rare Books and Ephemera online
Posted by Richard Gabriel on Tue, Apr 20, 2010 @ 11:51 AM
Selling Rare Books and Ephemera can be a tricky business. It is one of the oldest businesses in the world, probably outdated only by one or two other primary businesses. Even in Greek times, manuscripts and 'writings' were sold and traded! So with the internet, auction houses across the globe, why is it so hard to sell rare books and ephemera online? Well its the economy. Books and ephemera, like all items that are categorized in the disposable income category, fall off when the economy turns south, although this downturn has been exceptionally hard on just about everything that is tangible and for sale.
So recently, we cleared out a bunch of early Americana and sent it off to Heritage Auction for the up and coming June auction of books and ephemera.The collecton of rare books and ephemera that we had listed in our bookstore and in our ebay store will fair better in a one time auction. Generally, when looking at an auction, you estimate the retail value, discount that value by 50% to 60% and that will be the 'suggested price'.
Heritage does a pretty good job of bringing in the buyers but they too have had their spate of problems in the auction market. The auction market today is in essence a bidders market. Book dealers go to these auctions looking for inventory and rare items that may be underbid or under sold. Scooping these items will help their buyer portfolios but a good friend of mine that deals in rare and antique books also told me that the buyers on the institutional level, the rare book libraries, have had all their budgets slashed or completely shut off. Libraries and library buyers often work through intermediaries to try and acquire an item so as to not let the other bidders know that for example, that the library is bidding on the item. He has not had a 'intermediary' contract with a library for over 18 months when he would usually get one or two a month. The stand in bidder gets a piece of the action or an add on fee and buys the item for the library. Rare books and ephemera are generally somewhat recession proof because eventually, demand will come back and the pricing will rebound to where it should be. But if you have a collection of items you want to get rid of at the auction, you have to be careful of psychologically convincing yourself that the item will sell for more than the retail. In this market, the answer is probably not. Wait another year, and the rebound will show up in prices that are higher than the street value of an item.