Hi folks!

First of all I am new to these boards.  This site thus far has been extremely helpful in assesing the value of my collection.  And the people her seem very friendly and spot on.  Alas I am in a bit of a quandray.  Whereas my original intention was to sit on my collection idefinitely and let it appreciate over the long haul, unfortunately I am in a bit of a bind and I'm interested in unloading pretty much all of it or whatever I can as soon as possible.

Here's what I have.  Firstly I'll list the rares per this site.

1.  Dragon #1 - mint, pristine condition (I bought this for about $200 at a gaming convention 15 years ago and it has not left its mylar bag since)
2.  Strategic Review #1 - mint
3.  Strategic Review #3 - nmint
4.  SR #4 - nmint
5.  SR #7 - nmint

- Also, I bought the Dragon Archive 5-CD set several years ago and although not listed here it seems to fetch quite a bit on ebay these days due to the fact that it's pretty much unavailable now because of that whole copyright issue.

In addition, I have pretty much everything released to the general public as far as 1st Ed. AD&D goes.  I did however cantinue to collect for a while until the mid '90's so I have tons of 2nd Edition stuff as well.

Dragon-wise I have 1,9,20,22,23,26,27, and then 30-210; all in mylar bags.

I have things that may not make the Rares list but I know people would be intersted in, ie. Dieties & Demigods w/Chulhu, Vale of the Mage, Egg of the Pheonix (The I one not the R one), the Vecna stuff, etc.

As far as condition.....well, I was a youngster when I got into the game in 1980 or 1981 or so.  So some of the older books and modules are a bit thrashed.  As I got a little older and started to appreciate their value of course the condition gets exponentially better.  To the point where I was just collecting in the early to mid '90's solely for the collection value.  I compiled an inventory about a decade ago but its on pen and paper.  I need to put it on Word or whatever.  I'll probably do this tonight.

Well!  Here is my dilemma.  In a couple of days my rent and my utilities will be due.  I do freelance work and to make a long story short late last week I learned that I've been pretty much completely stiffed out of about three months worth of pay.  So basically I'm looking to unload everything I can immediately if not sooner.  Much as I would like to keep this stuff I dodn't really have any emotional or sentimental attachment to them anymore.

So!  My questions:

1.  I live in the center of Southern Califonia (Long Beach).  Can anyone recommend a gaming or hobby story that might be interested in buying this stuff?  The only one I know of is Brookhurst Hobbies in Garden Grove but their buyer will be gone for the next week and a half.  Couldn't really find anything on Google but maybe I'm using the wrong parameters.  I'm open to anywhere in Los Angeles Country, Orange County, even Riverside and San Diego Counties.

2.  Is there any individual here or that you might know of that might be interested in personally buying anything I have?  Of course, with the timing issue there are some caveats.  Ideally the buyer would be in So Cal somewhere.  Because, the ebay thing presents a problem.  Although I have an account (I've only bought before), there is the issue of the time it would take for the auction to go through, and also I just switched banks and don't know if I would be able to verify my new Paypal-linked account in time.  I mean, I'd be willing to ship any of it anywhere but obviously there is the whole trust thing, I'd probably need to have money wired to me first and then ship the goods.  But I doubt anyone would do anything like that on blind faith alone.


My sincere apologies for the overtly long post here but I thought it would be best to seek your counsel, since the whole selling thing is completely new to me, as well as my rather unique situation.  Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks for the advice!

Everything sounds good although the paypal thing would still pose a problem for two reasons; firstly the delay from when the paypal funds go into my bank account and secondly I am in overdraft at the moment so a good chunk of what I get will go towards my account overage.  Kinda pathetic, I know, but it is what it his.

Here's what I can do.  I'll work on a complete list and have it up by morning and once I have everything in one place I'll have a better idea of what I think everything's worth.  In total they are filled in about 10 of those standard-size white file storage boxes that you'd get at Staples or Office Depot...to give you an idea of the size/amount of stuff here.

Until then, Cheers!

Depending on price, I can say I would be interested in anything 2e you have for Ravenloft and anything involving Vecna. But, price is most important for me... not condition, though condition often stipulates price.

Villemar wrote:Thanks for the advice!

Everything sounds good although the paypal thing would still pose a problem for two reasons; firstly the delay from when the paypal funds go into my bank account and secondly I am in overdraft at the moment so a good chunk of what I get will go towards my account overage.  Kinda pathetic, I know, but it is what it his.

Here's what I can do.  I'll work on a complete list and have it up by morning and once I have everything in one place I'll have a better idea of what I think everything's worth.  In total they are filled in about 10 of those standard-size white file storage boxes that you'd get at Staples or Office Depot...to give you an idea of the size/amount of stuff here.

Until then, Cheers!

Paypal funds take about three days to get into your account....not a problem.  

If you don't accept paypal, and you don't have pictures/scans, expect your items to go for a fraction of what they are worth.  You'll get value, but not anywhere what you could if you took a little preparation.

Mike B.

That is quite a collection!

So, basically you have almost 500 items.  I agree with Rakeesh sah Tarna that cutting Dragon issues #51 and up is going to be a common request because of the cost to ship issue.  I personally would consider them dead weight relatively speaking.

I am guessing/hoping you are now O.K. with Paypal based on Badmike's comments?   If not, how do you want to get paid?

Local people would not have to factor in shipping in their bid so chances are you'd get more money that way, but not necessarily.  The other bonus with a local person is you get cash instead of dealing with Paypal or hauling the stuff to the Post Office.  I am assuming you don't have a scale and could easily do the on-line postage system where the Post Office picks your stuff up.

By the way, a 30 lb Media Mail box from 90210 zip code to 31210 is less than $15.00 depending on the dimensions, so shipping could be less than $150.00 total.

Whatever the local folks bid, it wouldn't hurt to give us on-line folks a chance to counter bid.  Perhaps we can make it worth your while.  You never know unless you ask.

Anyway, I hope it works out for you one way or another.

Found a couple more protential local buyers so I'm going to see if that pans out.  If not say by Thursday then we'll go this other route.

Tonight I did some math as to what I think would be a fair price for the lot.  I split everything into two catagories, Rare/Semi-Rare and the rest.

Per the Acaeum's pricing tables, cross-referencing the rare/semi-rare stuff by condition, I have 38 items that fit into this catagory and if I got the ideal price for all of them this comes out to $1,113.

I have 429 remaining items that are not especially rare, I think a fair price to get for each in bulk would be a dollar per, or $429.

So $1,113 + $429 = $1,542.  I don't think it would be unreasonable for a skilled seller to make around this if they were to sell them.

Myself not being in that esteemed company....what should I expect?

Well, relating this to something I have been selling as of late, that being CD's and DVD's, I have found how much shops that sell used CDs /DVDs will pay you in cash for these items.  Whether it be Amoeba, Fingerprints, SecondSpin....they all pay about the same.  That being about 40% of what they can sell it for.  So I usually get $2-3 per CD and $3-4 per DVD.

So 40% of $1542 comes out to a little over $615.  Hence, that's what I'd like to clear from this transaction.  I'd be absolutely thrilled if I could clear $615...it would be perfect.  Sound reasonable?  Oh and I can also upload a pricing breakdown if need be.

OK fair enough.

I have already propositioned my two potential local buyers for the $615 but they must accept the offer and I must have completed the transaction by this evening.  If neither of them pull through, I will be open to more serious bidding.

I have updated my inventory list (added the condition of some of the rares and semi-rares):

http://www.youshare.com/view.php?file=InventoryList.doc

And here is my specific pricing breakdown:

http://www.youshare.com/view.php?file=PricingList.doc

Congrats!  That is one happy store owner!