Buying and selling your toys

Ok I said I was going to get back to writing so here goes.

I have had a lot of people emailing and asking were is the best place to sell their items, mostly the diecast items such as matchbox, dinky and hot wheels.

Normally I would say eBay without hesitation but lately eBay has been letting the sellers down so I am going to put eBay last on my list of places to sell and suggest other avenues to sell from.

Since we are working with toys then the market is going to be limited to just that market. Before eBay and the online auction craze most sales were done through direct sales, swap meets, local sales outlets such as antique stores, yard sales, and some smaller stores such as knick brac stores. A few of these are still available but for the most part sales are done online, online auctions, onsite auctions, antique malls, toy shows and yard sales.

A lot depends on the toy you are trying to sell. Matchbox, Dinky, and Gorgi are a few that are international toys in that they are sold world wide and were also made world wide. These toys have a huge market place to work from if you have the knowledge to work the internet. Lets start with Matchbox.

Matchbox has been around for many many years and has become a staple in the collector markets and is the one I get the most questions about. Now first this article is not about the people who are dealers, or people who have a network to put their toys in front of. This article for the weekend treasure hunter who spends his or her time running the yardsales and antique malls for their treasures. Through the years I have picked up hundreds of diecast items through yardsales, fleamarkets and just people who want to get rid of the collection their kids left behind when they moved on in the world. In the beginning I just let them collect as there was not a market to move the items in. I could have set up at toy shows, done ads in magazines, or set up at a fleamarket myself but due to limited time and always hunting instead of selling they just set there.

Finally I noticed there was a large market on eBay and the toys were selling, now this was in the late 90s to mid 20s and eBay still allowed the sellers to make money. At this time value was were it should be meaning it was realistic for a used matchbox in played with condition and also realistic to one in the box excellent or better. Now after ten years or more the market place is completely out of sync.

As stated earlier there are still two markets to deal with and now it appears as if the dealers are holding the upper hand in value determination and they are entirely wrong for the weekend warrior. If we look only at eBay the the values are all to high by a large margin. This statement does not mean they all are it just means they have priced themselves out of the general market place. Maybe this was by design or maybe they just don't know their market. Either way values are all over the place and the layperson has no idea of the real value of their items.

First we are going to look at were to sell those 100 old matchbox cars and trucks you found at a yardsale in a box under the table. Did you find a treasure. NO I would say 9 times out of 10.  There may be one in the box that is valuable but then again we have to determine what is valuable. Matchbox that has been played with regardless of the model is not going to have a very big value.  Let us step back and take a look at eBay, still one of the biggest value indicators today. There are over 124,000 matchbox items on the site today so first we know the market place is flooded with matchbox, second we know the values are to high for unboxed played with toys. MATCHBOX # 27 D MERCEDES BENZ 230SL CONVERTIBLE Made in England is not worth $25.00 in played with condition. Fine if the seller can get his price that is why he has it listed. The problem is if most people find this car in that box of 100 old matchbox and find this auction for $25.00 starting bid then that is close to what he or she is going to list their item for and it is not going to normally sell. The new seller has lost his fees and still has the item to content with. Don't get me wrong there are a lot matchbox that is priced right on eBay but the margin of items priced to high is getting larger.

Then we have to look at the toys that are being sold international on eBay. you have to remember the dollar does not have the same value in England as it does here. As a matter of fact any country that uses the euro will have a higher value as shown on eBay. So we have to take that value into consideration with we are looking for values for our toys.

Get a basic value of your matchbox before trying to sell it. There is enough information out there to make an educated appraisal of the item before you try to sell it. And remember while you are searching for the correct value you are also finding sites you may be able to use to sell your item. 1 Don't go with the high end value and expect to make a sale unless it is a rare piece.  Look at all the information you can find and I know sometimes that is hard to do. You may only have the internet to get a value from or you may have many different places to get a value. I am not going to say RealPriceGuides is the place to get that value, but I am saying add it to the list of places you look at. This site may be wrong and if it is it will show up in your research.

Now that is all for today. We got into the value of the items, next is finding the right place to sell the item.

Ervin, Grumpy old man