Stuff

[Greg Gore; WA1KBQ]

What would you recommend a reseller use as a fair guide when making an offer 
on an estate? Bearing in mind at the time of examination often this stuff has 
been dormant and collecting dust for years. Most of the stuff will need time 
and effort cleaning and refurbishing to get working order again, etc.; and 
there is usually only two or three good pieces with the rest of it being mostly 
junk. Should a reseller always offer current market prices in observance of the 
sellers interest only? In helping with many of these estate radio collections 
what you are often dealing with is years of hoarding and most of the stuff is 
just plain accumulated junk from what I've seen. We have seen the recent 
pictures on the Internet of the collection that was obsessive hoarding, most of it 
was just junk that would require a lot of time and effort to try to sell. How 
many estates have you visited and it turned out to a museum full of pristine 
vintage equipment worth a fortune? In many cases a reseller is offering a 
valuable service in hauling off this headache for folks who would otherwise be 
unable to lift it and deal with it. I don't know how you could determine a fair 
market value. Ebay has ruined the hobby as far as I am concerned. Everyone 
seller likes to quote eBay prices and a few years ago it might have been a usable 
guide but things are changing and this stuff is headed back down now. Some of 
it you can't give away anymore because as I said earlier everybody has used 
eBay to load up. Every Hamfest you go to you see the same faces, we are a small 
special interest group. Everyone who is going to buy is full now and we don't 
have any new blood coming into the hobby that is for the most part interested 
in tube radio equipment. Lately I have been watching the car hobby as my 
interest has recently shifted from radios to old Corvettes. Prices for restored Ford 
model Ts and As are in the toilet because the generation that drove their 
values and prices is dying off. The new blood in the old car hobby wants 60s 
muscle cars or so called Resto-Mods, they ignore restored antique cars. You could 
investigate the rise and fall of Howdy Doody to see what the future is for 
tube ham radio equipment. Right now this stuff is hoarded and stored away but 
when we are all 80 years old and unable to lift it anymore the market will get 
flooded with it and you will see 75A-1s and 32V-2s selling for $50 again. How 
would you decide what a fair price for all concerned is? Personally I would be 
careful about paying $1200 for a 32V-3 again unless I just didn't care about 
throwing a lot of money away.

Regards, Greg

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