Where to Sell?

I have a number of WWI items to sell, beginning with 1918 French postcards collected by my grandfather in France.

Where would you gents suggest auctioning these items? I have considered starting on eBay, but thought I'd check here first.

Here's a sample...



Kurt P. Wheaton

BTW he was Ivan Pangburn Wheaton - if anyone has any information concerning him, please email me.

Apparently WWI postcards are somewhat less scarce than I had thought! Searches on eBay turn up a good deal of hits and the prices are generally under five dollars.

Are there tons of these cards in circulation?

[dbahn]

Ebay does expose your item to a large number of interested people. Sometimes the prices are low for exactly the reason that you mentioned in your note -- the items are not as rare as one would think. On the other hand, I've seen items that are truly rare command final bid prices that are probably higher than what would have been realized at conventional auctions. Overall, it's my impression that eBay has lowered the prices on common items but raised them on rare items. Maybe that's how it should be anyway.

Since you are addressing a group of WW1 aviation fanatics here, you might consider listing the items that you plan to sell and either offer them for sale here or at least announce when they are available on eBay. Please don't
drag it out, however. I don't think anyone is interested in seeing a new post for every item listed.

[Jim]

WW I postcards are extremely common. Virtually every soldier in every army on both sides of the war used them as their main way of keeping in touch with the folks at home to show them where they had been, to build morale of loved ones by showing how mighty their army is, or to impress their their girlfriends by showing how brave they were to be in the war. They are found postally used and unused. The unused ones were typically sent "back home" as bundles of them in letters and in general most of these sell for under $1 each. Postally used ones with military markings typicaly sell in the $1 to $5 range depending on the specific markings and their rarity. There are a few rare exceptions to these and maybe one out every thousand you run across might sell for between $5 and $25 such as real photos of specific aircraft or famous pilots and you might want to look at postcard collecting guides to get an idea about those but the odds of having one are pretty low relative to the total number of WW I cards out there. There are also a few kinds of military postal markings that give a slightly higher value, but most do not.

My recommendation is to keep them as a memento of your grandfather as the potential amount you might get from selling them is not likely to be much more than pocket change. Perhaps you might even want to expand on it and make a hobby of collecting them as it would be a very inexpensive and fun thing to do. You can specialize on all kinds of things, such as specific towns, military markings, real photo cards, embossed cards, cards with painted images, cards depicting soldiers, cards depicting battlefields or war damage, etc. etc. The possibilities are endless as is the supply of these cards. Best wishes.

Jim,
Yes, further study completely agrees with your assessment! I found one such collection on eBay of nearly 50 cards from WWI France for something like $30. It looks like the postcards stay with the collection.

One of the cards that might be of value is a photo of a Gotha shot down and placed in a village square for public viewing, but it's pasted in the scrapbook.

Thanks for the replys!

Kurt

["Junior"]

Talking of selling things, there was talk of making a "buy and sell" board here at the Aerodrome but there doesn't seem to have been anything more said about it. Be nice to see it happen.

Junior.

[dbahn]

Good idea.

[Jim]

Hi Pang,

Postcards that were pasted into scrapbooks tend to have almost all of their value lost as collectors do not like damaged cards and pasting a card onto a scrapbook page creates a great deal of damage. It would have to be an exceptionally rare and desireable card for such a card to have commercial value.

On the idea of a buy and sell page, I would like to chime in with another vote of support. I frequent a couple of other forums and they all have such pages that seem to work well. I'm not a dealer or anything, but I wouldn't mind having the opportunity to buy or sell something on occasion.

Jim

["Junior"]

Right that's 3 votes for. How many people do we need for a quorum?

Junior.

[wulffo]

buy and sell and especially trade would be an incredible section to have as every collector seems to be sitting on stockpiles of things they don't need and spend endless times searching for the rest. i'd have tons of things for trade... literally