You Must Buy My Stuff

At the stamp show today, I got cornered by a random collector who had three stock books to sell.  One had some good early Canada, one had common Canada and a final page with some revenues, and the other was common 10c-each material.  He started off by complaining, literally that "all the other guys are colluding against me."

You know what?  If you're going to start off by accusing people, you're going to have poor results.  He thought they were out to get him because they all gave different answers to "how much is my stuff worth?"  I had to explain that if Chuck said "$20" it means he's clearly not interested.  You're not asking "what is the universally accepted value?" you're asking "what is this worth to you today?"

I had to explain that all the dealers here already have a big stock of early Canada.  They're not going to pay top dollar for things they already can't sell.  I tried all different scenarios, and he was just offended that nobody wanted to hand him hundreds of dollars.  

He said he'll just "get an agent" to do it for me.  So, free appraisal?  No, that's 4-6 hours of work at $50 an hour, and there goes the $200-300 you thought it was worth.  You're just asking someone else to do all the work.  I let him know that any library will have the stamp catalogs and you should do some research first.  If you came in with a price list, someone might still only offer 20% but at least you were prepared.  No, he will not do any work, someone else has to do the work "because we like this stuff", just give him money.  I showed him this page has about $100 of stamps, this page has $20, these ones at the back are maybe $50 ... but if they're stuck down or whatever, the value drops a lot.

Seriously.  I said, if I did pay $200 for it today (on a day where I didn't even make $200), I would just price the books at $250, $50 and $20 and put them on my table.  They won't sell today because nobody is here buying.  After a few months, I'll drop the prices and they probably won't sell, and eventually I lose money, or they just never sell at all.  He didn't care, the just wanted money for this "treasure his dad left him."

If he did do the work to scan and list them on "those auction sites", sadly, I guarantee that there are 100 people selling that one ($1 bridge or whatever), so yeah, it's "worth" $5, you wanted to get $3, but some of those sellers will sell it for 99 cents and yours won't sell unless you also drop the price.  Doesn't matter, he won't put any effort into it.

NONE OF US needed those stamps on that day.  I told him it was like buying potatoes for $1 each and then expecting a supermarket to buy them back for more, when they already have hundreds of pounds of them for a buck a pound.  Collecting goes against the grain of the economy, where every industry buys wholesale amounts and sells smaller lots for higher prices.  Only collectors buy individual items to make wholesale lots (collections) and expect more than what they paid.  Ugh.

So this was annoying.  We finally agreed that prices are like quantum fluctuations.  Right now, those stamps have a price AND don't have a price.  Until someone puts money in your hands, the price is just theoretical.  He understood that.  

But he still felt that just because some catalog says there's a price, we should automatically hand over the money.  Or change our whole business plans because he showed up with some stuff.  And he hung around for another hour bugging all the dealers, even telling Chuck I told him it was worth $200, not $20.  No sense of how business works.

Why would buy items we don't need?  It's really that simple.  The more you know about what you're selling, the better the results will be.  But you may only get 20%.  It's business.

Aggravating.