by Dee Sacherich

One of our (NMGCS) members, who wishes to remain anonymous, recently sold her milk glass collection at a public auction, The auction company came highly recommended. The member gave the auction company a copy of the NMGCS membership so the members could be notified of the upcoming auction. Needless to say, none of the members were notified.

The auctioneer knew little or nothing about milk glass. As a result the member did not receive true value for the items in her collection. The lesson to be learned here is to be wary of the pitfalls because there is no easy way to dispose of one's collection.

If you try to sell it yourself, it usually takes a long time before all the items are sold and often you are left with some of them remaining unsold. If you choose the auction route, you do get to remove your whole collection at one time but it is costly. Not only do you pay the auctioneer a percentage of the sales, you also have to pay all related expenses. Any people working for the auctioneer during the sale are paid by you, the ads placed to advertise the sale, rental of a building if the sale is off premise, to name a few, are all paid by you. This lowers your return on the investment considerably, [f the auction is poorly attended, you stand to lose but if milk glass collectors attend the auction, then you could stand to profit. It is all a gamble no matter which way you choose.

A third option would be to sell your whole collection to a dealer, in which case you would receive a percentage of book value because understandably the dealer expects to resell them and make a profit. If you can find a collector willing to purchase your entire collection rather than pick and choose, you could always go that route. If you do, you should not expect full value for the items because the collector would be accepting as part of the entire lot many pieces he might not otherwise buy .

A fourth option, only relatively recently available, is to sell your items through the computer on the latest craze, eBay. eBay is an on-line auction that has many of our members staring at their computer screens and wondering where all the time has gone. With e-Bay, you would need to have a computer, of course, with an Internet connection and a digital camera or a scanner. You establish what you will accept as a starting bid. If you want, you can also place a reserve on the item to set the minimum you will accept for a winner bid. The buyer pays the shipping and insurance. The drawbacks to this method are that it takes a lot of time and effort if you are disposing of a large collection, perhaps many months before you have posted all of the items. In addition, you have all that packing to do when the item sells. On the plus side, you will have a much wider range of an audience from all over the world bidding on your items, therefore increasing your chances of selling.

What our member wanted to convey to the rest of us is to be aware of these things so that you make your choice wisely and in full knowledge of the pros and cons.