I've been watching this too, to see if anyone bids.
I would have at least bundled together same genre things if not sold them individually.

As kane1 says, maybe the person isn't really interested in selling them, and is interested to see if someone will bid on that price. And if they don't, they're not too worried.

When people buy archive boxes do they usually buy them to keep as part of their collection or do they open them?

Well, the first one I bought was Twilight Zone IV from about 10 years back. I kept everything but the set of Hall of Fame cards which I'd always intended to sell to recoup some of cost. I did, and ended up with all of the autographs from that set for around $400.

More recently, I bought Game of Thrones Season 1 and kept everything except for the duplicate full bleed autos which I sold to recoup some of the cost.

I then bought Game of Thrones II and sold the relic cards since I don't collect them and the autographs from signers who'd already signed for the first series. I did that to recoup some of the cost.

Finally, I bought True Blood Premiere on discount, and from that, I kept only the autographs I wanted (Bill, Eric, Pam, Sookie, Lafayette, Jessica, Godric) and sold or am selling all of the rest to, you got it, recoup some of the cost.

The beauty of this is that I got pretty much every card I wanted from these four series sets for less than the cost of a case of each of these products, from which I'd have come nowhere close to getting all the cards I wanted.

I get the impression that people have done the math and see archive boxes as a better deal than buying cases, especially in products that require multiple cases to complete a master set.

I would certainly hope that they are opening them so that the cards can be properly displayed. I can't say that seeing a stack of archives boxes counts as a collection to me, I mean it just amounts to inventory really.

Now if its an investment for future sale you have to keep them sealed and that's not a collection either. I don't have any facts on it, but I don't know that archives boxes appreciate very much over time on average. I'm sure some might, but the majority probably stay stuck at the market price or decline as the initial demand lessens, just like most modern individual cards do when they enter the market at their peak value.

Odd. He didn't sell at $24500, so he's relisted at $27500. Does he think he'll do better at a higher price?

I wanted to follow up on this because it turned out the seller did what he probably should have in the first place, and listed the boxes individually. He sold 22 of them for about $19,000, which means he netted $17K after the 10% Ebay fees on those, and he should have about 20 left over. Highlights were one of the Star Treks going for $1,600. The Twilight Zone 4 went for over $1,000 as did several others. Granted he possibly had to do the work of sending out 22 packages instead of 1 as he wanted, but I suspect it was less than that, as I'm sure at least some buyers bought more than one of them.

What it means is that his price for the lot was indeed a steal, especially when at least one person (me) had a chance to get the whole batch for 20 thousand. I came pretty close to pulling the trigger, but didn't want to take on all of the work, although what I (or someone else) could've done here is essentially the method by which I've built my own collection, albeit on a much larger scale. With this lot actually being worth closer to 30 thousand as it turned out, one could've sold 20 thousand worth of the cards to recoup their costs and then kept the remaining 10 thousand worth for their efforts. Talk about a collection builder!

It was indeed a tremendous horde, and it ended up being worth every penny (and more) that the seller was asking.

I'm sure your math is correct CPF, but this type of sale just illustrates the problem with trying to sell bulk collections, even when its all archive boxes. You have to have access to people who have the funds to absorb the collections, whether or not their intention is to keep them or resell them.

While you may estimate that it was a steal and worth closer to $30,000, that fact is the whole deal didn't sell even at $20,000. He had to break it up into individual archive box offers before he found buyers willing to go in for one or more boxes. That makes sense because there was different subject matter involved, but mainly because you are not going to find collectors or even dealers that will ploop down that kind of money on older cards.

I think we all have the same issue with our card collections in the end. Its not how much they are worth that counts, its only what you can get when you want to sell.

You're willing to give something up to not have to send a bunch of packages, it's true, but I couldn't give up that much, $10K in value, particularly since the faster you'd made back the money you'd invested, the quicker you could start keeping some cards for your own collection, which would have been why I bought them, not to reap a fast profit.
I'd have just bitten the bullet and listed them singly in the first place, though.

UPDATE: 25 of them have sold for around 21k and the other 17 are up now, so it's crystallized quite nicely in that way. The final prices of these newly listed 17 will reveal the value of the lot over 20k, and thus, what someone who ponied up the 20 when the lot was available for that could've made in either profits or cards they could keep, depending on their preference.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: chesspieceface,

This was kinda interesting. When I saw the post a few weeks ago I played the 'As a dealer what would I pay for them' game, knowing I'd have to recover my money and make a little. The total I got to was about US $16,000. Looking at what has sold so far, I wasn't far off, as the problem with a lot like this was there were some boxes I knew I'd struggle to sell, and however pretty it is, inventory sat on a shelf costs you every day you keep it. Although the perceived value of the slower moving items is still a chunk of money, finding a collector who doesn't have any of these cards, wants a master set and has reasonable funds is the thing everyone prays for I'll keep an eye on the rest...