Advice - secondary market prices

Hi,

I haven’t been buying Folios for a few years because of other financial commitments and I’m trying to weigh up whether it’s worth selling some of the more valuable volumes I might have to enable me to buy some of the newer books. I’m totally out of touch with the secondary market. Does anyone know what I should list my LE Mort by Pratchett in the ballpark of? I’m not sure whether I can bring myself to part with that, or any of the Fairy books which seem to fetch good prices but I’m dipping my toes in the water and thought someone here might have kept a closer eyes on the secondary market sales in recent years.

(The end result of this is already likely to be me not selling anything because I love them all :-D )

Thanks!

>1 klarusu: search "completed listings" on eBay. You can find the option in the advanced search. This only covers the last 90 days I believe for those that don't pay for premium service. If the sale was a best offer accepted, the page doesn't show the offer accepted. You used to be able to search the page html source code to find the offer accepted price, but that no longer works. I did find an external tool that will show this info though: https://130point.com/sales/

For the LE Mort, there were two sales within the time window:

Listed at 820 GBP
Best Offer Accepted Price: 720 GBP (Google tells me that is about 985 USD right now)
Sale Date: Sun 05 Dec 2021

Sale Price: 417.00 USD
Auction → Number of Bids: 2
Sale Date: Fri 05 Nov 2021

(The search I used to find those in this case was "folio society mort limited")

You might check ABEbooks to see what prices are being asked in the US and in the UK.

I believe your timing is excellent in regards to getting a good price. Maybe you don't need to sell Mort and start looking at the books you are more willing to part with. It's possible you have something you don't really want but right now is sought after.

As for ebay prices I wouldn't take them as hard reference of how much money one's willing to spend on a book. For example Fairies are hyped but that doesn't mean there's people in queue willing to buy the whole set for 3k. However the high ceiling means you can sell reasonably lower while still being quite profitable.

If you are in doubt you can start with a higher "buy it now" price but with "offers accepted" so buyers can give you a hint of how much they're willing to spend.

Additionally, the markets for these books are relatively shallow. If you want to sell right away, you might have to settle for a price on the lower end of the potential spectrum. If you don't mind sitting on the book for a few months or years, you will be able to get a lot more for it. "Hurry up and wait" is probably the best strategy. I have been surprised what people have been willing to pay for some books I have sold. I agree with >4 bacchus.: that "buy it now" listings that accept offers are the best approach unless the book is in very high demand, in which case an auction with a tempting starting offer can work well, though there is always the small chance that demand will be weak. I've done a number of $1 auctions for books where either A) I really had no idea what a good price would be or B) I was more comfortable letting the market organically determine a likely high price rather than setting one to begin with.