What would you do?

ArtVandelay

Here is the scenario.

An 80 year old woman who's husband just passed away asks you to advise her of the worth of a collection of old ball cards he collected as a youth. The collection consists of mint looking 1950's baseball cards and includes several potential gem mint Mickey Mantle rookies. What do you do? Or simply, how have you acted in the past with something similar?

mccardguy1

I advise her of the true value of the collection and make her a fair offer. If she does not accept my offer I offer to help her move the collection and get the top dollar for her with my payment perhaps being the opportunity to buy a Mantle at a large discount of her choosing.

Walt_Altmen

You advise her what the true value of the cards and make an offer that is based off their worth.

Assuming this is a raw collection.

1 and 3 are pretty close to the same answer for me.

The size of this collection is a huge variable and unless youve done it before is quite hard to fathom the actual amount of time, supplies and money it takes to liquidate all the items that you choose not to hold for your own pc.

I went with option 1 and would probably offer 60%. Later down the road if I happened to run across some obscure card or grail-type scenario, I would go back and throw her an additional bone and make it right.

If she declined for the easy dump, then I would probably give her a very fair offer just on the items I wanted with the notion that I’d help her in anyway I could with any other’s that approached her.

CdnOsfan

You advise her of the true value. You can't afford these cards so you assist her in finding a buyer.

2. I've done this before (not as big as this scenario) and gave them lower expectations so as to not disappoint. I told him I could try to piece it out and get him $10000 hopefully. He told me whatever I could get over $8500 was mine and I could have the 1978 Topps baseball set in his collection too. (The collection was mostly hockey so I had little interest.) We ended up getting about $14500 in the end after eBay/Paypal fees, some was sold offline. He insisted I take the $6000 as he said a deal is a deal. I knew him a bit and knew he could use the money so after days of arguing he took $10000 and I took $4500. He was thrilled and I had about 100 sales/auctions to deal with that got me $4500 that cost me about 50 hours of my time. We sold the good stuff on eBay and put an online ad up locally to sell the leftovers in one big lot that were not worth the time to list and money to ship.

doubledragon

You advise her of the true value. You can't afford these cards so you assist her in finding a buyer.

You always do whatever the 100% honest and decent thing is. You'll never go wrong if you do.

doubledragon

You advise her of the true value. You can't afford these cards so you assist her in finding a buyer.

If I couldn't afford them, then I would assist her and maybe, just maybe, if you're lucky she will treat you to lunch. A lunch that consists of.................... two good ol' fashioned hotdogs all the way, and a Large Coke. 😉

_EagleEyeKid_

You advise her they are worthless. You tell her your son collects cards and but you will take them off her hands for a couple of bucks. You don't actually have a son though.

I'll see you all in hell .

daltex

Yes, I don't see the difference between #1 and #3. Considering all your time and expenses, 50% is a fair offer. Explain to her what you're doing and why. I'll bet your 50% of retail offer is better than she could get from shopping it around, and much less work for her, too.