postcard.co.uk

Just finished watching this. One lot was for a collection of saucy/comic postcards. The "Expert" put an estimate of £40.00 on this. The collection looked in superb condition too. The winning bid was £5.00!!!!! Oh boy, was I mad that I could not have been there!!
"John Boy"

RAFPOL wrote: Just finished watching this. One lot was for a collection of saucy/comic postcards. The "Expert" put an estimate of £40.00 on this. The collection looked in superb condition too. The winning bid was £5.00!!!!! Oh boy, was I mad that I could not have been there!!
"John Boy"

Where was that then? Makes a change as the "experts" usually tend to undervalue postcards on those shows. Though I can remember some which were way over on the Antiques Roadshow in the past - such as run of the mill embroidered silks being rated at £20 each.

kevinramsdale wrote:

RAFPOL wrote: Just finished watching this. One lot was for a collection of saucy/comic postcards. The "Expert" put an estimate of £40.00 on this. The collection looked in superb condition too. The winning bid was £5.00!!!!! Oh boy, was I mad that I could not have been there!!
"John Boy"

Where was that then? Makes a change as the "experts" usually tend to undervalue postcards on those shows. Though I can remember some which were way over on the Antiques Roadshow in the past - such as run of the mill embroidered silks being rated at £20 each.

I didn't see this, but "experts" in these cases are usually generalists. But then I see some curious pricing of my collecting interest by postcard dealers. Dunno who the potential bidders were for the saucy/comic postcards, but I guess they were generalists too and didn't include too many postcard collectors. Perhaps the collection would have gone for £40 if split up and offered as singles at a PC fair?


Moonraker

Moonraker wrote:[quote
I didn't see this, but "experts" in these cases are usually generalists. But then I see some curious pricing of my collecting interest by postcard dealers. Dunno who the potential bidders were for the saucy/comic postcards, but I guess they were generalists too and didn't include too many postcard collectors. Perhaps the collection would have gone for £40 if split up and offered as singles at a PC fair?
Moonraker

Hopefully the "curious pricing" is sometimes in your favour. It is a fact that if you were to give two dealers an identical bundle of 100 postcards to price up, very few of the cards would end up at the same price - in some cases the pricing would be so widely different that the first dealer would gladly buy from the second at the price he was offering it at.

The "expert" was Jonty and the auction was somewhere in Buckinghamshire. Whoever was the fortunate bidder certainly got a bargain. I feel sure that there was no serious postcard collector present, because he or she would have realised the value of the cards and would have certainly entered a much higher bid than the winning bid of £5.00.
"John Boy"

RAFPOL wrote:The "expert" was Jonty and the auction was somewhere in Buckinghamshire. Whoever was the fortunate bidder certainly got a bargain. I feel sure that there was no serious postcard collector present, because he or she would have realised the value of the cards and would have certainly entered a much higher bid than the winning bid of £5.00.
"John Boy"

If I had been there, I wouldn't have entered "a much higher bid". I'm a serious collector, but only within a very narrow area, and I've only a sketchy knowledge of the worth of many types of card. I have bought two or three cards within my own specialism that I already have because they were going cheap, and offered them on eBay (which often produces oddities when it comes to what people are willing or not willing to pay). The loss I made on one cancelled out the profit I made on the other!

Mind you, I'm the world's worst businessman. About a year ago at a fair I bought speculatively a card showing soldiers in pontoons on the River Thames at Pangbourne; it was only £5. Later in the day I mentioned it to another dealer who wanted it for his own collection; he asked me how much I wanted for it, so I said £8. "I'll give you £10," he replied! (I can't be that bad, I suppose: I made 100% profit in an hour!)

Moonraker

Very entrepreneureal of you. I too am a "serious collector" but of comic cards you understand. I can hear you saying "How can a comic postcard collector be a serious collector?" I think because a comic postcard collector takes his subject seriously!!!!!!!!! Well, at least old John Boy here does.

RAFPOL wrote: Very entrepreneureal of you. I too am a "serious collector" but of comic cards you understand. I can hear you saying "How can a comic postcard collector be a serious collector?" I think because a comic postcard collector takes his subject seriously!!!!!!!!! Well, at least old John Boy here does.

A comic postcard collector can indeed be a serious collector (even if the subject matter isn't)

In fact I've always considered subject collectors to be the the true "serious collectors" of postcards, as topographical collectors are usually local history types, for whom cards are only part of of the story.

Only the image interests them, not the postcard as an entity in itself.

The postcard in my collection dating back to 1904 is a comical one, about a doorman must be over 6 feet, yep, he has six feet! Addled Ads!