£122 for a 1910 military Wiltshire card

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Moonraker
Posts: 222
Joined: Tue Apr 24, 2007 5:23 pm

£122 for a 1910 military Wiltshire card

Post by Moonraker »

Blimey. Just finished bidding for three postcards showing the South Midland Division arriving at and marching from Ludgershall Station in Wiltshire in 1910. I won two of the cards at "dealer prices", but the third went for a whopping £122, with someone else willing to go up to £120. It was a nice card, showing horses drawn up on the platform and a rake of horse boxes. But cards of "troops detraining at Ludgershall" are quite numerous if not common and normally go for £15-20, and the card had a bit of ink splashed on it here and there. I would have sniffed if a dealer had asked £20 for it.

I bid high quite often, but this is the most extreme over-the-odds bidding I've seen.

No sour grapes; I won the other two and am happy with my overall eBay successes, but I thought I would add something new to this slightly sluggish Forum!

Moonraker
Last edited by Moonraker on Sun Jun 29, 2008 3:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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kevinramsdale
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Re: £122 for a 1910 military Wiltshire card

Post by kevinramsdale »

Moonraker wrote:I thought I would add something new to this slightly sluggish Forum!

Moonraker
Could that really be because Mike has moved the link to the forum lower down the PTA homepage ........ ?
Kevin

Andrew
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Post by Andrew »

... or that people have finally run out of things to say?

MichaelDay
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Re: £122 for a 1910 military Wiltshire card

Post by MichaelDay »

kevinramsdale wrote:
Moonraker wrote:I thought I would add something new to this slightly sluggish Forum!

Moonraker
Could that really be because Mike has moved the link to the forum lower down the PTA homepage ........ ?
The links still in the same place in the index (next to top) but we had to put the poster ad for next years BIPEX in a prominent position so the other link has moved down a bit.

We could do with a new ...more appropriate postcard image for the 'Messageboard' section on the homepage - to replace the maypole scene - if anyone has any suggestions.

.. One reason that posts may be down is that due to a software problem since we moved servers - the board hasn't been able to accept new registrations for a couple of weeks. This appears to be quite a complex issue, which may involve re-installing the entire board if I can't find a fix. I've just been too busy to investigate properly so far.

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kevinramsdale
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Re: £122 for a 1910 military Wiltshire card

Post by kevinramsdale »

[/quote]

The links still in the same place in the index (next to top) but we had to put the poster ad for next years BIPEX in a prominent position so the other link has moved down a bit.

[/quote]

The "other" link is the one I meant, a connection does seem unlikely but the tailing off in posts did seem to coincide with the downward move.

:cry:
Kevin

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kevinramsdale
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Re: £122 for a 1910 military Wiltshire card

Post by kevinramsdale »

Moonraker wrote:Blimey. Just finished bidding for three postcards showing the South Midland Division arriving at and marching from Ludgershall Station in Wiltshire in 1910. I won two of the cards at "dealer prices", but the third went for a whopping £122, with someone else willing to go up to £120. It was a nice card, showing horses drawn up on the platform and a rake of horse boxes. But cards of "troops detraining at Ludgershall" are quite numerous if not common and normally go for £15-20, and the card had a bit of ink splashed on it here and there. I would have sniffed if a dealer had asked £20 for it.

I bid high quite often, but this is the most extreme over-the-odds bidding I've seen.

No sour grapes; I won the other two and am happy with my overall eBay successes, but I thought I would add something new to this slightly sluggish Forum!

Moonraker
Returning to the point of this thread, my first reaction is one of regret that I was not the seller of this card.

Seriously though, I do feel that postcard values still don't fully reflect the scarcity of the material in that the top prices are generally nowhere near those achieved in other fields - stamps, cigarette cards etc - even for what are likely to be "one off" items.

8)
Kevin

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Post by Moonraker »

I've now spoken to a major collector of cards of the precise category I described in my initial post. He too felt the £122 card was worth about £20. From the arch-anorak's viewpoint, the station setting is as shown in quite a few other cards and the rake of horse wagons was not particularly noteworthy. I could have understood some fierce bidding had the soldiers been from an interesting unit, but they comprised the South Midland Division, - excellent fellows, no doubt, but far from remarkable.

Moonraker

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Re: £122 for a 1910 military Wiltshire card

Post by MichaelDay »

kevinramsdale wrote:
Moonraker wrote:Blimey. Just finished bidding for three postcards showing the South Midland Division arriving at and marching from Ludgershall Station in Wiltshire in 1910. I won two of the cards at "dealer prices", but the third went for a whopping £122, with someone else willing to go up to £120. It was a nice card, showing horses drawn up on the platform and a rake of horse boxes. But cards of "troops detraining at Ludgershall" are quite numerous if not common and normally go for £15-20, and the card had a bit of ink splashed on it here and there. I would have sniffed if a dealer had asked £20 for it.

I bid high quite often, but this is the most extreme over-the-odds bidding I've seen.

No sour grapes; I won the other two and am happy with my overall eBay successes, but I thought I would add something new to this slightly sluggish Forum!

Moonraker
Returning to the point of this thread, my first reaction is one of regret that I was not the seller of this card.

Seriously though, I do feel that postcard values still don't fully reflect the scarcity of the material in that the top prices are generally nowhere near those achieved in other fields - stamps, cigarette cards etc - even for what are likely to be "one off" items.

8)
I guess like everything else the price is dictated by the demand, which is related to the size of the market. Our hobby is far more complex and diverse than philately (I'm sure to get an argument on this one) with numerous collecting fields, one for each place or settlement, plus just as many varied subjects.

So instead of one huge market for collectable cards we have countless 'micro-markets' where the relative demand for a particular item is actually confined often to no more than a handful of collectors.

Some of the "one off" cards are only sought after by one or two people, some categories don't seem to be collected at all...

...just a theory. :wink:

Moonraker
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Re: £122 for a 1910 military Wiltshire card

Post by Moonraker »

I've just started selling my stamp collection (I gave up collecting British Commonwealth and GB in the 1970s, and cycling stamps in the mid 1990s) and am a little surprised at the very low starting prices given by many sellers and the limited interest. Of course there's an abundance of a lot of the material offered, with a finite price based on catalogue values. But I'm surprised that some of my more individual covers (eg, early air mails) attracted no interest.

Moonraker

Kelv
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Re: £122 for a 1910 military Wiltshire card

Post by Kelv »

I think that the truth is that ebay is addictive and it is all too easy to get carried away.

Andrew
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Location: Gillingham, Kent

Re: £122 for a 1910 military Wiltshire card

Post by Andrew »

Moonraker,

I was given (yes, given) an album containing a couple of hundred old postcards, one of which is a faded Kentish military real photo postcard. Would you be interested in it? If so, I'll dig it out from the album.
Regards
Andrew

Moonraker
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Re: £122 for a 1910 military Wiltshire card

Post by Moonraker »

Thanks, Andrew, but my interest is confined to Wiltshire.


Moonraker

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