Is there something wrong with this hobby?
I ask this for the following reason. Today, I had an auction closing
on EBAY for an original 1941 lobby card -- a beautiful linen-paper
portrait card of Rita Hayworth and Fred Astaire in a tuxedo from YOU
WERE NEVER LOVELIER that I've had for years. I started this auction
low because I was conducting a sort of test. I wanted to see if a
card like this would reach its real value at auction on EBAY or not.
Well, unfortunately, the lobby card sold for a closing amount of
$11.50. 15 years ago this card would have sold for between $125. and
$200. You probably could have made a phone call and sold it for that.
Now it sells for $11.50. I posted the auction announcement on various
sites including two separate ones on MOPO. It ended up selling to a
man in NYC for $11.50.
Now as you may imagine, I was disturbed that it sold for so little.
In the future, I will probably only start one of these low opening
bid, Bruce Hershenson-style auctions if the piece is something like a
lobby card or poster for a major 1950s science fiction film or a
classic movie or obviously collectible poster or card. I think a
lobby card like this one is still of value despite changing tastes.
Maybe I'm wrong but I think there are still people who know who Rita
Hayworth is and who Fred Astaire is and admire their work and their
films. However, since no one in MOPO found this worth bidding on,
even if they could have gotten the card for as little as $12.50, maybe
I'm all wrong.
Thoughts please?
Channing Thomson
P.S. One other consideration -- I live in a major American city (San
Francisco) where I routinely see elderly Chinese people digging
through trash cans all over downtown trying to find cans or plastic
bottles for recycling. Sometimes they carry big plastic bags of these
balanced on bamboo polls over their shoulders. These are men and
women who are often as old as 70 or 80. You really can't go more than
a block without seeing them digging through the trash. Nobody seems
to think there's anything wrong with this here but it disturbs me and
makes me think we may actually be in a depression rather than just one
the typical recessions. The economy definitely BLOWS!
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