Help In Appraising The Value of Your Vintage Mobile Phone Collection

Feb. 8, 2011 - PRLog -- Nottinghamshire, United Kingdom - Are you thinking of selling off some of your old possessions? Or are you a collector looking to place your next big purchase? Are you a seasoned collector or do you consider yourself a novice? Are you collecting for fun or for profit? In all of these instances, knowing the true value of the item in question will help you tremendously in getting a fair price for it. (http://www.vintagemobilephones.org)

For many, the internet is the first place to look when you want information regarding the value of  any item you want to buy or sell. And it’s a great place to begin your search. In the comfort of your home or office, you can find out how much an item sells for in various markets. You can find out how much it sells brand new, and how much a used one will go for, and even the price it sold for when it was first released. You can even check if it’s still being manufactured and find credible advice on how you can tell if the item is truly authentic.

If you are doing just a general search, like on Google or Yahoo, there are limitations to what you’ll be able to find. Information are not geared towards the benefit of collectors, and in many cases important information regarding the item itself may not be available - information like the exact condition of the object which can make a difference on its value, or the opinion of experts and other collectors.

In this type of industry, knowledge is indeed power. The more you know, the better you’ll be able to do. So, in response to the needs of collectors and sellers, some specialized websites are trying to make it easier to determine the true value of their collectible items.

One such site is WorthPoint. It’s a membership site that allows users to search its vast database of collectibles that have been bought and sold. Currently, it boasts of having 35 million price records in its database spanning various types of collections and collectibles.

But that’s not all. One interesting feature is called “Ask a Worthologist”, where you can submit photos and description of the item for consideration, and request for an impartial and expert analysis of its value from one of its resident experts or Worthologists. This is great because not everyone has access to this kind of expert information, especially if the item that you are selling or buying is not something that many people collect.

If you are selling your collection, WorthPoint offers to help you do it by allowing sellers to list in their ‘Find a Business” section. This system uses the power of networking to help you reach your potential target market.

Another site that helps collectors and sellers assess the fair market value of their pieces is Prices4Antiques. What’s great about this site is the stricter method they use in gathering information about previous sales of collectibles. All information is gathered from over 140 choice auction houses all over the US.

Not only that. All the entries are reviewed by their editor-experts The information gathered for each item is as comprehensive as possible, in many cases including original market notes, photos of the item sold, and even description of the mood of the auction. They boast that the entries in their site are 90% unique and not the type of information you can easily get by doing a search on a web search engine.

Whichever service you choose to subscribe to, or method you intend to use to find the information you need, you need to take the information you gather with a grain of salt. Aside from previous prices at which an item has sold, there are other factors that can affect the price of a piece which can be difficult to assess or put a dollar value on. For example, things like the mood of the times and the taste of the collectors or buyers. After all, people who go into collecting are not always in it for the profit. Many of them just want to surround themselves with the things they love.

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VintageMobilePhones.org (http://www.vintagemobilephones.org)
Learn more about vintage mobile phones. Great resource for collectors and technology enthusiasts.