Here are some hints and advice
related to value and price when collecting military or any items. You
may already know most of them if you are a seasoned collector but for
the new person lets cover a few points. First of all "value"
is a very subjective term that can be expressed from several points of
view so its important to know this when discussing an items value. Some
items are one of a kind and from that perspective are
"priceless" Ultimately, the value of an item is what a
buyer is prepared to purchase it for. An Accountant will tell you
that the value of an item is what you paid for it. Another person will
say -"but you got it at way under the market price", There is
the concept of historical or archival value. There is
surplus value. There is the value of the raw material an item is made
from. Provenance is a concept where the source of the article is
documented and this adds to the value of the item. For example it could
be a newspaper clipping, an old picture, a statement from the owner
about a family connection or whatever.
Many collectors have unreasonably
high expectations of the value of their items based in part on watching
too many episodes of your countries version of Antiques
Road Show where they showcase examples of garage sales treasures
bought for pennies that turn out to the joy and secret glee of their new
owners to be antiques worth several thousand dollars. That sometimes
happens but more often that not the main value in a collectable is the
joy or use you obtain from it.
Unfortunately, for the collector when
an item begins to climb in price there are people who will seek to meet
this demand in the market by simply manufacturing more product. This occurred
with Nazi medals and other items from WW2. Some people will lie and
cheat to obtain a benefit and you must use due diligence when
making any purchase and that includes military collectables. Here we
offer listings from trusted suppliers in forms where the buyer has good
levels of protection and recourse if something bad happens but there is
still a level of risk that items will be incorrectly described or that
errors and omissions will occur.
In the case of military collectables
often there is a family value where younger members of a family wish to
have artifacts of the time their fathers or grandparents served in the
military. One of our websites includes this type of content and you can
check out NorthTreasure.com
for some good examples. I have a small pair of brass binoculars from WW1
with very good optics and every time I use them I enjoy the idea that
nearly a century ago some British Army officer may have been using them
on the front in Europe. Its a neat feeling that you don't get from an
injection molded plastic product from China. There is a value there. I
have no intention of selling them.
An interesting concept with
collectables is something called the trading value. Often a
person will encounter a lot of items where they already have them in
their collection or where the items are not up to the required quality
one would wish. Sometimes the prices are excellent too. What some people
do is buy them for resale and trading purposes -they have no intention
of incorporating them in their collections and this technique can work
quite well especially if storage space is not an issue.
An important concept is that military
and other collectables are in fact assets and do have a certain market
value. A market value is determined when the items are offered to
a variety of individuals looking for that item and prices are
established based on what they have been willing to pay. You also
sometimes hear the phrase "fire sale prices" and this is when
a merchant or individual usually encounters a cash flow problem so sells
off their assets at much less than fair market value just to get the
sales and raise some cash. The don't usually make a profit on the items
they are merely raising some cash and often need to sell for less than
their acquisition costs.
Estate sales are often a good source
of military items for two reasons -first the material may have never
been on the market before and secondly because those offering the items
for sale are often more interested in making a quick buck garage sale
style than actually doing the work and research to obtain the fair
market value for the items. You see this a lot with tools at estate
garage sales where the poor unsuspecting widow is just happy to
get rid of her spouses heavy dirty or dusty tools so that she will have
a "clean garage" again. Dealers and "pickers" will
often obtain their stock this way. The fact that it took her spouse
thousands of dollars and decades to fill the garage with expensive tools
kind of escapes her. Dealers dream about situations like this and often
leave with truckloads of product for pennies on the dollar.
If you are considering collecting as
a business I can recommend an excellent book that we published on
business called YOUR
VERY FIRST BILLION. In 420 pages it gives you excellent insight
into how everything works and most of it never appears in traditional
books.
A final thought on collecting - you
can't take it with you so enjoy the items while you can. If you collect
things that you can actually use or display its a lot more fun!
Your source
for Army Surplus
military items and collectables!
