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About Ready To Give Up On Live Marble Auctions


hdale7

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There are several auctioneers that notify me when marbles are up for sale. The auction didn't have a lot of marbles pictured but had jars, tray of handmades with some machinemades/mostly jabo and a no 1 akro box of cardinal red marbles. Didn't get a thing. http://www.auctionzi...1721238/fp1.cgi went for 475 dollars, I thought their retail value would be closer to 350. Box in good condition for its age and marbles were near mint/near mint plus. Lost a tiny peewee handmade swirl, was approx 5/16ths, just a general design, was solid core and went for 75 dollars. I don't have one that small and dropped out at 40. Coupe older gentleman bought everything up and I know they aren't resellers because I've ran into the one guy many times and he buys up all marbles and paperweights. Even in the tray where some Jabos were mixed in with older machine mades were going for over 10 dollars a piece. I'm not a machine made expert so i don't know what some of the other machine mades were and could have had some value but nothing popped out at me. Same thing happened to me a little big ago where a bunch of sulfides, some beat up as he.l with major damage and none went under 60 dollars and most were under an inch and those that didn't need reconditioning like a bear and cat, animal figures went for over a hundred each and some of these were just good conditon. Just venting and frustrated that I am trying to collect marbles as a novice with my son and can't buy a darn thing because of the pricing. I was willing to pay 275 which I dropped out of for the Akro box. I figured if I could get it for 275 I would keep it and if cheaper maybe would resell if I bought other marbles, fund our hobby. 2 large I believe around 2 quart jars of vitro reds/mk, bunch of vitro cats with a few pelt bananas and vitro hybrid cats went for 95 each on seller's choice. Anyone else see this kind of action at local auctions. I'm about to start buying on ebay because it seems to be cheaper for me. I'm in Michigan by the way and haven't bought any marbles at local auctions for about a year because of the prices at local auctions. I hate travelling almost an hour to go to auctions and get skunked everytime. I am thinking about packing up jars of common machine mades from the 60s and making some money offering them as cosignments, lol. Am I way off on what marbles are going for lately? Just a vent and sorry but I don't post that often but I hate going to auctions with my son and desperately wanting to buy some marbles and leave empty handed.

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hdale7

I have had some dealings with live auctions too.

It's seems that what I wanted, so does everyone else!

I've seen Mexico marbles that look like high end Pelts. bring

$275.00 for a group that was salted with a Super man look alike

and a Golden Rebel look alike.

Also I've tried selling jars of marbles,along with handmades & sulphides.

At the same auction house & took a beating.

Good luck trying to beat the system. I've tried & failed.

Also selling on e bay takes too much time for a small return.

I feel your pain.

marblemiser

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sounds like you have some folks attending auctions that are not familiar with what marbles are currently selling for. Heck, at Canton I picked up a sack full of handmades all good sized that were a little rough for 60 bucks

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sounds like you have some folks attending auctions that are not familiar with what marbles are currently selling for. Heck, at Canton I picked up a sack full of handmades all good sized that were a little rough for 60 bucks

Yeah then u turned right around and sold the sack full for $60. Hell I would have gave you $60 for the 1 big Onion, you dingbat!!! Ronnie
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Sometimes friendship means a lot more than money!!! I think the $3200 I made that show was more than enough.

C'mon Galen give me a break. That $3200 was for what u brought with u from the great state of California. truth be known you probably had that or more in them. :cool-smileys-262: :cool-smileys-262: :cool-smileys-262::character-smileys-238: Can't hide from the masked man. Ronnie
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Sometimes friendship means a lot more than money!!! I think the $3200 I made that show was more than enough.

thanxs galen that was a nice statement. i appreciate the favor ;0) NO PICS sorry

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My Dad and I started the Block's Box Absentee Auctions in 1989 because of our experience at a live auction in New Jersey. My dad had received a call from the auctioneer in the week prior to the auction telling him that there were about 100 lots of marbles in his auction Saturday and maybe we'd like to come down. So, we did. One of those interesting on-site at the house auctions with everything under tents. There was a very nice assortment of handmades and machine mades in the auction. Out of the 100 lots, we bought 5. One gentleman bought almost all of them. That gentleman was Jack Whistance (for those of you who remember Jack). But he wasn't the only one. Many of the lots sold for 3x what we were willing to pay.

So, on the way back in the car we were talking about it. My dad had been collecting antique paperweights long before he collected marbles and participated in a mail catalogue absentee paperweight auction out of Rhode Island. We had been producing a typewritten list of marbles for sale for a few years at this point, so we had a mailing list. We tossed it around and decided that if people were crazy enough to pay these kind of prices for marbles (back in 1989) then we could do a mail catalogue absentee marble auction.

And that's how it started. The first auction catalogued was printed in black and white!

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There are several auctioneers that notify me when marbles are up for sale. The auction didn't have a lot of marbles pictured but had jars, tray of handmades with some machinemades/mostly jabo and a no 1 akro box of cardinal red marbles. Didn't get a thing. http://www.auctionzi...1721238/fp1.cgi went for 475 dollars, I thought their retail value would be closer to 350. Box in good condition for its age and marbles were near mint/near mint plus. Lost a tiny peewee handmade swirl, was approx 5/16ths, just a general design, was solid core and went for 75 dollars. I don't have one that small and dropped out at 40. Coupe older gentleman bought everything up and I know they aren't resellers because I've ran into the one guy many times and he buys up all marbles and paperweights. Even in the tray where some Jabos were mixed in with older machine mades were going for over 10 dollars a piece. I'm not a machine made expert so i don't know what some of the other machine mades were and could have had some value but nothing popped out at me. Same thing happened to me a little big ago where a bunch of sulfides, some beat up as he.l with major damage and none went under 60 dollars and most were under an inch and those that didn't need reconditioning like a bear and cat, animal figures went for over a hundred each and some of these were just good conditon. Just venting and frustrated that I am trying to collect marbles as a novice with my son and can't buy a darn thing because of the pricing. I was willing to pay 275 which I dropped out of for the Akro box. I figured if I could get it for 275 I would keep it and if cheaper maybe would resell if I bought other marbles, fund our hobby. 2 large I believe around 2 quart jars of vitro reds/mk, bunch of vitro cats with a few pelt bananas and vitro hybrid cats went for 95 each on seller's choice. Anyone else see this kind of action at local auctions. I'm about to start buying on ebay because it seems to be cheaper for me. I'm in Michigan by the way and haven't bought any marbles at local auctions for about a year because of the prices at local auctions. I hate travelling almost an hour to go to auctions and get skunked everytime. I am thinking about packing up jars of common machine mades from the 60s and making some money offering them as cosignments, lol. Am I way off on what marbles are going for lately? Just a vent and sorry but I don't post that often but I hate going to auctions with my son and desperately wanting to buy some marbles and leave empty handed.

I have two nicer Cardinal reds box sets for sale. One with slags $425, and one with red onyx snakes $350
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