Well put K.First of all welcome back. It is very nice actually to hear from you after so much time.
I could send off a PM but perhaps it is best I write here what I want to convey to you anyway, since we've all been a pretty tight community from the very beginning here at ATG. Then if you want to discuss more you can always fire off a PM to me later on.
I have been through the same path, more or less, since early 2016. Unemployment and lack of steady income forced me to downsize, which of course had its merits as well. For 3 years and few months I have therefore been doing just that, with may trades and acquisitions along the way, I must admit. So it has been everything, collecting funds to pay off the banks and whatever else, but also downsizing and reducing the collection to what works best for me.
The process is very, very tiring, highly time consuming, you will most likely lose a lot of $$$ in the process on average, to the point that you will be completely fed up at the end. I am not sure if you also have the time to go through all that.
The approach you are considering for selling your collection in one go may sound easy from your point of view but in practice it is quite difficult to work for both parties, i.e. for you and also for the interested individual. Many of us here know you, we've lived your acquisition madness and glory days, and we vividly remember the so many items you were purchasing one after the other. But any other wet shaver who is not a member here or in TSR, does not know that. How will you take so many pictures and write all these descriptions for the items before you put them up for sale? Whether it's here or on eBay it makes no difference - the pictures need to be taken and the descriptions need to be written. And let me tell you, this is an ultra laborious task given the size of your collection.
Secondly, there are people out there who may try to deceive you. It was mentioned earlier on that the market for the NF brushes is weak at the moment. Well, in short the answer is no. In long, I can tell you that I had one NOS NF and one day I put it up on eBay. There's a 'collector' somewhere out there in the woods in Canada, in Edmonton more specifically who is ultra thirsty for these brushes. Let me also say he is a member of this forum, yes indeed. He paid and I shipped him my brush, then perhaps the packet was temporarily lost inside Canada or perhaps it was heavily delayed in customs - I just do not know that. I refunded the guy and a month later I received official notification that the brush had been delivered, albeit with a long delay. The fellow member never mentioned to me he did finally receive the brush. There are people who are nice but not everyone you meet or get to know is nice.
Many, not just a few, of the items in your collection will make selected collectors literally wet their pants. So you need to be very, very careful. While many of us here will appreciate the calibre and quality of the items you possess, there are few others who are out for making money, in actual fact as much money as they can make by purchasing something off you and then a minute later taking it over for sale in another forum. There are very specific people in this forum who do that, many of us know them, I've suffered price-wise because of that and the least I can do is to let you know so that it does not happen to you as well. It is particularly distressing because some of these people knew about my situation - and this goes on to show the characters you may also have to deal with.
On the NF articles in particular I highly recommend you are very, very slow and very, very careful to sell. There is no way you will lose $$$ from these brushes, instead you will make money provided you find the right buyer, that's my take. But you will need lots of time to go through all that s**t. That's the hard part. From selected razors as well you will make money. A good option would be to find someone in a forum, someone whom you know and kind of trust, and ship to him ALL your articles for sale. Then he can do the hard part, the work, and at the end of the day he can keep a few very good items for himself [or] take XX% of all sales proceeds. I would be very happy to do that for you actually, but (a) I am not in North America at the moment and (b) I may be actually and finally getting back to full time employment coming Sept 1st.... I've specialized in this BST thing now, and I am very accustomed to deal on a 24/7 basis with all kind of articles for sale, with all kinds of individuals and with all kinds of shipment methods...
Anything else you may want just fire a PM. I re-iterate: be very, very careful and slow to approach in getting started with this thing. It is a Herculian task given the size of your collection, and you have within it some items which are true gems. Old foxes will go for these first and if (by any chance, just hypothesizing here) you are in real need for $$$ then you are even more vulnerable.
And welcome back DB, good luck with your sales.
P .
