Determining Value and Pricing

When you have a collectible item to sell, how do you know what it’s worth? Is that first-edition hardcover book worth $2 or $200? What should you expect in terms of resale, and where should you set the item’s starting price?

To determine the value of an item, you have to do a little research. You can do the research yourself, by searching the selling prices of similar items in other eBay auctions. Or you can trust the research done by others, in various pricing guides available both online and in the bookstore. The point of each exercise is the same: to determine the current value of an item by discovering what prices similar items have sold for in the past.