Dept 56

A look at resales for the collector – eBay alternative The target market for most of dept 56 products is of course the collectible market. That is what attracted my wife and of course draws you in as you expand you villages or find more and more uses for the different. items. Recently one of our readers was telling me an interesting story about how they had to sell some of their collections in order to raise a little capital. She had a lot of items that she had accumulated over the years – and oddly enough she collects other things also but chose to sell her department 56 items. Why? I asked. She said because when she has money again they would be the easiest to replace. I began thinking – yeah, shes right, dept 56 has an type of replaceable liquidity. First of course is replaceable. She needs money – so she puts the items up for sale. No dept 56 is very affordable from the starting point so she knows that once she is back on her feet coming up with enough money to replace all her items will be easy. And replacing them will be easy. Sure she may have to wait a few months and watch eBay – but eventually she will find a mint condition replacement for every item she sells! I think she is on to something and has a pretty good strategy. She can sell all her dept 56 items and still retain the ability to bounce back without much effort. I know there is some sentimental interest in items but really when it comes down to it – for now – these items are replaceable. When we get on in years and these collectibles become more aged and closer to “antique” they will be much harder to replace and then sentimentality will kick in and value should increase as more people want an item and less are willing to part with it – this takes time as a collectible company like department 56 matures and its market matures. Second, liquidity. I figured the items would sell quick but was not certain how quickly. Turns out very quickly is the truth. Now the speed of sale always is determined by price but really she was able to sell everything very quickly and of course your question is – how much? She had various items from specialty village buildings down to misc accessories that can be used for any village. The lighted buildings are always very popular especially at discounted prices but do not forget that little accessories like the Frankenstein or the pumpkin carving station all of those items add a lot of fun and depth to your decorating. Well as beautiful as the items are she sold each one for about 1/3 of the price she originally paid. Now you may think – wow! That’s not much at all but then I looked into the numbers. After looking into other collectibles I think 1/3 is actually a good retainer of value but that is not the whole story. If you ever sold on eBay – you know the whole story is “shipping”. I looked at how much each buyer was paying for shipping and realized that it cost about as much as the bid for each item. This means that if an item cost $45 then she got an offer for $15 but it cost $15 to ship it. This means that the true market value of the dept 56 collectible was 2/3 of original value. Now that is amazing and we can only assume that the values will go up as there are more years put behind this wonderful company. All the items she was selling were less than 8 years old. Shipping also is a great hassle for the seller. Not only do you have to figure out in advance how much it will all cost you also have to factor in the cost of the box, packing materials, tape, and gas to get to the post office. While she thought it was all worth it in reality there was a cost to her. This led me to thinking that it would be great if we could overcome this hurdle of shipping, eBay fees, etc. It is possible that we will add an auction or for sale section on this site if enough users want it – sort of a clearinghouse but not that revolves around this site. More of a clearinghouse that revolves around the different shops across the country. We could network the shops with items they want sold with buyers in their areas – thus getting 2/3 price for the shops and creating sales and revenue and getting the buyer not only a new item straight from the store but also saving on shipping! This could also help the local stores that want to participate save learn more about the collectors in their own localities. What do you think? Please email me and let me know – admin@dept56.org I am thinking we can add this to the existing dept 56 web rings that exist and make a very good outlet for lower prices to the buyer as well as spur sales for local shops – all of which have seen a large revenue drop through this recent economic downturn. Maybe if we all band together and tap into this market channel we can get something done. I will start thinking of how to do it – really it should be easy – just put it through the ring of stores and have them post up the items – from this site we can do our specialty which is getting it out to the collectors and buyers what we are doing and lure them away from the major auctions into an environment where they can do things for much less. Because our site does not sell any product we can facilitate the stores as an impartial hub for the sales and hopefully we can pull it off without charging any money to anyone – this will increase the net proceeds for everyone and it will build our site into the dept 56 authority place that people can look to for information – win win for the shops, the collectors, and ultimately dept 56 corporate as we keep the products, liquidity, and public interest alive in this time of economic belt tightening.