Welcome chirinebakal!  You are not the first person to ask this kind of question about how best to sell your stuff.  I would say that going the auction route at Gary Con is probably not the best route to maximize your sales price, but there are advantages of going that route.  The first advantage is that you don't have to pack stuff up to mail or deal with buyers saying they didn't receive their item, or that it was damaged in transit, etc...  You also get to see the buyers and know the items are likely going to someone who really appreciates what you are selling.  They might even want to meet you and say thanks.  Another advantage is that, once you take it to Gary Con, it's likely gone, done and over with.  Your shelves are emptier and you have money in your pocket.

The items you are talking about sound like they would be interesting to lots of collectors, most of whom will not visit Gary Con this year.  If you take good pictures of your items, write good descriptions and have a decent reputation, your buying/bidding audience can go from several hundred to thousands by selling on eBay.  While eBay takes a cut, I imagine any auction would also take a cut.

Condition is a huge factor in an item's sale price.  While you could give lots of assurances that everything is pristine, complete, or whatever, long-time collectors here are picky about particulars and have to assume the worst.  Pictures are a great way to determine value, and if you posted pictures of your items, I am confident you could get some very helpful assessments and probably even some offers.

The answer to your question may lie with its condition/value.  If an item is pristine, old and valuable, then the difference in price gained warrants a less haphazard sales strategy.  But if you items are worth less than $50.00 on eBay, then what's the big deal about getting $45 instead of $50 at an auction?

If you are going to Gary Con anyway, I recommend you consider taking at least one of each item for people to look over and assess.  There are quite a few folks from this community who probably have everything you are selling and could tell you what you have without them bugging you to sell it to them.  I am not sure what the policy is at Gary Con of selling items on site, but most cons are cool with you trading one item for another.  Cons also have no problem with your getting a sales assessment.

Finally, you may want to look into creating Certificates of Authenticity for each/some of these items and their connection to the author, especially if he gave them to you, or signed them, or something like that.  I don't know if these would help increase their value, but it couldn't hurt.

When it comes to advice, there are no places where you can find people who know their D&D collecting better.  There is more that I could say, but maybe this will get the discussion started.  Good luck and welcome!  

chirinebakal wrote in A question from a new guy...:Or, should I contact one of the 'big-name' dealers in the field'? I gather that some of them will be at the convention, and since I am taking my cargo van down to Lake Geneva, I have the room to take stuff.

I would recommend following Chris' advice, and bring one of each of your items to the con, or at least a listing of them.  There will definitely be a number of collectors there, and you could certainly transact sales, but if you're not sure what you have and/or it's value, it's better to do some research first.  If you're looking for some input, I'll be at the Black Blade booth in the dealer's hall, and would be happy to provide some guidance if you're interested.

Chirine,

All who have posted before me are respected members of this community and their advice is valid of course.  Another option may be to list and show pictures of your items here to see if any of the collectors have interest.  Not all of use here have *everything* yet, so you might be surprised at the interest you'll get.  Our collecting community is a respectful and trustworthy group - I've had over a dozen transactions with people here and everyone of them (items and sellers) has been absolutely stellar.

Also, posting pictures helps us identify rarity, printing, condition and value; this helps you with getting the right amount for the items you want to sell.

Hope that helps some and welcome to the site,

~throwi

Hello and welcome!

I'd suggest listing items out here with photos, and then give some people some time to catch the thread. There's always a few members on here who don't catch the posts immediately (especially overseas collectors, which there are a number of on here) and could conceivably get you more than you're originally thinking.

I'm still alive! I've been down sick with a very bad case of bronchitis, and not able to do much more then really basic stuff. I'd like to thank everyone who's sent messages - I'll try and get caught up as soon as I can.

I will be at Gary Con, I am happy to report; I am doing some seminars on the early days of EPT / Tekumel and Gary's influence, and I've been asked to run a game of EPT for people. I will be at the convention from about ten AM Friday to about four PM on Sunday, and I will be available for anyone who wants to talk to me. I am planning on bringing some of my Tekumel artifacts for 'show and tell', and I'll also box up my spare paper goods for people to look at.

What's happening is that my lovely Missus has compiled all of our massive collection of Tekumel materials into digital format, and so I can look at anything we have in the collections on my computer. This has, to be frank, rendered a lot of my paper holdings sorta useless to me, and my thought is to put them out there for folks to use and enjoy. I will try and get photos up for everyone - how does one do that, if I may ask?

yours, chirine