I have a 21 volume encyclopedia set. Lexicon Universal Encyclopedia is the title. It was published in 1986. I had done research a couple of months back and someone was selling a set like mine for almost $800 used. I checked again today and I found 2 people selling them for barely $200 used. What are they really worth since I've only been able to find approximately 3 other sets on eBay. They are a deep green hard cover with gold lettering.
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A person can ask for any price. Its what it sells for that counts. Its not an antique and my guess is that it will sell for $200 or less.
A realistic price for your encyclopedias would be $150 to $200. The older the encyclopedia the more valuable it would be This is a nice set of encyclopedias but the problem is they're only vintage and not antique. People today will only buy antiques.
Many people feel that they can earn more money with these type of books when in fact it is very hard to sell them because the information is easily available online
You are on the right track for finding value. My suggestion is to move from the current auctions and only research through the SOLD auctions (on my screen it is to the left of the screen a radio button says SOLD).
Using this part of eBay, look for exact matches to your item--which it sounds like you are doing. The difference is by looking at sold, you can tell what people are paying for them which is current market value.
Sadly, I see none as sold in recent history so the market value cannot be determined at this moment.
As someone in this tread mentioned, people can ask anything they want, value is only in what people will actually pay for an item.
When doing this research, it is important to know if someone paid $100 with free shipping (you could value the item at $100). If someone paid $50 for an item and $50 for shipping, same thing (50 + 50 = 100). Value is what someone pays for the item (or value for insurance purposes).
The thing with VALUE is it is TOTALLY DIFFERENT THAN PROFIT. Meaning in the eBay example, if the item sold for $100 with free shipping, the seller only netted (profit) (and I am using round numbers for reference only) less than $50 because shipping something this heavy is expensive in that case is paid by the SELLER, plus the eBay and Paypal fees are paid by the seller also.
The same less than $50 profit is evident when the BUYER pays shipping (the seller can't count shipping as profit because even though the buyer paid for it, the seller spends it at the PO to get it to the buyer).
Another thing to help in your research is condition is everything, so if someone is selling a pristine set and it sold for $100, a less than pristine set would go for anywhere from 15-20% less...or even more if the condition is really bad.
So back to the sold numbers...if you really want to sell your items and profit is not an issue, price (VALUE) it at at least 10-15% less than the last UNSOLD item....then if it sells, you are getting CURRENT MARKET VALUE.
One last suggestion for encyclopedias, is some have more value torn up and used to frame the beautiful pictures and illustrations inside. If you are at all crafty, people make and sell amazing prints with encyclopedias and also convert them into lamps and such. Pinterest is a gold mine of ideas for this venture! You can make a HUGE profit that way if you make something really unique!
Hope this helps you determine value for your books! Good luck!
It is very difficult to give a value on encyclopedias as they are very slow sellers so there is no real way to set a current value.
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