Saturday, April 9, 2011

The Gazette has a practice of staying out of commercial matters and valuation. Probably a good practice. We veered a little to have some fun with a $120,000 starting price on Thistle pattern set of glass listed on eBay. Seems that veering has gotten us into some legitimate criticism. Let’s start with Michael Krumme.

Hello all,

Couple things — (1) I actually commented on this auction in an entirely different forum, and my comments were reposted to the CSC Gazelle Gazette, a forum in which I would not have tried to make them initially, so I was a little uncomfortable seeing them in a place where I didn’t intend for them to go; and (2) I thought that the policy of the CSC was not to comment on active eBay auctions (hence my not posting them here).

I think Bob Weinberg’s comments are well-taken. We all like to buy low and sell high, but we sure don’t want to sell low when the time comes for OUR glass to be sold, now do we? A vibrant market with both buyers and sellers trying to find that “sweet spot” that results in money and glass changing hands is the healthiest scenario. Besides, I firmly believe that if we find a price on something we’d like to buy to be too high, several customers “not buying” sends a message to the seller to adjust his or her price expectations. You can’t blame the seller for wanting to make the best of it.

And relating to an earlier comment, I’ll let a seller say that a set that is one goblet short is “a complete set.” Close enough! How many times do we see THIS many matching Steuben stems come up for sale? How many CSC members have a few stray items of a stemware line with which we would give our right arm to be able to set a table for 8 — even with just a couple of sizes? I daresay that a young person starting to collect Steuben today might never live long enough to be able to complete a “set” of many of the lines. I’m sure many members feel lucky to have even a few matching pieces in some of the stemware lines.

Michael Krumme
Los Angeles

Then next from Charles Sweigart

My comment had nothing to do with price. As per their list it is an incomplete set and ebay has recently attempted to get all sellers to include free shipping. I believe all can ask whatever they want but an honest description does not include fraudulent statements.

www.cardersteubenclub.org

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