Friday, May 29, 2015

Selling Antique Cameras

Antique cameras and equipment can be valuable items to sell to collectors and professional photographers. Listing them in venues such as online auction sites, camera club classifieds or even your local newspaper can help you sell them quickly and easily.


Instructions


1. Sell through eBay. You can set up an auction for your antique camera and hope that you will find a buyer willing to pay what the item is worth. With this option you can set a reserve amount that has to be met before you will relinquish the camera, though it may be harder to get interested buyers if you set the reserve price too high. Ebay also has a "Buy It Now" option that allows you to set a price for your item and buyers can pay it directly without having to participate in an auction for it. Using an online auction site to sell your camera gives you more control over the amount you sell for and does give you worldwide exposure to potential buyers, but you will have to pay a percentage of the sale to the website as their fee for using their service.


2. Sell through a camera club. The Historic Camera Collector club sometimes purchases old cameras and photography equipment. Many times this depends on availability of club funds, as well as the quality of the equipment you are hoping to sell. Some camera clubs have classifieds available to list your camera equipment through, which are accessed via the Internet or a club newsletter. Some may charge for listings while others will include them for free.


3. Sell through the newspaper classifieds. The weekend issues of the paper will be best if you are trying to reach a wide audience, especially the Sunday edition. Make sure to list your ad in the proper category, such as "Electronics," "Cameras/Equipment," or "Antiques" if possible. If you do not sell your item with the first ad that you list, you might want to try moving it to a different category and see if that brings in more interest. Listing in the newspaper is a good way to show your ad to local buyers, but will not help much if you are trying to find a national or worldwide potential market.


4. Sell to an antiques dealer. You can take your camera and equipment to a local storefront that deals in antiques and see if they would be interested in purchasing them. You can also try online antiques dealers, such as Antique-Buyers.com. The offer appraisal services and evaluations, as well as giving you several options for selling your equipment.


5. Sell to a used camera store. Sometimes the people working in or running camera stores will be interested in buying antique cameras for their personal collections, but not necessarily with any intention of trying to resell them. Used camera stores, which buy many different qualities of cameras and equipment, may be more interested in your item but may not offer you as high a price as a collector or antiques dealer would. UsedCameraBuyer.com is an online company that buys used camera equipment, after giving you a price quote of what they have determined the value to be. This can be useful, as it will give you an amount that you can use as an example of your camera's worth if you decide to shop around for a buyer. Keh.com works in much the same way as UsedCameraBuyer, offering both money or trades for your old camera equipment.