Quote:
Originally Posted by jimjim
Great point. A lot of the stuff was priced super high, and he would not come down on any of it. Even the not rare stuff. Never made sense to me how you can run a business that way, when other people and auction houses are selling things for half the price you're charging.
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We've been through all this many times before, but as he explained it to me, Kevin's approach to pricing autographs relied to a great extent on the answer to the question: "how much is it going to cost me to replace this in my inventory?" As for the idea that he was higher than other dealers, Kevin has always been convinced that other dealers used his extensive and highly visible (every week in SCD) lists to price their autographs, making sure they were below his. And having set up at shows with him for 15 years, the idea that he would not negotiate is just a complete fabrication, totally untrue. Finally, I'll tell you what he would say to me when I'd relay to him some grumbling I had heard about how high his prices were. "Oh yeah, why are they wasting their time whining about me when they could be buying up all the great cheap autographs out there, why would they even care what I charge for mine?" The answer is obvious, and so is the fact that he was probably the biggest volume dealer of vintage sports autographs in the country for decades and is now its top authenticator.