Any Sheet Music Collectors?

[zabet]

I may be mistaken but I thought someone here collected this. I think this is possibly a good buy...
http://fayetteville.craigslist.org/for/1517347845.html

[grasswire]

1. it's not a bad buy

Some of the sheets there are pretty common. The best one is probably the Irving Berlin "Ike" piece.

[democraticinsurgent]

2. Hard to sell on eBay

That's been my (limited) experience with sheet music. Bought a huge lot at a thrift store a few years ago, paid too much. About $2 each and it's hard to get $10 out of most any of it.

Which seems like a crime. It's so beautiful.

Maybe the best thing is to mat and frame and put in antique mall?

[grasswire]

4. $2 each is too much to pay if you want to make $ on it.

Unless I KNOW that I can make $10 or more on a sheet, I wouldn't pay more than fifty cents each.

But I have been a sheet music collector for thirty years and a dealer for half of that. So I have a pretty good idea what I can sell.

Condition is really, really important unless the piece is rare.

Re: your idea. Considering the cost of matting and framing, you'd be taking a chance with trying to sell it framed. Yes, it's more likely to sell to the general public, but they just don't want to pay enough for it to make it profitable.

I've got about 12,000 sheets on hand.

[democraticinsurgent]

6. thanks for the info

yeah...i did sorta learn the hard way on that purchase. But it was only maybe $75 and i probably sold 4 pieces at $10 so it didn't hurt much.

good to hear from the voice of experience, though. I thought i had hit the jackpot that day. lol.

[grasswire]

7. wish I could look through your stash!

Nothing makes me happier than seeing a big pile of sheet music to look through. And I love to hang it up, in plain black salon-style frames.

[Stinky The Clown]

3. Sparkly dabbles in collecting it

No doubt there are some items worth actual money, but a buck a sheet is about the average retail for it.

[grasswire]

5. yes, of course there are big-ticket sheets.

I sold one for $1,200 about ten years ago. I paid $12 for it.

And I've sold many for more than a hundred or even two hundred.

But a lot of it is unsaleable at even a buck.