? Is it better to sell an incomplete group as a group?

[grasswire]

My example: I bought a scrapbook put together in the 1920s by an amateur boxer and raconteur in the south Bay Area. It is loaded with (mostly local) boxing memorabilia and lots of tickets to entertainments of various kinds, photos, clippings, and lots of oddities of ephemera.

Unfortunately, there are some blank spots where something was pirated out.

Is it generally better to piece out the interesting things individually? Or try to sell it as a whole? Probably 5 percent has been pirated.

[InvisibleTouch]

1. I'd sell it as a group.

If there are some especially sought-after bits in the lot, you'll have bidders willing to buy the whole group just to get those pieces - and if they're not such sought-after items, it carries more weight as a collection than as individual pieces. Especially in this case, where it was all assembled by one person and carries the stamp of the collector's personality as well.

[Vinca]

2. I think it depends on the subject matter and quality of the stuff

in the collection. For example, if you were lucky enough to find an old Beatles scrapbook, I'd keep it together even if it contained tickets to concerts (that often sell for hundreds by themselves). On the other hand, if you found a scrapbook in fair condition that had some nice Victorian trade cards and a bunch of not terribly interesting newspaper clippings, I'd probably remove the cards and sell them by themselves. I think I'd be inclined to keep a boxing scrapbook intact. Too bad someone already pilfered it.