Is there ever a reason from a seller financial standpoint (don’t care about time) to sell a complete set of anything rather than breaking that set into single listings to get more money that way?
If you break the set there may be cards you will never sell. Also 1 shipping = 1 problem to deal with, paying also just 1 shipping. And it’s not like bulk that you must lower the price of the lot, an entire set is an achievement, you can charge the exact price of all cards together not even lowering the price, or maybe charge a bit extra, as you are saving the buyer the time and effort of gathering the entire set piece by piece.
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I would say if the set is MP-LP with no clear candidates for grading, it could be beneficial to sell it as a whole. It’s also convenient for the buyer, so that’s an added premium .
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Im considering doing this for psa 6 1st ed base holos since I already have some. Might crack them out but idk
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The seller just wants the sale and work of one transaction rather than a ton of single sales. Sure you could break up a set and SOMETIMES come out more, but unlikely. your losing shipping cost on every single card. The only way it would make sense to break up a set is to grade certain cards that would be high grade vs the others. Them you could sell the high grades. Even then I would still buy a lesser condition version of the cards I took out just to have it complete. People mostly buy completes for convenience. If they have to buy more then 3 cards in addition to a “near complete” set they may just go off and find another truly complete one.
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Once more big investors get into the hobby, I think complete sets will become more valuable. Not sure if many rich multi millionaires can be bothered running around on eBay and Instagram all day to complete sets. I believe we may see a premium one day for saving people the time and effort involved in collecting a set individually - especially for hard to complete sets like gold stars 10s or 1st base 9s/10s.
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I will often price up what’s cheaper - full set or singles. Usually it’s similarly priced, but if you’re patient and someone posts a low priced set you can scoop up, then you’ve probably saved way more than buying singles.
For the sets I have, I’ve both bought full sets and singles, the main downside of buying full sets is it’s almost impossible to accurately tell the condition if they’re shown in a binder. It’s much easier to scrutinise singles.
The main downside of buying singles I’ve found is that you can end up paying over the odds for rarer cards unless you’re incredibly patient (I’m not lol).
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