Intro / why I'm here

[Hobbit]

[Hopefully it's okay to post this here -- it's similar to what I put in at tarotcollectors.org.]

 

Hi all.  Arriving from the Boston MA area.  For the most part I don't "do tarot"
myself, but I'm here to help keep the community abreast on the life path of

a deck creator you may recognize:  Barbara G. Walker.  I'm her son.

This effort is just to let y'all know that I, or sort-of-we-by-proxy, are here

for a little while.  I can't say much more yet because of the post limit.  More

later, perhaps...

[DanielJUK]

Welcome to our community @Hobbit. Thanks for joining and your Mother made the wonderful deck in her own name with the amazing artwork

Thanks for joining to keep us up to date with any news about Barbara. If you get to 5 posts on the forum (or reply to people on this thread / other introduction threads) you can soon get to 5 and then you can write with no max word limit 🙂

[gregory]

Welcome to the forum, Hobbit (great name). Any "friend" of Barbara's is a friend of mine !

[Hobbit]

I have a couple of links in my profile to date [but I guess my avatar
doesn't show up until I cross the "get real" threshold either].  One to
a mini-site about Barbara's other creative efforts, and one to *my* stuff
which is much more technically oriented.  They're also listed in the TCF thread.
 

It was interesting to grow up through my late-teen years witnessing her creative

process and giving feedback.  Maybe that was my first go at being an art critic?

 

_H*

[joy]

Hello @Hobbit welcome to the TT&M Family  Great to have you here!

[fire cat pickles]

Hello @Hobbit, welcome!

[gregory]

22 hours ago, Hobbit said:

I have a couple of links in my profile to date [but I guess my avatar
doesn't show up until I cross the "get real" threshold either]. 

 

AFAIK you can add your avatar any time - in your profile, using the little image symbol on your existent "avatar"....

[Hobbit]

I did add an avatar [same one I use everywhere] but the board probably doesn't show it until I reach the "I'm not a troll" threshold.  Well, here's one more post toward that, I suppose.  I'm not going to be gratuitous about this, I'll let the forum mechanics sort things out at their own speed.

 

Thanks for all the greetings!

 

_H*

[Hobbit]

So, to ask the same semi-obvious question... what might a good option be for privately selling decks, for someone who doesn't do ebay or paypal, and has no clue about transactions across international borders?  I'm almost thinking local used bookshops or the like, with an established sales channel.  The other hairball will be determining the ballpark value of everything; I'm told some of the decks are fairly rare/valuable.

 

Mom update: still in therapy, hopefully headed back to her actual home soon.  Once that happens, I'll be heading south.  Into the blasting heat...

 

_H*

[Eno]

12 hours ago, Hobbit said:

So, to ask the same semi-obvious question... what might a good option be for privately selling decks, for someone who doesn't do ebay or paypal, and has no clue about transactions across international borders?  I'm almost thinking local used bookshops or the like, with an established sales channel.  The other hairball will be determining the ballpark value of everything; I'm told some of the decks are fairly rare/valuable.

 

 

Local bookshops won't pay you what your rare decks are worth. They usually know nothing about tarot deck values (most of them even don't know the value of rare books and that should be their main business...)

 

This forum has a trading section (but it is paying-members only), lot's of other forums have trading sections too.

 

Transactions across international borders aren't that difficult. You just put a disclaimer on your offer that all the customs fees are not your business and the buyer has to deal with them.

[DanielJUK]

With your next post @Hobbit you will have got to 5 posts and have more freedom and the forum software will know for sure you are a hobbit, not a troll! 😆

 

I agree with what @Eno wrote.

If a deck is rare / valuable, you need to find someone with interest in the deck and will pay for the value of it. I don't think local used bookshops will help, they just want to get rid of old tarot decks and divination books as they don't really have any interest in the area.

 

Here are some ideas from me....

 

- Find out if there are occult / esoteric book shops somewhere near you. Here in London we are blessed with quite a few and some of them take used items and sell them for good prices. I see rare decks on their social media and rare books. It's more antiquarian type book places but they have to have a divination interest, used books will try to get rid of them for a cheap price. You need a book shop with an interest in what you are selling and knows about it.

 

- I do think you would have better luck selling them online, you are more likely to match with someone with a real interest in buying the rare decks. It's not difficult to take out a paypal or ebay account and may be worth it in the prices you could reach on them.

 

- People sell rare decks on ebay and etsy. Some people sell on a tarot collectors FB group, I think that would be quite complicated and I don't know anything about it to give you detail. Like @Eno said we have all deck sales and trades in an area of the forum that is for subscribers only. So you would need to be a subscriber to sell here.

 

- Value is of course as much as someone is interested in the deck and is willing to pay. We try to move discussions out of the introduction section here and into the main forum after the introduction posts have stopped. So you could post about the decks with photos in the Tarot Decks section of the forum. It's okay to post there and ask what people think they might be worth as long as you don't sell them in that area. Get a discussion going on them and people may be able to have ideas for you. Not everyone looks through this intro area and so it's worth posting there. Some people follow the forum areas that interest them, like decks, this form of tarot, etc

 

- You can research value by what people have paid in the past online. Search ebay / etsy and amazon for similar versions of the decks, for example a first edition or rare special deck. Look for like for like. I am not sure if you need to make accounts to just search. You can usually select an option in the search to show you completed sales or sold decks. Have a peek at what people have paid. Some of the prices for decks on those sites are crazy! Often you see a deck on ebay that is well over priced that no one is touching and for sale for years! So don't just take one price as the value.

 

- On ebay and in our trading section here, you can say to your country only. You can choose how you want to sell. Selling out of your country is a pain now because of postage and requirements for getting it into a country. Some people will only sell nationally. However you might get a really good price from someone abroad who always wanted that version of the deck. So it's making it easier vs possible offers. Paypal is quite clever to sell through, people will pay in their currency and it will convert to what you are asking in your currency. You can find out the shipping costs and requirements after if you want to sell it to someone in another country. You can then take your paypal balance and transfer it into a bank account. Like eno said it's fine to make them pay any costs, it's not on you

 

I think really selling online would get you more for it from an interested party vs having to deal with it and sort it out. But lots of people sell used decks online all the time, it's not that tricky once you have started.

[AJ-ish/Sharyn]

Tarot Garden might be interested, but anyone buying  for resale will need to give the seller the bare minimum, as there is storage to consider,  it is a lot of work to list decks, hold them for sale, check every single card, package them safely, field a ton of questions. 

I just sold the last 80 decks from my collection and can speak for how much work it is. I netted about $4500.00 though so it was worth it to me. I probably would have gotten $500-800 selling them to a reseller, if I was lucky. 

You could list them here to find out what people think/guess is the value, but my guess is you won't get much response as why should we do all the research for you? 🙂 said with a smile. I wish your friend the very best.

[Hobbit]

I did see that thread, in fact, and some others, and agree that it is a lot of work.  Determining "value" also seems a bit of a dartboard, as you often find way-out-of-line overpricing in various sales channels, but hopefully I know enough about how to look around and take the "google average" to approach closer to fact.

 

I won't really know more until I'm able to physically view the collection and make a real inventory, which I hope to do soon!  My main goal is to avoid waste, not obsess about profit.

 

_H*

 

[gregory]

Value is in the eye of the purchaser, at all times. There's a tarot book up on ebay - it has been there for literally years now - @$399 (it used to be $299, then went up to $499. I watch it in horrified fascination - yes, I can't see another copy anywhere, and probably never will (and yes, I own one and paid, IIRC, $50 for it) - but....

 

Greenwoods have recently sold for £500 and for £300. ON the other hand two months ago one  fetched a mere $100.  It all depends on who is looking and how EXACTLY it was listed. I forget which rare deck I acquired that had accidentally been listed under jewellery....  But people who know what they have and list accordingly fetch far higher prices than those who found something in an old suitcase and list it as (for instance) little deck of cards in a blue box.... It's a mug's game, and I'm glad you aren't going to agonise over the money side of it !

[Hobbit]

Minor update, posted here to avoid duplicate clutter.   TL;dr is I'm in the same location as Mom's deck collection, and now the real inventorying work begins.

 

_H*

 

[Hobbit]

[Posted into multiple spaces]

Okay, with my Mom's guidance, I've gone through the entire on-site inventory
and her notes and have come up with a complete index of everything physically
present, including links for the majority of items back to the pages on AT
for easy reference.

   http://bgw.works/tarot-inv.html

At the end is a picture of my work-process - she has two monster looseleaf
binders, with neatly assembled details on each deck, with text details,
clippings from paper catalogs that she used to receive, and in a couple of
cases, example card backs if a deck had those informational extras that aren't
essential.  The list started with one of her online documents and built from
it in flat-text form and turned into some token HTML, with the last step
being to hunt down a link, if available, in the huge AT index.

I'll likely be bringing all of this home with me when I return to Boston,
but if some appropriate brokering opportunity arose in the meantime, they
could wind up getting shipped someplace completely different.  I encourage
further discussion of options.  Again, community benefit is the primary
driving motive here, not self-enrichment.  I've included a human-readable
hint to an email address if that works better than forum mechanics.

_H*
 

[gregory]

There are certainly a few people looking for the Amazon from Elfs and Dragons....

 

I'd list the Symbolon under taro, and also the Mantegna, as anyone looking for it wouldn't look under oracles. Your link to the latter goes to the Lo Scarabeo version; I wouldn't be surprised if she had one of the " better" versions ?

[Hobbit]

Oddly, I could not find a hint of that "Amazon" deck at AT, but my mom did the art for four or five cards within it.  That one also doesn't have an official box, it's in a sort of hand-labeled posterboard folder/sleeve that works well enough for containment.

 

I have it from my Official Local Source [!] that Symbolon and Mantegna aren't really usable tarot.  The Symbolon has a lot of nonstandard names for the cards, and NO labeling on the faces -- it's really hard to figure out which is which from the LWB, but in this case my mom went through them in original packed order and labeled the back of each one with the LWB name.  There aren't any suits.  It's just weird, so she classed it under "oracle" which I suppose also serves as "other" in her mind!   I'm not sure where this version of "Mantegna" came from, it's 30 tiny cards that seem cut out from a book and hand-assembled onto little cardboard tiles.  Another super-weird item, and may not have any value as such.

 

I'm wondering if I should start a different thread about this, but it's unclear where it would best go.  I respect that TTM is not a straight-up "sales channel" as such, so I'm trying to keep most of that flow off the forum.  I also updated the page to reflect that I do *not* do ebay or paypal at the moment, but I realize that carves out a lot of settlement options so I might look into setting up something.  Suggestions welcome [PM if you don't want to clutter the public forums].  I really don't trust companies with sleazy practices having their fingers directly into bank accounts...

 

_H*

 

[Hobbit]

Okay, I give.  I've started the process of getting set up on paypal, after resisting for years, not to mention being occasionally needled by my tech buddies about not having the capability they find so convenient.  So it's not just about tarot decks, it seems to be the first thing [other than "Venom", owned by PP anyway] that people think of for personal payments.  Now that it's easy to set up a special "stovepiped" bank account or card to associate with it, that makes things a bit safer.  PP can also handle cross-border transactions and conversion, so that may be a plus.

 

_H*

 

[stephanelli]

18 hours ago, Hobbit said:

Okay, I give.  I've started the process of getting set up on paypal, after resisting for years, not to mention being occasionally needled by my tech buddies about not having the capability they find so convenient.  So it's not just about tarot decks, it seems to be the first thing [other than "Venom", owned by PP anyway] that people think of for personal payments.  Now that it's easy to set up a special "stovepiped" bank account or card to associate with it, that makes things a bit safer.  PP can also handle cross-border transactions and conversion, so that may be a plus.

 

_H*

 

A belated welcome to the forum!

I use PayPal lots - its ability to handle currency conversions is so useful for me!

🙂

[gregory]

You have to subscribe to sell here but you could link to "another site" that would let you list. You are in a different position from most of us ! And yes - I use a different account for paypal, too ! AND a credit card that I ONLY use for that ! but it is so very useful.

 

Maybe put Symbolon and Mantegna under "other" then ? I would never have looked under oracles and all of a sudden her Mantegna sounds interesting !

Edited August 2, 2022 by gregory

[Hobbit]

Okay, funny story from yesterday.  A small group of people came to the house to pick over some mineral samples and decorative glass and crystal items, and one of the women saw the cases full of cards and went "ooh, tarot!  Those would be great at the renaissance-fairs we go to."  And wound up buying half a dozen decks on the spot, including a couple of the obscure ones I couldn't find on AT!   [I've updated the inventory page accordingly]

 

I also experimented with paypal the other night with a couple of tech buddies, so I see how it works now.  One evidently wants to be sure to use the "friends and family" mode, to avoid fees...

 

_H*

 

[gregory]

OOOOH what did they buy ? you HAVE to tell !

[legendaryelement]

I didn’t go over in person, but I shall be getting Wizards Tarot by John J. Blumen and Corrine Kenner (book/deck)

[Hobbit]

Well, lessee.  Baphomet/Geiger, Green Witch, Pagan, Wildwood ... and one of Mom's, tin-box in original shrinkwrap [she has about 5 more kicking around the house].  For the moment I'm sort of keeping track of this right in the index file, for the HTML-savvy.  Legendary's Wizards ships out tomorrow morning...

 

The whirlwind of activities I describe around email, websites, paypal, youtube, forums, etc as I wander through this journey certainly has Mom's head spinning.  Not a computer person, despite trying fairly diligently to learn more about it ~ 20 years ago.  I've been living the "parental system management" life for some time now.

 

_H*