Ephemera
Ephemera covers Theatre programmes, and Football
programmes, and posters advertising such entertainments. You might think they
are rubbish to be put in the paper recycling bin. However, often there are
people who are interested in acquiring them, sometimes for very obscure
reasons. There are various things you might do with Ephemera: Sell direct to a
dealer, sell individually such as on ebay, sell or give to fans via a forum, or
donate to a charitable concern, or possibly an archive.
Categories
Sell To A Dealer – Appropriate if you have a
large number of programmes to sell. However, dealers will only buy if they feel
they can definitely sell a good proportion of the programmes they are buying
from you. Therefore, dealers will probably need quite a number of details about
the programmes in your collection. It can be quite time-consuming to list them
all.
Sell On Ebay – Given the fees involved,
this probably works best if you have a good idea that the programme can be sold
for a sum that will at least cover the fees. You might list a whole bunch of
programmes together as a group. However, programmes seem to sell best when
listed individually. If listing programmes on Ebay it is advisable to type out
the entire cast list, as sometimes the most minor of players (and in theatre
terms this may also include musicians, and Assistant/Acting Stage Managers)
could be people who went on to either become famous in their field, or at least
acquire enough of a fan following that someone might be interested in a
programme from the early days of their career. Of course if selling on Ebay you
may consider using an intermediary firm.
Offer Via A Forum – You might want to offer
programmes to interested fans via a forum specialising that area. In this case you might sell
for a low price, or offer for postage cost (depending on your preferences). For
Theatre ephemera suitable forums include: The Dress Circle messageboard, and
the Savoynet mailing list. Sporting ephemera too would have its own forums.
Give To A Charitable
Concern –
Some Oxfam shops seem to know what they are doing with ephemera (and list good
items on Ebay). In London, the record shop Dress Circle has a box of items
(mainly theatre programmes) for sale to raise fund for TheatreMAD (Theatre
Making A Difference).
Donate To An Archive – Some theatrical archives
(for example those dealing with specific venues) may be interested in
particularly rare items, dealing with their specific area of interest, if it
does not already have copies of the item, for example the Royal Opera House
might be interested in filling in gaps in its collection. However, when offering stuff to
archives, it is worth bearing in mind that in many cases the institution is
likely to have the more general stuff, and will not want duplicates,
nevertheless they can be worth considering.
Directory
Auctioning4U: collections@auctioning4u.co.uk
C20th: info@c20th.com
Dress Circle
Ebid: http://uk.ebid.net/
Flogit4u: 020 7424 0761
Stuff U Sell: Tel 0800 075 0015
See Also
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