Click to Print  How to Inspire Bidding Frenzies  August 31, 2005
Getting Top Dollar for Luxury Goods         Managing the Middle
Market        Collectibles and Low-Priced Items  Probably the
most difficult items to price correctly are one-of-a-kind
collectibles or very low-priced items. And when you have a low-
priced collectible, you've got a real predicament.  That's the
challenge faced by Gail Hubbuch, 59, who sells historic
postcards. Hubbuch (eBay User ID: snowhub) started several years
ago from her Columbia, Kentucky, home with an inventory of more
than 100,000 postcards, for which she paid an average of just 26
cents each.  "I've sold postcards to the Guggenheim, the
Smithsonian, and several historical societies," she says. But
pricing is still more art than science for Hubbuch. "My main
selling strategy is to make money on obscure places that no
longer exist. I never know what the price will be--it has to do
with people's emotional attachments to those places," says
Hubbuch.  It's that emotion that