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Permalink Reply by Dane on March 30, 2014 at 4:59pm

$4800 seems a lot for 18 cuts. It wouldn't make sense (at that price) to cut the book up. Also, it's likely that some of the pages are signed on both sides, which wouldn't be of much value, either.

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Permalink Reply by Carlos on March 30, 2014 at 5:01pm

I don't see any real reason to own a book when you can't display all the autos. Seems pointless
On the price - it was only bid up to 2k with a few hours left then the seller ended it and relisted it for this price

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Permalink Reply by Dane on March 30, 2014 at 5:30pm

Well, there's always the "Report Item" option:

1) Listing Activities

2) Avoiding eBay Fees

3) Avoiding Reserve Fees

I don't really know what eBay can or would do to someone for doing that, but this seems the most blatant abuse of the cancel auction option that you could do. At least other sellers would usually just not relist the item for a while.

At $2000-$2500, it would make *some* sense to cut the book up. $250-$400 per cut for "Muhammad Ali" signatures and $700-$800 for "Cassius Clay" signatures once authenticated. (Yes, you'd need to have every cut authenticated to sell them individually.)

Assuming there are actually only 12-14 cuts (with 4-6 being on the back of other pages), $1400+ in fees would be about right. So, you'd be looking at $3500-$4000 outlay at $2000-$2500 for about $7000 of cuts (on the high end). If you bump it up to the $4800 asking price, that increases your cost to $6000-$6500. The seller probably realizes this, so they're selling it as a collection rather than cuts. The margin on cuts is too small to make it worth breaking up the "collection" of signatures.

As to your question of display, William already pointed out that someone buying the book would probably get a display case. That would add $300 (if you get it used, I'm guessing it'd be around there) to your cost. $5000 for a nice museum piece isn't bad for someone who has a nice Ali collection (robes, gloves, etc). $6500 seems horrible for someone who might be looking to cut the book up for a profit.

From a business perspective, you don't buy the book, since it's not worth the marketing costs to sell the cuts. From a collectible perspective, you don't cut up the book, since it's probably the only one (or maybe one of a handful) out there.

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Permalink Reply by Carlos on March 30, 2014 at 5:49pm

They haveowered the price by 1050 since they relisted it lol

So as a collector you would keep it as a book?
I am an avid Ali collector. If I purchased this the autos would be displayed, with the pic, individually. There's no point hiding 17 autos just to show one

On another note, Ali signed pics aren't rare and a lot of these are of every day life so not too desirable

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Permalink Reply by Mike Kaminski on March 30, 2014 at 5:13pm

If I'm looking at it from a business perspective, yes, I do cut them up. Finding a person that would want all 18 in a book together would be hard to do, and you'd likely get more selling pages (would be foolish to just cut out the autograph without the photos in my opinion) than you would selling the book as a whole. There is also a very good chance that they're on the back of one another as Dane said so one would have to take that into account. 

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Permalink Reply by Carlos on March 30, 2014 at 5:18pm

Yea I agree with leaving the pic with the auto
I just can't get my head around having a book you can't ever display
I can however see having 18 different framed pics around lol

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