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[Luke H]

Without knowing what you have exactly it’s a piece of string question.

The advice given for rare and valuable badges will of course be different v’s genuine but ‘run of the mill’ v’s reproductions.

Also depends how much time and effort you have/wish to put in.

To get informed advice you’ll need decent pictures front and back of the items, ideally individually but 350 is a big ask and at risk of repros not actually being worth that effort.

So far 2 fakes, 1 genuine common badge suggest your hit rate mightn’t be great.

Perhaps create an album inviting comments, photograph the badges in batches where the resolution is still decent: four - six per image to cut down on the work. Upload a dozen or so pics inc. what you think may be rare etc.

From there you should quickly get an idea if it’s worth more effort or not.

[Alan O]

I would expect most dealers will offer your 25% of their value and auction them individually is best. Auction houses will rob you blind and sell them in big lots for pennies.

[Tony Branch]

Thanks guys. selling badges is not easy it seems.
As far as what i've got I have a spreadsheet with all badges listed. I've done my best to identify fakes and restrikes. I've looked at retail values on commercial sites and taken the lowest value shown from a number of them. Even at 25% of retail value its still a significant sum of over a grand.
E bay prices are so variable and I'd be sceptical of who I'm dealing with that i've pretty much discounted using it.
All I need is for someone to take a look at it physically which strikes me as better than 700 or more iffy quality photos. May just end up putting the whole lot through auction and hope for the best.

[Luke H]

I sympathise with your dilemma and understand disposing of a large collection is a challenging task.

Sounds like you’ve taken a pragmatic approach to price which hopefully will stand you in good stead.

Some dealers do ‘house calls’ but the main dealers do not really list / sell the standard infantry or corps badges on their websites so mightn’t be interested doing this if that’s the bulk of your collection. And as Alan says you’d likely be offered a fraction of their value.

Appreciate eBay fees can be off putting but I do think it opens a wide market and gives you control how they’re listed. Plus there are many ‘internet dealers’ who don’t really do provincial auction houses but do buy up the more common genuine badges online.

The recent Amersham is probably reflective of mixed lots. Sixty badges per lot, fetching between £90-240 which after 15% sellers commission is about £1.27 or £3.40 per badge (less 1% insurance and a £4.50 lotting fee per lot).

https://www.amershamauctionrooms.co....urrentPageNo=2

Certainly in one of those lots there were some decent badges, one with a single badge worth more than the hammer price of the entire lot.

Or if selling as one big lot I expect you run the risk of the auction house not bothering much with photos, often you’ll see on the-saleroom a single picture of a big box of badges just showing the top dozen. Invariably dealers pick these up for a song as speculative lots, sometimes less than £1 per badge.

Good luck whatever you decide.

[wardog]

I hate multiple lots like those you link to Luke. Very time consuming to wade through online and many badges you cant be sure about as the image is poor. What was the badge you mention Luke? I wondered about the darker 1st TS but I would not be sure with the image. Regards, Paul.