Image courtesy of Hummels at a Discount
I remember as a kid when my father bought my mom her first Hummel. At the time they were treasured and very expensive – and the type of expense my parents really couldn’t afford at the time. Through the years they added to the collection, eventually getting a nice little wall display case for them all. The one in the image – Sensitive Hunter – is how my mom always saw me, and therefore was the one she wanted to represent me in her little menagerie.
But today an article at WalletPop talks about how the once treasured collectibles have fallen out of favor and are no longer fetching the prices they used to command:
Prices, Kovel says, have “gone to hell.” “If we have a Hummel whose book value is $325, they are now bringing about $50, sometimes less,” wrote estate liquidator Julie Hall, the author of The Boomer Burden: Dealing with Your Parents’ Lifetime Accumulation of Stuff, in an email. On eBay, ultra-rare Hummels still occasionally fetch big bucks — ‘Adventure Bound’ recently sold for $1,135 on eBay. But that’s the exception. Many other Hummels don’t sell at all — or sell for less than $50, a once unheard of price for Hummels.
So if your mother or grandmother has a collection that you hoped would provide you cash to get yourself an iPad, you might be out of luck. Hopefully there is plenty of sentimental value and memories there, because there likely isn’t much else of value.
Source: WalletPop
