🔵Facebook sale ---80 McDermott cues from friend’s late-father & McDermott dealer — How will this end? 🔵

[maha]

a ten to 20 year old cue is just that as soon as it is hit just once. and then becomes an old used cue. and worth far less. and real hard to sell
as a cue is a personal thing and finding a buyer for it isnt easy.

if its rare and kept new and has collector value that is different.

 

[Paul_#_]

Thanks Yup Talon for your reply.

Your comments speak well of McDermott. Regarding McDermott providing a warranty, buyers didn’t seem to be convinced of the warranty or its value.

Dry rotted bumpers and tips..... Should they have rotted in this time period?

Sobering that prices often went 30% less than ten-year or older sticker prices. In other words, buyers paid little or nothing for the warranty and that they were new cues. Worse, they didn’t take into consideration that the list prices were years’ old.

Maybe MaHa’s post is correct that lower prices were due, despite being unused cues, older, non-collector cues.

Given some eBay buyers' major complaints while in-person buyers did not, eBay can be an expensive snake pit.

Why didn’t you use AZBilliards?

You have three left on eBay and have been there since September (M72B and M72H) and November (M66G). Their buy-it-now prices are less than their 18-year-old MSRPs:

Buy it now at $350: McDermott M72H Bolivian Cue of the month September 2007, linen wrap, price tag $419 (your earlier price was $641)

Buy it now at $369: McDermott M72B Cue of the Month 2007 Double Diamond Cue, 19oz 58" 13mm tip, price tag in 2007, I think, $686

Buy it now at $500: McDermott M66G Ivory Valiant 20oz LIMITED 1 Of 150, price tag in 2007 $600.​

 

[yup talon]

a ten to 20 year old cue is just that as soon as it is hit just once. and then becomes an old used cue. and worth far less. and real hard to sell
as a cue is a personal thing and finding a buyer for it isnt easy.

if its rare and kept new and has collector value that is different.

The vast majority of what I had was indeed unused, still has a sticker on it brand new. However there were exceptions as you can see from my list.

This whole ordeal was quite an experience, as I ran into quite a few buyers who had attachments to specific models (both new and used) for various reasons - "I lost this cue years back", "this was the cue of the month when my child was born", "this cue has my late mothers birthday on it" ("Oct 06", translated differently for this buyer), and so on... These cases were instances where cues sold for near or over sticker price/researched value.

 

[maha]

well you did just fine and it worked out for all.

 

[yup talon]

Thanks Yup Talon for your reply.

Your comments speak well of McDermott. Regarding McDermott providing a warranty, buyers didn’t seem to be convinced of the warranty or its value.

Dry rotted bumpers and tips..... Should they have rotted in this time period?

Sobering that prices often went 30% less than ten-year or older sticker prices. In other words, buyers paid little or nothing for the warranty and that they were new cues. Worse, they didn’t take into consideration that the list prices were years’ old.

Maybe MaHa’s post is correct that lower prices were due, despite being unused cues, older, non-collector cues.

Given some eBay buyers' major complaints while in-person buyers did not, eBay can be an expensive snake pit.

Why didn’t you use AZBilliards?
View attachment 874153
You have three left on eBay and have been there since September (M72B and M72H) and November (M66G). Their buy-it-now prices are less than their 18-year-old MSRPs:

Buy it now at $350: McDermott M72H Bolivian Cue of the month September 2007, linen wrap, price tag $419 (your earlier price was $641)​

​

Buy it now at $369: McDermott M72B Cue of the Month 2007 Double Diamond Cue, 19oz 58" 13mm tip, price tag in 2007, I think, $686​

​

Buy it now at $500: McDermott M66G Ivory Valiant 20oz LIMITED 1 Of 150, price tag in 2007 $600.​

I forget when it was, but i don't even think i thought to ask McDermott about them honoring the warranty until May/June. So, my early sales had no implied warranty in the listings. Though i was happy to provide a bill of sale to any new cue buyer from before or after that time.

I'm no expert, so cant speak to how or why some bumpers/tips dried up over ~15 years, but they definitely did. All cues that showed signs of this were sent to McDermott and they repaired/replaced/rebuilt them under warranty. These cues were found stored pretty safely - either in cases or individually wrapped in their original bags/bubble wrap/shipping tubes, or wrapped individually in towels.

In my opinion, I was surprised that more of these didn't sell for closer to sticker. Like you stated much earlier in this post, the price of cues has gone up noticeably over the past 15 years and the ones i was offering were new and of similar quality, plus they weren't the same designs that everyone else has available to them right now. To put it into perspective, it seemed crazy to be selling some of my G-core equipped cues for <$50 more than what a new G core shaft sells for now in some cases. But again, I am new to this community and am still far from an expert at selling in this market.

And yes, maha is correct. There were some cues that very clearly got no traction anywhere, and eventually got posted on eBay with $99 starting bids and sold for <50% of their sticker. From my perspective, they sold for what they were worth and we were fine with that. I wasn't trying to still be selling these in 2029 just to squeeze every penny out of them.

The eBay fees sucked, but that wasn't even the worst of selling there. I had a guy that bought an old used uni-loc shaft from me for like $30 that was CLEARLY advertised as used and warped. The buyer went bananas saying it was junk and useless being warped and eventually abused eBay's buyer protection policy. He even went as far as snapping the shaft in half to state his case that i didn't deliver what was advertised, even though earlier in our correspondence he said that it arrived in one piece. I was temporarily forced to refund him, but after about a month i eventually got the money back. I had another guy buy a cue recently that left a great review, and even personally messaged to share that the condition of the cue was even better than he imagined. Weeks later he started going on about some phantom spot on the linen wrap that didn't show up in my high quality listing photos, nor did he notice upon receipt (to further his baseless claim, this was also a cue that McDermott had their hands on just a month prior and had passed all their quality checks). The photos he sent me didn't show anything out of the ordinary. It amounted to him backing out of another auction he'd won. I cancelled the transaction at his request to just to keep the peace and move on.

I was weary of showing up on forums like this to try selling anything. First, who's going to trust a new account with an unbelievable amount of new-old stock cues? Especially when I wasn't interested in accepting any form of unprotected (for me) payment (I've been burned accepting money via Venmo/PayPal goods and services with folks that have utilized buyer protections and claimed that the package came empty - leaving me without the merchandise/money.) and i didn't want to go straight to giving eBay a cut. I strongly preferred to put these cues into peoples hands and dealing in person. As good as my photos were, and as honest as I am, its impossible to meet every buyer's expectations without the benefit of personally handling these items first. It cost me time and money but i think it provided a much higher satisfaction rate both on my end and the buyers' side. Plus, i actually tried creating an account here a while ago, but my account was never approved. I misspelled my user name anyway, so i gave up until this week, now that my journey is nearly over. (Note to admins: feel free to reject/delete the account name "tup talon" haha).

I just sold the G1908, M88A and M88B about a week ago, the C21 is at McDermott and will sell pending their restoration assessment, so its not surprising that a couple limited editions are of the remaining few (ie: M66G, D606). If anyone is interested in a limited D606 for $350 (sticker is $449) shipped via PayPal friends and fam, that one is still around too. I'd also be happy to cut any of those eBay prices by 10% to a buyer that will deal outside of eBay.

-Ryan