I been looking at the possibility of selling off my Transformers: Premiere Edition Volume 1 and replacing it with the IDW collection hardcovers. When I checked the price though on Amazon it was £299+ and ebay has only 1 and it's listed for £1000+. Does it really sell for these prices? (I could pay for a large chunk of my wedding if it does!)
First thing you have to realize is there are a lot of people/entities who list on Amazon.com, and a lot of the times, their prices don't really reflect the market value - they're basically price gouging, and it doesn't help that people think it's Amazon who's actually selling it and not someone else via Amazon. Think of it as the Amazon version of eBay's Buy It Now option. Best to actually check eBay's listings and see what the completed listings go for.
Yeah, checking completed eBay listings is the way to go. Something Amazon Marketplace (and eBay Buy It Now) sellers often do is use algorithms to automatically adjust the price of their items to match other listings for the same item, to ensure their pricing is competitive. Of course, if they don't ever bother to check the listings themselves, this means the prices can sometimes run wildly out of control when two seller's algorithms wind up reacting to each other in an endless cycle.
Well the reason I asked is because I couldn't find a completed listing on ebay and while I realise that the £300 price tag on Amazon isn't Amazon itself, it is the cheapest I've seen it listed for. (I've check a couple of other places and the price still seems to be around $1000).
Chances are you'll be hard pressed to sell it for anywhere near that price. Why would someone want that, when they can have the IDW collections which actually continue to exist? Just because people put ludicrous prices on something, doesn't mean its worth it. Try and think like a buyer, who would buy it? Heck, Forbidden Planet UK recently had em marked down to £50 and EBS currently has em in for €70
I am afraid the Premiere Collections don't go for much... there was one that sold just after Christmas I believe for about £45. Nobody really wants them, because the IDW Collections replaced them, reprinted more material and are generally better.