A rare Pokémon card recently fetched an astonishing £279,000 at auction, proving that idle items lying around the house could be worth more than we think.
Interested in discovering how many of us could be sitting on rare goldmines, money.co.uk scraped eBay’s collectables page to find the most lucrative collectables and how much they could earn us.
Results:
Money.co.uk can reveal that the most valuable items lying around the house could be antiques, such as old English clocks, historical amulets and jewellery. The median listed price for this category on eBay is currently £8,800.60.
In second place is coins, with the collectables selling for a median price of £5,921.10. The priciest coin listed reached a staggering £293,359.78, with the second-highest at £188,488.23.
If card games are your passion, take a second glance at any you have stored away as they may be worth a fortune. In third place, card games attract a median price of £4,072.86 on eBay, but the real star of the show is the Pokemon Trading Card Game 2001 Tropical Mega Battle Set in English, which is the highest listed collectable overall at £499,999.99.
Despite being in last (13th) place of all categories considered, postcards are still worth a median price of £218.46 on eBay. This value makes them potentially profitable, considering that they are relatively cheap to purchase first-hand.
Money.co.uk can also reveal the five highest-priced collectable items on eBay:
Salman Haqqi, finance expert at money.co.uk, provides his tips on maximising the return on collectables if you want to sell yours:
“Determine your desired return – The only way you’ll know how much to sell an item for is by comparing it with others. Research what similar items are selling for on resale sites to help you to decide on the desired amount
Take good care of your items – An item’s value will diminish if it’s in bad shape. Research the best ways to keep specific items in top condition and ensure they are kept this way. Coins, for instance, shouldn’t be cleaned as using brass or silver polish to add shine will decrease the value
Monitor the market for the best time to sell – Check the supply of your item on resale sites (eBay’s sold and completed listings provides a 30-day overview) and as long as supply doesn’t get too high and demand too low, you could be safe to sell. The price of your item should continue to rise in this scenario, but continue to monitor the market for any changes.”
Please find the full data of all 68 countries analysed here.
Methodology:
Money.co.uk sought to discover which collectables could be worth the most on eBay.co.uk.
A total of 14 available categories were selected for analysis on the UK eBay collectables page, considering item origin and delivery from each country.
Money.co.uk scraped all active listings under each category on the 17th November 2021, to collect product names and prices for each item. The total and median prices of each category were then calculated and sorted from highest to lowest value to reveal the collectables category with the highest prices. A threshold of greater than ten counts was implemented to filter for small sample sizes.
Data for the category ‘comic book’ was unavailable in the UK and so was removed from the study, leaving 13 categories for the final analysis.
The top ten items by price were also found through this data analysis.
All prices were originally listed in USD dollars ($) and converted to GBP pounds (£) on the 7th December 2021 using XE.com.
All monetary figures are accurate as of 17th November 2021 when data was calculated, but are subject to change.
