For the seller

Where to sell a vintage camera collection

There are four real ways to sell a vintage camera collection: sell it yourself piece by piece, send part of it to auction, take it to a camera dealer, or pass the whole thing to one buyer. Which one is right depends less on the cameras than on how much of your time you want to give them, and whether you want the collection to go on as a whole.

A shelf of forty cameras, a drawer of lenses and a box of flashes and filters is a big job to sell, and it is worth knowing what each route actually asks of you before you start.

Selling it yourself, one piece at a time

This asks the most of your time. Every piece has to be identified, checked, cleaned, photographed, described and listed; then come the questions, the packing, the shipping and, now and then, the return.

What most people find is that the good pieces go within weeks and the ordinary ones sit for months. A large part of any collection never sells at all: the third flash, the fourth lens cap, the camera with the stuck film door. Somebody still has to decide what to do with those.

Right for you if the collection is small, you enjoy the work, and you are not in a hurry.

Auction

Auction houses take the pieces they can put in a catalogue and leave the rest with you. Most only accept lots above a certain value, ordinary cameras are bundled together into mixed lots, and from consignment to the end of the sale often takes several months. A collection sent to auction usually comes back as a few lots sold and a lot of boxes still in the house.

Right for you if you only want to part with one or two pieces, and you are prepared to wait.

A camera dealer or trade-in shop

Quick and simple. Dealers want what they can sell on quickly: popular, working, current. Film bodies that need service, accessories, projectors and anything unusual are often turned away, because testing and repairing them is more work than a shop can take on.

Right for you if the collection is a handful of popular cameras that still work.

One buyer for all of it

This is what we do at Unseend. One person looks at the whole collection and takes all of it: the remarkable pieces and everything around them, including what will never be listed anywhere. Nothing is left behind to deal with, and it is done in one go. How it works is explained on our Pass it on page.

What you get back is time, and something most routes lose: the story. Before anything is sold we record how the collection started and what mattered in it, and that story goes with every camera to whoever owns it next, with the collector's name on it.

Right for you if there is a lot of it, it is mixed, and you would rather it went on whole than be taken apart on a kitchen table.

What a camera collection usually turns out to be

Having handled close to ten thousand cameras and collectibles over the years, we can say this with some confidence: almost every collection has a few pieces at its heart, the ones the collector was proudest of. Around them are lenses, bags, filters, flashes, manuals and cameras that worked when they were last used, which may have been twenty years ago.

Those pieces at the heart are the reason we are interested, and the reason the rest makes sense as a collection. Light seals turned to dust, slow shutters, dead meters and hazy lenses are all normal. None of it needs fixing before you sell, and trying usually does more harm than good.

Before you choose

  • Do not clean the lenses or try to free a stuck shutter. A scratch on the front element is worse than the dust ever was.
  • Keep the boxes, manuals, receipts and cases. They matter to collectors more than most people expect.
  • Photograph the shelves as they stand before anything is moved. It helps any buyer, and it is worth having anyway.
  • Keep it together. A collection with its best pieces taken out is no longer the collection somebody built. It loses its story, and what remains is much harder to place. Most buyers of whole collections, us included, will not take one that has already been picked through.

Wherever the collection is

Unseend is based in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, and we buy collections wherever they are: across Europe and anywhere else in the world. When a collection is worth the journey, we come to it ourselves. We record the story where the collection lives, then pack and ship everything properly from there, so nothing has to be boxed up by you.

Smaller collections can be sent to us instead; we arrange the freight and insure it. Within the EU there are no customs forms at all, and from further away we take care of the shipping and the paperwork that goes with it.

The first step is the same either way: tell us what you have, and a person replies within two days.

Short answers

Is it better to sell a camera collection all at once or piece by piece?

Piece by piece takes far more time than most people expect, and part of it never sells. All at once, everything goes together, the best pieces and the rest, and the collection keeps its story.

Do the cameras need to be tested first?

No. Broken, untested and incomplete is normal in a collection. It only needs saying.

Do you buy single cameras?

No, only whole collections: roughly twenty objects and up, or fewer if they are exceptional.

Do you come to collections outside the Netherlands?

Yes, anywhere in the world. If the collection is worth the journey, we travel to it and pack it ourselves.

Why we keep the story

A collection is not a pile of objects.

It is years of somebody deciding what was worth keeping, and sold off piece by piece that is the first thing to go. So before anything is sold, we sit down with you and record it: how it started, what the best of it was, the piece that got away. That story stays on every object with the collector's name, and goes with it to whoever keeps it next. You get a page where you can see where each piece ended up.

Three ways the story gets recorded

On camera, where it lives. We travel to the collection and film it properly: you talking about how it started, the room and the shelves as they are, the objects in your hands. Wherever in the world the collection happens to be.

On a call. If the collection is sent to us rather than collected, we have the same conversation over a video call and write it up, with one photograph of the shelf as it stood.

In writing. If you would rather not talk at all, answer a handful of questions in your own time and in your own words. It goes on the objects exactly as you wrote it.

It never changes anything else, and you can always say no to it. Some conversations run ten minutes, some an afternoon. Read the collections we have taken on

If it is a whole collection

We buy whole collections, not single pieces: one person takes all of it, and the story is kept with every object. Tell us what you have and a person replies within two days.

How passing it on works, in full

1The collection
What is in it
Pick everything that applies. Something else opens a line to tell us.
Roughly how many pieces
A guess is fine. Nobody has counted.
How would you describe it
There is no wrong answer here, and a lot of ordinary is a normal collection.
One or two sentences. This is the question we care about most.
2Where it is, and how it could reach us
Town and country is enough.
How could it reach us
Unseend is in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Sending and bringing are as welcome as a visit; if it is sent, we pay the freight and insure it.
When does it need to be gone
No hurry is a good answer. It lets us plan a visit properly.
3Condition and photographs
In your own words. Broken, incomplete or untested is fine and is normal; it only needs saying.
Photographs
Three to ten photographs The room and the shelves as they stand. Phone photographs are fine, and a slow walk round on video says more than any of them.Send them to hello@unseend.com
Or attach them to the reply that comes back within two days. Any of them works, and nothing is looked at until a person reads it. Do not clean up first — the shelves as they stand tell us more than a tidy arrangement.
4The number, and the story
A number or a range, whatever you have in mind. You will get an honest answer either way.
Would you tell the story of it
Filmed at the collection wherever it is, on a video call, or written in your own time. It never changes the price.
5How to reach you
The reply comes here, from a person, within two days.
Only if you would rather be called.

Answered within two days, by the person who would come, and by email at every step after that. Nothing you send is shared with anyone, and your photographs are deleted if we do not go ahead.

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