We can’t believe that we are almost half way through the year. I know we say this all the time but time really does fly. You will notice on the front of our homepage that we have now a new valuation service and sales service. This is something that we have been planning for the last few years and with the red tape and legal issues that have to be dealt with we are finally glad that we launched this for the weekend for the League Cup final Liverpool V Cardiff City. We also took a page in the cup final programme. Once again we are leading all our competitors being the first ever company to offer a service such as this and if you have something that you want valued or something that you wish to sell this is the quickest way to do either why not try the service. It would be fair to illustrate that this is a premium telephone service however it’s all automated and you will be surprised how quickly the results come back to you.
On the sales front we have been delighted with the sales of vintage memorabilia. Certainly across the world now have really created a niche market and with all rarities coming up it’s been wonderful to offer some signatures that are complete one offs and images have not been seen anywhere else. Even looking on some shopping websites not being able to find an example of any of these autographs certainly makes these rare items.
Soccerbid again was delighted to be featured again on ITV’s “May the Best house win” although this programme was recorded last August it keeps being repeated and we are grateful for the television advertising we receive. We can safely say with our products as seen on television.
Olympic memorabilia is starting to come into its own and we are delighted now to start putting together collections of some of the greats not only British but also some world greats in the memorabilia business.
Another thing that seems to of come completely out of the blue is some of the personalized and special requests that we get. One example a French client who wanted a personalized shirt of not only Robin Van Perci but also Yossi Benayoun although this does take a little more time and in 95% of the cases we can get the photograph of the star of the item that has been personalized sometimes holding it up so it’s a unique photograph of this being done. This is something that particularly with the southern clubs we are starting to get done more and more.
It seems for the first time that auctions seem to be a bit thin on the ground, we have come across quite a number of fund raisers that have decided to start using what’s known as black listed companies who have in the past had questions raised about the quality of their authenticity and the only losers will be the end buyers who will be spending good money given to the charities only to discover that the items are indeed not what they are meant to be.
Bobby Moore signature goes down in value
It was something that we thought we would never announce. Sadly after say 10 years of getting good money suddenly we find that there are literally hundreds of Bobby Moore signatures now on the market, although we have discovered only in the last month around 80 different fakes. Although the prices of the genuine ones are starting to tumble you still need to be very careful. With this in mind bearing in mind what’s happening in the business we have now discounted all our Bobby Moore’s. The price will go up again so who knows its time to bag yourself a bargain. Other businesses are complaining how quiet it is we once again humbly thank you for your continued custom and look forward to talking to you very soon.
December 2011
We can’t believe that we are back to another December again. We have been pleased with the recent sales; they still seem to be coming through fairly regularly with lots of new customers.
Our decision to go down the old Legends route certainly proved to be profitable this year. Mainly because a lot of the items we have are one off items and wherever you are in the world looking for a 1950’s 60’s or 70’s unique sports legend that meant something to you as a child or to your father or grandfather, obviously we are the idea place to come for this.
We were delighted this year to work with BBC Children in Need, providing memorabilia for various fund raisers. One particular event that our team attended they managed to raise £4,000 for Children in Need by using our memorabilia.
We are delighted now that quite a lot of charities have decided that perhaps the authenticity of service provided by the existing supplier wasn’t quite good enough and have now come over to start working with us. One large International known Charity, we have been knocking on their door for nearly 15 years, suddenly they have now seen the light and have decided to start working with us. (Apparently they had problems with the supplier and the authenticity!!!)
We have been delighted with a number of International sales that are now coming our way. Supplying items across the world isn’t a problem, providing we can sort out how we get our money and how we get the item to you. However, with good relationships with courier company’s and if banks worked a little quicker it would make the process a lot faster.
However, having supplied items to Japan, Australia and America in recent weeks, we are quite happy to do this.
Those of you who saw ITV’s “May The Best House Win”, you would have seen our boss showing people around his house and each of the guests were given a Soccerbid goodie bag, which was great advertising for us, although in some area’s, we understand that part of this excerpt was cut out. However we are now glad to say that Soccerbid has now been seen on ITV-1 by millions of people. We have also been approached by other production companies to put some of our memorabilia on various TV shows, so look out in the forthcoming months for this.
After the passing of Sir Henry Cooper, the prices hit rock bottom, when everybody decided to sell the Henry Cooper Items immediately after his passing, now the value has steadily moved up again and Henry Cooper signature value is now increasing.
The passing of Socrates was quite sudden as with Joe Frazier.
More and more clients now come to us as they say we have a proper landline number and a real person at the end of the telephone and if you phone us you will know we are passionate about memorabilia, especially if you are wishing to buy off us!
As it is December and coming towards the end of the year, it is time to reflect and also give thanks to those people who have supported us during the last year. It has been a tough year in the memorabilia market, however, we have been delighted by the response from our customers, so may we now take this opportunity in wishing you Festive Greetings and lets all look forward to profitable New Year.
We would love to see West Ham get promoted to the Premiership, Wales to win the six Nations and UK to win every Gold Medal. But then we can all dream--- All together now “I’m dreaming of a white Xmas”
Assuring you of our best attention at all times, once again thank you for your interest and consideration in Soccerbid.
Soccerbid News. Written October 2011
Where the summer has virtually passed us and we are back with the football season again as West Ham fans we find it difficult where people rave on about the premiership fixtures at the moment. Hey Ho the Welsh contingent here are jumping for joy with the Rugby World Cup and also everybody is getting excited about the Euro’s.
On the memorabilia front pre 1970 seems to be the flavour at the moment and I suppose having quite a unique selection of memorabilia which is not only rare but also genuine puts us slightly ahead of our competition.
We were delighted to be featured once again as a consultant with the BBC Faking it which was shown 8th August with approximately 7 million viewers. The BBC trusts our credibility and authenticity all the more reason for you to do the same. How many other companies can state that?
You will notice that we are getting more and more sporting art prints signed by various sporting legends are becoming available and prices are dropping for them as well. This is proven to be very good value particularly for Birthday presents, or dare I say Christmas. With most of them under £100 we only have ones and twos of each of them so don’t delay as we cannot get any more.
On the valuation front we are still delighted to be doing many valuations and lots of companies are using valuations for Insurance purposes.
Several people have contacted us in trying to sell us their memorabilia and to be totally honest we do not necessarily need to buy yet another 1966 item as we have plenty of our own; however we will consider selling peoples items for them. Advertising them on soccerbid and then taking a commission for selling the item or at least advertise the item for you. If this is something that you could be interested in providing the authenticity of the item checks out please don’t hesitate in contacting us.
A couple of years ago we had a bit of fun with some of our readers predicting the results of the premiership for the end of the season. Once again with soccerbid the brains who have been behind this and this year we are going for instead of naming who we think is going to win and get second place we are going for a team who might surprise everyone.
The team to get the highest in Europe this year will possibly be Chelsea. The team to come up to the championship would love to say West Ham however at the moment the jury is out although we would desperately like this to happen.
Our prediction for the rugby world cup is the All Blacks.
As always we have to say Thank you for your constant interest and custom and look forward to being of service to you very soon.
Kind Regards
Soccerbid
Soccerbid News. June 2011
Hello there and welcome to our can you believe it half way through the year newsletter.
There’s been some great business in the last couple of months, people buying items that have been in stock for a long time and once again we are delighted to welcome new people to our website.
We were delighted to be invited in our AFTAL capacity to feature as an advisor on BBC1’s Fake Britain, demonstrating the difference between an original autograph and a pre-printed autograph. You will be safe in the knowledge that even the BBC are now using our advice and yet another reason for buying with complete safe knowledge concerning authenticity of the memorabilia we sell.
Fathers day gifts were a bit slow we were surprised with all the “new” older stock us particularly with the legends of the early 1950s/1960s and some lovely pieces of very rare memorabilia coming through.
Since our last news letter there was the sad passing of Sir Henry Cooper. Henry was very giving autograph signer and one of the nicest Gentlemen in sport.
Please don’t forget to look at our soccer-bid shop on ebay. We have got some new items on there and we discount some other items that are not necessarily all seen on this site; however we do appreciate that ebay is a worldwide shop window. Some exclusive things on the ebay shop this month include a Jesse Owens signed 1st day cover. This I’m sure you will realize is very rare lots of 1966 related items. Neil Armstrong signed autograph
As board members of the AFTAL organization, we regularly do a news letter for our AFTAL dealers and we have decided to take a portion of last months newsletter where we have put in our opinion the top ten sports signers that we have had pleasure with dealing with. A lot of which are our clients on our associate company The Old Boy’s Network www.tobn.co.uk however we have worked with so many sports people across the years.
Thanks once again for your continued custom and we look forward to speaking to you soon.
Soccerbid.co.uk sports celebrities 2011 autograph signers
(Current and passed on)
No 10 Pat Jennings. Pat never seems to have a problem and is always accommodating with his signature, he gives time with people and doesn’t mind posing for photographs. When he puts his big hand in your hand to shake it there is genuine warmth from him.
No.9 Sir Henry Cooper now passed on but up to around two years ago he was always a very accommodating signer, particularly good with children at boxing events and fairly consistent with his style of signing, never to hurried and a lovely gentleman that hadn’t let the money side of autographs change him.
No.8 A surprising choice Steve Collins a former middle weight boxer. I was recently surprised at an event when quite a number of celebrities had gone home Steve was still signing autographs, having photographs taken with people and giving people all the time in the world. He was a great boxer in his day, sadly he talks a million miles and hour and quite difficult to always understand what he is saying, however he means well and is very giving and has time for people.
No7. Andy Murray obviously it’s best to get him when he is either winning or away from the tennis environment. His signature has changed over the last few years; he still has time for people and will pose for photographs and his recent appearance on Comic Relief, although it was a sketch it shows it is typical of him where he will give time to autograph hunters.
No6. Gareth Edwards, although Gareth is now aware of the commercial implications concerning autographs, he is still a very giving person. However, if suddenly approached with a number of photographs or shirts he won’t necessary sign them all but you would certainly get one or two. He is a real legend and possibly one of the greatest rugby players in the world.
No5. Billy Bonds, obviously with our personal West Ham connection there had to be a Hammer in there somewhere. Billy who was a tough footballer, this was for solely on the pitch he is nothing like that off the pitch. He is always very giving when out and about. He doesn’t mind posing for photographs and quite a number of times after a function will go and join a group of lads at the bar, have photographs done with them give autographs when really his job of work is finished and he could be on his way home.
No 4. The great Bobby Moore, our first ever client. Bobby always had time for people; it is such a same that he didn’t get a real chance to experience the renewed interest in the 1966 team. He came in very early when the big interest in sports memorabilia was starting. This was in the days when former players particularly in memorabilia were just starting to get paid. I remember organizing a signing of First Day covers for him, when he was paid a massive amount of £1.50 an autograph. In those days it was thought to be disgusting that he should be paid for his autograph I had many an abusive phone calls where people felt that players should give their autograph away for nothing so they could sell at vast profits. How many of those Bobby Moore’s do we see now on the market at hundreds of pounds?
No.3 Peter Shilton – People often ask us why Peter Shilton signature is not so valuable. The reason is he is such a giving celebrity over the long period of his career, which was almost 35 years, and has given a lot of autographs in that time. It is quite funny watching him at functions where senior directors are barking down their phone at their secretaries and juniors giving it the big “I am” sitting on the top table trying to appear important, then stand up like a little boy to try and meet and get the autograph of England’s most Capped Footballer. Many a function has over run hours where Peter was giving his autograph to early hours of the morning.
No2 Sir Stanley Mathews ones of the legends of the game who would give hundreds of autographs away every day on street corners and outside football grounds because he gave away so many his autograph is still easy to find at reasonable cost. We did a commercial signing with him just before his passing and he was embarrassed at being paid for doing something that he had freely done most of his life.
No1 Frank Bruno is not good for the memorabilia industry as he is such a giving signer many a time people stop him in his car to get an autograph with the little face at the end of the autograph he makes the fan feel special. His signed gloves and replica shorts and bigger presentations still seem to get good money but photos and books are every where!
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Soccerbid News 14th April 2011
Once again we have been delighted with the sales we have received and meeting new customers on our Soccer-bid Ebay shop. (Please note the – in the title)
You would have noticed now that we have extended our range of older legends, material from the 1950’s/60’s, as we seemed to have found ourselves a specialized market for these and obviously they are quite rare. Ideal for a father’s day present!
It is a big charity auction time at the moment and lots of charities and fund raisers are now taken advantage of the wonderful deals we are offering.
We have been pleased to work with not only charities but boxing clubs, hospices’, rag weeks at universities and fund raising at schools.
There seems to be more and more charities now that need to earn money, plus those who haven’t been able to get their grants this year and are looking for other ways to earn money. Working with us, not only does it give your event guests a chance to have something different from the normal auction item but also there is no financial risk to the charity in what is at the moment a precarious market.
We have had some horror stories from some of our competition, where they have taken 25 items to an event and not been able to sell one item. With our items starting as low as £5, surely there is something there for everybody?
We were delighted to recently conduct and on air discussion concerning memorabilia with the National Talk Radio Station in Ireland and regularly continue working with the BBC on their various radio shows.
You will notice that for a number of regular items, the prices seem to be coming down, this is probably now because of the amount of memorabilia currently available.
We are constantly striving to look for a new and interesting items away from our competition and slowly but surely are trying to offer items that are not available anywhere else.
It is quite funny this year with some of the transfers that have gone on in the football market, people now regretting buying something signed by perhaps
Andy Carroll on a Liverpool shirt or even Torres on a Chelsea Shirt. Time will tell.
We sincerely hope that although we are West Ham Fans that these do not prove to be expensive mistakes by both of the clubs.
This is where perhaps legends memorabilia is the thing to buy and how valuable a signed shirt by Torres will be next season if he doesn’t perform and gets sold off to another club, this could apply to Andy Carroll as well.
Our valuation department is still busy and is getting more and more request asking for us to authenticate items.
We have now joined with another company who will give a straight yes or no authentication on items for one price or a more detailed authentication for another price. However, we are looking at the moment at the legal implications of this, because even the fakers and people who have made good money in the business selling fake memorabilia want to come out fighting and threatening legal action when we expose their wrong items.
Our valuations are ideal whether you want to sell your item or just get it insured. Please note that your general house insurance does not necessarily cover memorabilia, because they don’t seem to understand memorabilia. You need to either take a separate insurance or with your existing insurance company get them to acknowledge in writing accepting the fact that you have memorabilia and this is covered by your policy. We regularly have to do valuations after someone has either lost an item or a fire has occurred and the insurance company is arguing about paying out.
The next time we write we will know if West Ham are still in the Premiership, if Andy Carroll and Tories were a good buy or not. Talking of good buys or good byes until next time.
Dave Davies
Written Feb 2011
Can we still say “Happy New Year to you”. It has been a very busy time for Soccerbid, particularly setting up and continuing to work on our Soccer-bid Shop on E-Bay.
After a number of years of us not wishing to have anything to do with e-bay, due to the amount of fakes on there. We are pleased now with the amount of sales, (although it is still early days) that we are getting on
e-bay.
We were sad to see the passing of Nat Lofthouse and very quickly the few bits we had left signed by him were soon snapped up. (we have one left) He was one of the gentlemen of football and in the old days; when we used to write him a letter concerning commercial opportunities he would always send back a signed photo, even though we didn’t ask for one.
The Memorabilia market is certainly going through some change at the moment and a lot of the retailers and shops are admitting that they are finding it hard work now to earn a living on a regular basis.
As Soccerbid is very much part of our Sports agency, on the valuation front so many people now wishing to get valuations for their not only insurance but to find out the value on their memorabilia. Probably due to time constraints there is probably a lot of newer listed items on our Soccer-bid shop on E-Bay, please note it is Soccer-bid it is always worth having a look on there. The prices are up and down on both sites as we are always putting together special offers for both sites.
More and more Charities and Fund Raisers are now coming to us to provide items for auctions and as we offer a Sale or Return basis, this is proving to be very successful.
It is funny when we look at the stock that we were selling 4 to 5 years ago. A lot then was modern day compared to what the public are now demanding, very little modern day items apart from the long term legends who are still playing for a club like Ryan Giggs at Manchester United. Of course the fans are finding out with despair that they buy a shirt or photo and spending their long hard cash on something, only to find that some of these players are disappearing the season after. How many fans are burning their Andy Carroll Newcastle shirt or Liverpool fans turning their Fernando Torres signed shirt in to an expensive duster!
Those of you who are interested in 1966 memorabilia, again we draw your attention to some of the collections that we are now putting on our Soccer-bid web site on E-bay. We are clearing a collection of photo’s, memorabilia and items that are slightly different if interested please advise.
We are looking forward to a prosperous year although it looks to be tough and as always thank you for your constant custom and we appreciate you coming back to us time and time again
Written N0VEMBER 2010
Hello there once again we are getting towards the end of another year. It goes so quickly.
In the memorabilia market it has been certainly a learning curve for a lot of memorabilia dealers who now realize that it is not a case of putting your stock on show and people just buying it. You have now got to work a little bit “outside the boxing” creating opportunities for sales with memorabilia.
After long and hard discussions amongst our staff, we have decided now to open our first E-bay shop, which is known as soccer-bid, where we will be putting on around 150 soccerbid items, but will be giving special offers almost on a fortnightly bases.
We feel now that although for a number of years we didn’t want to trust and be associated with a lots of items that sell on E-bay, which were clearly fake, we now feel that with restrictions and a lot of the bad dealers have now been thrown off E-bay, a second shop window was needed for our stock.
We have been surprised with people selling identical looking stock to ours, however theirs turning out to be fake and ours genuine, guess what theirs was cheaper than our. However this will sort itself out in due time.
We were delighted to meet some of our soccer-bid clients at our recent show, with Sir Trevor Brooking and Steve Lomas. Even theatres are finding that they are currently havening a bit of a down turn and we were disappointed with the turn out on the night at the Brentwood Centre. However, entertainment value was certainly there and some bargains were certainly picked up on the memorabilia front.
We were contacted via Aftal to give an expert opinion on educating the public for the BBC 1 programme “Fake Britain”. This is where our principle Dave Davies was interviewed by Dominic Littlewood, showing and giving examples of bad memorabilia and trying to offer advice to the public. This then highlighted the need to be very careful on what you buy and from for whom you buy off. This will be shown on BBC 1 in March 2011
We were also delighted in being involved with the first autograph course held by the vice chairman of Aftal, who provided a basic introduction course into memorabilia, covering auto pens, fakes, printed signatures, consumer and civil law.
Anybody who is looking at getting into the business of memorabilia, this is certainly something that you need to be fully aware of.
As Christmas now is getting closer we now look at what presents can now be offered to tickle your taste buds for our festive period. Don’t forget that memorabilia is ideal for the man or women who has everything!
We look forward to being of assistance to you and let us be early in wishing you Christmas Greetings and hopefully a Prosperous and Happy New Year.
Thanks once again for your support and business in this last year and we look forward to being of service to you very soon.
SEPTEMBER 2010
As September is now upon us and already people are talking about Christmas, we have enjoyed good business and our August this year has probably been the best August we have had for a good number of years.
Again it looks as if legends memorabilia is the thing people are looking for as opposed to modern day stars.
More charities continue to use us for their events, although most charities are commenting that the amount of money being sold at events is not as good as it was last year.
We are delighted along side our associate companies to confirm that their will be new signings with Pele,
Bobby Charlton, Denis Law, Paul Scholes and Sir Henry Cooper.
We look forward to showing you results of these items on the web site soon.
We were delighted with the amount of international sales that we had last month, with items going to Canada, America and Japan.
We have a new type of self assembly frame, which we will be exposing to showing you very soon. It is the simplest and quickest way of assembling a frame that we have had before. It looks quite modern so it will probably suit more modern day shirts. The advantage with this frame is that if you have a shirt and you have it up on display and next season you decide that you would like a different shirt, you haven’t got to destroy the frame or ruin the shirt when it comes out of the frame.
This is also ideal for the fund raiser that wants to get the shirt signed at an event by a celebrity and then put into a display case fairly quickly in order to auction that evening.
Suddenly a lot of people are buying up a lot of Olympic memorabilia because of 2012. I am sure that this is going to become very popular. At the moment the memorabilia signed by the ex Olympic legends is proving to be a good investment as their prices are very low.
Thank you once again for your interest in Soccerbid and look forward to being of service to you very soon.
July 10th 2010
For the England fans an absolute disaster on the pitch. Memorabilia wise we were glad we didn’t invest to heavily in modern day shirts; however it heightened the value of the 1966 team the only team to ever win the World cup. We at soccerbid HQ feel that it wasn’t a memorable world cup however it would be fair to say that we had probably had the best three months we could wish for and to our customers we say a very big thank you.
We were delighted to rent out our World Cups to various different bodies and quite a number of people have commented that our modern day world cup was the best they had ever seen.
So now we look forward to the premiership season. We have got the rugby World cup next year. Will Tottenham perform in Europe? Will England get through in the Euro qualifiers? What will happen in the memorabilia world? We are finding that more and more people are wishing to sell us their collections. With so much vintage memorabilia now being offered a lot of it is unbelievable in its content however as a business we have make right decisions whether to reject some of the very good items that are being offered to us or maybe take the initiative and of start to sell other peoples memorabilia on their behalf. This is something that we are experimenting with. Soccerbid still has excellent figures on people viewing the site and so in that respect it’s a perfect shop window to sell your wares, particularly the front page. So we will be experimenting with a select number of collections of memorabilia that we are happy with the authenticity. If you are interested please send us details of the items that you have got, a scan of the signature and the authenticity that comes with it. It would be fair to say that a high percentage of the items that we are offered are just not authentic. Once again we will urge any buyer of memorabilia buy from a credible memorabilia dealer. Do not get conned by a geezer who is selling a bit of gear from his front room or the back of his car. Do not be scared to ask you would like to visit the premises from which the person operates. Ask if they VAT registered ask for the company registration number, ask how long they have been trading. Unless they can give you a positive answer to all of the above do not deal with these people. We need a clean memorabilia industry and certainly don’t want people to be scared to buy by bogus sellers of memorabilia.
We look forward to being of service to you building up to Christmas, have a good summer and lets hope next year we are well on our way to qualify for the Euro championships.
Written June 2010
World Cup fever is here and we have been delighted by the last couple of month’s sales, working along side a number of our own clients (please see tobn.co.uk). We have been up and down the country supplying memorabilia for many people attending functions.
This business goes in swings and roundabouts one minute we are doing loads online the next minute we are doing everything face to face.
However we have been delighted and surprised by the sales and we are looking forward to a prosperous world cup.
You will notice we have a number of England shirts signed by some of the currant team members and also some of the legends. It’s the first world cup that we haven’t invested too heavily in lots of multi signed England shirts. We remember from the 2006 world cup we were left with about 20 shirts.
People are always questioning how we manage to obtain such quality autographs although we are not going to give our secrets out it would be fair to say through our sports agency which has been trading 30 years this gives us access to lots of sports stars. We also get involved with official signing sessions sometimes supplying the artiste sometimes tying up with other companies and we also have lots of people on “the inside”.
One day I’m sure we will write a book about it.
Memorabilia wise and we say this as West Ham fans and through gritted teeth; we were delighted with the success of Chelsea and Tottenham because it opened it up for a whole new batch of memorabilia. We cannot believe how much Tottenham shirts have been getting in auctions.
It seems the days of signed photographs have almost died a death and the 10 x 8 photographs certainly seem to be on the decline. For those people wishing to buy photographs it now seems to be more and more 12 x 16”s.
Our boss David Davies who is chairman of the Aftal organization was delighted to meet a number of members of the public and dealers at the recent memorabilia exhibition held at the NEC Birmingham. Aftal delivered its first Oscars to various recognized dealers within the industry sadly the board members couldn’t vote for themselves.
We are delighted that our world cups have been used by a number of companies on hire for various events ranging from TV to star studded events.
We look forward to a prosperous world cup and the new season isn’t very far away. While Tottenham and Chelsea fans are congratulating themselves the West Ham team are just pleased to be in the premiership and the prayer mats are out again to hope under a new manager we can be in the premier league this time next year.
Have a good summer
Kind Regards
Soccerbid team.
Written April 2010
Here we are a third of the way though the year and already we are starting to plan events and promotions for the end of the year.
Soccerbid has been delighted to be in attendance on a number of West Ham shows and also starting to appear at dinner functions with various legends around the country.
In the memorabilia world, on line dealers are reporting brisk business, however, we are still constantly surprised as to the numbers people out there who are spending their hard earned cash with our company Thanks.
You will notice an influx of quite a number of new Bobby Moore signed items. As possibly one of the largest dealers with collections of Bobby Moore items, we have started making available for sale single signed Bobby Moore items going back to the early 50’s and covering the 60’s to the 80’s.
We are surprised at some of the ignorant people out there that claim that Bobby’s signatures of the late 50’s and early 60’s are fakes when they are clearly not, it is just a different style of signature that he then used.
We are aware of 12 different styles of signature but it goes back to the old saying, if spending good money on something why not spend it with someone who knows what they are talking about.
We have opened a sister company dealing with our passion of Titanic autographs.com. This is really to capitalize on the sales for 2012 and if anyone out there is an investor. This must surely be worth considering.
Our boss Dave Davies has been asked to attend the autographic show in May and speak and present prizes on behalf of Aftal to the dealers of the year, something of which will be an honour and also a privilege.
World Cup memorabilia is very much now in demand and where we thought 1966 memorabilia was getting to be quiet; it has now been reignited by the World Cup in South Africa.
Some of you may have noticed the recent drop in price reference some of the player’s worn shirts. We have found that these have started to fall in value, particularly high quality England worn shirts or those worn in World Cups or by A list former England players.
We now are on Twitter and pick up some weekly bargains and new one off products before they go on the main site. Just look for soccerbid
Feb 2010
Greetings and can we still say a Happy New Year to you.
We are always delighted that January proves to be one of our best months in the year for memorabilia. We have now found a trend where our clients are only to happy to wait until January to get some bargains. This is fine for the modern day memorabilia but for the vintage memorabilia this seems to hold its own price and in some cases goes up in value.
We have at last started to see a movement upwards of George Best memorabilia. Initially when George died, because he had on a few occasions some near misses with his maker. Immediately after he recovered there was thousand of items signed, all of which seems to descend onto the market initially after he died.
The market seems to have settled down now and over the Christmas period with people buying presents suddenly the value of George Best items suddenly shot up. So if you have held onto your George Best you have kept yourself a good investment. A lot of people were finding through selling early, resulted in loosing money.
We are being asked about current England memorabilia. Here at Soccerbid we made a mistake at the last World Cup, we stocked up on too much modern day England memorabilia.
You must remember that these currant guys have still got to do it to replicate our hero’s from 1966, then the value of their autographs will go up; we have a strong feeling in this office that the team will get into the quarter finals. Dare we say quietly the semi finals?
If the team does get into the semi-finals, they can be held into the high esteem along side the team of 1990, whose memorabilia still keeps a good value. We therefore wait with baited breath.
Soccerbid has been on the road again with West Ham shows both in Dartford and Basildon. We are delighted in making lots of new friends and renew acquaintances with old ones. We are looking forward to further dates in this part of the South East of England.
Our new concept on valuations seems to have hit some red tape. We will keep you posted. Until then you will have to email us!
Aftal still seems to be going from strength to strength. With Aftal exposing even more fake memorabilia dealers dare we say most sell on EBay when will people learn? The 6 nations is just about to start and with our boss being a Davies he is hoping Ireland can be the force to beat this time round however he is not feeling that confident. With West Ham having new owners we are concerned the name is not going to be changed to Anne Summers Utd.
Thanks for making our 2009 the busiest year yet we do appreciate your custom and keep spreading the word Please!
Written December 2009.
We can’t really believe that we are once again coming up to Christmas, it doesn’t seem five minutes when we were wishing Christmas greetings this time last year.
It has been a very busy 6 weeks again. Since our last scribble we were particularly delighted to meet a number of our northern soccerbid customers at the Legends of Manchester United at Salford. Gary Pallister, Alex Stepney and Norman Whiteside joined us there with the memorabilia shop and also the auction items.
We popped up to the memorabilia show at NEC the weekend of the 21st and 22nd November 2009. Apart from the AFTAL Dealers we were surprise that the members of the public were quite happy to trust the authenticity of dealers selling premiership signed football photographs at £3 and £4 pounds. A few at even £10!
It doesn’t take much common sense to work out that full time staff have to get the autograph, the cost of the photograph, vat where applicable, the cost of running an professional office with telephone staff, rates etc how can you sell premiership signed photo’s at £3 each and they be genuine. We will leave you this to ponder.
There seems to be a growing divide now between the proper dealers in the UK and the others. Sadly the number of proper dealers in the UK seems to be decreasing but we are glad that our customers keep coming back to us time and time again and telling us what a great job we are doing in the memorabilia market.
This leaves us finally the opportunity to wish you and yours greetings at this time of the year and looking forward to a profitable year 2010 for all concerned. Who knows we may even win the World Cup!
From all the team at Soccerbid thank you once again for your continued support and business. For those who have not bought from Soccerbid before why not try us you will be pleasantly surprised. |
