NavList:

John Pazereskis, you wrote:
"I hope what I'm about to ask doesn't break any of NavList's rule."

No. So long as there are not multiple complaints, you can ask about buying and selling, and you can also post basic notices about sextants for sale. This isn't a selling forum, but you're welcome to announce offers and sales that are taking place on other forums, like ebay.

And:
"I have a Hughes Gothic sextant complete with working Booth Bubble attachment, that I think I want to list on Ebay. I bought it years ago used from Baker Lyman. My problem is that I have no idea whatever of what to ask for the old beast ($1.95, $1000.00, $1250.00,  what? It's in good (rather than excellent) condition. It has the wonderful 2 power star scope and the two inverting scopes as well as the Booth Bubble attachment. Any ideas as to what I might ask for it? "

Fair market value is unknown but probably around $500. Remember this: the price you list is not by any means the price that it will sell for. Suppose you list it at $1.95 starting price. You'll get a lot of attention from folks looking for a bargain, and many of them will bid innocently and early, and they will drive the price up quickly. Within a couple of days, the offers might hit $200. Then the bidding will quiet down. On a typical seven-day auction the real action will occur in the final five minutes and for many auctions in the final thirty seconds. Bidders will push the price up based on their own pre-programmed bidding ranges, and the final price will be a reasonable reflection of market interest. It's worth what it's worth.

An alternate theory says that buyers like higher prices. This applies primarily to "luxury" bidders. Some people see a high initial price as a sign of value, and they are more likely to bid on a sextant with a high initial price. If that makes sense to you, then try a starting price of $950. That's probably a little high, but if you emphasize the presence of the unusual bubble attachment and talk up the historic significance of the instrument in your description, you might get bids at that level. At worst there are no bids, and you would pay a small fee (a few dollars) to re-list your item. So a week later, you list it at $900. If you're in no immediate hurry to sell the instrument, you can incrementally adjust the price over the course of a few weeks until you get a hit. You might also simply re-list at the same high price working under the theory that there is a buyer out there, and you need to wait until that buyer finds your auction. This last line of selling logic definitely applies to some types of sextants because they count as collectables but sextant collectors with money to burn are relatively rare.

You concluded:
"I dislike selling on ebay, so I'd like to do this as painlessly as possible."

Why is that? Some general advice: selling online in any forum requires lots of high-quality photos as well as proper detail in all of the required and optional fields in the auction. If you're not up to it personally, then find yourself a "local expert" --a relative? a neighbor? It's probably not worth paying anyone to do this, but you'll certainly benefit from quality photos and descriptive text.

Frank Reed