The Customer Experience Lab and MaxSold

WorthPoint® is, at its most fundamental level, a content-driven service. We are equipped to wade into the never-ending battle against FOMO (fear of missing out), unprofitability, and misinformation through dictionary pages, articles, data analysis, and informational videos. Armed with information, sallying forth with digital infrastructure, and alongside our data partner brethren-in-arms, WorthPoint fights the good fight for pickers and flippers everywhere.

But WorthPoint is a database, not a selling platform. So who does WorthPoint turn to when it needs a piece sold? Enter our partner MaxSold. MaxSold is a premier service that specializes in making the selling process as quick, efficient, and simple as absolutely possible. Between WorthPoint’s raw data and MaxSold’s commitment to easy selling, a truly valuable partnership is formed between two separate entities.

The Dragon’s Trove

It should come as no surprise that WorthPoint’s CEO, Will Seippel, is a collector. After decades of purchases, the breadth of his collection rivals the stocked inventory of an Amazon warehouse.

A veritable mountain of black plastic crates, boxes of figurines, and no shortage of shelves filled with books, coffee mugs, and curios of every description swell the Customer Experience Lab. Here, a picnic table laid out for a vintage meal of antique salt shakers, glass vases, and bone china plates. There, a pillar of cardboard filled with baseball cards supporting the arch of a King Kong advertisement.

The range of pieces is unknown even to our pair of professionals, not unlike biologists taxonomizing every insect in the rainforest.

“We hope to have everything sold within five years.” So says Nathan Teasdale, manager of the Customer Experience Lab. He smiles and shrugs, effectively conveying the scope of the task in one gesture.

But what’s led to the weaponization of Will’s collection? What makes such a mysterious hoard so valuable?

Purpose Driven

WorthPoint has, since its inception as a niggling idea in Will Seippel’s mind, been built by pickers, for pickers. One’s end game is inconsequential. Whether flipping, downsizing, or collecting, our staff meets each purpose with equal attention, vigor, and efficacy.

Seippel saw the value of his collection, not in the items, but the common ground between himself and his fellow pickers. When WorthPoint showcases a Star Wars figurine, where does the figurine come from? When our team details how to preserve a 19^th-century news bill, where does the news bill come from?

Suffice to say, you don’t buy eggs when there are chickens in your yard.

Seippel’s collection became an unexpected boon, one at the very heart of WorthPoint’s service. The depth of his collection enables Nathan and his colleague Sharon Clayton to showcase a wide variety of pieces as well as how to handle, sell, and preserve them. And what place could possibly serve those purposes better than the transient resting place of Seippel’s agglomerate?

A Duo Most Dynamic

Despite the value of Seippel’s collection, the world is not Beast’s castle. The items won’t magically rise from their boxes and recite their history, value, marks, and purpose. To squeeze blood from this particular stone, we have Nathan and Sharon.

Enthusiastic, passionate, and skilled, Nathan and Sharon are responsible for cataloging the items in the CEL to sell through MaxSold. As I walk through the building, Nathan gestures excitedly at the boxes, telling me that just that morning, he had scaled the wobbly edifice to comb through the mysterious treasures. As the CEL’s archivist, he is responsible for much of the hunting, cataloging, and polishing up of our pieces.

Sharon has a strong background in business management and marketing. She ensures that the infrastructure behind much of our content and sales runs smoothly. In addition, as a reseller, Sharon ensures that the tasks and responsibilities executed in the lab coincide with the customer’s needs.

Together, Sharon and Nathan make a formidable team for harvesting every last drop of value from the CEL. It is largely thanks to this duo that the CEL can operate.

The CEL creates a wealth of educational content for our users through meticulous record-keeping. Primary sources are vital in the antiquing world, and the ability to catalog this information is invaluable to any database service.

Many of our how-to videos feature pieces owned by WorthPoint staff. For example, when a video is made detailing how to remove paint from varnished wood, we don’t use some cheap picture frame purchased that day. Instead, we use the pieces we own, our tools, our own hands. This transparency is critical to our message: We believe in what we tell you. Very soon, Will’s collection will be turned to this purpose.

And all of this is enabled by our CEL. If WorthPoint is a singer, the CEL is the microphone, allowing the service to meet its potential and extend its reach. And if the CEL is a microphone, Nathan and Sharon are the factory that manufactures the tool. Without our resident archivist and reseller, the CEL could not function at its current level.

The MaxWorth Partnership

The wonderful thing about the antiquing industry is camaraderie over competition. It isn’t about what store sold what item at whatever time and made a certain amount of money. It’s about everyone being equipped with the right knowledge so that when the unexpected happens, you’re ready.

When information is so vital, it requires collaboration. And that’s what WorthPoint has done with MaxSold.

“MaxSold sells everything simply, in a reliable, safe, and transparent manner, in under two weeks.” -Oona Huddle, Director of Sales at MaxSold.

Honestly, there’s no other way to put it. MaxSold is a service that specializes in the downsizing of estates. Whereas WorthPoint is designed for those seeking in-depth information and sales data, MaxSold is a purpose-built platform for quick and effective selling.

And as any picker knows, there’s no such thing as an archetype. One individual may like to collect antique lamps but is effective at flipping baseball cards. Another may be seeking information on an inheritance from Grandmother but is unsure how to flip the pieces.

MaxSold and WorthPoint each occupy their circle in the Venn diagram of users. However, it’s that lovely little overlapping median that this partnership is for: Those looking for both information and a qualified team of antique sellers.

Sales, as a whole, can’t be made without understanding the product. Sales also can’t be made without the strong arm of at least one informed, qualified individual. By taking the best of both WorthPoint and MaxSold, a collaborative project is formed, fueled by the extensive efforts executed by the Customer Experience Lab.

Jack Rose is an Associate Editor for WorthPoint. Jack provides show notes for our Flip It and Skip It Podcast and contributes to the WorthPoint blog and Dictionary pages. Jack graduated from Auburn University in 2019.
 

WorthPoint—Discover. Value. Preserve.

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