Just a thought, start with something like a minimum starting bid of $1150 and free shipping within the continental 48 states.
You don't want to give it away.The picker that gets your intact collection at a simple quick "giveaway" sale is likely going to list and sell each plate individually.
That picker is gonna really cash-in if you simply do the giveway sale, because you don't wish to realize what you can by selling them piece-meal, one by one, individually. I do understand that it might be more time consuming and maybe more effort but come on now, you are talking about lightweight, relatively small, thin, flat, not easily damaged, metal bicycle license plates.
You could ship them via the USPS in manilla enevelopes with two pieces of corrugated cardboard protecting said plate within the enevelope. Just figure out what you'd need to get for each individual item, factor in postage costs and/or ebay fees if you would consider listing on the bay-----then just post a buy-it-now price with free shipping for each item.
For potentially extremely desireable antique plates that you may have in your collection, you could auction it off, but make certain that your minimum bid/opening bid equals or exceeds your reserve price.
Hey, you have USPS Priority mail, or USPS Priority FLAT RATE Mail, the flat rate might be good if you wanted to bundle a large LOT , and Priority mail might be more attractive to some purchasers, but I doubt it. Lower shipping cost on your end as the seller would allow you to achieve greater net proceeds from the sale. Your license plate items cannot be easily damaged even if sent via normal United States Postal Service. You can get delivery confirmation for added nominal cost if you think that is important and it might be if you think ebay flim-flammer scammers might try to take advantage of you by lying and saying they never received said license plate. Would you really think that scammer lying cheats would really be concerned with such little items such as bicycle license plates?
Feel free to do however you wish with your nice license plate collection.
I'm simply saying that you might want to think twice and reap a probable more substantially larger net monetary proceeds from the sale(s) of these items. It is your money. Do what you want to, but do realize that depending on the single way that you dispose of the entire lot of your collection, you are just gonna make the pickers/flippers day, as they are gonna go to town with their resale proceeds and net profit from flipping individually the items.
It may be something to consider. The individual items sold piece-meal will bring you far greater net proceeds in my opinion.
The items are all small and simple to package and ship. I'm guessing that you have a post-office within 4 miles of your home or office. The potentially greater net proceeds will allow you to do more since you'll have more dollars as a result. I'm sure you can think of ways to use those dollars. A few possibilities, but you could think of many more possibilities, would be to add to your vacation fund, or buy your wife something, or maybe contribute a little bit to a worthy charity like St Jude's Childrens Research Hospital in Memphis, or just for whatever you want to do with the greater monetary proceeds.
The slight increase in effort to increase revenue potential from the individual item sales should not be too time consuming or overly complicated. You are talking about small unbreakable items that will fit in ordinary enevelopes of various sizes, and can be mailed inexpensively via the United States Postal Service at your local post office location.
My recommendation is don't just "give away" your neat little collection, unless you're gonna give it to a family member or maybe a close personal friend. Why do you wish to "give away" at a bargain -fire sale to some random person that will hit a tripple off of you. You won't even get a chance to appear on a television show like you would if you sold it to Gold & Silver Pawn ("pawn stars" the Harrisons) or to the smart morons from Iowa("american pickers"Antique Archiology"M.Wolfe & Dani D.).
