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One Man Comic Business
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279 posts in this topic

I like the thread(s) on the explosive growth in pricing on comics, modern and otherwise.

 

There are valid comparisons to coins, stamps, and cards that should prove warning signs. That said, comics are different in that they represent cultural movements that coins and stamps simply don't. And unlike sports cards, they are extremely flexible. From Disney to Superhero to Horror/Fantasy, the genres covered are all things popculture.

 

So even if the superhero movie craze goes away (and I don't think it will) like the 1960s western, there are so many different directions comics can go.

 

The real issues with a "death of collecting comics" is the dynamic of price to collectible.

 

Unlike any other time, the affect of price on supply and demand is really convoluted. Not to get into Econ 101 or 301 on demand and supply curves, instead I'll use simple language. In the real world demand goes up = price goes up. Price goes up signals to suppliers to make more and brings the price back down. In collectible world you can't make more but price going up brings more available for sale. And we see that no matter how hot the comic is. New Mutants 98 has found a price equilibrium or around $800 for a CGC 9.8. OK good.

 

The problem happens when prices go down, or demand softens. In the real world as prices go down supply should go down. (Keep in mind, prices here are demand driven, not supply driven - assume a fixed supply which isn't quite true but is generally, ie no more can be produced and real world assumptions about amounts and grades are probably pretty accurate) What happens in the collectible world is that as prices go down, while real supply stays steady, supply made available for sale goes up!

 

For one out of favor comic, no big deal. But when this happens to the comic collecting market as a whole, the downward cycle can be fierce.. So the comparison to my experience with baseball cards is valid. Sure Mickey Mantls RC and Nolan Ryan RC were and still are in pretty high demand. But even the hot two bit players RC cards were going for crazy money. The variant stuff and all that craziness is just part of it. But once the music stops, all but the very best stuff will be near worthless.

 

Right now seemingly every SA or BA comic is a key. So was every Joe Morgan card once he went into the HOF. It really can't last and when it falls the supply will spill over with no buyers.

 

The issue is, nobody can say when it will happen. Prices were crazy 10 years ago. got crazier 5 years ago and crazier still today. They can go crazier still. Cycles happen too. But generally in the collectible world market wide sell offs don't recover. See stamps coins, sports cards, beanie babies, you name it. Comics have survived some of these down cycles which is a strong sign for the comic market. But still, I certainly have a hard time understanding the demand for C and D tier character's Rookie Cards. Ahem, 'scuse me. First appearances. Time will tell.

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Ebay 8/10: Simply put, ebay just has so many eyeballs. My method here was to sell them in lots of 25 or 60 by character. It was and still is very effective. 25 were priced at $15 to $24 and lots of 60 were $30-$40 w free postage. I was shocked at the variety of selling. It wasn't just Spiderman or Batman that sold. New Warriors sold, Sleepwalker sold, FF, a few lots of Daredevil, Firestorm etc etc. A 25 lot of TMNT sold for $50. This is all without scans or pictures, just the one generic pic shown in this thread. Sure these are netting me 35-40 cents each after fees and postage but I've seen similar long boxes at shows selling 3 for $1. A number of times, one buyer would pick up 4 or 5 lots which pushed the net to 50 cents a book. The downside is that it is slow going and the hit rate is maybe 3/20 per week on ebay listings. That can eat up the free listings but if I had a monthly subscription it wouldn't be a big deal. And it takes 10 buys to sell a long box, that takes a while.

 

 

For your ebay sales - what was the most cost effective manner for shipping the bulk issues?

 

My experience has been that the medium flat rate box works best for moderns (due to weight) - but you may have shipped more in bulk - and the medium boxes (for me) - only fit ~ 50 books.....

 

 

TIA

 

 

 

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Priority works best within your own postal zone. I couldn't find a convenient chart online but there are about 7 of them if shipping from the coasts. Only zone 1 works for priority being cheaper or equivalent. Especially with ebay postal discounts. I'm not sure if these will go away when they split from paypal.

 

Otherwise Media Mail is by far cheaper even at 1 lb. OK at 1 lb it saves maybe 30 cents but for heavier stuff it saves up to $5 to $10 on 10 - 15 lbs.

 

Flat rate is pretty expensive generally speaking compared to Media. Even full with comics, it winds up being the same as normal priority. I haven't done an analysis for every possible weight or postal code, but that's my experience.

 

Ed

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Priority works best within your own postal zone. I couldn't find a convenient chart online but there are about 7 of them if shipping from the coasts. Only zone 1 works for priority being cheaper or equivalent. Especially with ebay postal discounts. I'm not sure if these will go away when they split from paypal.

 

Otherwise Media Mail is by far cheaper even at 1 lb. OK at 1 lb it saves maybe 30 cents but for heavier stuff it saves up to $5 to $10 on 10 - 15 lbs.

 

Flat rate is pretty expensive generally speaking compared to Media. Even full with comics, it winds up being the same as normal priority. I haven't done an analysis for every possible weight or postal code, but that's my experience.

 

Ed

 

Ah - thanks Ed - was not even considering media mail. One of those grey areas......

 

 

Dave

 

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Great thread Ed. Very informative.

 

Maybe i can use this as the basis for my wife to begin selling off my old dealer stock. I Finally have my 100+ box stash almost organized. first time in nearly 20 years/

 

I am trying to figure out how much you net per book on you box ebay sales.

 

you sell 60 books for $30 out of which you pay ebay fees, for the box with recycled packing material, and for the shipping at media mail rates. You also need to factor in some kind of overhead for your picking up each of the delivery materials and going to the post office to drop off the packages. seems like you cannot be netting even a quarter a book. Of forgot to mention the monthly storage costs

 

I know when i was buying collections, albeit it 25 years ago. I tried hard to keep the cost per book down to a dime a book. At least that way I knew that in the long run I would not lose money.

 

Ed is a great guy to deal with and hope we can do more in the future.

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I've only sold a few 60 book boxes. And I upped the price to $33-$39 character dependent to help with postage/fees etc. More often I've been selling the 25 books for around $16. That is with free postage too. Postage is $4.25 via Media. Ebay and Paypal around $1.75. Box and tape call it 50 cents.

 

Trip to post office is nothing. In theorey they would pick it up. Storage is a Fixed cost so I don't apply that to each order. And the only way I can end that expense is if I sell the books. That cost should not affect my margin evaluation on a given sale, only the overall price I pay for a collection in the first place. $60/mo I'll probably have it for a year so $700+ in added price.

 

I net $9.50 on 25 comics or just under 40 cents a book. Which is pretty decent for common 90's books even of quality titles/characters. I'd be a lot more enthusiastic if I was selling 10 a week, but its really 4 or 5 a week. At 2 longs a month, that's a while to unload excess inventory of 100 long boxes.

 

I also don't give the listings much attention. Stock photo, no returns, no choice in titles, no listing of specific books, no treasure hunt. If I put a bit more work into it there, they might sell better. But then, that's a cost too.

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Next couple of posts will be my experiences with a web site. I'll mix a lot of business points of view that are covered in typical business books as well as my views on what a good internet business is or should be. Not a lot about comics other than that was the vehicle where I focused

 

I had a great idea and developed a business plan to be the next big thing for online comic and popculture sales. So I hired two local web designers to help me build popculturesales.com

This morphed into xcollectibles.com. Both are now defunct, I lost the popculture website when I didn't renew and have stopped supporting xcollectibles. And I'll get into all that later.

 

My idea was this. Take the best elements of ebay, comiclink, mycomicshop, and craigslist and develop a marketplace to buy and sell comics. Make it free like craigslist, focused like comiclink, comprehensive like MCS and user friendly like ebay.

 

The popculturesales site (PCS) was decent but looked dated and like any new website run on the cheap, couldn't handle any traffic without shutting down. And the bottom line with websites, is first mover advantage is everything on the web. Like any business, the owner operator needs to be dedicated and dynamic to make it work. I simply couldn't put the time in to make it work. More on this later.

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Here's a run down on some of the expenses I put in.

 

$4000 for the website design and expenses for two years.

Another couple hundred for some upgrades and attention, but that was really it.

 

I met with the designers about once a week for 3 months.

 

And it did meet all my specs. You could list and buy items for free. You could communicate internally similar to ebay. Pictures needed to be stored elsewhere. Search function worked with a glitch or two. Listing an item where the seller was prepared took less than a minute.

 

All good. Marketing on the other hand was a different story. Having a fully functioning site and then getting people to visit and use it is the real nut to crack. With all things internet, its a virtuous cycle. Users attract users; no users create no incentive for new users. It's tough. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an option but is expensive and the site wasn't ready for prime time anyway.

 

So pretty quickly I realized to make a website work in any real sense over and above a personal gallery, it requires all the elements and resources of any real business. Money, dedicated manager(s), partnerships, and on and on.

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So the website went away but I still had the idea and to this day think it's a good one. However I'm convinced it can only work with an already established partner. So I followed that path. Called up Steve F at Metropolis and pitched my idea to him over the phone. He had just started Comic Connect as an answer to ebay and Comiclink. Fair enough but for the most part and especially in the beginning years, it was a vehicle to auction his own inventory. I still think that is the case but there might be some consignments from his large rolodex of customers.

 

Anyway, his answer was that he was already putting a lot into the auction site and to revamp into something like my idea was a bridge too far. Called MCShop and really got nowhere with them.

 

So here's my thoughts on where they and Josh of comiclink are missing the boat.

 

In essence they are not taking advantage of the power of the internet and the networking affects. Take Comiclink. I can't ask questions of the seller. After a sale the seller has to ship it to CL who then ships it to me. The website has basically been the same for 20 years with the exception of adding the auction services which is now about 10 years old. I'm certain the web expenses are high but Josh at CL could have owned the comic marketplace and expanded into other venues if he solved some of these pretty easy problems and lower his price point of 10%. Smaller criticisms are the search function is weak, database management is weak, and listings takes way too long. CL has lots of strong points too - biggest one is it was early to the internet.

 

Take mycomicshop. As far as I can tell they only sell their own inventory. The greatest power of the internet is to connect people. Think of all the resources MCS has to use. Buy inventory, manage inventory, list inventory, ship inventory, track all of the above. Instead, get rid of buying inventory and let others do the listing etc. Again, they are doing a lot of things right, having a quality website (unlike Mile High, lets say) and a huge inventory sets them apart. They are becoming the go to place for common books. Their operations and inventory management seem spot on too.

 

But what a missed opportunity.

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Look at these boards and it's marketplace. It is surprisingly efficient and goes to what I think works but has some limitations that are pretty obvious.

 

"Listings" are free. Communication is open. Other than the website itself, which is already here, there's no real work to be done other than a little extra moderator time. I'm guessing liability is nil.

 

But of course the search function is horrible. And the marketplace reach is OK at best. Inventory of items for sale is hit or miss, mostly miss. But again it works. I personally sell about 40% here and 40% on ebay and the rest via Craigslist and other. That's pretty good given all the limitations the boards have here as a marketplace.

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So imagine if Metropolis went with my idea.

 

They source $100,000. They already have a quality website where they list their own inventory. Then take my website concept and overlay it. Free to use for buyers and sellers. Open communication. Easy to list, search, and evaluate quality sellers. Market the hell out of it.

 

This does not guarantee success but imagine simply this one success that comic collectors started checking out the inventory and then started listing items. Building the networking virtuous cycle. Does anyone here thing money could not be made here eventually?

 

Once popular, who would list on ebay anymore? Once popular, the inventory becomes better than ebay or MCshop. Once popular, might I use their auction services? (I forgot to mention that my concept is for fixed prices, not auctions) Once popular expansion into toys, statues, and other popculture items becomes natural. In theory expansion into all kinds of venues becomes possible.

 

So the vision is that Metropolis has the inventory, great website with quality search, interaction between buyer and seller, price is free. They quickly become the go to place to buy and sell.

 

Or they can have a quality website of their own inventory, a marginal auction site and keep doing what they have been doing for years. Nothing wrong with that but opportunity knocks.

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Next chapter is the Xcollectibles website.

 

So I had an idea and concept that I wanted to give it one more chance. I thought I could overcome the problem of not having sellers by adding all the inventory that was already out there online and aggregating it. Think of the highly successful news sites like Drudgereport. They basically don't do any reporting but they link to all the stuff out there.

 

For $200 or a little more, you can get a webcrawler to "grab" the information on comiclink and provide a link to your own site. With a little tweeking and an upgrade to my overall website (and a new name) xcollectibles was started. Within an hour I was able to list all 10,000 items from comiclink. I literally had a better search functionality on the10,000 comiclink items they comiclink did. Apply to Metropolis and MCshop and even ebay (to a point) and all of a sudden I had 100,000 items of searchable inventory.

 

Granted if the site took off, I'm sure I would have received a legal call or two. But I'm not sure what the legal standing is on that. Providing a link is perfectly legal, but I never did follow that all the way through from a legal aspect. Ebay was interesting as they had web crawler blockers of a sort that sometimes worked and sometimes didn't. Either way, I still think its a valid concept.

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So again, imagine Metropolis following this. Open and free marketplace, quality website search etc. On top of that a link to every item listed out on other folks websites increasing inventory 2 or 3 fold.

 

Again, they become the goto place to buy and sell.

 

As a marketplace, you want to be Google not just a corner store selling hammers.

 

I realize not all of this is cost free, quite the contrary it costs a good bit. But it isn't exhorbitant And once the users are there, it's game over and you've won. This is how $Billion dollar company's are built like Uber or Cragislist taking advantage of networking affects vs $Million dollar companies Metropolis or Mile High simply buying and selling product.

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So the website went away but I still had the idea and to this day think it's a good one. However I'm convinced it can only work with an already established partner. So I followed that path. Called up Steve F at Metropolis and pitched my idea to him over the phone. He had just started Comic Connect as an answer to ebay and Comiclink. Fair enough but for the most part and especially in the beginning years, it was a vehicle to auction his own inventory. I still think that is the case but there might be some consignments from his large rolodex of customers.

 

Anyway, his answer was that he was already putting a lot into the auction site and to revamp into something like my idea was a bridge too far. Called MCShop and really got nowhere with them.

 

So here's my thoughts on where they and Josh of comiclink are missing the boat.

 

In essence they are not taking advantage of the power of the internet and the networking affects. Take Comiclink. I can't ask questions of the seller. After a sale the seller has to ship it to CL who then ships it to me. The website has basically been the same for 20 years with the exception of adding the auction services which is now about 10 years old. I'm certain the web expenses are high but Josh at CL could have owned the comic marketplace and expanded into other venues if he solved some of these pretty easy problems and lower his price point of 10%. Smaller criticisms are the search function is weak, database management is weak, and listings takes way too long. CL has lots of strong points too - biggest one is it was early to the internet.

 

Take mycomicshop. As far as I can tell they only sell their own inventory. The greatest power of the internet is to connect people. Think of all the resources MCS has to use. Buy inventory, manage inventory, list inventory, ship inventory, track all of the above. Instead, get rid of buying inventory and let others do the listing etc. Again, they are doing a lot of things right, having a quality website (unlike Mile High, lets say) and a huge inventory sets them apart. They are becoming the go to place for common books. Their operations and inventory management seem spot on too.

 

But what a missed opportunity.

 

Came across this journal today when were mentioned. Read through it all--lots of good information you've put together. One point you made that I especially agreed with was re: self-insuring. We self-insure most of what we ship, all but the most expensive packages. It doesn't matter if we lose some here or there on a lost or damaged package, as long as what we spend to refund/replace is less than what we'd spend buying insurance, we're ahead.

 

Regarding the marketplace website you're discussing, we've had something similar to what you're thinking about in the works for a while now. Later this year we'll be putting up a major update to the MCS web site we've been working on for quite a while. Getting that up is our first big project, with the marketplace project following after, and using a lot of the same software infrastructure and resources. You can reach me direct at 512-240-2802 if you want to discuss anything.

 

Are you familiar with Atomic Avenue and Comic Collector Live (unless you already mentioned them and I missed it)? They seem a lot like what you're talking about. As far as I can tell both have been moderately successful, but I don't think have ever really taken off or been much competition to eBay. I think we can build a compelling alternative, and have the seller and buyer connections, inventory, marketing, site building know-how, and capital to get over the start-up hump. Don't intend for it to be free, but fees will be low and competitive.

 

 

Re: "As far as I can tell they only sell their own inventory"--if you mean only inventory physically in our possession, correct. But if you don't know we do consignments, then you're missing a big part of our business.

 

For example, our Spider-Man listings -- every item in a yellow box is consigned. Or see our list of newly listed consignments

 

We accepted our first consignments in 2010, and our consignment business has grown substantially every year since then, covering everything from $15-20 raw books, to slabbed 9.8s and hot off the presses variants and SS, to high end Gold, Silver, and Bronze books. At the high end we're not in the same league as HA, CL, and CC, but I'm confident we'll get there and we make progress every year.

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Great point I assumed incorrectly that consignments were a lot smaller component of MCShops inventory.

 

That said, consignments have all the similar problems of comiclink. Double shipping, coordination efforts with the seller. Huge roadblocks to attempt negotiations directly. And on and on. Add to that the listing effort, inventory management and insurance requirements on typically high dollar items. If it's not in hand, that does go away but then presents the problem of unconsumated sales.

 

Unconsumated sales are a problem with an open market website and ebay leads the way in attempting to solve that issue.

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From the OO Potomac collection. Here are his asking prices for the 4th world books. This will be tough I can tell already.

 

FOREVER PEOPLE 1 - 12 $585.00

 

OMAC 1 - 8 $570.00 INCLUDES 5 COPIES OF #1 AND OTHER MULTIPLE COPIES

 

KAMANDI 1 - 59 $1764.00 INCLUDES 2 COPIES OF #1 AND OTHER MULTIPLE COPIES

 

DEMON 1 - 16 $589.00 INCLUDES 3 COPIES OF #1 AND OTHER MULTIPLE COPIES

 

MISTER MIRACLE 1-25 $1208.00 INCLUDES 2 COPIES OF #1 AND OTHER MULTIPLE COPIES

 

NEW GODS 1 - 19 $477.00 SOME MULTIPLE COPIES

 

DC COMICS PRESENTS 1 - 87 $699.00 INCLUDES 2 COPIES OF #1

 

NEW MUTANTS 1 - 26 $109.00 INCLUDES 4 COPIES OF #1

 

SPIDER-WOMAN 2 - 50 $317.00 INCLUDES MULTIPLE COPIES

 

JIMMY OLSEN 133 - 161 $1061.00 I also have some earlier Jimmy Olsen 70-79, 80, 85, 96

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From the OO Potomac collection. Here are his asking prices for the 4th world books. This will be tough I can tell already.

 

FOREVER PEOPLE 1 - 12 $585.00

 

OMAC 1 - 8 $570.00 INCLUDES 5 COPIES OF #1 AND OTHER MULTIPLE COPIES

 

KAMANDI 1 - 59 $1764.00 INCLUDES 2 COPIES OF #1 AND OTHER MULTIPLE COPIES

 

DEMON 1 - 16 $589.00 INCLUDES 3 COPIES OF #1 AND OTHER MULTIPLE COPIES

 

MISTER MIRACLE 1-25 $1208.00 INCLUDES 2 COPIES OF #1 AND OTHER MULTIPLE COPIES

 

NEW GODS 1 - 19 $477.00 SOME MULTIPLE COPIES

 

DC COMICS PRESENTS 1 - 87 $699.00 INCLUDES 2 COPIES OF #1

 

NEW MUTANTS 1 - 26 $109.00 INCLUDES 4 COPIES OF #1

 

SPIDER-WOMAN 2 - 50 $317.00 INCLUDES MULTIPLE COPIES

 

JIMMY OLSEN 133 - 161 $1061.00 I also have some earlier Jimmy Olsen 70-79, 80, 85, 96

 

good luck :)

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Success with the demons the DC comics presents spider woman new mutants and the Jimmy Olsen's.

 

Even better I was able to add doctor strange tales red Sanja new teen Titans A few extra Star Wars warlock black panther black Goliath marvel comics presents.

 

As nice as the fourth world runs were it was just a bit too much for me and they are a little too common.

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