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mycomicshop

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Posts posted by mycomicshop

  1. Our want list buying department manager's feedback on shadroch's transaction was that first, he's always welcome to raise concerns like that directly with us, and we'd be happy to review and provide additional info or correct any errors we find.

    As to the books, he reviewed them and is in agreement with the grades that were assigned, but said that our grader should have provided grade notes on some of the larger downgrades and failed to do so. He's discussed that with the grader as well as reminding the rest of the department.

    Here are some of the relevant grading notes on books I asked about that had larger grade reductions. These notes were not included in the feedback shadroch originally received on his transaction, but our grader should have provided some of these notes while grading:

    Gizmo 6 - color breaking spine stress, edge damage, minor crease, denting, and fingerprints
    Grendel 36 - color breaking spine stress, scuffing, denting, accumulation of minor creases, foxing, and water spot
    Torg 2- scuffing, soiling, heavy denting, spine roll, and abrasions on back cover
    Wave Warriors 1- cover length creases, foxing, denting, and 1" spine split

    Our largest downgrade was on the Wave Warriors, from VF down to GD. I'm sure there are sellers that would grade this higher than GD, but I also know we'd have unhappy buyers if they received this book from us as a VF.

     

    20240410_093156.thumb.jpg.e4c4d864394c60b7b00af0b7f67af768.jpg20240410_093214.thumb.jpg.af040f950f2d2cf80d3e7291df214185.jpg

     

    I don't deny that we're tight graders and grade many books lower than other sellers might, and lower than CGC might. We do our best to grade consistently to our own grading standard and we're not trying to grade exactly the same as CGC. We buy 50-60K comics a month via this want list system, so it may not work for everybody but a lot of sellers make heavy use of it.

     

    For anybody that prefers to sell comics in larger quantities or through channels other than our online want list, our Seller Services department buys collections of any shape or size, based on whatever info you provide. Since that system doesn't involve individually reporting specific grades on each issue as part of the purchase process, there's never any friction or disagreement about grade. The seller gives us whatever info is appropriate: list, pictures, sometimes we travel for an in-person examination--and then we make an offer for the group. As long as our offer beats anybody else's the seller will likely choose to sell to us, and it doesn't matter how we'll eventually grade the comics.

  2. On 4/9/2024 at 2:47 PM, Axelrod said:

    That is kind of sad, but appears to be the M.O.  If you are selling to them, they will always undergrade you and pay you less.  Too many stories about people sending them the exact same book back that they previously bought from MCS and yet now it gets a lower grade.

    And I also have little doubt that when the book subsequently goes up for sale it will magically have become the higher grade again - possibly I'm too cynical there.  

    They assign tight grades on consignments too, I gather, but probably not as much as when they are buying themselves.

    This is 100% not the case and has never been the case, and I give the same response any time this accusation is made. Shadroch is referring to selling to us via our online want list system, which involves full transparency on price and grade: we show up front the prices we pay in various grades, and once we receive your books we report to you what grades we have given them. Any that we graded lower than the seller did, the seller has the option of having the books returned to them. Every book bought under this system in which we bought the book from the seller at a specified grade will be listed for sale at that same grade. The only exceptions would be the occasional much higher value book we decide to send to get slabbed, and if we somehow encountered a flaw later after purchase that we didn't see while buying the book, then of course we'd grade it down accordingly.

    Depending on how common the book is, it's easy to monitor our behavior on this yourself. You can watch our new listings page to see when we eventually post your book for sale (although that page isn't targeted at showing sub $5-10 books because there are too many of them and they're less interesting than the higher value ones). Or, just look at the issue listing itself, and wait til you see new inventory get added. Nobody has ever posted a "gotcha" of us relisting their purchased books at a higher grade because this is something we never do. If we did do that, people would have reported a lot of examples by now across the literally millions of comics we've bought over the years via this system.

     

    This system does not guarantee that a book you bought from us months or years ago will receive the same grade when you sell it back to us. We don't have perfect consistency just like CGC and other graders aren't going to produce perfectly consistent repeatable grades across multiple gradings, and our graders just grade the book in front of them. If we do grade a book at a lower grade than you bought it from us some time ago, it's not because anybody has their thumb on the scale. It's just because whoever graded your book this time selected the lower grade.

    I've relayed shadroch's feedback about his transaction to the head of our want list buying department, and he's going to take a look at the books and report back to me.

  3. On 4/1/2024 at 3:50 PM, the blob said:

    What is the experience with comic art? Is that an area you are looking to expand in? I don't see many listings. Last time I tried to consign art with Heritage they said no because they only thought it was worth about $750. I wound up selling it for closer to $2,000, so I'm not going to bother with that again.

    We don't have nearly the volume of higher end art sales that HA and ComicLink do but we do sell plenty of it, and have sold 5 figure pieces via both auction and BIN for very respectable prices. When Steve Borock was with us one of his efforts was expanding our support for art and volume of art inventory. Part of that effort was significantly improving the data model and categories that we use to record our art listings, so it's easier to browse by category instead of them being in a single big list with low value prints mixed in with good OA pages.

    Our art section

    As with our comic listings, all art that's consigned with us for BIN sale is also cross-posted to eBay, so you're getting that exposure in addition to the MCS site.

    I would love to grow our art selection and do more with it, but can't devote much attention to it right now, and since Steve left we don't currently have anybody specifically spearheading that area.

  4. On 3/19/2024 at 9:49 PM, mintcomics1 said:

    I have had nothing but positive experiences buying and selling with MCS.

    Professional communication, timely payment, cheap shipping, great packaging and quality books from every era or genre.

    Is there a time limit on consignments before you incur fees with them?

    I have a few books that are approaching the 300-day mark.

    Our terms say that after 12-24 months we may require either periodic price reductions, moving the item to auction, or else will begin charging storage fees. However, we haven't actually begun charging anyone storage fees and are working toward a different model that would still accomplish our goal of not allowing indefinite storage of overpriced consignments.

  5. On 1/22/2024 at 1:25 PM, sledgehammer said:

    This is what I see as the problem with not knowing a timeline on when we will hear "who" CGC believes is behind this:

    It seems to me to be an extreme example of a coincidence, that @mycomicshop would list 3-  9.8 ASM Newsstands right now, all from the same submission

    I brought it up earlier that I would now be viewing submissions on books listed with a lot more scrutiny. The listing prices are quite high for the current market, but offers are being accepted

    Here is what I see.

    This cert, of a 9.6 newsstand, sold for the highest price (by quite a bit) of a 9.6 in 2023.  4144955001 sold on June 19th, 2023

    I think that's intriguing ( and please, somebody check the sale if possible :foryou:) , considering the speculation on shill bidding in many of "scamboy's" auctions, when you consider this:

    Here are the other books in that submission of 12/12/22:

    4144955002  9.8  ASM  300 newsstand   https://d1466nnw0ex81e.cloudfront.net/n_ii/originalimage/7181147.jpg

    4144955003  9.8  ASM  300 newsstand  https://d1466nnw0ex81e.cloudfront.net/n_ii/originalimage/7181145.jpg

    4144955004  9.8  ASM  300 newsstand  

    4144955005  9.6  ASM  300 newsstand

    My opinion is, cert #s 002 and 003 seem to have some funky things going on to be considered 9.8.

    They could also be post slabbing issues, I'm sure.

    The 3- 9.8s were just listed. and I'm not saying @mycomicshop is doing anything wrong, make me curious if the consignor is from NY?

    On your website, the consignor is Ironside Comics, of Texas. Are they possibly consigning for someone else?

    I'm assuming the answer is MOST PROBABLY NOT, but do you guys have clarity, on who "scamboy" is, from CGC?

    Until we get clarity, on exactly why this is limited to reholders/custom labels, it seems like it wouldn't be advisable to do business with "scamboy", if there's any doubt about the legitimacy of comic books that he owns??

    Until we get clarity, and an understanding on how books were delivered to CGC in a way that this got past them?

    Oh yea, curious what the second highest price was on a 9.6 newsstand in 2023??  It was this one, on January 1st 2023.  4140765015

    That submission was on  11/11/2022, and included the following 3-ASM 300, 9.8s.

     4140765016, 4140765017 and 4140765018.

    All 3 have the "very light spine stress lines to cover" grading notes.

    There is going to be a big fog over this, until light is shown.

    :sumo:

    The three items you're referring to have been in stock with us since September 2023 and gone through a few price reductions since then. When you ask why they were listed "right now", I'm guessing you mean new listing on eBay, because the listings on MCS have been there since last September.

    The last time those three items got a price reduction was December 22, and I think all you're seeing is that our code is reposting the listings once they pass 30 days old.

    The sale you're talking about on June 19 2023 looks like a normal sale to a buyer that doesn't look suspicious. The buyer bought that one comic from this consignor, and one other comic from a different consignor. No pattern of other buying activity from the same consignor or anything suspicious.

    The consignor of those slabs is indeed from Texas and I have no reason to be suspicious of the consignor.

  6. On 1/5/2024 at 12:50 PM, ADAMANTIUM said:

    awesome info! Good to know :) 

    I don't suppose you have the scans from way back then? to now compare to any new ones?

    Click the links for any of the books (except the two that were returned rather than sold) to take you to our product page showing the archived sale, and that has links to the full size front and back scans, even for the oldest one from 2012.

  7. On 12/28/2023 at 12:46 PM, Black_Adam said:

    FYI - It appears that MCS has sent this comic to their Jan. 6th auction. Make sure to bid big for Jimbo!   (thumbsu

    Yes, just assigned!

    The auction listing will open for bidding January 6: https://www.mycomicshop.com/search?ItemID=58759618