mycomicshop

Sounds like I should look at clarifying that if that’s the impression it gave you. The 25% commission for “multi item lots” refers to groups of low value run comics that wouldn’t be worth enough to be consignable individually, but can be grouped together and sold as a single lot in our auction. 

Any CGC graded comic is automatically eligible for consignment as a single item, they would never need to be grouped together in a multi item lot.

Our commission is 8% for auction, or for buy it now sale it’s 10% for the first $300 and 8% past $300. Our commission is capped at $1000 per item, so anything above around $13K where the cap kicks in the you end up with an effective commission below 8%.

Please feel free to PM me with any questions or text/call me at 512-808-7099. We’d definitely be a great home for a registry set. We can buy the whole set or take them for consignment. We pay very competitive prices for slab collections and keys, but unless you want the immediacy of an instant all-cash sale, you’ll be able to make more consigning. 

2 hours ago, G G ® ™ said:

Hi guys/girls.

I'm hoping someone can step up and give me the assistance I need. 

A few years ago I made a substantial purchase via a bank transfer to America from the UK.

It must have been a decade ago and due to the mists of time I've forgotten how to go about it.

I have a purchase I need to conduct again in this way.

Can someone please, please walk me thru' the process?

My seller is in America and they have no experience what to do either, so I need a detailed point by point explanation that I can pass onto them, as well as me.

Looking forward to hearing from anyone who can help me out.

Thanks in advance, and thanks for reading, even if you can't help. 

paul 

At minimum you will need to know the seller's bank's Swift code, the seller's account number, and name. Your sending bank might also want to know the name of the receiving bank, and possibly the address of the local bank branch for the seller you're paying.

We provide all of the above information for buyers paying us by bank wire. Additionally, we also provide the routing number and ABA number for our bank, but my understanding is that those are only needed for ACH payments and wires within the United States, and are not needed for payments originating outside the US as described here: https://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/the-difference-between-swift-codes-and-routing-num.aspx

24 minutes ago, Motor City Rob said:

Yes, thanks for the correction. 11.7% not 11.5%. It's clear that you guys definitely have a more favorable fee structure for most sellers. I would argue that most people sell books that are less than $4,000, and that's where MCS is more enticing for fees.

For bigger books, seems like eBay is more favorable, in some cases by $400+. Any thoughts on considering some fee restrucuting for higher valued books to win over more eBay sellers that may only deal with those types of books?

Again, appreciate the transparency and true professionalism. 

We always try to be as competitive as possible (and our rates are already at ~8% and capped at $1000 for these high end sales vs other auction houses that are 10%+ with no cap), but we can't completely price match a platform like eBay that is providing less service and less seller protection. There's a risk premium associated with shipping a $10K+ book to a buyer, and eBay doesn't protect the seller the way we do. If you sell an expensive book yourself, you take on that risk yourself. If you sell a book through us, we insulate you from all that, you just get paid.

You can cross your fingers and hope nothing goes wrong and eBay decides in your favor if there's a dispute, but one big loss wipes out the savings from a lot of successful transactions. You can purchase a collectibles insurance policy that provides coverage if an expensive item goes missing during shipping. Whatever might happen and however you choose to handle it, there's always some cost associated with risk.

There's also factors like marketability--plenty of buyers will be more likely to buy a $12K book from an established and well-regarded retailer like us than they might from an unknown individual on eBay--meaning your book sells faster and/or at a higher price than if you handled it yourself. And some sellers selling on eBay might choose not to sell internationally because of the higher risk of shipping-related issues (btw the eBay Global Shipping Program doesn't allow sales over $2500, even eBay doesn't want to accept responsibility for shipping expensive items internationally). With us, your comic is available for purchase internationally too--bigger market = faster sale and/or higher sale price.

4 hours ago, Motor City Rob said:

Ebay caps their fees at $750, which is nice when selling major grails.  Does MCS have a cap as well?

These are the eBay fee details for accounts using managed payments, which I think is maybe everybody now?

Selling fees for managed payments sellers
12.55% on subtotal + shipping up to $7500, 2.35% on amount over $7500. There is no separate PayPal or payment fee here, it's combined into one percentage.
This is equivalent to a 10.2% final value fee capped at $765, plus a 2.35% non-capped payment fee.

Store selling fees for managed payments sellers
There are two relevant tiers:
1) The "starter" store level costs $7.95 a month. It saves you some money on listing fees but the final value fee percentages are the same as a regular eBay account without a store subscription (12.55% on subtotal + shipping up to $7500, 2.35% on amount over $7500)
2) The "basic" store subscription costs $27.95 monthly but does buy you better final value fee rates: 
11.7% on subtotal + shipping up to $2500, 2.35% on amount past $2500.
This is equivalent to 9.35% final value fee capped at $233.75, plus a 2.35% non-capped payment fee.

In comparison, our rates are
auction = 8%, capped at $1000
buy it now = 10% on first $300, 8% on amount past $300, capped at $1000

Here is how our rates compare to the eBay rates for a standard eBay account (or starter store), and an eBay "basic" tier store that costs $28/month:

Our fees beat a standard eBay account or starter store across the board. With the $28/month basic eBay store, you'll do somewhat better on fees for sales in the $5000+ range, although the difference isn't large when you're talking about a multi-thousand dollar sale, and we're providing significant services that eBay is not. With eBay, you're responsible for shipping and insuring the sale yourself, plus any potential buyer problems or fraud. We provide more protection against problems with shipping and buyers than eBay does--you basically don't have to worry about it as long as you can get your book shipped safely to us. Plus, the fact that eBay charges you a percentage on shipping, and that with eBay you have to spend your labor and material costs into shipping individual purchases to individual buyers, vs making one single combined shipment to us, provides some further advantages to us that aren't represented in the raw percentages.

For reference, these are the links for the old eBay rates for any sellers that have not been transitioned to managed payments yet:
Selling fees for sellers not on managed payments
Store selling fees for sellers not on managed payments
 

15 minutes ago, Sweet Lou 14 said:

Might as well ask, by any chance were you actually named after the Robert E. Howard character?

What my parents have always told me is they liked the name from Arthur Conan Doyle but that I’m not named after anyone specifically, including the barbarian. 

Hi @NamesJay, sorry to hear about the trouble you had. I looked into it and think I see what happened.

Looks like your previous order that caused the block was March 2017 for 39 copies of the same issue (multiple copies of a bunch of variants). I'm guessing this is the order where you had returns, though I don't have any notes about how many items were returned or further details about that. I don't know if this was the first order with returns or if you had returns on that account previously.

When we get returns, if the quantity of the return is small and/or the person processing the return on our end agrees with the reason for the return (we overgraded or made some other mistake), the returned inventory is regraded or corrected as needed and refiled, and the appropriate refund is issued, and there's no judgment of the buyer for returning. If the quantity of returns is high relative to how much was ordered, and if in our opinion many of the returned items were correctly graded (eg we wouldn't necessarily change the grade if refiling them), then they'll sometimes be given to Buddy, the company owner, to review the grades to give a final determination if he thinks they were fairly graded to our standards.

Usually, when we get somebody returning a larger number of books that results in this kind of review, the comics in question are all modern era books under $10 that we've graded NM on the "letter grade" scale (NM, VF, FN, etc) rather than books that we graded on the 10 point scale (NM+ 9.6, NM 9.4, NM- 9.2, etc). A letter graded NM from us does not mean the comic is guaranteed to get a CGC 9.4. A letter graded NM book from us could encompass anything on the ten point scale from NM- 9.2 up to NM/M 9.8, perhaps occasionally a rare 9.0 VF/NM. We sometimes get customers returning letter graded NM books because what they want are NM+ 9.6 or NM/M 9.8 candidates for slabbing. We can't accommodate people fishing for only 9.6 and 9.8 range books from among our letter graded NM inventory.

If Buddy reviews the returns and determines that many of the items were fairly graded to our standards and the customer expectations are too high, then we may choose to limit that customer's account. In the past, the main option for this was blocking the account from ordering.

Within the past few years we've added other, softer options than blocking the account. One option is informing the customer that all future orders are on a non-returnable basis due to disagreement about grading expectations. Another is to mark the account so that it can only order slabbed comics. And of course in some cases it's appropriate just to warn the buyer that their grading expectations are higher than we can provide, without blocking them. Blocking should be more of a last resort for people that are fraudulent, particularly rude or hostile, or have proven to be completely unreasonable or a big timesink to deal with for whatever reason.

We also have some new faces in our customer service department that I think are doing a better job at handling these kinds of situations. A former employee who wasn't great at de-escalating disagreements and was too quick to block an account doesn't work for us any more, and I think our CS department is stronger because of that.

I'm taking this discussion as an opportunity for me to remind our current CS team that where appropriate we want to reach for those softer, intermediate options (warning, non-returnable status, or slabs-only purchasing) rather than completely blocking an account. I've updated Jay's account with notes, unblocked the account, and am PMing Jay to follow up.

Best,
Conan

The info in the table is based on these terms:

• MyComicShop auction 8% seller's commission, commission amount capped at $1000, 3% buyer's premium waived to 0% for payment methods used in this price range
• ComicLink auction 10% seller's commission, ~3% buyer's premium waived to 0% for payment methods used in this price range
• ComicConnect auction 10% seller's commission no buyer's premium, potential 3% payment fee to consignor depending on how the buyer pays, but usually 0% for sales in this range
• Heritage auction 15% seller's commission, 20% buyer's premium
• Large enough consignments can negotiate better terms with Heritage. It's a range depending on what you're able to negotiate. This example shows what it looks like if they agree to waive the seller's commission to 0% and tell you they'll pay you 105% of the hammer price, which is accomplished by taking a quarter of the 20% buyer's premium, 5%, and paying it to the seller.

I think this info is accurate, but please let me know if I've got anything wrong. The seller payouts for Heritage are calculated as: amount paid by buyer / 1.2 * 0.85 for standard Heritage rates (equals 29.2% of what the buyer pays), and amount paid by buyer / 1.2 * 1.05 for the negotiated rate example (equals 12.5%).

More options:

• Consign with well respected dealers mentioned in this thread like Bob Storms or Greg Reece for 10% or less for higher value items.
• If you're comfortable with the idea of selling a high value item on eBay, shipping it, and dealing with buyer concerns/returns, then you can get an eBay store account to cap your final value fees at $750. Caps at $350 or $250 are also available for more expensive store tiers, but those may not make financial sense unless you're selling a high volume on an ongoing basis.
• MyComicShop buy it now consignment rates are almost exactly the same as the auction rate for items in this price range, only difference is our BIN rate is 10% on first $300 and 8% past $300. So if you prefer BIN to auction you can do so for essentially the same rate as shown in the table, 8% capped at $1000.
• Heritage has a newer buy it now type option for 10% on sales $250-$5K, 9% $5K-10K, 8% $10K-25K, etc. Haven't heard much about that yet, not sure what seller experiences are with it.

There are quite a few buyers that will complain about any minor defects on the case and either want to return a purchased slab, or ask for a partial refund. Some of the "defects" that buyers will complain about are minor cosmetic issues sometimes found in brand new slabs fresh from CGC that CGC considers within the natural and acceptable range of the production process for case material.

To head off conflict and returns, we do our best to accurately note anything buyers might want to know about the slab before they buy/bid. Additionally, all our CGC eBay listings have this text:

Quote

While we make every effort to note any significant damage to slabs, any CGC case may display minor imperfections including Newton rings, slight inner well scuffing (present at time of encapsulation), or standard surface wear (minor scratches/scuffing). 

44 minutes ago, piper said:

That hasn’t been my experience with GA classic covers with light sales and low census numbers. I would have left significant money on the table.

The other factor to consider is that the collectibles market is scorching hot.

I think the opposing viewpoints here between Motor City Rob and piper center around the difference between books that are more or less readily available in the market (buyer's market) and books that are in high demand but don't appear for sale often (seller's market).

There are a lot more books in the first category than the second. Even many expensive high-end keys are nonetheless pretty readily available. That doesn't have to mean there are multiple copies sitting on eBay every day of the week, but you know they come up for auction fairly frequently.

For those buyer's market books, I tend to agree with Motor City Rob. You will on average do better with a well-informed fixed price sale than with auction. You only need one person to meet your price, whereas the auction winning bid is determined by the amount the second place bidder is willing to pay--the winning bidder will often have been willing to go higher. Sure, sometimes there will be a bidding war and an auction can end higher than what a comparable copy could be bought for that's available on eBay or somewhere else as fixed price, but that's the exception not the usual outcome. On average, auction prices will be somewhat lower than fixed price. It varies depending on type of material, but I often expect a good auction to average in the range of 90-95% of GPA. Auctions tend to pull the GPA average down and fixed price sales tend to pull the average up.

But for particularly desirable, rarely available seller's market books (a prime example of which would be "GA classic covers with light sales and low census numbers"), auctions can look more appealing. Three factors:

1) A big element is that because the books are rarely traded, any available sales data is often several years old. Because the books are desirable and rare and the market has moved up, there's pent up demand. When a book sells in auction it goes for a lot more than the older sales, and it's easy to attribute that success to the auction model rather than the fact that the market has moved up significantly since the previous sales.

2) High-profile auctions can help funnel buyer attention to books. Out of everybody in the world that might care about your book, if the 2-3 people most willing to pay for it become aware of your item because they see it in an auction, and they wouldn't have come across your item otherwise as a fixed price listing, that's an advantage an auction can provide.

3) Animal spirits lead buyers into a bidding war and make them bid more than they would have been willing to pay if pulling the trigger on a fixed price listing for a lesser amount.

I think there's something to be said for all three of those elements, but it's easy to over-estimate their significance. Could the same or even a higher price have been achieved without the auction? In many cases yes, but no easy way to prove it. And fixed price sales come with the trade-off that they can take longer to achieve that higher price, vs the immediate result you get with auctions.

2 hours ago, Cat-Man_America said:

While this thread continues looking back to the best of 2020 with an eye toward the future, I'm continually reminded of the toll this year has had on the collecting community, not to mention me personally.  

We lost Bart Bush in August, a driving force of the half century old Oklahoma Alliance of Fans and the revived OAFcons...

Yesterday, another founding OAF member, Don Maris, passed away from declining health and age related issues.  

This was the last pre-lockdown group photo (Feb. 12th) from a local Metroplex lunch get-together that included Don... 

 

Note: I'm on the left with Roxanne who passed away on Nov. 1st. On the back row are Bob Wayne, Buddy Saunders, David Spurlock, and Steve Schleef. 

Don Maris is in the front row directly under the second "C" in Comics next to his wife Bernie and Buddy's wife Judy.

With sadness, I raise a toast to those we've lost while looking forward with hope to the coming year!

 

 

Thanks for posting this and the photos. 

I knew Don and Bernie through my dad (obviously). Some of my first and best memories with Don were helping out at the Dallas area Big D collectibles shows he put on--I was probably 12 or 13 and would work the front table and watch the front entrance to make sure everybody going in had badges.

Don always had that kind of laid back manner of speaking and a wry sense of humor and chuckle. I'll miss him. Didn't know Bart as well but met him a few times at the more recent OAF Cons. Cat, my condolences for Roxanne. I'm sorry for your loss and know my parents really enjoyed her company the times you all hung out together. It's been a rough year.

I'll join you in raising a toast to these fine people and looking forward to a better year ahead!

15 minutes ago, James J Johnson said:

That has nothing to do with ebay listings, non-communication on ebay being the subject of the thread and my bringing that to your attention here, since I was unable to bring that, or anything else to your attention, on ebay, where the listings appear and should be able to be addressed. . 

In my first post in this thread I've already responded about both why our eBay policy is as it is, and mentioned that we'd possibly do a trial and potentially change it. I've also PM'd you and offered to get you answers on Monday if you'll tell me what your questions are.

The thread now seems to be more about proving somebody right or wrong--I'm not interested in that and have nothing further to add. PM me if you like and I'm happy to get your questions answered.