mycomicshop

David (@mytastebud), thanks for the update. Appreciate the kind words about our service and I enjoyed our conversation a few weeks ago. As I mentioned on the phone, I would generally say that you and I had somewhat different expectations for what your books should go for, and I think the softening market of the past few months hasn't helped.

The main pattern I'd characterize these books with is:
- They started out priced a bit high--not crazy high, but priced at or above the upper end of recent GPA results.
- Books are relatively common (eg 5-10+ sales in past 90 days), which usually means there are other copies available on MCS and ebay as BINs. The higher priced BIN won't move as long as a cheaper one is sitting out there.
- After trying the books for a while at BIN prices that are a little too high to connect to a buyer (even after some price reductions), instead of lowering the book comfortably into the range of current GPA where they'd be very likely to sell, the books were moved to auction.
- In auction, because they're common, books tended to sell at the lower end of GPA. Eg below the average, but still within the range of multiple other recent GPA sales.

Two points I bring up in conversations with sellers thinking about pricing and BIN vs auction:
- Asking prices are less relevant to pricing than realized sale prices. Sellers who think their books are worth more than I do are sometimes more focused on asking prices than on GPA results, or if they do look at GPA they look at only the very highest sales and ignore all the lower ones.
- For books that are relatively common, auction sales tend to fall at the lower to mid portion of the GPA range and pull the average down. BIN sales tend to fall at the mid to upper end of the GPA range and pull the average up. That applies universally, not just to MCS. If you have a book you've listed as a BIN priced above the GPA average and it hasn't sold, I'd try pricing it at nearer the GPA average first before I move it to auction. Further complicating things, in a market like we've had over the past few months, GPA average has been a moving target that's been dropping a bit for many books.

Happy to get into specifics on any/all results either publicly or via PM. I like to stand behind our results but not trying to be argumentative.

On 6/20/2022 at 6:39 AM, jharvey said:

Just don't send MCS high dollar raw comics. You don't want your 6.5 Strange Tales #110 to get graded 4.5 by them, for example, and leave thousands of dollars on the table.

I don't generally see high value raws listed on ComicLink or ComicConnect either--they get them slabbed first. We will do the same for any consignor. Send us your high value raw, we can submit it for you, and consign it when it returns from CGC, the same way it would be handled if you wanted to consign it with HA, CL, or CC.

Usually any book above a couple thousand or so we'll discuss with the consignor and depending on the book, grade range, and value, we'll either strongly suggest slabbing, or require that it be slabbed first. We're more permissive with our own books--sometimes we slab them, some times we don't.

I can see how that could be irritating, but stuff like that will happen. From our perspective, I see it as a good thing that we're actually grading the books we receive and not just looking at our old label and slapping the same grade on it without looking at the comic. Once a book is out of our possession anything could happen to it in terms of handling, inadvertent damage, or even being swapped out. That doesn't mean we mistrust the submitter, it's just not a workable policy to list books for sale based on an old label when the book was not in our custody.

It's the same with CGC--if you crack a CGC book out and send it back in at a later time accompanied by the original label, CGC's under no obligation to give it the same grade. With us, with CGC, or anybody else, the same book looked at at different points in time might get a slightly different grade.

Regarding sentiment that our grading is too tight, couple of thoughts:

One, I've mentioned in this or other threads about this topic that this is something I'm reviewing. I'm very happy with our tight grading, but I agree it's possible to go too far. If there are some defects we hammer especially hard, and our grade ends up too far below CGC, I want to identify those areas and potentially adjust a bit. But my goal is not for us to grade exactly the same as CGC. I'm fine with us being a little tighter. That review is a longer term process, not anything that's going to happen immediately.

Two, I would encourage potential consignors deciding whether to send their raw books to us to look at it in terms of where can you get the most money for your comics relative to your investment (labor, shipping, slabbing costs, etc). Focus on that return rather than whether we grade something differently than you would. Because of our reputation for grading, buyers really like buying raw books from us. You can often sell a raw book through us for as much as a slabbed book in the same grade would go for, and in some cases, for somewhat more, and that's without the time and expense of slabbing. But if you prefer slabbing first, we support that too, can submit to CGC for you, and then list your slabs when they come back.

The number of raw consignments submitted to us has increased every year since we started accepting consignments in 2010, with just two exceptions: 2020 was down a bit for covid-related reasons, and 2015 was higher than 2016 due to one especially massive submission. Other than those, we've received more raw consignments every year, and 2021 was our highest ever by a significant margin. Our system works well for a lot of people and a lot of books.

On 6/7/2022 at 12:43 PM, ttfitz said:

It doesn't really apply in this case - given the grade, the value of the book likely doesn't change and it doesn't sound like you are sending it back - but in general, I believe they DO care. And not just because I think they are a pretty good company who cares about these things, but in a practical sense. My understanding is that their position is that at the point a consignment book is sold, it's now MCS's book - that is to say, if there are problems, with a return or whatever, MCS is the one to deal with it, it doesn't go back to the consigner to deal with.

@mycomicshop can confirm, but I think that's the policy that's been stated before.

Yes, we do care, and we wouldn't be successful if we were careless about the things buyers care about like bad packing or bad grading. We generally do a very good job of grading and a very good job of packing, but because we're a large business with many employees, sometimes human error or just bad luck will slip in somewhere. When it does we take it seriously and try to fix the problem and keep it from happening again.

And yes, if there had been a problem with this book (damage we're responsible for, or a return, or whatever), it would have had zero impact on the consignor. The consignor got paid quickly after the book sold, and anything after that point is our responsibility. The consignor would never even be aware there was any issue.

After speaking with our shipping department manager, and getting some additional information from the OP, I can confirm that this book was not packed correctly. It was an error made by the person who packed up this order for shipping.

Our shipping manager will review all this with the person who made the error, as well as the rest of the department, to make sure this doesn't happen again.

Thanks for the report, and sorry that happened. I will review this with our inventory and shipping department managers and then report back.

On 5/31/2022 at 2:06 PM, VintageComics said:

Are you sure? I seem to remember their scans only being a certain size and even contacting MCS about it. 

Our scans have been zoomable and at least 1200px wide for years, probably dating to before we first accepted consignments and that was in 2010. The ones I just spot-checked are all 2400+ pixels wide.

There's a difference between our generic catalog issue images and our images of actual item front and back covers. Some of the generic catalog images are smaller, like 300px or 600px wide, depending on how long ago the image was set up. But all our images of actual buyable comics should be very large, and we also provide a lot more back cover images than some venues do.

And yeah, I don't mind criticism of our site not being mobile friendly. It's admittedly not. I think it's still highly functional for desktop users. Getting a mobile-friendly redesign is important, and we will get to it. What I want to avoid in pursuing a redesign is:
A) making the site slow to load (slow download or slow to render/first interaction)
B) ending up with a layout that works for mobile but is poorly designed for desktops, with layouts that are primarily vertical stacks of centered rectangular content blobs with lots of unused empty space on the sides. I've seen that pattern more than once with mobile redesigns.

I buy lots of CGC books. Looking at the label is much faster than looking up the grader's notes. Anybody who's making lots of quick decisions buying or bidding on multiple books isn't going to want to stop and look up grader's notes for info that might or might not be there. This change is a negative for me as a potential buyer of CGC slabs. I don't see how this provides us any advantage as a dealer or auction house either. If anything it's going to mean we have to field more questions from potential bidders/buyers asking us to verify details that previously would have been on the label.

Seems like maybe it's intended to increase recurring subscription revenue by moving notes off the label and putting them behind the annual subscription paywall.

On 5/17/2022 at 6:28 PM, jaxcomics said:

MCS's site has a clean, easy-to-use interface. Are you confusing them with Mile High? 

Appreciate it, but I'm willing to acknowledge some fair constructive criticism. Our site is better than Mile High's, but our last major design update was 2010 and our current site design isn't mobile friendly. I'd love for us to get an updated mobile-friendly design out there, and we will get to it at some point, but so far it just hasn't moved to the front of our priority list compared to other things we could be working on. Our site design is from 2010, but in lots of other areas we've grown and improved tremendously since 2010.

On 5/17/2022 at 2:52 PM, rjpb said:

I wonder if MCS is going to expand their auction footprint. As of now their weekly auctions seem to be mostly lower grade stuff that has trouble moving at a fixed price, but they would see well positioned to up their game on this front. 

Our weekly auctions have an intentionally lower value target, and older/better stuff is funneled toward our four times a year Prime Auctions that run in January, April, July, and October. Earlier this year we had our first ever prime auction to surpass $1M in sales. Our sales I think are also tilted more heavily toward BIN format than auction, compared to some of the other venues that are more auction-centric, so a lot of material that might otherwise end up in auction instead sells as BIN.

That said, our weekly auctions have been filling to capacity recently even after expanding them by one hour. We will adjust our auction schedule, weeklies and primes, to match demand and the needs of our consignors.

On 5/17/2022 at 12:04 PM, thunsicker said:

So with a grader like Steve joining MCS should we expect their grading standards on raw comics to more closely mirror CGC and CBCS or should we expect them to keep their ultra tight standards?

We may make small tweaks to our grading standards at the margins, but no big changes. That's something we've already been looking at and would be working on with or without Steve. I'm fine with our standards being tighter than CGC and CBCS to some degree, but I don't want to go too far.

No change at all with Este.