PMMMAS

January 12

On 1/11/2024 at 3:40 PM, mycomicshop said:

Obviously biased take coming from me, but I think what I say here is accurate.

Given these choices:
HA auction
CL auction
CC auction
MCS auction
MCS buy it now

For most books out there the option I would recommend, and the one we use most often for selling our own inventory, is MCS BIN. MCS and our consignors together sell 4x more $1000+ books by BIN than by auction. That's the reverse of the other venues, which are strongly auction-centric, and probably sell 5-10X or more via auction than BIN. Auction is easier for auction houses than BIN because it requires little upfront investment and produces an immediate guaranteed sale for them with little need for longer term inventory management and storage.

In terms of what option puts the most money in the seller's pocket, for the vast majority of books that aren't super scarce, MCS BIN is going to average out as the winner. Assuming the market itself is flat rather than on a strong upward trajectory, the average of all results from anybody's auction (MCS, HA, eBay, etc) does not exceed the GPA average. MCS BIN results do exceed the GPA average, it's that simple.

MCS has far and away the most successful BIN platform in comics.

- all MCS BINs listed both on MCS and eBay, so huge customer base
- for anything with significant demand, lots of people have that issue on their want list. They'll be notified when you post it for sale as well as each time you lower the price at least 5%.
- if you choose to allow offers, offers can come in from both MCS and eBay

Result is that it's generally easy to make 5-15% more via BIN than auction, sometimes more.

BIN also doesn't have to mean a slow sale. If you price fairly within GPA range, you can often sell within a month or two, sometimes much faster. The mistake some consignors make is aiming too high, listing at 150-200% of GPA, then after there are no takers, they give up too early and instead of lowering the price to a more reasonable range they throw the book into auction where they end up selling it for less than if they'd kept it as BIN but lowered the price to 100-120% of GPA.

The rest of this is me stepping through GPA and some of our recent relevant sales for each of the five books you mentioned.

1) For your first book Action 242, the best comparable grade with multiple 2023 sales I can reference is 4.0. Here's GPA for Action 242 in 4.0:

Here's what those sales are:

Dec 2023 $1500 via HA auction CROW, seller takes home $1063 after 20% buyer's premium and 15% seller's commission (1500 / 1.2 * 0.85)

Nov 2023 $1616 OW, source unknown but probably an eBay auction, seller takes home $1402 after 13.25% final value fee (1616 * .8675)

Aug 2023 $1800 via HA auction OW, seller takes home $1275 after 20% buyer's premium and 15% seller's commission (1800 / 1.2 * 0.85)

May 2023 $2281 via MCS BIN CROW, seller takes home $2031.80 after 3% buyer's premium and 8.27% effective seller's commission (10% on first $300, 8% on amount past $300). This book sold in about a month and a half after it was first listed. The seller started it April 6 at $2600 and lowered the price incrementally until it sold at $2215 May 26.

May 2023 $2575 via MCS BIN LTOW, seller takes home $2294 after 3% buyer's premium and 8.24% effective seller's commission (10% on first $300, 8% on amount past $300). This book also sold in about a month and a half. Seller (different from the first guy) listed it April 7 at $2750 and sold it via best offer for $2500 May 18.

Comparisons like this are not perfect. Books can vary in PQ, and appearance/desirability, and the market can move up or down over time. When I look to see whether there's a clear price trend at GPA for Action 242 from May 2023 to the end of 2023, I see a mix of some grades holding steady or moving up and some moving a bit down. I don't see any obvious major downward trend for the issue. So, I look at those sales and conclude that the two MCS BIN sellers came away with significantly more money in their pockets (with LTOW and CROW copies) than the other three sellers (two HA auctions, one probable eBay auction).

2) Next book, Batman 121, not as frequent sales and not as clear of a comparison, but we sold a CGC 4.5 this year. Here's GPA for 4.5:

The $3193 sale is an MCS BIN sale. The consignor sold his book within less than a month via best offer. Looking at GPA, that seller did well.

3) Next book, Batman 181. Best comparable data I can find is in grade 7.0:

The May 6 for $2200 and Jun 22 for $2000 are MCS BIN sales. The $1920 Oct 9 is HA auction ($1360 to the consignor) and $1577 is Hakes. These two MCS sales were our books, not a consignor's, but had they been consigned, the consignor would have walked away with $2018 and $1834 respectively.

4) Next, Hawkman 4. Harder to find nice clusters for direct comparison, but we have these sales in the past year:

MCS consignor sold a CGC 9.6 for $11,400 via BIN best offer Jun 2023. Could it have done better in auction at HA or CL? It's certainly possible but hard to know for sure. A 9.4 sold for $10,800 in Jan 2022, and a 9.6 sold for $20K in 2021, but there was a lot of downward market movement from 2021/Jan 2022 to Jun 2023. I can say that it sold at a price the consignor was willing to take, or he wouldn't have accepted the offer.

MCS consignor sold CGC 8.5 for $2000 via BIN Feb 2023

MCS consignor sold CGC 8.0 for $2048 via auction Aug 2023

MCS consignor sold CGC 8.0 for $2350 via BIN Jan 2023

MCS consignor sold CGC 7.0 for $1065 via BIN Mar 2023, noted as having slab damage (peg chipped off)

GPA data for Hawkman 4 in CGC 7.0

The Mar 12 sale for $1056 with some minor slab damage is an MCS BIN consignor sale, in which the consignor netted $937 after BP and commission. Compared to HA sales of $1320 Jun 26 ($935 to consignor after BP and commission) and $840 Aug 14 ($595 after BP and commission). Even with this book that looks to be in the bottom 50% of 7.0 sales for 2023, the MCS consignor still came out even with the strong Jun 26 HA result and way ahead of the $840 Aug HA result.

5) And last of all, Superboy #68, not a lot of data but we do have these two in CGC 6.5 that sold in 2023:

MCS-owned BIN sale for an OWW copy $1864 Jan 2023 (would have been $1659 to the consignor after BP and commission if it was a consignment sale)

HA auction sale for an OW copy $1500 Dec 2023 ($1062.50 to the consignor after BP and commission)

Since our sale was early 2023 and the HA sale was late 2023, not a great comparison if the market for this book has weakened over the course of 2023. But, looking at GPA, I don't see any notable trend like that. This book seems to have held pretty steady during 2023.

If you negotiated a better rate with HA like 10% commission instead of 15%, every bit helps but MCS BIN sales in these examples would still come out ahead.

I'm not ragging on HA, they're an amazing auction house and good people. Since they report to GPA and have a lot of sales, their examples are the ones that come up most often for me to compare with. I'm just making the case that if you're selling a book in the $1,000-30,000 range and want to know which option puts the most money in your pocket, in many cases the right answer is MCS BIN rather than choosing whose auction to use.

Sorry for the lengthy post.