Aweandlorder

NOT gonna go down that road, since it leads nowhere. Just gonna state the obvious. SME15 is, was, and always will be a key. Eternals wasnt Last I check CGC doesnt grade importance of keys, they grade comics. No one else should either

I can’t imagine anyone growing in the 70s-80s reading comic books and NOT considering Master of Kung Fu a key comic title. Not a best seller by any stretch of the imagination, but fun, campy, and cool comic book title. I can however see how most readers growing in the same era not knowing or caring for Eternals. asserting that Eternals was a key book is a thought I would attribute to newer collectors who pick hot titles of trending blogs/apps

Different platforms attract different buyers. ebay is king when it comes to collectibles still, so a secondary market comic book, in comic book format will still weigh heavier on eBay, but there are often some surprises with Amazon even with those. You can also totally rule out slabs from retailing successfully on amazon. Amazon sells almost exclusively to readers, meaning that digital downloads, TPB, HC, Magazines, treasuries, prestige format comics will sell better there. I started selling on amazon 8 years ago and it took me awhile to figure out which books sell better... But eventually you get there through diversifying your inventory. I think that as a comic book retailer, a seller MUST sell on amazon, not just to profit more, but to also learn which books sell to readers and which sell to collectors. So to answer your question - if you were to just take an inventory of comic books in comic book format and offer them on both platforms, youd do better on eBay. BUT, the effortless process of listing them on Amazon coupled with the added stream of income and market knowledge gained, suggests that youd better with having both. Heres a chart of my income from the previous year: Amazon Dec 781.58 Nov 379.7 Oct 431.98 sept 804.25 Aug 749.62 July 1052.76 June 292.52 May 538.81 Apr 654.47 Mar 240.81 Feb 476.8 Jan 1042.12 Ebay Dec 2700 Nov 2050 Oct 1000.00 sept 2450 Aug - 1400.00 July 1600 June 2000 May 1400 Apr 2250 Mar 1500 Feb 2000 Jan 2650 Facebook/Craigslist 700

well then....

I dedicate a certain amount of time to deal searching and it really is shifting more and more towards online/eBay finds. Since I can do it at any time whenever I get a break, waiting on a meeting etc... there are certain times a year when I’m less busier with other occupations and I allot it to intensive deal finding. But overall it’s not like it used to be for me, I found that driving to look for collections is a lot more time/money consuming and brings weaker results, as opposed to deals I’m finding online which bring higher precision profit gains and take less time/money

Now looking through a million comics - THAT could be time consuming

That’s exactly what I do plus saved eBay searches on the mobile app are quite useful as they are notated with a black asterisk immediately when a listing was added to a search

The amazon platform is far far far wider than ebay. most people have an amazon prime account and if they search for a book on their preferred platform on their phone (ie safari, chrome etc) they will get a direct link to the amazon listing before they will ever get to it on ebay. These guys dont EVER compare prices. they whip out their phone, look for a book, see the price and IF ITS IN THEIR BUDGET they BIN

My wife used to joke about my comic book sales gig until I threatened her Ill go back to my DJing gigs without it... Now shes coming with me to conventions/yard sales (she actually got quite good with negotiating)

And again, I wouldnt always go hard on listing $5 books. Only when I notice a dry period. Instead of sitting on a store full of $20+ ticket items which wouldnt move during a slow season, I would pull those $5 books out and list away. it works

I assume this is the listing for Lethal Protector: https://www.amazon.com/Lethal-Protector-Complete-Limited-Marvel/dp/B00JQHECZ2 So how does it work on amazon? Instead of creating an entire listing from the ground up, when you list a book on Amazon it goes under a Master Listing. from there, titles are listed under the Master Listing and organized by condition and price. MUCH easier than building a full-blown listing on the bay, right?! Furthermore, if you’re the lowest priced listing, and your seller rating isn’t whack, you’ll grab the coveted BUY BOX. It’s the all-important orange “Add-to-Cart” button; the one shoppers click on to buy a product. But wait, how do I know if my book will sell quick or next year? Simpe... just look at its BSR You see, if a product sells, even a single unit, then Amazon assigns the item a BSR. The lower the Best Selling Rank, the more sales the product makes. so, for example, if a book has a BSR of 1, that means it’s the best selling book on Amazon. A #1 ranked book would sell multiple copies every single day. but if a book has a BSR of 2 million, it could take 60 days or more to sell a single copy of the book. So as to the Venom listing above, you can see, its BSR is at #1,886,366. Which means that even if you were the lowest price in the listing, it would still take awhile for it to sell it.... probably a few months, maybe even a year. I would type/scan all of my books ISBN into Amazon and then cross-reference them with the each book’s BSR. For comics If it was lower than 1 million, and at a price of $11.50 (shipping included) i would list it. The entire process takes seconds... You sit with a long box pull and scan. Youd have to have an active amazon account in good standing, Individual seller accounts are free, but you have to pay an extra $1.00 for every unit you sell. Conversely, professional seller accounts cost $39.95/month. However, as a pro sell, you don’t have to pay the extra fee of $1.00/unit. So, if you think you’re going to sell more than 40 units per month it’s less expensive to sign up for the professional selling plan. I hope this helps anyone reading this if the Amazon game is good for them.

No one can tell u whats the best way to work your craft. Everyone has a system. The ones that are successful from it only perfect it with time. The ones that try and fail will move into something else. there are many ways to trade and many ways to build a portfolio. They all take time and skill

Sure. Here’s how I work it i have a long box which has random books, the runs I usually keep separate unless there are several big books there which I send to grade... the odd ones I price out based on lowest price offered. Vfnm Books like bronze/copper x men, asm, hulk u can easily price at 5+5. Same goes with not so common variants that don’t really have much hype. bronze marvel in fine-vf fall into that category as well. I move tons of 5$ tpb on amazon as well. Tons. Amazon is much easier to work with tho since they have a ranking system that works wonders and I can tell u by a books ranking just how quickly it will move

I think u missed my point. u can’t say that packing one book equals the same time u pack 10 30 or 100 books. 1-5 books takes 5 minutes. 10-20 may take 15 minutes and so forth and so on the correct way to look at it is how much time you dedicate to comics a day in relation to your income from them You should consider allotting a certain amount of hours a week to make a certain amount of money, is the proper way to look at it. but wait there’s more...... What about the stock you hold onto for the long run that you’ll cash in when retire? does that factor in the relation of the hours you put into your work? as you can see, it’s silly to look at it as amount of time per packing you spend on a single transaction when there’s a whole bunch of other variable involved. let’s just say: work your pace and profit AS MUCH AS YOU CAN in the process

It isn’t 10 minutes. And u can’t look at things from an “each sale = x amount of time spent” perspective. when you’re moving 5-10-20 books a day it gets very profitable and packaged very quickly

How about Alberto?

dont forget to redeem those eBay bucks... I completely forgot about them last quarter and kissed away $70 bucks

no problem at all and just as a note. I mean $5 profit books (shipping and ebay+paypal commissions are factored in the shipping price which is usually 5.00

That strategy always works. I do that with my fb listings, take a few pics of 2-300 random books, ones that Im struggling with moving and some low grade SA, I always list them as readers so no surprise when you get them. I used to think that i was committing a crime when i started doing that years ago (on craigslist back then) but when I had repeated buyers I realized that theres a market for everything

Retail arbitrage has been going on for years with comic books (as well as other categories), but the fact that it’s retailing positively on fb is interesting

Also Halperin suggesting on social media that out of the total number, comic sales account to 55% of the money as opposed to the rest being art

My sales were up 10-15% from ‘18 so not really THAT much better but if there’s anything I did different last year it was going heavier on listing lower ticket items starting with $5 books than previous years. It worked extremely well on slower periods I found, as people spent more money on those books as opposed to big books

I’ve had a great year. Not Halperin great, but great nonetheless

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamrowe1/2020/01/12/heritage-auctions-comic-book-department-sales-hit-a-record-79-million-last-year/#3ab5cb03f705

This is just one crazy cover