VintageComics

As a buyer, Heritage's fees don't affect you at all. You just bid what you want to bid. As a seller, you can decide whether you want to sell with Heritage or not but you get a lot of benefits when you sell through them. And I'm not defending Heritage because I use them...I rarely do. But what I will say that as far as auction houses go, their infrastructure is ridiculously good and all that costs money so that's where the fees are going. Their website is top notch. Massive scans, easy to use, full database of all previous sales going back almost 20 years, video feed of live auctions. There really isn't another collectibles auction site like it. There's a reason they're the largest collectibles auction house in the world (they auction dozens of different types of collectibles, not just comics - if you want a meteor or a dinosaur bone you can buy one from Heritage). And they mail out a world class catalogue that most collectors keep and collect themselves. If you've never seen one of their catalogues they are the quality of a high end coffee table book. All of that infrastructure brings a large swath of buyers from all over the world. So it's not like they're just squandering the money they make.

You pay what you want to pay for a comic. There is no 'extra' 10% fee. Comiclink, like any other consignor, takes 10% off the final price of the comic and pays the seller 90% of that price. That's how they've been doing it since they've opened (as has every other consignor) It's there every time you bid. No company would be able to hide anything as obvious as a 'buyer's premium'. Just think of it as a transparent commission. It's nothing more than that. These are bids on some random items to illustrate. I'm not actually bidding on these items.

The confusion comes from Heritage calling it a 'Buyer's Premium' It's not really a BP it's a consignment fee that the seller gives up. I think that's where all the confusion comes from. Just change Buyer's Premium to Consignment Fee that is transparent for everyone to see and all of a sudden it looks completely different. Now WHY they call it a BP is another discussion.

If that fee is included in FMV then that book keeps rising and rising in value until its completely out of reach for most rational spenders No it doesn't, because people still pay what they think is fair market value for the book. They don't pay fair market value plus the premium. The premium is a part of the FMV. Not added on top of it.

I don't have shareholders or own shares in Heritage! This is how rumors get started! If I were selling a book on consignment FOR SOMEONE ELSE I would be taking a small percentage (10%) of the sale price for doing the work of selling it. Just like every other dealer selling consignment books. Just like every middle man ever. But when I sell my own inventory I keep 100% of the sale price. Hope that makes sense.

Proof of what? GPA collects the final price that you are out of wallet for.

Dealer A (let's say Comiclink) sells a book for a seller and collects 10%. This is generally accepted, standard fee although it varies from dealer to dealer. Dealer B (let's say Heritage) sells a book for a seller and collects 20%. The seller nets either 80% or 90% of the sale price of the book (the seller chose his consignment dealer and is OK with the fee) Both books sell for exactly the same net price - Fair Market Value - which means whether you buy from dealer A or dealer B you pay the same price. How does this affect you? I think the confusion comes from Heritage constantly calculating the 20% in front of you AND for calling it a buyer premium but if you're focused on the final net selling price with the premium it's irrelevant.

I don't have a link but we don't need one. It's commonly understood that GPA records the final, full sales price of the book which happens to include the consignment fee from all sellers. The only difference is that with Heritage you see the consignment fee broken down in front of you whereas with other dealers it's generally silent because it's irrelevant - the final price you shell out is all that matters to GPA just like it's all that matters to your wallet.

Then maybe people should start making some noise. Things never change unless people make a stand. So if you're buying a book from a dealer (whether it be Highgrade, myself or Comiclink) and they all charge a 10% fee for buying from them you want that fee removed from recorded sales prices?

Well, most dealers charge a straight percentage. Like BlazingBob and myself charge a consignment fee. It's pretty standard across the hobby. Comiclink? Same thing.

I've never heard anyone complain about GPA including a dealer's consignment fee that everyone pays in the price of a sale before. Have you? So how is this different?

It still doesn't affect how much you're willing to spend in total so as a buyer, I don't care. As a seller, I collect less but we're only talking about buyers here. I think a lot of people confuse how they feel about the BP percentage with how they feel about the total price and the two really aren't the same thing. You might dislike the percentage they charge but that still doesn't change the fact that you can spend whatever you want on the total price of the book.

The book is worth what someone ponied up to pay for it. So if you spent $5000 to acquire the book, it's worth $5000. I don't understand why someone has a problem factoring in the BP into the price being collected by GPA except that Heritage collects the BP. It's no different than if someone buys a book from a middleman but the middleman charges a surcharge to make the deal happen. What the book sold for including the middleman is the value of the book. Or do you not think that dealers should add their commission price into the value when they sell a book? Just look at the Heritage BP as a commission that Heritage collects and it's no different. It's the cost of doing business with each respective company.

No, if you want to spend $5K on a book that's worth $5K, just bid $5K total with the buyer's premium. So you'd bid $4200 (or whatever the exact number is) and you'd see with the software that your total bid is $5040 That's how you bid. That's how everyone bids on Heritage. Factor the premium into your bid the way everyone does. Nobody bids $5000 for a $5000 book AND expects to pay another 20% BP on top of that....unless of course they're going all out to win the book at any cost. In that case you're not winning anyway. How much you want to pay for a book on Heritage doesn't change if you factor in the BP, the only thing that changes is the way that final number is broken down on Heritage's software.

The buyer's premium is irrelevant as a buyer. You just factor it into the price you're willing to pay just like everyone else does. It's the same level playing field for everyone...you just pay the price you're wiling to pay (BP included). In fact, you don't even have to do the math. The site does it for you.

His heads are also too big for their bodies. That's always been a peeve of mine even if I like Byrne's work.

Byrne is the better cartoony artist. His art looks like I'd expect comic art to look. Perez' art is more lifelike and realistic (even though both are realistic artists). It's almost clinically good only Byrne's slightly more exaggerated cartoony style ads a bit more soul to the art. I'm emotionally attached to Byrne more and prefer it but I think Perez is the 'better' artist.

Well, two male faces and one female face. Wolverine and then everyone else.

Thanks, I appreciate that. Thanks, I appreciate that.

Thanks, I appreciate it. I generally try to be positive but some people really enjoy trying to make life difficult for people and sometimes I need to push back a bit. I'll bump this thread when I have a date for fresh books, everyone!

To answer everyone's questions: All books that have been paid for have been shipped (and likely received by now) unless you asked me to hold off on shipping them to add to your piles. I have another batch of books I've been working on and will have them for sale this coming weekend. This will be the largest batch yet. I will bump this thread with a finalized time when I have a better idea of when exactly this will be. Many people have been asking how to do this so if you want to FOLLOW this thread to receive a notification when posting starts, this is where you do it: Follow the thread by clicking on the red button in the circled area:

Mom...MEATLOAF!! So, I've been here for 16 years this month with almost no problems but in the last few weeks the moderators have been on a tear. The Coronavirus discussion in the Watercooler has been pretty heated at times and so they've been really on it lately. In the last 3 weeks I've gotten 2 day vacation for a political post that wasn't really political. 2 day vacation for another political post that wasn't really political (people were getting strikes for posting pictures of Lysol ) 1 week vacation for being 'contentious' - basically I replied to someone to defend myself after they've been harrassing me since time immemorial. 1 week vacation for 'masking' - I basically to the sh word, threw in a symbol instead of a vowel and placed a NUMBER at the end instead of the letter T and the mods considered it masking. The mods have really been on a tear lately and things that used to go unnoticed seems to be getting hammered lately. Anyway, THIS is the reason I've hardly been here.

For some reason I couldn't find it in the archives or in this weekend's auctions. Obviously all 4.5's are now worth $66K

It's not showing up on the Heritage site.

I have to apologize. that book was taken earlier and I somehow forgot to edit it out. Apologies