The Less Blob

I am using a box cutter

So I just spent 30 minutes (at 3 a.m.) cutting cardboard sheets out on my porch in sub arctic temperatures in my shorts to use inside my gemini mailers because I am too cheap to buy their pads (which seems too small for silver age bags/boards). So I was cutting them to be 7.25 x 11 using one I cut as a template. Somewhere along the line these wound up growing to 8 inches wide... To wide for the mailers. Now I will need to trim 50 of these. Uhg

I have never heard another dealer send someone at a show to another booth. Is this a Canadian or Midwest thing?

Don't sell for less than you want to. Don't get mad when someone tries to make a buck. Get mad if they are a jerk about it.

I actually don't think this is so bad. He has developed those relationships with clients. He needs to pay his mortgage and alimony. If he isn't lowballing too much? If he is buying 5 or 6 good books and spending money why wouldn't he try to get a deal? I would. And there is the chance his customers pass on the books and he has now paid 85% of FMV, let's say. It's not a given he makes money.

I should have added "at 99 cent starting auctions." You seem to start your auctions at $5, which gives you some protection. But I looked at your sales the last couple of months and on a lot of those auctions that ended at $5-6 you would likely have done better here or via BIN/Best Offer. A lot better (and I had some comparisons here, but I decided against posting them). Sure, some did fine, an it has nothing to do with you (you have outstanding feedback, big scans, etc.) , it's that folks bidding on auctions for medium in demand books seem to be a small component of the market now and many are flippers, while collectors willing to pay more for what they want right now seem to be going the best offer route. Of course, there is some randomness to it all. One week there may be no interest in a book, the next week a bidding war. If the goal is to unload them ASAP, sure. But I'd rather wait a bit longer and get 2-3X as much if possible. I understand doing a consignment model where folks want cash now makes that less possible. Listen, I have no problem with selling a bunch of $7-10 books quickly for $5 a pop, I just don't like doing the $15-$25 ones that way.

Are you ever thinking of doing NYC shows again? I know, space in Manhattan is unreasonably expensive (but seriously, so many places are going to be unused on a sunday morning) and doing other boroughs might be tricky (although 2.6 and 2.5 million people live in Brooklyn and Queens, respectively, and both have LIRR access). You used to do one at the Holiday Inn in the 50s, no?

I find ebay store pricing so frustrating. Did they want to clean out all the mid-level sellers of collectibles like comics? $60 a month for 1000 listings. Sure, this is fine if you only have hot stuff or GA or whatever and it moves, but to be able to sell $3-10 comics you need to have a lot to offer so that folks can combine and save on shipping. If you sell 50 comics a month out of 1,000 (which actually is not a bad ratio...5% turnover a month is 60% for the year) that average $6 each that is a whopping $300 (and $6 might be optimistic). $42 goes to ebay and paypal fees. Subract $60 and you're clearing a whopping $200 for a fair amount of work and that doesn't even include likely losses on shipping expenses, cost of your product, and losses if anything gets returned.. Weren't stores much less expensive about 15 years ago? Anyway, I'm just whining, I know. They don't want a vast amount ofcheap clutter, but that's exactly what they get with mycomicshops and milehigh's low end offerings anyway. $3,000 for a 100,000 item store? You might as well pay rent on a brick and mortar.

Right! Everyone seems to assume "but they'll save on combined shipping"...I don't know how much money I have wasted bidding on auctions in the hope of winning a few and getting combined shipping. Invariably I win the one item I bid on that I was the least interested in. With that said, someone was apparently willing to pay a total of $12.95 to obtain this mid-grade Submariner 41: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Sub-Mariner-41-Marvel-Comics-1971-Bronze-Age-HIGH-RES-SCANS-/143070668682?hash=item214fad278a%3Ag%3AIZ8AAOSwVcZcJ1Us&nma=true&si=k5rBGBi%2BuujbAIA%2FqNJ8cW9pcBQ%3D&orig_cvip=true&nordt=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557 And $7.43 for this copy listed as Fine Minus (it might be better though) https://www.ebay.com/itm/SUB-MARINER-41-SEP-1971-MARVEL-GERRY-CONWAY-STORY-FN-/132882540497?hash=item1ef06aa7d1%3Ag%3AKzoAAOSwEOJcDNJg&nma=true&si=k5rBGBi%2BuujbAIA%2FqNJ8cW9pcBQ%3D&orig_cvip=true&nordt=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557 And VG copes are costing someone $7-10 to get them to their door. So $5 is actually not unreasonable (although there are also costs to attending a con, so if you spend $100 on $5 books (20 of them) and spent $15 to get in and $15 to park and get there (I am using lower dollar amounts assuming a show in a small city, not a big "CON" where it costs $60 a day or whatever and parking will cost you $40).

"I love seeing nice books in $5 boxes but I cut them back when found $5 box buyers were not $1 filling a collection guys but just guys looking for an easy flip." Now the question is would you put likely $10 ebay sales in your $5 boxes to avoid the hassle of ebay? Frankly, I don't know why anyone puts a non hot or non-scarce/GA book up for auction on ebay. Well, I do, they want to get rid of it, and that's what will happen I suppose.

"They would show me multiple copies of hot books bought from an unknowing seller or high grade keys for a few cents on a dollar." This stuff isn't a mystery, it's pretty easy to use the internet to get an idea of what the books are worth, and if you only do 1 or 2 shows a year you have even more time to verify your inventory pre-show.

Get a wall. I am a bin hunter and I wouldn't say I wouldn't look at a table without a wall, but I don't think it hurts, and frankly, don't put $50+ books in your long boxes (I assume you are not bringing a ton of big time books and are setting up like metropolis or Harley yee (who has books flopping around everywhere, I don't understand how he doesn't have $20,000 in theft each show)..those expensive books will (1) get stolen (yes, even in Canada) and (2) may get bent/damaged, even if you have 10 backing boards, Just don't do it. As for seeding books, I wouldn't bother. Hey, I love to snag a good deal and I am a guy who will spend $200-300 on cheap books if you have good stuff (ask Zapp), but why seed a [legit ebayable] $25 book in your $5 box only to have some guy (like half the people on this board) go through all your boxes early in the show and yank every seeded book? If you have some good stuff I will keep on looking, you don't have to give me a $20 gift. Not to say I don't get a few each show I go to, but I think they are oversights more than anything else, and frankly, I am the guy who should be getting that $25 book because I am not cherry picking. As for that Sub-Mariner 41 rcheli mentioned..., I was thinking "you can sell that for $5 at a show?"...Sure, I'd try to get at least $5 on ebay, if I had a vast store I'd put it up for $10 and field offers, but that book probably moves better in a 3 for $10 box. As for selling to dealers (I have only done a couple of shows and none in 20 years)..price your good stuff where you feel comfortable. Honestly, I don't see the point in pricing stuff at the minimum you'd be willing to take, because that just sets you up for further downward negotiation beyond your comfort zone. Give yourself a 10-15% buffer. Not talking about your $3 or $5 books, but the price as marked stuff. I know you don't want to scare people off with too high prices, but if you don't think you'd do less than $50 on a book, marking it at $55-60 probably won't scare folks off. They'll ask if you'll take $50. Mark it at $50 and they'll offer $40. I know some dealers can be unsavory types, but some of them can be cool, just like here. Are you happier getting picked clean by 15 junior ebay flippers or 3 dealers? Just don't let them bully you into taking a personal check. At least when they take your stuff and mark it up they'll make you look cheaper. I once saw Harley Yee buy a long box from either Redbeard or Jscomics at one of the Mike Carbonaro St. Paul church shows in Manhattan the 90s (why he came all the way from Michigan i have no idea, can't remember, but it was a NJ guy with a big set-up)..$2 books, but I think he was doing $200 for a long box, so less than a buck a book..it was good stuff, and I was frantically trying to fill my long box (I filled mine until it almost exploded) and beat Harley to the good stuff, but he had a 15 minute head start on me. I might be wrong, but I think he just took that box over to his table and marked them at $5 each!

I guess the restored books I used to own had so much other work done on them that CGC didn't bother mentioning the pressing, no room on the lable

I have a book that would benefit. The seller refunded enough to get the press, etc. As I thought the book would get up to the advertised grade with a press as the flaws not visible in the scans were pressable. Minor key and such. For the collection, although that won't stop me from putting it in the ebay store for $200 more than it is worth. Book does not show up much over 7.0.

Nobody has a gun to your head and is forcing you to type.

I didn't miss them as I was here in 2004. But I didn't/don't have a horse in the race, so after a few pages I stopped following. I have never had a book pressed or submitted to CGC, although i will be doing both in the near future. As it is not something that can always be determined just by examining the book and does not involve adding or removing any part of the book (like a proper wonder bread cleaning) I get why they went that route. Mind you, it would be informative for blue labels to indicate pressing when obvious so that buyers know there is no additional potential maximization. Unless there is evidence that a particular pressing has degraded the paper in the book, that should be noted. I guess we shall see in 20 years if pressing speeds up eventual brittleness. I have no idea. I think the pros doing it now have much better methods than 20 years ago.

Why did I predict you were the one who grabbed that?

I dunno, did PLODs ever say "pressed" as part of resto? Trimming, if they could catch it, has always been considered a PLOD worthy offense. Seems that CGC continued to not ding pressing, just like they had not dinged it for years. That they now have a pressing service..yes, that's tricky. But if there is a pan asiatic wall and no preferential treatment given to their own pressing, I guess that is fine.

Donald Trump was a publicity seeking new york City real estate developer in the early 90s. Not sure if he was a failed casino operator, failed airline owner or any of those things yet. Come to think of it I think he was bankrupt when that comic came out, be he got bailed out.

Pressing and trimming seem different. Pressing is pretty common in all sorts of paper collectibles (but so is tear sealing...), cutting off a piece of the item, however?

Well, a year is a long time, but maybe not go nuts right off the bat thinking you can be a comic wheeler and dealer in 3 weeks. We can't all be Aweanorder and make six figures per month finding hidden treasures on ebay and flipping them.

Tanks. I have an old (2005) OPG in the office for reference and I found the entries a little confusing. Seems to be some new material in there.

Not talking about the Frazetta issues or even the WW II and earlier issues, but the post-war issues really where I see decent copies in the $15-$25 range.

Don't forget Walking Dead 33. Had the pleasure of fishing that out of a 3 for $2 box. Got over $100 for a copy with some spine ticks.

That is the ballpark. I think you might have gotten it a little cheaper because the big scan looks like it has water damage or something, but if you look at other scans that was likely just light reflecting, so if someone just quickly looked they may have passed. Here is a newsstand, no UK price, perhaps a little harder to find (a little) and maybe a little more expensive: