The Less Blob

Open a comic shop in 1990. Buy as much nice GA, SA, and BA as possible that walks in the door that people don't care much about, do not sell it, keep it at home. Order 1000 copies of Harbinger 1. Don't order 11,000 copies of Turok 1 or any other sucker book. Don't hold out for top dollar on your modern back issues, sell them fast! Well, regardless, 1995 - 2001 are going to be rough. Buy 1000 copies of Walking Dead 1 when it comes out. Retire on that and the cheap vintage stuff you were able to trade Harbinger 1s for in 1993. OR buy $5,000 worth of Amazon stock in 1997, don't deal with all the hassle, wait until now, retire.

If only I did not already have most of these. He is being very fair on the price. Someone should buy these.

https://foursquare.com/v/gotham-city-lounge/49cd9410f964a520035a1fe3 This is what hipsters in Brooklyn are doing instead of playing with comics

Shops in my area (NYC) close due to the absurd rents in the area. My guess is that the ones that closed in the last few years had sufficient revenue to survive in a less costly area. When a few hundred square feet in a middle class area deep in an outer borough is $4-5,000 a month (forget about Manhattan) it is hard to make enough money selling funny books. A couple of stores that had a few outposts have closed one or two them here in Brooklyn. Galaxy comics had 2 locations in Park Slope and one in Bay Ridge, now down to one in Park Slope and Bay Ridge, Bulletproof comics may be down to the one location next to Brooklyn college. There are very few shops left in Brooklyn, population 2.6 million, which is nuts given how many hipsters we have. In Manhattan there are like 6 or 7 shops?

I suppose you have been at this a long time and if you have money and a good eye you can buy high end books in quantity and even a 5-10% margin on a $5000 book is a nice piece.

I look, just haven't seen comics. I slow the car down every time we pass a garage sale and eyeball it quick. My wife tolerates it because I have made some quick money scores like this in the past. It was just dry this year for comics.

There is a big difference between a 10% and a 50% margin. You have an MBA, you know that. And a 10% margin usually needs to be a 20%+ margin to stay 10% after paying fees, maybe eating some shipping, etc. And finding those books in enough volume to add up to a $100K net is hard. Otherwise there would be more people doing it. There are plenty of people ding this as a side hustle, sure, but that ain't $100K a year. $100K is $274 a day, net, which means, what, $400 in sales a day even with a roughly 200% margin (you are laying out $126 to sell a comic for $400...not so easy)..a 50% margin is more like $750 in sales a day. Are my numbers wrong? That's a really heavy steady flow of good books. You may score several of these a month with your expert eye, etc., but 30?

Many of us are giving you grief because $100k net sounds naive, not that many of us in the midst of a job or career transition haven't contemplated similarly. When I was getting transitioned out of a big fancy law practice (aka did not make partner) in 2003 and was not having good luck finding anything suitable in the lateral market, I seriously contemplated hanging a shingle. With no clients I knew it could easily be 6-18 months before I made any money, if ever. I tried to run the math on what it would take to clear $5k a month on eBay, which after taxes basically covered my living expenses here in NYC with some dipping into savings to pay for my law practice. I was already selli g $750-1000 a month on eBay, albeit not just comics, my wife had stuff too, and I also sold books. It was easier to find good deals back then, but more stuff in general sold on ebay. It was easier to arbitrage on eBay then and shipping was lower. It was both a good time to sell and buy on eBay. On the other hand there were far fewer $10++ keys and semis back then, hot books, etc. Anyway, the math did not work, particularly as I was not going to throw $50k of my three years of F. YOU money I had saved into improved inventory.

Your margins assume the buy at 50 cetns - $2 sell at $7-$15 model, which I know, you're the master at. Harder and harder to find material at those margins in quantity, not that it isn't out there, but a lot of people are chasing it.

Look around here where you have a lot of part time dealers chasing collections and I think that should give you a sense of how infrequently a decent size collection of GOOD material comes up. Sure, opportunities to buy palettes of moderns abound, and there can be treasure in there, but there is a lot of stuff that is unsellable or needs to be bulked out. It seems that 90% of the time if a vintage collection is decent the owner wants way too much. So I think your perspective might be a little skewed by stumbling upon the above two situations. It may not happen again for years. I am not saying it is not worth pursuing, but given how you describe your finances (it sounds like you are not in a position to swing that $50K deal if it comes up) I don't see netting $100K a year any time soon as being realistic. Sure, you might stumble on an old lady with a box of Action 1s, but that doesn't really happen anymore. People win the megamillions a lot more frequently.

I think he is looking for net, like an income. Sales of $100K don't mean that much if the cost is $90K. So we're probably talking about $200K in sales depending on margins.

How many new books sell for $80? I see huge numbers in 9.8 selling for way less than the cost of slabbing.

I was being facetious. If you spend it on some really big books it probably wouldn't be all that much work though. Need to hope they go up enough to leave some $ left over after fees.

I'll get out of this in a minute. A guy like Flying Donut is kind of a machine when it comes to netting $5 - $15 a book and probably has a better idea of how much a voracious approach can net in that world. The only time I was ever bringing in $3K a month was when I was selling most of my good stuff to buy and renovate my house. That dries up eventually. But I'll tell a story of a deal I was watching at NYCC while BSing with one of the dealers there. He (a respected dealer) and another known guy worked out a deal on some nice slabs. Nothing AF 15 9.4ish, but a nice stack of books that may have averaged $1500- $3000 each. What I picked up is that recent GPA had the books at around $70K. My sense is that they ultimately sold in the low $50ks. The buyer is a well known guy and probably going to get around GPA on them give or take. So, after fees (whether they are credit card fees or selling on comiclink or selling them at a show or whatever) the deal had about a net (of selling costs) $6-$12K upside, albeit one that may take months to realize. How many deals like this is the well known dealer going to make a year? How many of these opportunities present themselves? And it presented itself because of relationships (I'm sure these guys have been dealing with each other for years)and, let's be honest, having $50K or so in cash handy.

And if all 2500 are like that you are doing great. What are the chances of that? There are a lot of $1-3 BA books. Lord knows I own plenty.

$100k? Net?? If you clear $10 a book you have to sell 10,000 books. 900 a month? 30 a day? That's a very steady flow of good material. Not a doable task.$100k a year gross? Easy. Spend $120k a year on books. But seriously, comic dealers who make six figures have to sell a bunch of four digit, five digit, and a lot of three digit books and have decent margins on those. It takes a lot of capital to acquire those, helps to be in the business a while if you are buying them outside of where everyone else can. Do you have $100k to buy a good collection? Can you shell out $50k quickly if a dealer wants to sell a stack of books quick because they are looking to buy something big? Established dealers do. If you know what you are looking for, have money to spend and work at this is a $1-2k a month side hustle doable? Sure. If you spend $2 million a year on better comics, trying not to overpay, trying not to sell too low, you should be able to squeeze $100k in profit out of this.

Maybe some of the ranxerox issues? I think HM (or a booth only selling HM) was at nycc in 2017 and was selling back issues, asked about those and they were all sold out.

Expected one day handling is nuts for the reason you mentioned. A late night purchase needs to go out by 4 or 5 the next day? Ebay was not built on full time automated sellers.

Yeah, I need more sleep.

I know, letters on these things are rough

"Wildcats 2 might be a dollar book. It like it because its shiny lol" I know, I know, I still find myself buying some of these shiney 90s books when I see them because they look cool (it isn't like I didn't see them when they came out either..), but I am more selective nowadays at least and try to avoid those dreaded spine ticks and such.

Weather is turning in my part of the world. Chances to get anything in outoor sales diminishing weekly. Frankly, I do not think I have picked anything up this year and didn't even see much of anything comic wise at the few yard sales and flea markets I popped into. Oh well. Bummer. Gottah keep on trying!

"The only Wildcats I see in his pic is the Malibu Sun, which is the first appearance of the team. That can be a $5-$20 book depending on condition." Below "What is Wolverine Killed Hulk" are some Wildcats 2s. I see Youngblood 1s in the dollar box a lot, I can't bring myself to buy more of them. If they ever pop I have a few. Now I have to remember to consider the #2s.

Once upon a time (like 14 or 15 years ago) I had a full 500 listing store. Back then people would buy a bunch of stuff to get free shipping, so most of my sales were people buying 5, 6, 7 items. ahhh, good times. But yeah, I hear you, I need to ease into it. I need to start creating some additional income streams. I'm adjuncting a class, which is nice. weird being called "professor". would love to do one of those a semester.

I am pondering a store well beyond the minimum so that I can park 500 - 1500 good items in there and not worry about stuff, but I dread the idea of putting the work into listing 1500 items and then maybe giving up when they jack up subscriptions or do something irritating. It's not like that effort can be transferred to some other venue/database. At least they still do self-hosting (right?) so that I don't have to mess around with photobucket. And their phaseout of paypal will create new problems.