SteppinRazor

Thanks!  Will probably submit through LCS.  Do I still need a membership?  I should probably get one since I have maybe a dozen to submit.

Do they get a rarity bump, or not really?  Are signed ones the same as signed American books?

Forgive me if this is covered somewhere, but I haven't found it.  For the submission through the comic store/authorized dealer, I take it they ship the book?  Do they charge for that?  Do the books get shipped back to them, or to you?

Also, it's not listed as an option, but I think I read here you can submit for grading at a comicon, is that right?  Is it just presecreening, or do you drop them off and then they are shipped back?

Thanks

1 hour ago, adampasz said:

You also need to consider demand for what your trying to sell. Spider-Mans, Batmans, X-Men will move quick. But if you have a bunch of B-List books it could take you much longer to sell through them, even if you lest them significantly below guide.

The premise of your original question is somewhat confusing. I don't think there is a raw/graded price ratio per se.  But Ultra-high-grade (i.e. 9.8s) books usually end up in tiers like this:

raw-NM    9.8
10$           50$
20$           75$
30$          100$

I just pulled those out of my butt, by the way. And I'm not sure anyone's done any kind of deep analysis.

And, as others have pointed out, you have to factor in a lot of other costs.

All this begs the question: Why not post pics and sell your books raw?

 

Working backwards, I will probably sell the vast majority raw.  I'm trying to find the balance point, so if I look up a book and it's available graded, I have a price that 's or s a submittal.  That way I don't have to do as much individual book decision making.

At the first level you showed, If it costs $25+$5shipping to get a $50 resulting price point, then you are earning $10 more than you would raw, but at the further cost of delayed payment due to time CGC has the book, so you'd have to evaluate the utility of that $10 too.  IOW, it's probably not worth it in practical terms even though it nets you +$10 than selling raw.  Additionally, in that scenario, a 9.8 book that sells for $40 is a net loser (counting your time/materials to ship).  So if I see a book going for $40 or less graded on Ebay, I'm gonna sell it raw.

However, if you have say Amazing Spider-Man 400 which would earn a 9.8 grade, then your cost to grade would be (roughly, I'm a little confused about which would be the best choice for submittal) $35+$5shipping, then you are earning $275 more than you would selling raw ($355 - $40 raw - costs), also deferred the CGC time, much more worth it in practical terms (at least to me). (prices pulled from quick ebay glance). (And, call it an actual earn of $250, to create $25 of value for the buyer, which incentivises them to buy.)

Using your numbers, the $75 dollar range is kind of interesting.  $18+$5, so you earn $52 - 20raw price = $32 more for waiting approx. a month.

There's a very similar economic rationality game in which people are asked if they'd rather have $10 today or $50 next week.  Logically $50 is more than $10, so one should choose the $50, but people generally don't.  Their reasoning is they are still + in terms of gain, but they get to realize it instantly.

I'm not surprised if this kind of analysis is not common, many of you are collectors for the love of the medium, not as mercenary as this kind of analysis.  And I'm sure the dealers have already figured out what's worth a submittal from doing it hundreds of times and being operators in the market.

Your point about how quickly it moves is important, too.  I currently run my own business making art and furniture.  There is a definite utility to having money in hand for a product I made right after it's done vs a few more dollars a month later.  And there's a definite range of pricing based on how long I've had something.

[BTW, kind of interesting that grading costs are relative to value considering it takes the same work whether a book is $1 or $100,000.  It seems like tiering based on age makes more sense because older books are harder to handle]

@lizards2, he did his own colonoscopy, like a man

58 minutes ago, shadroch said:

Do not assume all your books are 9.8s.

Post a few in the Please Grade My Book forum.

I plan to for sure.  The assumption was for the attempted calculation, as differing grades would be too many variables.

Since I can't really screen/choose books to send in the more mathematical way, I've found that $50 for a 9.8 is about the threshold for ebay listings.  Anything less than that and it's uncommon to see a graded book for sale.  Although I have come a cross a couple of $30ish books, it seems most that can't bring $50 don't get submitted. 

I want to appreciate this thread, because without it, my Darkhawk #1 was in a pile of, 'stuff I'll turn into art' along with luminaries such as Black Axe #1 (I have 2!) and FoolKiller #1.  So thanks.  There's at least a chance I'll send it in for grading.

11 hours ago, 1Cool said:

You will develop a feel for what works for you.  9.8 copper age books are not as easy as you would think so I'd recommend going prescreening (especially for the 1st few batches of books).  If you can sell a book for $20 high grade raw and it cost you $20 to grade a book then it doesn't make much sense to grade a book that sells for $40 in 9.8.  If the book is $60 in 9.8 then it's up to you if the effort is worth the extra $20 ($15 after e-bay fees).  If the book is $80-$100 in 9.8 then I'd think most people would find the effort worthwhile but once again it's up to you if $40 - $50 extra profits is worth the extra effort.

This is kind of what I was thinking about.  I just wasn't sure if there was like a standard equilibrium price.  Is there an average grading cost/book?  So I can research a price for a graded copy, subtract the average book grading cost, and see if it's worth it v. raw? Furthermore, is there a constant raw:graded ratio, or does it depend on the book?  I'm trying to streamline my process for evaluating what I've got, because it's really an enormous pile of poo with probably one or two silver nuggets at the bottom.  I don't want to have to examine every poo nugget to see if it's silver.  IYKWIM

Hopefully this is the right forum for this question.  I have a lot of Copper Age books to go through and sell, and I was wondering what you would consider break even value for getting something graded.  IE, if it costs say, $20/book to get graded, what price would it have to sell for to beat the raw selling price+value of time taken to grade?  Is the spread between raw price vs. graded price usually the same percentage (for ex a raw book would sell for 10% the graded price?)  Assume 9.8s for grades for simplicity's sake.  Thanks

Are the scores intended to be empirical or relative?

7 hours ago, 01TheDude said:

It could just be the same result seen in print media in general-- papers losing circulation and moving toward a digital format. Print media as we knew it is a dying breed. As much as one might say this happened to vinyl recordings after CDs became the preferred method of mass consumption -- they are seeing a minor re-introduction to the market albeit no where near the same market share. Based on that-- perhaps this is the natural order of how things will go with comics-- moving toward digital releases with minor amounts of print media produced (other than perhaps TPBs). It seems like most comics are made using computers these days anyway... so it literally starts out digital. Someone mentioned the growth of the digital purchases-- perhaps the market has already shifted.

The one problem with this- and it sort of relates in a way to pornography-- is that there are ways to view this material without paying for it. So the costs associated with producing have been reigned in significantly. Lesser salaries result in less interesting and stellar work being produced. Not sure how they get around that issue, or if it is even possible.

I went with music in my analogy, but yeah, based on that example it isn't possible.  Music has gotten both less lucrative and worse in quality (as a whole, not that there isn't talent now).  The vast majority of musicians earn a decent or worse income.  The rare big smashes are about the same percentage.

The Disney stuff is interesting.  I think they bought Marvel for the character rights, not to publish.  And Disney has had big hits since their classics with diversification like Mulan for example.  Reboots are undoubtedly going to occur, I wonder if they'll continue to publish electronically just to float and familiarize people with new versions of marvel superheroes.

2 hours ago, Chuck Gower said:

But are they quality creators? Creating comic books isn't the same thing as writing code for software or crunching numbers for accounting. 

Math has a specific answer that's right. Comic Books do not. 

See above. 

There are good and bad coders, too.  The difference is, creators have to face judgement, which is not often the case with other professions.  A coder can probably get away with sloppy code for example, but a lackluster comic creation gets an immediate result.  I think there should be value built in to what creators are paid for that reason.  If everyone had to face that kind of judgement on the daily like a creator does, there would be a lot of angry and unemployed people.

The thing really most everyone who works for someone else shares is that the individual brings their talents to the job, and the employer wants to get the most out of them for the least amount of money.  The result, which we are seeing in the economy as a whole, is that younger/less experienced people get hired more often because they are cheaper.  In a situation like a comic publisher setting exploitative pay schedules, new creators will take their shots while established ones will move toward self publishing or different mediums.  Elsewhere you can see it in the NFL, accounting, IT, etc..

Color break is that little white curl to the top left of the logo, from the spine?  Also looks like one above the black dot near the "CLAWS!"  (Mine has these, too)

Cool, thanks.  When I get a chance I'll post mine in the spare a grade forum.

12 hours ago, kav said:

I started reading spiderman from watching the cartoon.  I can imagine some kid or teen watching Thor movie then going into comic shop asking to buy Thor.  Do you want muslim thor, black thor, hulk thor, lady thor, tranny thor or evil thor?  Then walking out of shop empty handed going wtf just happened??

They would definitely need to coordinate with the movies better, so that the Thor in the comic is the same as the movie Thor, which shouldn't be too difficult since actors don't like to reprise roles forever and they get old.  If they stopped a serial and went to graphic novel/electronic formats, this shouldn't be much of an issue.  Especially if they do electronic only, then no kid walks into a shop at all for a comic.

1 hour ago, ComicConnoisseur said:

I had these cousins who formed a rock band, and practiced for years. They went out to Los Angeles in 2004 with high hopes of breaking in to the biz. The consensus just about all the music producers they met was they were ten years too late. If they had started in the 1990s they would have had a chance,but I guess around 2004 the digital music was starting to change things. I wonder if this is 2004 now for monthly comic books? As in digital comics finally starting to make some noise?

Could be.  It's definitely hard to predict.  On the one hand, it seems reading words printed on paper is obsolete.  On the other, people will always find avenues to create, and it's the cheapest way to do that over video games or movies.  I was pretty surprised to see Top Cow having to do a kickstarter posted in a thread somewhere on here.  If they need to do that, it seems the bell is tolling.

If the publishers want to stay alive, they certainly need IMO to bring in new readership.  That means moving on from characters/stories.  For example, Peter Parker getting married is like a knife in the back of a little kid's imagination.  I know it's probably not a poular position here, but moving on from the originals is the best way to update for new generations of readers.

Just now, ComicConnoisseur said:

Sounds like the music business.

Yeah.  I have a friend to is a music producer, and there's been a paradigm shift thanks to the internet that just massively affected the income of both artist and producer.  Very very few go around driving Bentleys anymore, even the ones we've heard of.

But even in non-creative industries, any job, an employee goes to work and creates something that day for his/her company, be it accounting or HR, or whatever.  Where people fall on how much credit/piece of the pie a comic creator should get is applicable to their own lives.

Interesting conversation.  I haven't followed comics for 20some years, and signed on here really to find out if comics had basically died, like my other childhood hobby, football/baseball cards.  I think it's very possible that the kinds of entertainment that came in comic form transition to video games and movies, however, I don't think that that is a very sustainable model either, it'll just take us through the next 20 years or so.  The reason being, comics were essentially low barrier to entry entertainment products.  A movie or video game is decidedly not low barrier.  So as much as comic creators skewed value towards themselves in the 90s and away from publishers, they'll start to price themselves out of the low barrier market (which is happening now), and the high barrier to entry markets are... tougher to enter.  One of two things will happen then.  The kinds of stories that appeared in comics will die, or print entertainment will go more subculture like comics used to be.  We'll have zines and graphic novels, not so much serial stories.  This I think is the right model for now, and internet versions in the future.  Companies like Marvel and DC should be transitioning into graphic novels or story runs in a TPB/electronic versions.  Creators would be more like novel writers - your book/story/art gets picked up on a project basis.  That is going to hurt creators, but if the market isn't there to sustain what creators want out of their creations, then they'll need to either adjust their ideas on income, or do something else.

What's also fascinating in this conversation is how appicable a lot of it is to any industry.  The short sightedness of businesses, the value a worker creates for their employer, etc..

7 hours ago, ADAMANTIUM said:

for a 9.0 on ebay last auction was $255

Thank you.  So 255 - 1100 for a 9.0 - 9.8 it looks like.  Ebay is confusing.

I have one that looks very similar to the last posted.  What's the price difference between 9.8 and 9.6?

On 3/18/2017 at 4:15 PM, skrank said:

Daredevil was one of the hottest non-Image titles going at that time.  The prologue to Fall from Grace a couple issues earlier was the hot book in the run.  I always missed it, and still haven't found one to complete the story.  Smart stories and cool art 

Still looking?  I just pulled one out of the box (trying to liquidate my old collection of comics).  Mine's black with a white bldg though, not the one above

And to contribute re:the thread title, I remember when Shi was the hottest comic coming out.  No idea about now.

How much is the 9.0+ range for this these days?

On 4/14/2017 at 2:41 PM, ADAMANTIUM said:

"purchased"? did Randy have a patent?

Just FYI, any original creation is automatically protected as intellectual property.  Whether you can prove the idea was yours is a different story, or whether it was sufficiently altered so as to be a new creation is up to lawyers should it get that far.

@jcjames I definitely don't want to be like that guy, hopefully y'all will help me didge that bullet

Appreciate the responses.  I should have some multiples that were never even cracked open, but it seems more than likely of little value anyway.  I tried checking out ebay a couple of years ago, but it seems the same condition books would be either go for $4 or $100.  Probably just not very good at searching ebay.

@valiantman - thanks  for the specifics.  Xmen 266 is first Gambit, right?  I know I have that one.  I'll start pulling the ones you guys have given me already, and maybe check in with a few that I might have questions about.  Like my Sal Buscema signed Hulk comic, which is in Dutch.

If anyone has any other suggestions on potentially worthy comics, please keep 'em coming.