FSF

I didn't do a very god job of articulating what I'm trying to say. In the case of the professional services, it's something that moves so quick (like when trying to file for an iPO) and you get so much smoke blown up your by slick talking attorneys and accountants and investment bankers, and it's isn't anywhere near simplistic as comparison shopping for a Honda Civic, that no matter how smart you are and no matter how much you're willing to "research", there's a VERY good chance you're going get screwed. And as simple as the comic book world maybe to you and me, it can be daunting to some. As a finance person myself, I can't tell you how many brilliant doctors, scientists, engineers, lawyers, etc. I've met who couldn't grasp the simplest financial concepts because it wasn't their thing, even though I knew it the minute I learned it, and these folks are smarter than me.

I don't visit Mile High. I very much like MCS but I think it is a much bigger time drain than it should be. Which is where I would agree with you. It shouldn't be THAT difficult to find decent priced material on stuff that isn't rare.

But if you're stating that "it shouldn't be" difficult to find decent prices, it doesn't matter whether MCS sets the prices or not. THEY are the one's allowing the infrastructure for it to exist. The issue is the same. The party to blame, and how much to assess can perhaps be debated, but it's still a fact that it IS difficult finding decently priced material on MCS, which goes to the heart of your comment hear.

That's perhaps because you're looking at this through the prism of only your experiences. That you have a lot of knowledge about comics and/or that you have a lot of time to learn and keep up on them. Some people don't but still want to participate. I can tell you that the exact same service for CPAs and attorneys can run $100K with one firm and $500K with another. I've personally seen it time and time again. Now if you spent $500k and later found out that you could have spent $100K or even $300K, I'm guessing it's going to leave a bad taste in your mouth and you'll probably look for another firm immediately. There a lot of nuisances that take a long time to learn with comics. While the buyer indeed does have the ultimate responsibility for his or her purchases, it's not much to ask that the playing field is as fair as reasonably possible. At least that's how I feel. I'm not one to want to squeeze ever dollar out of every transaction, especially in a hobby setting.

Isn't this pretty much the opposite of what you're saying in the other MCS thread. Maybe not literally and exactly, but in spirit?

I'm not holding them accountable for anything. I'm suggesting they reconsider their policy on their consignment business model. Ultimately and obviously, they can do whatever they want. This is a comic book forum talking about comic book matters and I am posting my thoughts on such a matter. No one has to agree with it. But it still stands that: 1) Their site is very laborious to look at because of the incessant amount of overpriced material. Now they might not care and others here might consider it "fun" to spend their time window shopping overpriced material, I don't know. I guess I just consider it a complete waste of time and I can't be the only one. 2) They are allowing anonymous sellers to use MCS's reputation to take advantage of suckers. Sure, we could just have the viewpoint of "buyer beware" but I for one think that hobby participants, especially those that yield such influence as MCS does, should consider the ramifications of allowing consignors to take advantage of the unsuspecting. To be clear, I have never been ripped off personally. And I consider MCS to be very reputable and indispensable so it just surprises all the more that they would engage in the model that they do.

ebay is NOT a comic book dealer themselves. If you're going to hold ebay accountable, you might as well hold the internet service provider, the USPS or FedEx or whomever, and a whole bevy of other entities that took part in the item getting from Point A to Point B responsible as well.

I'm quite fond of them myself which is why I'm so surprised that they would want to associated themselves so directly with such rampant overpricing on material that isn't their's.

I can't tell whether you're being facetious or not. But that is another major problem I have with their consignment program. Whether you actually are a sucker or not, I abhor the idea of them putting themselves out there for others to utilize to try and sucker in the unknowing or some newbies, who are then left with a bad taste. I'm pretty sure that if those same anonymous sellers came on these boards and tried to hock the same material at HALF the overpricing that goes on at mycomicshop, there would be numerous board members here eviscerating such hypothetical sellers.

Personally, I don't really care what they do. I just don't see the point in having a consignment program where the vast majority of the material is egregiously overpriced. I'm not saying there aren't some reasonably priced material to be had, but I am saying it's not really worth the bother for as little of it (on a % basis) that exists. Here's an idea, take only auction consignments and actually SELL the items being consingned and let the market dictate what it's worth. They seem to get better pricing than eBay anyway for less fees and work involved for the owner.

I would have expected an automatic algorithm that rejects any pricing attempt above a certain % (like maybe 30-50%). I don't expect them to really to do anything.

Let me add that I understand with low priced moderns that they are market competitive. I should have made that clear. That is not an area that I participate much in And toward that the end, the volume they do on eBay clearly tilts heavily toward moderns and or low priced older issues or somewhat infrequently traded issues that are low to moderately priced. It doesn't surprise me at all that that stuff moves with them. Their shipping is reasonable an they have the wide selection to make it worthwhile to order low priced (especially modern) stuff through them

That example that you point out is merely a proxy for a TON of back issues on their site with the same situation. That is my problem. And sadly, the exceptions are very very few and far between. As for eBay, I agree there are unrealistic sellers there, but there are tons of closed transactions on just about every given book that trades regularly (both fixed price and auctions) that trade for well below anything available of a given issue on MCS. A silver age book ranging in VG to Very Fine could have multiple examples all trading well above anything close to market reality.

You'd be surprised how many businesses have no clue how to operate their businesses. I'm not saying mycomicshop is one them. But I highly doubt they have some in house financial analyst doing hardcore spreadsheets to run various profit scenarios on different business models. I could be wrong.

I agree that they grade strict. I'm not sure I agree it's as strict as all that. On average, I would anecdotally guess that 20-25% of raw books might grade the next grade up at CGC. Meaning a Fine might go Fine+ or maybe sometimes F/V. It's not like all of their Fine listings, or even remotely the majority of them, would grade VF (which would be an outlier IMO). And of course, that wouldn't really explain virtually all of the CGC books also ridiculously priced.

But I'm not talking about the 20% or even 50% over retail on books that trade in volume every day, week and month elsewhere. I'm talking 2-20X+ on VERY COMMON material. Even if some sucker should come along to bite, I would think it's such an infrequent occurrence that I just don't get the rationale behind it. A site like that should be able to turnover very rapidly and keep profits rolling in instead of having dead inventory lying around for months and years and year.

I completely agree with that philosophy, and if it were the shop that were charging it, I chalk it up to another Mile High situation and move on. But the fact they let so many others use the site to clog it up with such unrealistic pricing has gotten me to the point where I'm pretty much done with them, at least in terms of fixed priced listings. I'm one to pay over retail so I'm not looking for "deals". I'm willing to do that on many occasions because my time is limited. But I find spending time on their site is just a major time suck and I can't be the only one that thinks this way.

First off, the vendor and site is great. I have issues with it's limited search capabilities but it's still top notch for a retail vendor. However, I don't understand why they bother having SO MANY items that are obviously way over market pricing. I get that they want to eliminate the need for management of pricing the item but the time it takes to scan and catalogue and store all those items seems wasteful in many instances. The vast majority of their consigned items are so far above eBay, it's virtually a complete waste of time to even look on the site except for perhaps auctions and some very limited situations. It would be nice if they required the pricing up front and rejected all those that exceeded a certain threshold.

Good to know. It's curious that the very same book (like ASM 300) sometimes has these flaps and other slabs from the same generation don't have them.

Why do some holders have internal flaps at the side and bottom edges and not others? It would seem to me that those flaps may cause problems over the long term by pressing on the book in an unnatural way.

I agree. This place isn't Hop Sing's. It's time to name names!

If you were to cull that down that list to a Top 5-10 must haves (primarily if not entirely from an objective standpoint), what would/should the list look like? I would think the top 3-4 that would have to be on the list are: -Hulk 181 -ASM 129 -X-Men 94 -X-Men GSX 1 What else should perhaps be considered on such a short list? I have some feelings about the following from just personal preference: -any one or all of ASM 121, 122, 194 -Daredevil 168 -Hulk 180 -Star Wars 1 (though this isn't a comic property) -X-Men 101 & 129

I'll take it!

I think that's a pretty good and thorough synopsis of the situation. Except it is missing one possibly key component. Many of the backs are undoubtedly fine and I would be happy to bid strong on them, as apparently might folks like Domo Arigato. But they'll never see those bids and to some extent, and possibly more than they would like, it may generate less revenue than they otherwise might.

Is Wondercon not worth it?