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Stefan_W

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Everything posted by Stefan_W

  1. I do strictly cash, but I will note that vendors who accept plastic sell a lot more comics.
  2. I have said this before, but assuming a hot market will stay hot or assuming a cold market will stay cold are both very common mistakes. The first sucks you into buying books at a price you will never get back, and the second leads you to avoid solid investments. I've definitely made both mistakes since you never know how high or how low you can get, but I have also tried to minimize them by not buying "hot" books and by taking advantage of steals when prices tumbled.
  3. The do not appear until after the books are graded, so they will be there at some point shortly after it moves to QC. They listed under "Category", so books that make the screen show "Modern" and those that do not show "REJECT". The other way of seeing how you did before the grades appear is to check your Visa for charges shortly after QC. Once the pre-screen books are graded you can tell how many books made the screen (although not which ones, of course). The actual grades do not usually appear until it rolls to Shipped status.
  4. Hmm, I keep seeing people moving to shipped within a day or so after QC, which has been my experience. My latest pre-screen has been sitting in QC for a couple of days and my card has not been charged yet. The QC part is whatever, but I have never had a wait longer than a couple of hours between grading and my card being charged for pre-screens. I wonder if some part of the process changed slightly.
  5. I usually just group it all together as a final price in my head and decide to buy based on that. So from a cost perspective there is no difference between $100 for a book with free shipping, $80 for a book with $20 shipping, and $70 for a book with $20 shipping and $10 handling. However, if a sale is recorded in GPA I want the final price I pay to be reflected in what appears in GPA since it sets the bar for future value. So extra costs that are not recorded in GPA sales make me less likely to buy a book.
  6. I had 6 moderns close out this week and only one of them recovered my grading costs. A couple more would have but I sent that one through a different presser (it was before I started pressing my own books) and the extra costs associated with that pushed the line higher. Full disclosure though that being in Canada the costs of shipping to and from CGC are much higher, and there are also costs shipping to a US-based auction house. My cost per book after all fees in a full CGC submission of 25 moderns is usually about $45 CAD, so 33 USD. Auction house fees at CL at 10%, and shipping to CL is about $40 for a six book lot. I don't send smaller in books in for auction unless I figure they will go for $100 or more.
  7. Honestly couldn't care less about your opinion of the book - I was just sharing as an example of how much below market value modern books were going. As I said in the post, I had someone local offer me $100 for it a couple of days after it was sent in so it has value at least to some people. People's tastes, and what they choose to spend money on, are personal and exist regardless of what someone who feels they have more elite tastes thinks of them.
  8. Here is an example of the blood bath that I took. This book was ranging in the 130-160 range, and when I sent it in there was one lower sale of $100. I figured it would land at about 80-100. After I already sent it in there was a lower sale at $61 but that seemed like a one-off thing. Someone local offered me $100 for it two days after I shipped it out. Well, here is what happened.....
  9. Just hit QC today, Oct 5th. Lightning fast! I noticed one difference the past couple of pre-screens. They are now listing rejects right away as soon as they hit QC so you know how you did. I like this change. I ended up with 22/25 hitting this time around which makes me happy.
  10. My estimate was based on about 70% of current GPA, so it had a lower expectation already built in. Most went for about 1/3 "value" or so, but of course with prices tumbling value is tough to estimate. I probably would have done better on this group of books in one of the CL auctions prior to the pandemic. Aside from one book that climbed to lofty heights over a hundred bucks I did not even make back grading costs let alone value for the books themselves. No one seems to be putting cash into run fills and moderns now. There is still a bidding war for Silver and Golden age keys, especially the scarce ones you do not see all of the time. I put the cash from this group into a signed CGC 9.9 Vampirella that I liked. It has pretty bad Newton Rings which means I have to send it in for a re-holder, but that also kept the price down so I think I will be ok. If I was asked before the auction whether I would trade those six books for the Vamirella I would have said yes so I guess it worked out ok for me in the end. I am a bit more concerned about the higher value books I have lined up in the next two auctions.
  11. My CL books in the current auction are all done and I made under 50% of my pre-auction estimate on them. Granted these ones were not big keys, but there were a bunch of 9.8 books that are cool enough to have gone for much more. A lot of comic prices seem to be swirling around the drain right now and I doubt it will end any time soon.
  12. 25 book modern pre-screen: SFG - Sept 20 G/E/I - Oct 4 Super fast once again
  13. The usual suspects are holding since everyone figures bigger silver and GA keys are the best choice to protect your investment. It is the run fills and more recent books that are taking a massive tumble right now. The first four of my books that closed in the current CL auction went for about half of what I was hoping for and I regret putting them up for auction. In the end I know my bigger books will do alright though and hopefully it will all come out in the wash.
  14. Mine is back up and working again, thank you for all of your hard work getting things up and running again!
  15. Same issue with submission tracking but I did not think much of it since I figured it was hurricane related.
  16. I hope everyone in the area impacted by the storm is all right and stays safe. Scary times.
  17. I have a pile of books in the current auction along with Oct and Nov, and yeah "bloodbath" is the perfect way to describe the ones that ended so far. I sent them all in hoping to roll smaller books into a grail but if they all end at a full third below value I will end up with a lesser book than I had hoped.
  18. I think this is a big improvement. I have sent in a lot of news stand and Canadian price variants, and up until now they have made the notation on certain books and not others. This creates more consistency and acknowledges that a group of collectors hunt for news stand copies. I also like that they will be split out better in GPAnalysis moving forward since some "big sales" in certain books were just news stands that hit the market.
  19. This is exactly right. When comic prices were going up and up in 2021 I sent in a lot of books that were "heating up" on the hot comics lists. By the time I got them back most were already well on the way to decline and I doubt I will see my money back on them. I think the best bet on those types of books is a quick raw sale that can be pulled off before people lose interest and move on to the next spec book. Live and learn. On the topic, IMO it is really easy to fall into the trap of assuming the market will stay the way it is. So in a hot market it is easy to assume it will keep going up, and in a sluggish market like we have right now there is probably a tendency to assume it will keep dropping. The people who do the best will ride the highs and lows and focus on the bigger picture and long term trends.