OuterBanks

1 minute ago, I Am The Answer! said:

The Answer is 9.0 due to stress marks on the spine.

Press and clean won’t get me to a 9.9  ?

32 minutes ago, the blob said:

Is this wrong?

"If you file taxes as a single person, your Modified Adjusted Gross Income (MAGI) must be under $139,000 for the tax year 2020 and under $140,000 for the tax year 2021 to contribute to a Roth IRA, and if you're married and file jointly, your MAGI must be under $206,000 for the tax year 2020 and 208,000 for the tax year ..."

You can do a traditional IRA if you exceed those numbers, but can't make it tax deductable. So, you have to invest with after tax $, it does grow ta deferred, true, which is good for dividend reinvestment and if you move stuff around a lot, but then you pay taxes again when you withdraw. So a 401K (if you have access) is better as you can at least deduct your contributions, but your investment options are more limited (although you ought to be able to get a low fee S&P 500 index fund in any 401k)

 

 

 

 

There’s a loophole - good CPA’s will tell you about it.  No matter your income level you can put $6K a year into an IRA.  You will not get any tax benefits if you make too much.  You leave it in cash for a week or two and then you roll it over into a ROTH.

Once in the ROTH you can go hog wild and buy/trade equities or index funds or whatever you want.  All your earnings are tax free.  It’s called a “Reverse ROTH”.  The IRS is ok with it too - it was thought to be a loophole but people protested so congress left it alone.  

Comics are at a disadvantage to stocks/equities when it comes to investing.  I just do it because I love the hobby and collecting.

Imagine if you bought a few stocks like Amazon, Google etc.. 10yrs ago in a ROTH IRA - you’d be a millionaire with zero to pay in taxes.  Can’t do that in comics.  But comics are more fun

3 hours ago, the blob said:

He is not talking about buying and selling slabs. He is talking about finding a cheap raw, maybe pressing it, and then getting it slabbed. There is a whole lot more expertise going on with that than picking the right books, and luck. 

I do the same and have had a great run.  I will on occasion buy a collection form someone who just wants to unload it (I’m getting a complete run of Sandman and Tomb of Dracula next week) and I can tell you that even with those things going for you the stock market is a better investment.

- Capital gains on collectibles is 28%, 31% if you make over $200K

- You can’t do this in a tax deferred account - anyone can do a ROTH or “reverse” ROTH even - between you & your wife you can put $12k into stocks/crypto whatever and never pay one penny on capital gains - you can do this every year until you retire

Investments like Crypto are going crazy as have standard indexes like the Nasdaq & SP500.  Pretty sure if you had 10K in 2003 and put it into the Nasdaq vs. buying a collection (cost of press / clean, cost to list, commissions on sales, packaging costs, CGC costs) you would be behind.

The tax system is setup to view collectibles (including art, gold, coins, stamps too) as a wasteful endeavor.  I still do it because I love the hobby - but I’m under no illusion that my money would have been better off going into more traditional investments in a brokerage or retirement account.

On 5/3/2021 at 9:29 PM, NewWorldOrder said:

I dont think the hobby as a whole is talking about those books.  More so the keys and semi keys.

Not getting your stock market remark.  Generally comics have outperformed the stock market since I graduated from college back in 2003, at least for the average investor.  Stock market has never outperformed any of my CGC invoices. 

Stock market is absolutely killing it - more so than comics - SP500 in 2003 was less than 1,000.  It pays dividedens and you don’t have to pay taxes on your gains (ROTH IRA, Reverse ROTH etc.).  Nasdaq has done even better.

ASM & X-Men (Claremont run) are the two runs I still collect.   

I buy everything Robert Kirkman writes.  When you see him in interviews, he’s so humble, modest and relays these stories of how hard it was to get his point across when writing comics, or getting lectured at Marvel for being a doofus and the guy is so damn talented.  If you only had those interviews to go buy, you’d never be able to connect him back to Walking Dead or Invincible.  

I’d recommend the following if you haven’t gotten them:

- Oblivion Song - underrated 

- Firepower - IMO - shaping up to be better than Invincible 

I’ve got OutCast on the todo list to read.  

On 6/5/2020 at 12:34 PM, shadroch said:

In mail order, the longer the return period you offer, the fewer returns you get. It sounds counter-intuitive but it works.  Tell someone they have a week to return it and they will scutinize it quicker. Tell them they have sixty days and half the time they misplace it before they can return it.

This is something I learned a lot in marketing courses - if a restaurant emails its customers regularly a coupon, most won’t use it but they feel good will and start coming more often.  We have a local restaurant that ran a Facebook ad offering 25% off, it got a lot of shares and buzz in our area, but I suspect most people didn’t bother to print out the coupon and still wanted to try it out.

Could be something similar here with returns.  I’d feel less suspicious of a seller if I knew they offered returns.

On 6/5/2020 at 9:08 PM, Xenosmilus said:

Someone mentioned that Go Collect actually manual inputs data from Comic Link. I looked into it and don see it based on some sales I followed...  Is that BS? If it's true I might consider Go Collect over GPA but at this point I don't think it is.

I work in tech on this kind of stuff -  these sites actually “scrape” - meaning that they have software that just reads the pages of each major auction sites and pulls down comic sold, graded, value sold at and plumps it into a database and averages out a price for us. 

GoCollect & GPA might have to do some manual work to massage the data but the problem I see with them is they’re slow (GoCollect is).  I buy comics and have noticed it’s taken well over a month to register the sale on GoCollect.  GPA seems to be faster.

I like GoCollect’s interface and price but love the fact that GPA has 17yrs of data.  I noticed recently on heritage - they link to GPA data and you can view the historical price there.  

They’re both good options - 

I’m 48 - this was the 2nd copy I bought that got me hooked.  The 1st was an issue of the Flash I lost (which was boring).

https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Daredevil_Vol_1_183

10 minutes ago, Vince G said:

Like I said, I've been reporting for the last 5 years so this is how it's done in those situations.  In your example, your 4k profit is taxed at the long term capital gain rate of 15% because it is an investment that you've held for more than 1 year.

28% and 31% if your overall income is higher than 200K.  Collectibles are taxed higher because the government views art, gold, stamps, coins, comics etc. as a worthless form of investment.  I think the IRS should give hobbyists a pass and say it’s a $20k cut off.  If you’re making more than 20K in profit a year - you need to incorporate or work as a 1099 and deal with capital gains.   Most of us are just pouring our profits back into the hobby anyway.  It’s not really like a tax dodge.

14 hours ago, Frost451 said:

I quit selling on eBay for good in 2021. It’s not just the new tax laws, their fees are stupid high.  13.5% fee on top of 28% capital gains tax.  Do the math there, you sell high value comic let’s say hulk  181 9.0 and it sells for $13,000 that eBay fee is $1755. Let’s also assume you bought it last year when prices were still reasonable for $5500.  You end up with $5745 profit that you then have to pay a 28% tax on which is $1608.60 so your actual profit is $4136.40  so between the government and eBay they are taking $3363.30 out of your pocket.  Like that’s almost half your profit gone.  At that point what’s the point of even selling.   Flippers will be in for a real surprise when they go to file their 2021 taxes and end up getting a 1099.  Also they don’t know what you paid for your items and so are reporting the entire amount of the transaction to the IRS.  

^^This - 

And imagine if you had put that into a tax deferred IRA or done a “reverse ROTH” (reverse ROTH means you pay ZERO taxes) and bought the S&P500 - up more than 70% from the lows of last year.  Collectible suck as an investment because of the fees & taxes (the cap gain is actually 31% if you earn more than 200K total income).  

I suspect the collectors market will pop if the IRS pays a lot of attention to it.  I got a feeling they won’t though. I don’t think even the capital gains tax stuff is happening - sounds it like it died in the Senate.

18 hours ago, WEBHEAD said:

23 PAGES......much of this is about ebay and other venues..... so if we sell all out books on CGC  are they going to send us a 1099?   I think the small time hobby collector still gets a pass IMHO

I haven’t gotten 1099’s from consignment - I suppose if someone uses multiple auction houses and consignment you could go under the radar but I’d still think that’s risky because there are anti money laundering schemes in place that track all transactions > $10k into your checking account

By the way - this is why my CPA was saying expenses can’t be counted unless I go the 1099/corp route:

https://kb.drakesoftware.com/Site/Browse/15800/1040-Hobby-Expenses

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act implementations beginning tax year 2018 disallow expenses incurred by hobbies. Income must still be reported. Per the Schedule C instructions, "...a sporadic activity or a hobby does not qualify as a business. To report income from a non-business activity, see the instructions for Schedule 1 (Form 1040), line 8, or Form 1040-NR, line 21." This is Schedule 1, line 21 in Drake18. 

4 hours ago, fantastic_four said:

I posted this a few weeks ago--HR Block disagrees with this.  When you enter collectibles losses from the past year into their software it deducts it from your overall income.  If anyone has Turbo Tax I'd be interested to hear if their software does it as well if anyone wants to enter a sample loss in and see if it deducts it from your overall income.

I need to switch to HR Block Thanks - I hope I’m wrong.  I have been selling off comics this year and am frustrated with the whole tax thing.

I think it’s all about hunting for deals - I got a major Silver Age key for about 1/2 what it should go for off a major auction site recently.  That’s an anomaly but I also saw an AF15 2.5 on that site go for “pre crazy” prices the prior week.

I’d say deals are out there but much harder to find.  I might look into buying collections from people who just want to get rid of stuff.

On 3/8/2021 at 3:25 PM, Wolverinex said:

A big question is selling comics that you've held over a year.. are you charged at a long term capital gains tax rate and how does ebay know?  

28% cap gains on collectibles (gold, comics, coins, stamps, art).  You can’t claim losses with your hobby unless you declare it a business (1099, s-corp etc.).  Still stuck with 28% cap gains though.

7 hours ago, djzombi said:

  "Superjumbo #1" might have 10 sellers trying to get $100 bucks for it, but if all the "last sold" listings are around $50, then it's not worth $100 (unless you are, in fact, willing to pay that).  People can TRY to get $100 for it, but the market is saying the current going price is $50.  

Yeah and this market it seems to be the exact opposite - those recently sold listings on eBay and other auction sites will be way more than what sites like GoCollect reflect because they need time to update.

Lol - I have thought about the same.  Here’s the best article I came up with: https://www.score.org/blog/how-transfer-assets-your-llc

It sounds like you have to have a record of what you paid for the stuff so the profit will come back to your individual tax as a capital gains tax.

I bought some special UV protected cases from Crafti Comics because our living area has a lot of sunlight.  I’ve been happy with them - 

They are scraping the sites and looking at seller data and then averaging it all out.  It’s probably not that easy to get it updated in real time.

The market is crazy right now - sellers are looking at last sold prices on eBay.  I don’t think your seller on FB is doing anything crazy or unethical - they just know that go collect, GPA etc. are a bit out of date and usually that doesn’t matter but in this kind of market it does matter.

Just ask your questions - I would not be the slightest bit offended if someone asked me this and I had posted something for sale.