Tough Decision, need boards help

[kryptonitecomics]

I posted this over on the CPG forum, but I know that not everyone posts to both so I though I would get the wonderful folks on these boards to weigh in with their insight and thought's.

 

I need your guys combined help on this one. I have been selling off my sportscard collection for a couple of month's now. I have probably about $10,000 to $15,000 worth left at current book prices. If I continue to sell on Ebay it will probably take me another 3 or 4 month's to list them all and the average sale is about 10% of Book due to the market being so bad for cards.

 

Now I have come across a gentlemen that wants to trade comic books for my entire collection. Since I am selling the cards to pay for comics...this is very appealing to me. I told him that I would take $2,500 in trade for everything I have left, which is certainly more than I feel I can get by selling it piece meal on Ebay.

 

Here comes the dilemma, I told him that we should set a price per long box and then divide that into the $2500 so in essence I will just take a certain amount of long boxes in trade, not actually $2500 book value in comics.

 

I like the deal and I think I can make out pretty well, but how much are bulk long boxes worth. I know that he hasn't bought comics in at least 10 years and that he has a lot of older comics from the 70's and maybe older. Since I don't know exactly what is in the boxes, what would be the going rate for a longbox full of comics in your opinions?

 

I know that a box of 60's comics would be worth a heck of a lot more than say a box of 80's, but what would you estimate these boxes to be worth sight unseen per box?

 

I don't have a lot of experience buying bulk so any gustimates would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks!!!

 

 

 

 

[Mephisto]

I'd like to actually see the books before I'd go through with a deal like this. Couldn't you at least get a list and a few pics or something because sometimes you do luck out with bulk but a lot of times you can get some terrible books that are basically just quarter books that you would probably get less money than for your sportscards.

[FlyingDonut]

I posted this over on the CPG forum, but I know that not everyone posts to both so I though I would get the wonderful folks on these boards to weigh in with their insight and thought's.

 

I need your guys combined help on this one. I have been selling off my sportscard collection for a couple of month's now. I have probably about $10,000 to $15,000 worth left at current book prices. If I continue to sell on Ebay it will probably take me another 3 or 4 month's to list them all and the average sale is about 10% of Book due to the market being so bad for cards.

 

Now I have come across a gentlemen that wants to trade comic books for my entire collection. Since I am selling the cards to pay for comics...this is very appealing to me. I told him that I would take $2,500 in trade for everything I have left, which is certainly more than I feel I can get by selling it piece meal on Ebay.

 

Here comes the dilemma, I told him that we should set a price per long box and then divide that into the $2500 so in essence I will just take a certain amount of long boxes in trade, not actually $2500 book value in comics.

 

I like the deal and I think I can make out pretty well, but how much are bulk long boxes worth. I know that he hasn't bought comics in at least 10 years and that he has a lot of older comics from the 70's and maybe older. Since I don't know exactly what is in the boxes, what would be the going rate for a longbox full of comics in your opinions?

 

I know that a box of 60's comics would be worth a heck of a lot more than say a box of 80's, but what would you estimate these boxes to be worth sight unseen per box?

 

I don't have a lot of experience buying bulk so any gustimates would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks!!!

 

 

 

 

There is no way to answer this question without knowing what he has. Bulk books from the 80s and up should cost no more than $25-40 a box (and the 40 is at the ABSOLUTE top end). If he's bulking them out, you should be looking at AT LEAST 80-100 long boxes for $2500 (assuming 300 in a box), and that's probably high (I'm figuring 8 to 12 cents per book, I would imagine you could get them for half that).

 

But for older books, who knows? Grades? Who knows? Even so, if they're being bulked out, they should be cheap. For a relatively good idea, take a look at Chuckie's buy prices for 60s and 70s books and cut them by 75%, and start there. Even that is probably too high.

[Aman619]

I have some baseball cards too.

What cards are you selling that are only worth 15% of book?

80s and 90s star cards? Or 50s and 60s HG stars??

[kryptonitecomics]

I will get to see the books before making the deal. I stipulated that I was looking for DC and Marvel books only, and I know that he doesn't have anything from the last 10 years. So a longbox full of 70's to early 1990's DC's and Marvels should sell for?

 

I'll post more specifics once I get to look, but I know he has 6,000 comics and doesn't collect them and his brother has 200 long boxes, so their is a chance that I could get some decent books.

 

I won't go through with the deal if it's all worthless garbage!!!

[kryptonitecomics]

I have some baseball cards too.

What cards are you selling that are only worth 15% of book?

80s and 90s star cards? Or 50s and 60s HG stars??

 

You name it I am selling it and on Ebay, about 80% of my cards are going for 10% of Book.

 

Michael Jordans, Shaq's, Birds, Football and Baseball stars like Bonds, Ripken, Sanders, Farve, Marino etc.

 

I have done better on some stuff like the Vintage pre-1960's stuff, but the Market is really bad right now. It's not a good time to liquidate a card collection, but I wanted to spend more money on comics so I went for it anyway.

[FlyingDonut]

I will get to see the books before making the deal. I stipulated that I was looking for DC and Marvel books only, and I know that he doesn't have anything from the last 10 years. So a longbox full of 70's to early 1990's DC's and Marvels should sell for?

 

I'll post more specifics once I get to look, but I know he has 6,000 comics and doesn't collect them and his brother has 200 long boxes, so their is a chance that I could get some decent books.

 

I won't go through with the deal if it's all worthless garbage!!!

 

yeesh, there's a LOT of worthless books in that time period. $40 a longbox is probably the absolute top end - you could get stuck with a LOT of [!@#%^&^] out of the books that you wouldn't be able to move at all, so you'd have to bulk them out again.

 

There are dealers with literally thousands of long boxes of this kind of stuff. You might want to widen your search and look for some independents (Eclipse, Turtles, some smaller stuff) as well, but, again, you're going to be stuck with a lot of [!@#%^&^] books.

[kryptonitecomics]

I will keep that in mind when I start searching through the boxes. I want to add to my collection so I'm not trying to get books I can re-sell per say. Now if I get 50 copies of something sellable (wishful thinking)....I would have to start selling some off on Ebay

[Filter81]

Bulk comics from the 80s and 90s (with notable exceptions such as Wolverine 1 and Wolverine 10) are generally worth between 8 and 10 cents apiece as far as resale value on eBay.

 

 

[lou_fine]

There is no way to answer this question without knowing what he has. Bulk books from the 80s and up should cost no more than $25-40 a box (and the 40 is at the ABSOLUTE top end). If he's bulking them out, you should be looking at AT LEAST 80-100 long boxes for $2500 (assuming 300 in a box), and that's probably high (I'm figuring 8 to 12 cents per book, I would imagine you could get them for half that).

 

But for older books, who knows? Grades? Who knows? Even so, if they're being bulked out, they should be cheap. For a relatively good idea, take a look at Chuckie's buy prices for 60s and 70s books and cut them by 75%, and start there. Even that is probably too high.

 

 

The above scenario should provide a definite warning sign to all speculators and CGC slabbers who are buying up Modern junk in the hopes of huge investment returns down the line.

Just imagine, 8 to 12 cents a copy per book!!

[Zanarkand]

The rule of thumb with bulk buying is that the seller wouldn't be bulk selling if the books were worth anything. On rare occasions, the seller really does need to unload boxes at a time "to clear out room", but mostly it's because the books in question don't sell, not even in the quarter bins.

 

Of, course, "worth anything" is up to you. I recently bought a lot advertised as "70s to present! No duplicates!", which turned out to be almost entirely 90s junk, with duplicates. But there were lots of late Valiants in there, which can be kind of hard to come by, so it worked out collector-wise.

 

See if you can get an idea what he's got, is all I'm saying.

[richnerd]

First I must agree with the rest...see what is in the boxes first.

 

I mainly buy bulk and resell bulk on ebay. One of the post pointed out that people selling bulk are usually just trying to get rid of 25 cent bin stuff that they can't sell and just need to make room. This is not always the case as most of the people I buy my bulk lots from are just old collectors who don't realize that comics are making a come back.

 

I was actually one of those guys just a few months ago. I quit collecting about the time superman came back and seen the price of books drop. So I threw my collection in storage and forgot about it until one day surfing ebay I seen the price of comics came back. Well most of my big lot buys have been from people who don't collect anymore and lost interest with comics back in the 90's. I can't believe how easy it is to find people willing to sell their collections for pennies on the dollar.

 

 

Ok any ways that said, on average I pay $10 - $30 a long box. If its 1978 and up I never pay above $20 unless its loaded with ASM, If you have plenty of 10,12,15 centers in the box use your own discression but you may want to go higher if you need. But what I found is most of these people will part with these just to get some quick cash and get some room back in their house.

 

 

Rich

[kryptonitecomics]

Very good info and I thank you all for your candor and feedback on the subject.

 

For the record, I am comic book savy, I just haven't bought bulk before.

 

I would not go through with the deal without going through the boxes first.

 

I am not buying anything, I am trading Cards for comics, and the guy I am dealing with is a card collector and not a card or comic dealer so the comics he has are from his collection. I will of course verify that Vs taking his word for it

 

Lastly, I no have a good idea of what bulk comics go for thanks to you fine folks, so when talking # of longboxes to trade for my $2500 worth of cards it looks like it could be a heap of long boxes, which is fine with me!!!

 

I will make sure once I get a peak and the treasure or garbage that awaits, I will report back as to whether or not I went through with the deal