My Yardsale

[The Less Blob]

Well, we had a neighborhood yard sale last weekend and, as usual, I had a few long boxes out. Mostly moderns from the 80's - 2000's, sprinkled in enough spidermen and x-men and supermen in there to appeal to most folks, etc. I also scattered in some reader grade 15 - 25 cent cover price books in bags and boarsds. $1 for anything without a bag and board, $2 for B&B, I told everyone I'd round down if they bought a few books. last year I sold a fair number of comics (probably 70 - 90 or so), albeit mainly to 5 or 6 customers and for below the $1 I was shooting for, but whatever.

 

While I can't complain about the yardsale overall (we did over $200 in about 5 hours -- a lot of it selling off my vintage records) and 80-85% of that was in the first 3 hours, the comics were pretty sad. one mistake might have been putting them on my last table, furthest in from the driveway where they were slightly less visible to someone driving/walking by, but if you knew comics, these were obviously comic boxes.

 

I sold $15 worth to a guy who was probably 20-25 who works at a local restaurant (and I gave him several freebies, of course), and two sets of $5 worth to two other guys. some pakistani kids from just outside the neighborhood were checking them out (I live in a serious melting pot area...we have everything here except maybe a native american reservation), but their burka wearing mothers would never allow them to buy any. i tried to entice some other kids, but none were interested. one cute woman looked through all three boxes and took a pass. a cute pair of 10 year old mexican american girls wanted to know if they could get anything for 25 cents and I said, sure, for them, the dollar comics would be 25 cents. they scoured the boxes looking for comics with female super heroes and found a copy of avengylne 2 in there, but I couldn't sell it to them as that looked inappropriate for a 10 year old. finally I dug up a copy of an x-men from the 180s where rogue (with a mohawk) and kitty pryde are flying around on the cover and that was a winner for them because they knew storm from the x-men movies. plus I gave them a free copy of the freebie spiderman kraven comic that came out a little while ago (heck, it was free for me...).

 

So maybe the future of comics is finding out a way to appeal to mexican american girls?

 

As an aside, if you think comic collectors can be cheap, record collectors/re-sellers are the absolute worst. one frigging guy said he'd "maybe" pay $1 each for a stack of records from the 50's - 60's, most of which were actually in nice shape, like he'd be doing me a favor taking them off my hands. when i'd quate a $2 price for some record from the 40s or 50s...and we're talking about som frank sinatra and doris day stuff...they acted like i was trying to steal their pension money. i was looking to get about $2.50 each from the guy with the stack because he actually had some interesting likely rare stuff in there. given that they were all over the place in terms of genre, I'm sure he was buying them to re-sell. with that said, i did ok with the records...pretty sure they were at least half of my sales of the day. and gven they had all been fished out of the trash at my old apartment building, it's not like i had anything in them $-wise.

[gcstomp]

Interesting. No one tried to give you a lowball offer for the lot?

 

When I have tried setting up at a big outdoor flea market books fly at $1 a pop, assuming they are bagged and boarded. Moving books at actual comic shows, I prefer to let others sell the books at $1 a pop and I have more real estate worthy material. Long boxes of trades/graphic novels can easily produce 10 times what the $1 boxes pop out in $$ at end of day.

 

No matter where or what I am selling, I make sure the boxes are on tables, not the ground, as people wont stoop over to look thu 5 or 10 long boxes of $1 books.

 

When I want to flip them, easiest thing in world is a craigs list ad for $25 a box, clearly say no haggle/ no cherry picking. I have boxes sold within hours of placing ad. Ive moved hundreds of boxes this year alone that way. No clue what buyers are doing with the boxes but it has been sure fire bankable way to move bulk.

[jdjunker]

As an aside, if you think comic collectors can be cheap, record collectors/re-sellers are the absolute worst. one frigging guy said he'd "maybe" pay $1 each for a stack of records from the 50's - 60's, most of which were actually in nice shape, like he'd be doing me a favor taking them off my hands. when i'd quate a $2 price for some record from the 40s or 50s...and we're talking about som frank sinatra and doris day stuff...they acted like i was trying to steal their pension money. i was looking to get about $2.50 each from the guy with the stack because he actually had some interesting likely rare stuff in there. given that they were all over the place in terms of genre, I'm sure he was buying them to re-sell. with that said, i did ok with the records...pretty sure they were at least half of my sales of the day. and gven they had all been fished out of the trash at my old apartment building, it's not like i had anything in them $-wise.

 

-this is pretty funny. You dug them out of the trash and you complain that the record collectors at your sale didn't want to pay $2.50 each for random 40s/50s/60s stuff?

 

Doris Day? Do you know any Doris Day collectors? Sinatra? Really? Do you have any idea how many MILLIONS of copies every Sinatra album sold? Sinatra is great, but i can get you all the Sinatra LPs you want at $1 each and I'd still make a profit. 45s or 78s wouldn't be as expensive.

 

This would be like some normal, non-comic collecting person finding your box of dollar comics in the trash and complaing that comic collectors didn't want to pay $2.50 each for them. Bunch of rip off artists! Comics are valuable! Plus they were in plastic bags! And interesting likely rare stuff!

 

If you got more than $1 each for Doris Day et al (let me guess--Herb Alpert, Mantovani, Jackie Gleason, Bobby Vee, Dean Martin...) you did very well. And you were the annoying garage sale seller we all hate to have to deal with, who thinks that the VG reader-copy of Tomb of Dracula #XX must be valuable because one of us wants it and we are out to rip them off by offering a mere dollar.

 

Still, i would have loved to have had first look at the records.

 

[lizards2]

Off topic, but old Doris Day movies are really great - check out Glass Bottomed Boat or That Touch of Mink. I'm sure there are tons more.

[dupont2005]

Patents seem to hate buying kids anything at yard sales. The last one I had parents were rummaging through stuff and if a kid picked up a comic book or Christmas ornament that I was asking a quarter for the parent would say "PUT THAT DOWN!" or "Don't you have your own money?" I felt bad and gave a few kids some little Christmas trinkets. Never sold a single comic. I did clear out all my manga to an older guy who also bought all my cd's. He was major lowballing me and when we finally agreed on a total (like $25 for a stack of cd's and a box of manga) he wanted me to carry it out to the car and load it in the backseat while his rottweiler growled at me. I have a feeling that guy works at a swap meet or something, no way he was going to listen to the music or read the manga.