I'm going to look at a collection today....1200+ long boxes!

[catrick339]

If you want to get into the quarter box biz just for chuckles, let someone else do the work and buy at a nickel a book. Your time IS worth some money.

 

Go find yourself a 100 box lot already alphanumeric, bagged and boarded, in decent shape boxes, with a minimum of dupes. Lots of those types of deals around for a couple thou. All you gotta do is walk into a good sized show on a Sunday afternoon with a little cash in your pocket and find the folks getting ready to shlep out a honkin' big pile of longboxes. They'll throw themselves at you,

 

[Peter Loves Gwen]

Ditto. That kind of collection is what you find at all permanent flee markets. Countless dealers at flee markets are selling those kind of books. They can do that by not moving the books, they stay in the building constantly. Those dealers also don't make much money from those books, they do okay given the low costs due to the permanent location, but it's not great.

 

I used to frequent a few of those dealers at one market I liked, because they would take some of my extras occasionally. That was 1991 or so too, by now the number of unsold doubles of unpopular titles has grown massively. By now my boxes of doubles may be worth more than that collection in this thread.

 

Yes, run away fast, spend the money on something good. Good luck,

[G.A.tor]

For a grand or so I would buy it

[tth2]

For a grand or so I would torch it

[JiveTurkeyMoFo]

Recently I purchased a 20 longbox collection of Silver/Bronze/Copper/Modern for what I thought was a pretty good price. However, I already have about 12 hours of labor into the picking up, sorting, stacking, and prepping of the books, and I'm only going to start making my money back this weekend after about three weeks of owning them. And they are being stored in the garage & can be transported with a minivan (no additional expense)...anything over 40 longboxes becomes a real hassle to try and manage.

 

While I know I'm going to do fine on my return from this group of books in the mid to long term, the amount of work that needs to be invested in the short term is considerable. And the books I bought are decent Silver/Bronze books, not '90s drek that you can't give away short of finding a couple of suckers willing to go through a quarter bin.

 

Honestly, walk away and keep right on going. Even if the guy sells them to you for $3k, its not going to be worth the time and effort you'll have to put into it.

 

 

[Monster's Lair Comics]

Haven't pursued the collection since I asked the guy to give me a price, and he balked. I figured I'll let the guy wait, but in doing so, I'm rethinking my pricing. When I went back over to do the hard count on the books, there is about 500 gold/silver age westerns (nothing great, but easy to sell at the right price), larger runs of Amazing, Cap, Thor, Batman, Detective, Uncanny, Wonder Woman (nothing with alot of age, but multiples where I can make reading sets), and some other interesting books.

 

Also found Champions 1-15 (about 15 copies deep each), some early ghost rider (down to issue 2), and a smattering of other bronze, early copper.

 

At this point, I'm slowly walking sideways, not really away yet, but not towards either. If I could get it in the 1500-2000 range, It would still be a good money maker, but yes, man hours get pricey fast. There is a con here close in April that I think I could realistically put out 100 boxes, and move 40, and the cost would be minimal.

 

In the mean time, I am looking at other options.

[Flash105]

If I worked 1000 man hours of hard tedious work, I would want to make 50K at least. The kind of work you are talking about is more than just a hobby. Although, it would be really cool to say you owned 250,000 comics. Not many can say that even if it is .

[RockMyAmadeus]

If I worked 1000 man hours of hard tedious work, I would want to make 50K at least.

 

You make $50 an hour sorting comics? Cool.

 

The kind of work you are talking about is more than just a hobby. Although, it would be really cool to say you owned 250,000 comics. Not many can say that even if it is .

 

 

 

[Comicdey]

I had an opportunity a few years ago to buy a huge collection of 30,000 comics for around $2,500. Nothing great, a few boxes of LG SA, lots of mid grade through 1980 and then wonderful stacks of 1990's stuff. There were a few ms. marvel 18's in there in high grade but overall, nothing special. I just couldn't deal with the volume and didn't have the time. I had just bought around 6,000 really sweet books a few months prior with all the major keys and had my hands full upgrading my collection and selling the duplicates.. I gave him the number of a local auction house and I believe he sold them all directly through there for something on the order of $10,000. They came and picked them up, and he just got a check after a few months. He needed the money a lot more than I did as it was his fathers attempt at collecting to start a store some day. I did buy a copy of Superman #2 from the guy and sold it to point5 at my cost. Some times walking away is the right idea if you don't have the time, but there's the other option if you can buy the books at the right price, put them into an auction house that does all the work and you can turn an easy profit, albeit much smaller that if you spent the time. Cherry pick it first.

 

Good luck.

 

 

[tth2]

I can`t believe there have been 68 posts in this thread. Let me just summarize it briefly:

 

OP: I`m thinking of buying this "collection"

 

Everyone else: DON`T FREAKIN` DO IT!!!!

 

OP: I`m still thinking of buying this "collection". What do you guys think?

 

Everyone else: DON`T FREAKIN` DO IT!!!!

 

OP: Okay, but do you think I should buy this "collection"?

[shadroch]

If the price was right, I'd buy them. It would take about forty hours to seperate the drek from the super drek. The drek you could sell for a nickel apiece, the super-drek you can wet down and use as bricks to build a super nice fort. From what you described. I'm sure you could find 2,000 books you could sell for $1-$3 and you can foist the used boxes off for about fifty cents a pop.

I'd make the deal contingent on having nine months to move the stock and access to it in the mean time. Five months from now, you walk away from whatever is leftover- unless you can find another bulk buyer, which you should be able to. Theres always somebody with a few bucks and dreams of quitting their day job.Just offer them four months free rent.

[Monster's Lair Comics]

I'm getting that. Live in "out in the middle of nowhere" Texas, with no access to collections (I'm used to living in Chicago, where a collection came along every other day). I just like moving books. But yes, I get everyone's .

 

The reason there are posts.....it's fun to think about it from both sides, and we all like to talk comics, whether it's buying em', selling em', or not buying.

[3319comics]

Do the Marines take comic books for thier Toys for Tots drive? donate the drek to them :shrug:

[cheetah]

Do the Marines take comic books for thier Toys for Tots drive? donate the drek to them :shrug:

 

If you can claim cover price on them, you might get a decent tax write off.

[rjpb]

A lot of those long boxes have water marks on them, it sounds like about half the collection will have to be hauled to a recycling plant after you've sorted it out.

 

For the amount of time expended, even getting them for free, it would be more of a hobby than a business.

 

If you are dead set on going through the stuff - tell the guy you'll give him $500 - take or leave it - and then walk away when he balks.

 

Pull out the whatever individual books and short runs you might be able to sell for $50 or more on ebay, and if you're in or near a large urban area - just sort the rest into Marvel, DC and Indy boxes with minimal duplication - and put them craigslist for $10-$30 a long box (no resorting allowed) - and don't bother rebagging or reboxing them, and if any one shows up to buy offer enticing discounts for buying several boxes, then haul the rest to the recycling plant.

 

You might waste some time doing all this, but you should at least make your $500 back.

 

 

 

 

 

[the blob]

If you don't have room to store this stuff do not even contemplate it. Paying storage fees on this mess would be KRAZY!

 

you'd think with all those beat to heck boxes there might be more vintage stuff in there.

 

offer him $1 a long box to make him feel good about himself and let him know you're doing him a favor cleaning up the room. if there are water stains on these boxes you will be chucking half of them. as things stand you will no doubt need to rent a truck, which is going to probably push you up to over $1000 for this mess, assuming you have somewhere to store it.

 

what he has in these books is irrelevant. he made (or didn't make) his profit long ago on the junk he DID sell.

 

 

[ft88]

Following the story here it sounds like theres about 20 good long boxes. Say $50 a box and the rest he can either keep or you get them for the price of moving them since they have no real value.

 

Assuming you have even average runs of Spidey 325-385 and similar key titles in that era plus the Bronze stuff you mentioned, you have to figure you can sell that for $3000 or so over time.

 

I'd just discard the 790 boxes as fast as possible.and don't try to sell them for anything. Maybe a craigslist ad at best for say $20 a box for any buyer. This, after you've set aside the better stuff.

 

Ed

[the blob]

criminey, i'm having a tough time processing the 7 or 8 long boxes of stuff I've acquired in the last 2 months, 800 long boxes hurts my brain.

[Monster's Lair Comics]

I would have to divide the boxes between my garage, and half my mother's garage. I think I can get away with no storage fees. At the height of moving books, I would move about 10 long boxes a week through trading, selling, and even bulk sales. I have some other guys that I can move some of the material through as well.

 

As far as the water marks and other stuff the boxes show, the books are surprisingly fresh. I went through and pulled random handfuls of books on suspect boxes, and they were really nice.

 

I'm letting the guy stew. See if he calls. If not, no loss, if so, he's ready to deal. We'll see.

[MyNameIsLegion]

assuming one long box weighs 25 pounds, that 25 x800 boxes, that's 20k pounds!

 

The LARGEST u-haul truck you can rent, the 26 footer, has a max capacity of 7500 pounds. That's 3 full trips, of 235 boxes per trip, that means you have to load and unload the truck 3 times, which means you will pick every box up at least twice (load and unload) thus you will have moved 40 THOUSAND POUNDS. 20 TONS. Your going to get about 2/3 of the way thru loading the first haul and realize this was not such a good idea. It will be the equivalent of moving a 3 bedroom house 3 times, only worse, cuz its the same back breaking repetitive motion 1600 times.

 

Fahrenheit 451, that's your best option.