East of West 1 1

[ItsJustRyan]

Who's this "Viperdays" you guys speak of? :shrug:

The man.

The myth.

The legend.

[CBT]

Who's this "Viperdays" you guys speak of? :shrug:

 

this thread started off with a boatload of people piling in talking about how many copies of this they had pre-ordered.

 

Followed by many other people then trashing the book saying it would flop in secondary value a la bedlam.

 

Followed by others saying quality is what matters, not print run, a la Saga.

 

viperdays was one of the people who bought 100 copies, and it led to a lot of side arguments, and an underlining current of discussion on bubbles, methods of ordering comics etc.

 

Really, the recent sub-subjects are par for the course in this thread .

 

Anyway, let's get back to money with numismatic value!!

 

 

midtown can make 9.8s, who knew

[CBT]

CBT, i thought I was the only one who saw John Marston on the cover of this book! I too wish death was a little more gruff. Maybe dragotta is going for the sophisticated look, is that a Feragamo suit death wears?? At least he could have given him a gnarly scar on the cheek or somethin. The "high noon" showdown page is my favorite so far followed by the 2nd to last page.

 

Can't wait for issue #2!!

 

, yah, and a cowboy's jaw line!

 

agreed, i liked the whips the one girl surrounding him had too, some knarlie looking characters there i cant wait to find out more about.

 

Borderlands Redemption

 

that's what this book should be called .

 

"aint no place for a hero". Gotta read it listening to the theme music

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1QUZzeZoPQ

 

Edited April 5, 2013 by CBT

[MutantKeys]

Who's this "Viperdays" you guys speak of? :shrug:

 

this thread started off with a boatload of people piling in talking about how many copies of this they had pre-ordered.

 

Followed by many other people then trashing the book saying it would flop in secondary value a la bedlam.

 

Followed by others saying quality is what matters, not print run, a la Saga.

 

viperdays was one of the people who bought 100 copies, and it led to a lot of side arguments, and an underlining current of discussion on bubbles, methods of ordering comics etc.

 

Really, the recent sub-subjects are par for the course in this thread .

 

Anyway, let's get back to money with numismatic value!!

 

 

midtown can make 9.8s, who knew

 

Thanks for the info (thumbs u

 

[Sarfa]

I sure hope I have enough

 

[ebtorres]

Not nearly enough... 100+ copies or BUST!

 

 

 

[Revival_Hoarder]

Not nearly enough... 100+ copies or BUST!

 

 

 

 

Glad I got over 110 copies of both

#1 AND #2

 

R_H

[ebtorres]

Change your name to "EoW Hoarder" now!

[Revival_Hoarder]

Change your name to "EoW Hoarder" now!

 

Doesn't sound as cool...

 

R_H

[ItsJustRyan]

Who's this "Viperdays" you guys speak of? :shrug:

 

this thread started off with a boatload of people piling in talking about how many copies of this they had pre-ordered.

 

Followed by many other people then trashing the book saying it would flop in secondary value a la bedlam.

 

Followed by others saying quality is what matters, not print run, a la Saga.

 

viperdays was one of the people who bought 100 copies, and it led to a lot of side arguments, and an underlining current of discussion on bubbles, methods of ordering comics etc.

 

Really, the recent sub-subjects are par for the course in this thread .

 

Anyway, let's get back to money with numismatic value!!

 

 

midtown can make 9.8s, who knew

 

Thanks for the info (thumbs u

I would have explained MK, but CBT likes to explain things

[ItsJustRyan]

I sure hope I have enough

 

 

 

 

NO

 

 

[CBT]

I would have explained MK, but CBT likes to explain things

 

guilty

 

like i explained that the one guy was shill fishing Revival #2 ultra-high grade, and then the owner showed up to argue back two seconds later proving it

 

like i explained he'd never get the loonie prices he was dreaming of for it, and he never will

 

 

[ItsJustRyan]

 

[cujobyte]

Not nearly enough... 100+ copies or BUST!

 

 

 

 

Glad I got over 110 copies of both

#1 AND #2

 

R_H

 

Your name is "Revival Horder" not EOW horder .

 

Speaking of.....cujo even got in on this one! 1/3rd of my overall shipment. But lets break this down: $1.75x 200 = $350 which is less than 20% of over all profits from Sixth Gun alone. Yes, granted got very lucky, but selling roughly 35-40 copies on ebay to recoup, so why not??

 

[ItsJustRyan]

That's a lot of EoW brother

 

 

[cujobyte]

Hickman quickly became my fav' writer with MP, sooooo anxious for issue 2!!!!!

[Mike's Rack]

To affirm CBT's point and take it a step further, thinking of comics as investment is a mind trap. Selling a book for 2x cover is a great margin on paper "I doubled my money". The problem is that you can't look at comics as a margin based investment because the process is labor intensive. You have to look at it as a wage. Not "I doubled my money" but rather I spent four hours driving to the LCS picking out my books, listing them on on eBay, answering buyer questions, picking up packing supplies, packing up the books and taking them to the post office (I realize that these steps can be done more efficiently) so I bought 5 books and sold them all for 2x cover after PayPal and eBay fees I profited $16, or in other words, I made $4.00 per hour.

 

Some people can broaden the scale and increases efficiencies to make the process work and that's great for them. The problem is that this type of model can be damaging to the hobby if it becomes too pervasive. When people have pallets of books in their garage, they tend to panic and dump at the first sign of instability.

 

The targeted high margin approach the CBT mentioned (that has been mastered by many of the old school boardies that don't post here anymore) is much more effective and healthier for the hobby. It's not as fast and it takes some patience but the pay off is well wrong it. It is in everyone's best interest to study the market, learn what to look for in new books and learn how to maximize your time investment like CBT suggested. The image 1 bubble won't last forever, but there will be something else after it. Don't ask "what books should I buy" ask "why did those guys know to buy those books?" "Why did East of West look like a good bet compared to so many other books?" If you spent the time to study the market, you will have a good idea when to get out and you will see what is comming next early in the game. If you use the shotgun approach you may hit some targets but you won't have a sustainable model when the market changes.

[Westy Steve]

Two points that need to be made here:

 

Don't want to get burned in a bubble? Then don't pyramid up. Always buy the same amount of what you're speculating on. So when the bubble bursts you don't have all the profits you ever made tied up in inventory.

 

Second point: There should be an understanding that the time and trouble associated with being a visionary and buying a bunch of these comics based on the great writing and artwork should mean that each of these issues are worth no less than $10. FP variants shouldn't be any less than...say...$40 for the same reason. When cartels cheat and undercut, prices drop. All that being said, price fixing is illegal so don't do it. An understanding of what things are worth sometimes lead to super close prices on airline tickets and rental car rates. Why should speculative comics be any different?

 

All of that being said, I'm going to follow this series until it ends. Good writing makes for valuable modern comics. I'm in no rush to sell my extra copies at all.

 

WC

 

 

Plenty of stuff like this in my Blog

[Mr. Hog]

Horrible luck with eBay lately. Got my ghost in a brown mailer with a thin cardboard backing. I'm so sick of getting stuff in that looks like it went through the dryer.

[Mashed Potatoes-migration]

To affirm CBT's point and take it a step further, thinking of comics as investment is a mind trap. Selling a book for 2x cover is a great margin on paper "I doubled my money". The problem is that you can't look at comics as a margin based investment because the process is labor intensive. You have to look at it as a wage. Not "I doubled my money" but rather I spent four hours driving to the LCS picking out my books, listing them on on eBay, answering buyer questions, picking up packing supplies, packing up the books and taking them to the post office (I realize that these steps can be done more efficiently) so I bought 5 books and sold them all for 2x cover after PayPal and eBay fees I profited $16, or in other words, I made $4.00 per hour.

 

Some people can broaden the scale and increases efficiencies to make the process work and that's great for them. The problem is that this type of model can be damaging to the hobby if it becomes too pervasive. When people have pallets of books in their garage, they tend to panic and dump at the first sign of instability.

 

The targeted high margin approach the CBT mentioned (that has been mastered by many of the old school boardies that don't post here anymore) is much more effective and healthier for the hobby. It's not as fast and it takes some patience but the pay off is well wrong it. It is in everyone's best interest to study the market, learn what to look for in new books and learn how to maximize your time investment like CBT suggested. The image 1 bubble won't last forever, but there will be something else after it. Don't ask "what books should I buy" ask "why did those guys know to buy those books?" "Why did East of West look like a good bet compared to so many other books?" If you spent the time to study the market, you will have a good idea when to get out and you will see what is comming next early in the game. If you use the shotgun approach you may hit some targets but you won't have a sustainable model when the market changes.

 

I don't disagree with the overall notion that a buy and hold strategy, rather than a quick flip is a preferable model (especially for the industry). But I think that everybody is over exaggerating the labor intensive story of selling comic books, which leads to this unreal notion that it equates to minimum wage. It does not take four hours to buy and sell 5 books. I am sorry, but it doesn't unless you are in a slow-mo universe. There are economies of scale in place with large shipment orders and ways to work smarter, not harder. I know the poster above readily admits that efficiencies can be gained in his example, but his/her example is not indicative of how the people I know run through the comic book buy/sell/ship process. The example above is the exception and not the rule.

 

Let's break down the four hour example used above to sell 5 comic books with how much time it actually took me to unload 80 books in a week. I bought 250 EOW #1 and 50 EOW FP #1. I sold 60 of EOW #1 and 20 of the EOW FP #1, to roughly cover costs of purchasing all 300 books ($2 and change per regular book and $7 for FP). The rest are going to sit in my closet or at CGC till at least issue #6.

 

1. Buying the books (6 minutes) - It took all of two minutes at DCB, TFAW and FP to order my books online. Why go to a comic store when you can buy it cheaper online, and they deliver to your door? There is no drive involved....nothing. Buying books is as simple as going to the web site, clicking add to cart for your book, adjusting the quantity, and then checking out. This is not labor intensive. Searching for a good YouTube video is more labor intensive.

2. Buying packing supplies online through Amazon Prime (4 minutes) - Again, buy online as it is cheaper, shipping is free and there is no drive time involved. This is not labor intensive.

3. Receiving books - They come bag and boarded. There is nothing to do outside of moving them to your comic book boxes. This is not labor intensive. It takes a few minutes. Again, less labor intensive than googling a new meme.

4. Packaging - This is the most labor intensive aspect of the process, but there are ways around it. I invited my friend over who has a 11 year old kid. The little guy likes to help out. So he packaged the books while I hung out with his Mom. Aiden inspects the books for me, can spot NM books, and is careful to package them for me. There has never been one complaint of his packaging and shipping. If children this age in other modern day countries or during the industrial revolution can perform complex duties in factories, modern day American kids can surely package a comic book. Not rocket science here. He worked for a little bit over an hour (call it 90 minutes) to package 60 books in lots of 5 or 10. Actual time it took me = 0 minutes. Actual cost = a medium cookie dough milk shake from Baskin Robbins.

5. Listing on eBay (20 minutes) - Creating the first eBay listing takes 20 minutes, less so if you have a template already. Since you are selling the same product over and over again, each additional listing takes less than 5 seconds to click "list similar item". This is not labor intensive. I also have a list of people I sell to outside of eBay that I send out one bulk email to. Some of my biggest sales actually don't happen on eBay but through my email list.

6. Answering questions (1-2 minutes a question) - If you auction description is detailed enough, you don't get that many questions. The main question I got was, "do you have any more EOW?" or "can you hold 10 till Friday when I get my paycheck?". It is not labor intensive to read one sentence and respond back, "Yes, I have more books and can hold them for you. Have a nice day."

7. Shipping (2 minute) - Also not labor intensive. Because all the boxes I have are uniform, and already packed; I know the shipping weight. So shipping is comprised of clicking on print shipping label in eBay or PayPal, selecting the service type and weight, then sticking the label on the prepacked box, and then clicking on another button to schedule a mail pickup. I don't go to the post office or ups or fedex when they offer to come to you. You don't even need to input the tracking number to communicate to the seller because eBay and Paypal do that for you automatically.

 

So I don't get this minimum wage stuff that people keep on throwing out there. I have honestly spent more time reading and writing on the EOW thread today alone than I have spent selling and shipping books this week. I have spent maybe 2 hours on the entire EOW buying, selling, shipping process for selling 80 books, 60 of which are already out the door. So that is around $1000 in comics in under two hours of actual work (reading the boards and bleeding cool not included in this analysis). If you take out the ebay/paypal fees, along with the initial cost of the 80 books and include the milkshake fees, the profit is $600 for about two hours of actual work. That is $300 an hour for this example. How is that minimum wage? Let's say that I did not use child labor and packaged them myself and spent an exaggerated additional four hours doing so, that still comes out to $100 an hour.

 

I agree that you can fatten up your margins if your wait longer and take a chance that a book appreciates. But most volume investors are going to cover their initial costs first and flip off the bat. The investment philosophy you guys are saying is true if a book appreciates, but some of these comments of how little instant flippers make per hour is far far far far from true. Let's not kid ourselves here while defaming flippers. You can dislike them for damaging the comic industry, or driving down the price of a book since they have a volume profit model, or the fact that they put profit over the content of a book, but let's not think that they a foolish enough to work for minimum wage. The only flippers making minimum wage are the ones that do all four of these things; drive 30 miles to comic stores, wait in hour long lines at the post office to ship, sell/package books one by one, and sell books for $0.50 above their purchase price. I can't say for sure, but I don't think there are any that check all of these boxes. I know a few flippers (not Viperdays). None of them operate this way. They are all savvy business people that have well paying jobs and broad investment portfolios. There are too many opportunity costs and the concept of comparative advantage keeps them from working for minimum wage. Comic books are just another investment item for them and they would not do it for minimum wage.

 

As to what is healthier for the industry, you are right that wide-spread speculation and a flooding of non-traditional collectors distorting the natural supply demand equilibrium is going to pop this bubble. This is no different than investing in tulips in 17th century Holland, or purchasing debt in the South Seas company, or investing in the pre1929 US stock market on margin. All of these were bubbles that were driven with speculation. And like these bubbles, there will be a correction, but who knows when. Some speculators will lose money at the end, some will have costs covered at a minimum. The speculators that won't get caught in a bubble burst are the ones that immediately cover costs. I have covered all costs on my comics. So if I don't sell another comic and they all get reduced to $0 value, I still won't lose anything and would have made a profit...above minimum wage. Enough above minimum wage that Saga paid for the new double paned windows in my house. NWM is going to pay for the new bar I am installing. I still have over 200 EOW, 50 Sex, 50 Helheim, 3 SAGA RRP 9.8, 2 Comics Pro ToT 9.8, and 6 Saga #1 getting graded at CGC. So I am hoping that this still market keeps up a little longer.