Flipping a 25 cent comic and making $1700.. (True Story)

[Alawson453]

What's your take on flipping comics?

 

I thought this would be an interesting story to share with my New Registry Family About 7 years ago give or take a year, while on one of my regular visits to the local outdoor swapmeet I happened upon a box of comics from one of the regular vendor's.

 

Now this guy was also one of my competitor's for buying storage units at auction. He was a well seasoned buyer and dealer to say the least. So when I searched through his box of comics on his table I never expected to find anything of tremendous value, but from time to time I find a gem.

 

Well it's the middle of summer and if you know Vegas on a normal day it's well over 105 degree's so i'm ready to high tail it out of there. I start making my way towards the exit and make a stop by this guys table to see what he might have in this small box of about 40 comics on his table.

 

Well at first glance I can see he has a few magazine sized comics near the back of the box but I take my time and go through the rest of the books first. When I get to the larger books I find that they are copies of TMNT #1. Ok I'm thinking that they are all 3rd prints since I already had a couple of copies and could tell the difference by looking at them. But there was another copy that looked slightly different. I ask Tony what he was getting for the books and he says 25 cents each.

 

Ok, you don't have to be a genius to realize even if they are all 3rd printings you will still make a lot more than a quarter a piece. So I buy them all and the rest of the books in the box.

 

Not paying much attention or mind for that matter I get the heck out of there and head home. I didn't research the books right away because I was late for taking the wife to breakfast so they had to wait. 2-3 hours later after we return home and settle down I finally get the chance to open up and check what print runs they are actually from.

 

Holy ! One of the TMNT books is actually a first print and the other 2 copies are 3 prints. Well now I am really excited because I really didn't collect that title anyway and could see $$$$$$$ and a profit on my 25 cent investment.

 

What follows next is documented somewhere within my many sales records on E-bay.

 

I package up the book and ship it to CGC for express service so I can have it back in a week. They get the book and it comes out with a grade of 8.5. Ok now we are really talking some serious cash for the 25 cents I spent. It was well worth the $85 for the slabbing that I paid. I get the book back and list it with a starting price of $2250.00 knowing that I would get

offers of much less I wanted to at least not under price this little gem.

 

So offers start coming in, the first was $1400 (nice) I wait and another comes in $1100 considering my investment and total cost this was also a nice offer but it's the first day and I think there's more to come. The next offer is $100 yep that's right one hundred dollars. Never the less I inform the guy that I was blocking him form ever bidding on any of my items for making such a ridiculous offer. He apologized and I didn't block him. Later that evening I received what I thought was a great offer of $1700 and accepted the offer hoping the guy would honor and pay for it. And yes within 24 hours the sale was completed and the book was shipped.

 

So within a little over a week I managed to flip a TMNT that I picked up at the local swap meet for 25 cents and pay the $85 for rush service at CGC and make a profit of well over $1600.

 

The books are out there guys, but you do have to look under every rock to find them sometimes and it's true the early bird gets the worm. But in this case I was actually late and quite a number of people had already gone through the box of comics from what Tony told me. (I never told Tony about the flip)

 

See more journals by Dre

[seanfingh]

 

That's a tasty flip. My best four figure quick flips were Walking Dead related, but I always paid between cover and 20 bucks a piece for the raw books. So the $0.25 initial investment makes me say -

[Point Five]

Well done man! I always enjoy stories like this. (thumbs u

 

 

[Mailman_Comics]

As more and more people start to notice the potential for profit in comics, steals like that get harder and harder to come by.

 

One story that came to mind of a single comic flip, I went to a garage sale out in San Diego about 7 years ago, person had a small stack of comics in a shoe box. Lower grade silver age DC's mostly, but one stood out, it was a higher grade Justice League of America #9. I bought it for 25 cents, I later sold it on ebay as a 7.0-7.5 for like $120.

[telerites]

That is cool. The best I ever did was Hulk 181 - bought for a $1 and flipped for, get this - $3. It was 1979 at my first convention bought and flipped same day

 

Usually I do backflips and lose money

 

Congrats

[Alawson453]

That was a nice flip and a tidy profit as well. Thanks for sharing

[Alawson453]

Hey back in 1979 that was an awesome flip. I know and remember those days when that book only sold for a couple bucks at best anyway.

Thanks for sharing

[Alawson453]

I'll take those $20 investment flips for four figures any day. Great Job!

 

[Alawson453]

Thanks point five, I really was proud of myself for that one

[Ronnylama]

Inspiring story. My TNMT #1 is a 3rd print and even that sells for a pretty penny. I would have loved to have gotten Gobbledegoop back in the day. Do you remember the Troll Lords? They were huge for a bit of time and now can't get rid of them.

There are some great independent books from the 80's out there...

Great job again

[seanfingh]

Inspiring story. My TNMT #1 is a 3rd print and even that sells for a pretty penny. I would have loved to have gotten Gobbledegoop back in the day. Do you remember the Troll Lords? They were huge for a bit of time and now can't get rid of them.

There are some great independent books from the 80's out there...

Great job again

 

http://www.myslabbedcomics.com/GalleryPiece.asp?Piece=4157&GSub=629

[seanfingh]

That is cool. The best I ever did was Hulk 181 - bought for a $1 and flipped for, get this - $3. It was 1979 at my first convention bought and flipped same day

 

Usually I do backflips and lose money

 

Congrats

 

 

I used to set up at shows in the late 80s and early 90s. One Sunday, sometime between 88-90 there was a guy with a beautiful Subby #1. It was $8 in the big Guide, but had just gotten a pop, I think to $24, in the Overstreet Update. I bought it for $8 from him and put it out at $24 on my table. It was there for about an hour, and another dealer bought it and put it out for $40 at his table. And it sold before the end of the show.

[DR.X]

I used to set up at shows in the late 80s and early 90s. One Sunday, sometime between 88-90 there was a guy with a beautiful Subby #1. It was $8 in the big Guide, but had just gotten a pop, I think to $24, in the Overstreet Update. I bought it for $8 from him and put it out at $24 on my table. It was there for about an hour, and another dealer bought it and put it out for $40 at his table. And it sold before the end of the show.

 

WOW!

[seanfingh]

I used to set up at shows in the late 80s and early 90s. One Sunday, sometime between 88-90 there was a guy with a beautiful Subby #1. It was $8 in the big Guide, but had just gotten a pop, I think to $24, in the Overstreet Update. I bought it for $8 from him and put it out at $24 on my table. It was there for about an hour, and another dealer bought it and put it out for $40 at his table. And it sold before the end of the show.

 

WOW!

 

It was such an awesome time to be in comics. The trends did not move like lightning like they do now. You could plan, look at the guides, try to suss out some strong plays and then launch all out assaults on the 10-15 different LCS in any decent metropolitan area. Ah, the salad days.

[Mayor006]

I think the best I've done lately (and this was just a couple of weeks ago) is two copies of Marvel Graphic Novel #4 for cover price and both look to be 9.6 or better. Hoping that at least one comes back a 9.8 (1st New Mutants)

[DR.X]

I used to set up at shows in the late 80s and early 90s. One Sunday, sometime between 88-90 there was a guy with a beautiful Subby #1. It was $8 in the big Guide, but had just gotten a pop, I think to $24, in the Overstreet Update. I bought it for $8 from him and put it out at $24 on my table. It was there for about an hour, and another dealer bought it and put it out for $40 at his table. And it sold before the end of the show.

 

WOW!

 

It was such an awesome time to be in comics. The trends did not move like lightning like they do now. You could plan, look at the guides, try to suss out some strong plays and then launch all out assaults on the 10-15 different LCS in any decent metropolitan area. Ah, the salad days.

 

 

You know better than to take me seriously. I was busting your chops.

[GamingEtc-migration]

Not to be negative, but as a 14 year eBay seller I think it's silly you were going to block someone from ever buying from you because he made you an offer you didn't feel was worth the price of your item. An item you paid a quarter for. Just saying.

[Alawson453]

Hi GamingEtc, Thanks for your comment and yes I agree it was a little harsh but in the end hopefully it deterred that buyer from making silly offers on another dealers merchandise like possibly yours. I do this as a part time thing and have had people offer me as low as a dollar on expensive books or not honor the bid/offer they submit. So as a seller I reserve the right to not do business with anyone who submits what I feel to be unreasonable offers or does not honor bids. It's not fair to the great many number of buyers who deal in good faith and will email me first if they want to ask if I will take a bid/offer that is substantially lower. Now I simply state in most of my high dollar item auctions that I will block anyone making such bids and I have not had very many issues in the last 7 years. (I only have 7 names on my blacklist)

[Alawson453]

Thanks Ronnylama, and yes I still have a copy of Troll Lords #1 also 10 copies of Elflord #1, Redfox #1, Shuriken #1 and so on. I also have never been able to get rid of those books, so I decided to hold on to them in the hopes that maybe some day they will again rise to the heights of the black and white boom of the 80's (ha ha right) Oh and I forgot the 10 copies of Fish Police (Arggh!)

[Gatsby77]

My favorite (and best ever) flip came the first week I started collecting. This was summer of 1989 and at a neighborhood yard sale a kid had a box of recent Marvels for $.25 apiece or 5 for a dollar. Included about a dozen McFarlane ASMs, and some X-Men.

 

I bought a few, then went home to grab more money. When I came back, the obvious $8-20 books (McFarlane ASMs) were gone. Whoever it was knew what they were doing because they left # 324 (the non-McFarlane) in there.

 

So bought a few more issues. Turns out that the very first X-Men issue I ever bought was a # 248. I thought it might be a key issue since it proclaimed the "death of Storm." Three years later I sold that $.20 book for $14.

 

Fun times...