Consigning at MyComicShop

[ttfitz]

I've got some books in at MyComicShop to sell on consignment. While I am waiting for them to finish scanning them in, I thought I'd ask here from anyone who has done this. Do you find it better to list on the site for sale, or submit to auction? Or maybe on the site for a while, then auction if they don't sell?

 

Thanks.

 

[lemonman5]

Fixed price is good, because they list the books on eBay (they just add the eBay/PP fees to the listing).

 

Auction isn't too bad, but it depends on what you have. Certain things do good on their auction, while others don't sell for as much as eBay. If something sits for long as a fixed price listing, then I usually lower the price first then if I get no bites, I'll just send it to auction.

 

I consign to them all the time, and I love it.

 

EDIT: When pricing your books, MCS also gives you GPA statistics, current stock, and previously sold prices which can also be a help.

[Junkdrawer]

The next auction deadline is a ways away. Post them at your price till its time to send them to auction. If another identical grade/issue is in before you, your book will get bumped.

[SteveoSupremeo]

Don't overprice your non key books or you shall be judge!

 

I typically find books that are overpriced to ebay and overstreet standards. Price according to current market and you shall be fine.

[Loukayza]

Don't overprice your non key books or you shall be judge!

 

I typically find books that are overpriced to ebay and overstreet standards. Price according to current market and you shall be fine.

 

 

Slightly disagree, and offering my opinion to price them a bit high at first, because you can then lower it after a few days if they don't sell. Can't remember the exact percent, but you can continuously lower the price, and it will show on MCS as "New in Stock" each time you do it.

 

[Heronext]

I seem to recall reading on myCS's site that they reserve the right to change a price if what you're asking is not somewhere in the ballpark of a fair price

 

In practice I doubt they ever do this, because I see some ridiculous ask prices quite a bit (which makes myCS look bad IMO)

 

If a price seems reasonable, I assume it's myCS stock and not a consignment

[shadroch]

I seem to recall reading on myCS's site that they reserve the right to change a price if what you're asking is not somewhere in the ballpark of a fair price

 

In practice I doubt they ever do this, because I see some ridiculous ask prices quite a bit (which makes myCS look bad IMO)

 

If a price seems reasonable, I assume it's myCS stock and not a consignment

 

Anything that is a consignment clearly indicates it is a consignment and an additional fee will be charged. Think its 3% additional on all consignment books.

Not all consigners ask crazy amounts. I've consigned a few books I needed to sell right away and priced them as such. Most have sold within a day or two. Other books i'm not in a rush and ask more for, as you can always lower a price.

I wish they would implement a make an offer option. Its been discussed, I believe.

[marmat]

A few months ago I submitted a big (for my standard) book after trying to sell it here on the boards and ebay. I was surprised that it sold in less than a week for a very strong price.

Most important, the day after the sale, the money was in my account.

BTW, my book was a fixed price, not auction, and I put a strong price (not a crazy high price, but a bit above FVM) and was surprised it sold so fast.

 

All the process was extremely easy, I asked a couple of questions and got an answer within 24h.

It seems to me that MCS has a huge customer base that buy exclusively from them.

 

Conclusion, a very satisfactory experience, and I'll send them a few books next month.

[ttfitz]

Fixed price is good, because they list the books on eBay (they just add the eBay/PP fees to the listing).

 

Auction isn't too bad, but it depends on what you have. Certain things do good on their auction, while others don't sell for as much as eBay. If something sits for long as a fixed price listing, then I usually lower the price first then if I get no bites, I'll just send it to auction.

 

I consign to them all the time, and I love it.

 

EDIT: When pricing your books, MCS also gives you GPA statistics, current stock, and previously sold prices which can also be a help.

 

I was hoping they provided some guidance on pricing items, I'm glad to see they do.

 

Thanks for the responses.

[mycomicshop]

Posting this reply from a question raised in another thread. Didn't want to hijack that thread.

 

Hypothetical situation.

 

I have three hundred books I'd like to move.

I can pay you monthly rent, plus a percentage of the sales price and gain the ability to sell them to anyone who walks thru your door.

Or,

I can pay a one time shipping cost, send them to mycomicshop, sell them to anyone who either searches their website or looks for the item on ebay, and pay them 10% of the sales price.

Your idea may have worked twenty years ago, but I don't see it working today.

 

 

MYCS wants $50 or better books. With that said, they do seem to have a bunch of sub-$50 books on consignment.

 

Just curious, who picks the prices on their consignment items?...

 

Update: Looking at the prices, it must be the sellers. MYCS consignment kind of looks a bit like ebay stores with a gaggle of wacky prices.

 

 

Here's some background on the mycomicshop consignment minimums:

 

We charge a minimum commission of $5 per item on consignments. We prefer not to have somebody consign a book that sells for so little that our $5 commission makes up a majority of the sale price. That would make money for us, but we want the consignor to keep a higher percentage of the sale. For that reason, we prefer consignments that are likely to sell for about $25 or more.

 

When you consign with us, we're not initially there with you in person to look at your books and tell you what we will or won't take on consignment. Instead, you look up your comics yourself on our web site, and our site will tell you what we'll accept on consignment, based on the expected retail values in our database. For slabbed books, there's no question about the grade, so if we think the retail value is about $25 or more, we'll take that slab on consignment. Similarly we'll take any 9.8 or higher slab on consignment automatically--not that they're all necessarily $25 items, but close enough.

 

But for unslabbed books, we have to build in some wiggle room on the grade, to accommodate cases where we grade a book more tightly than the consignor did when first submitting it. Example: a consignor submits a book he's graded as VF 8.0 that puts the expected value right at the $25 minimum to be consignable. After we receive the book, we grade it as a FN- 5.5, and estimate the book will sell for only $10 or so at that grade. That's not something we want as a consignment.

 

We and consignors both want to avoid having to return items to consignors that didn't grade high enough to be eligible for consignment. It's wasted effort and expense for the book to have been shipped to us, graded, then shipped back. So to minimize that chance, we set the front-end minimum higher--about $50 retail instead of $25. That way, if somebody submits a book right at that $50 expected value level for consignment, there's still some room for it to be accepted as a consignment even if we grade it somewhat lower than the consignor did.

 

The other factor is that the expected retail values in our database are just estimates--books can sell for more or for less, especially in auction. A book with an expected retail of $25 might go for $15 in one auction and $30 in the next. If we lowered the cutoff from $25 to $15, for example, you'd have some of those items end up selling for $5-10.

 

It's not perfect, but it works well for consignments submitted over the internet where they're being shipped to us before we can grade them.

 

We can also make exceptions--the estimated retail values in our database are good for many issues, but not all, especially variants and lower value items where we might not have as much info. If you have a book you know will easily sell for enough to be a good consignment, but our site says it's not eligible, we have a page where you can submit that item to us anyway, and provide a link to a prior ebay sale, or other info showing how much the book is worth.

 

Taking that a step further, I've been tossing around the idea of adding something like a "pro mode" for consignment submissions. If you know your books well enough that you know what they're likely to sell for, and you've submitted enough that you have a good feel for how we grade, then you know what you're doing and we don't have to protect you from the possibility of a low-end sale. You can submit anything you want, and if it sells for only $10, $15, $20, fine--as long as you're okay with the minimum $5 commission it doesn't matter. That would expand the range of issues that are consignable for you, since you wouldn't have to clear that initial $50 minimum.

[mycomicshop]

 

As for pricing--we provide the following info to help you set your pricing: what any other copies currently in stock are priced at, any recent sales made through mycomicshop or our eBay store for that issue, and any recent GPA info (assuming it's an issue where we've linked our database ID to GPA's). Note that the GPA info is only available for issues you already have on consignment with us--you can't just look up any book you want.

 

Here's an example of what it looks like:

 

 

You can also contact our consignment director Este Bagato, or PM me, if you want pricing advice.

 

All prices are set by consignors, not us. We don't tell consignors what they have to price at. If it's too high, the book isn't going to sell. We might eventually set something up to encourage downward movement on prices that have been in stock too long without selling due to an above-market price, but I don't think it's been a significant issue thus far.

 

I think it's only come up once ever, that we had to contact a consignor and ask him to modify a price, because it was orders of magnitude too high and was drawing "what is MCS thinking" questions. If I recall, I don't think it was intentional, just a mistake, and the consignor set a normal price as soon as he was made aware of it.

[shadroch]

Conan

Any progress on a "make an offer" feature?

[Barbarian]

I recently had a consignment transaction with mycomicshop for 13 Books.

Some early TWD and a Batman 232. This is what I can tell from my limited experience:

 

The good:

 

1- Great in terms of overall service. The consignment service is easy to understand and they provide excellent data on GPA and previous sales that help you get a good picture of how your books are currently valued.

 

2- Visibility: For a seller outside the US with a very limited Ebay FB like myself, I found that MCS offers great visibility to a large pool of customers. Apart from 1 book, all my items were auctioned so people would probably bid in them with more confidence than the new guy in Ebay from Portugal.

 

3- Easy: They do all the work in terms of scanning, grading, receiving payments and shipping the books. Fast in paying the items.

 

The not so good:

1- Grading. I´m not an expert by any means and inserted the same grade for all my TWD books as to indicate that I was not sure (as mentioned on the website), but I felt that most, if not all my books were undergraded by 1 to 2 full grades.

 

Overall I would probably use them again, especially if I had slabbed books on their list or a major key, but would probably think twice in sending raw books in the 50-100 value mark.

 

 

[mycomicshop]

Conan

Any progress on a "make an offer" feature?

 

Yes, but not done yet. It will be added (along with a lot of other new features) as part of a major site redesign we're working on. We expect to start rolling out portions of the new design for testing in July or August.

[ttfitz]

As for pricing--we provide the following info to help you set your pricing: what any other copies currently in stock are priced at, any recent sales made through mycomicshop or our eBay store for that issue, and any recent GPA info (assuming it's an issue where we've linked our database ID to GPA's). Note that the GPA info is only available for issues you already have on consignment with us--you can't just look up any book you want.

 

Conan, thanks for the explanation, that was very helpful. My books are currently "Being scanned and filed" so I'll be seeing this soon first hand. Had a couple emails from Este, sounds friendly and helpful, so I'm looking forward to giving this a try.

 

Books graded out lower than I had estimated (and lower than folks in the PGM forum had thought), but I'm okay with most of them, given how I've taken advantage of those strict standards in my purchases.

 

Thanks again.

[Mike's Rack]

Conan

Any progress on a "make an offer" feature?

 

Yes, but not done yet. It will be added (along with a lot of other new features) as part of a major site redesign we're working on. We expect to start rolling out portions of the new design for testing in July or August.

Hey Conan, any chance of adding the ability to reprice in bulk e.g. Lower prices of all books by 5% with one click?

[mycomicshop]

I recently had a consignment transaction with mycomicshop for 13 Books.

Some early TWD and a Batman 232. This is what I can tell from my limited experience:

 

The good:

 

1- Great in terms of overall service. The consignment service is easy to understand and they provide excellent data on GPA and previous sales that help you get a good picture of how your books are currently valued.

 

2- Visibility: For a seller outside the US with a very limited Ebay FB like myself, I found that MCS offers great visibility to a large pool of customers. Apart from 1 book, all my items were auctioned so people would probably bid in them with more confidence than the new guy in Ebay from Portugal.

 

3- Easy: They do all the work in terms of scanning, grading, receiving payments and shipping the books. Fast in paying the items.

 

The not so good:

1- Grading. I´m not an expert by any means and inserted the same grade for all my TWD books as to indicate that I was not sure (as mentioned on the website), but I felt that most, if not all my books were undergraded by 1 to 2 full grades.

 

Overall I would probably use them again, especially if I had slabbed books on their list or a major key, but would probably think twice in sending raw books in the 50-100 value mark.

 

 

I'm glad that you decided to try us out and were pleased with the service, and thanks for providing your perspective.

 

You make a fair point about our tight grading--it's not uncommon for somebody consigning for the first time to feel their books were graded more tightly than they would expect. However, as a consignor you benefit from our grading in the form of faster sales and higher achievable prices due to buyers who know they'll get a well graded book from us and pay accordingly.

 

For example, one of the more expensive books you consigned was a WD #19 that we graded a FN 6.0. It sold for $185 in our January auction. According to GPA, a CGC 8.0 sold for $150 in January, a CGC 8.5 for $156 a couple weeks ago, and three CGC 9.0s sold for $159, $140, and $203 in December. Your $185 sale for a raw 6.0 looks pretty good in that company.

 

Another was your WD #3 that we graded VG/FN 5.0. It sold for $147.50 in the January auction. According to GPA, a CGC 8.5 sold for $130 in January, and a CGC 9.0 for $148 in February.

 

One more, WD #4, we graded VG/FN 5.0. Sold for $85 in the January auction. Per GPA, a CGC 8.0 sold for $81 in December, a CGC 9.2 sold for $128 in January, and four CGC 9.4s sold in December/January for $100, $101, $105, and $125. I think $85 was a strong price for your book even if you think we undergraded it somewhat.

 

It's a fine line grading tight enough to please grade-conscious buyers, and loose enough that sellers don't feel like we're being too harsh. We like where we have our grading calibrated, and think it's working well for us, our consignors, and our buyers.

[mycomicshop]

Conan

Any progress on a "make an offer" feature?

 

Yes, but not done yet. It will be added (along with a lot of other new features) as part of a major site redesign we're working on. We expect to start rolling out portions of the new design for testing in July or August.

Hey Conan, any chance of adding the ability to reprice in bulk e.g. Lower prices of all books by 5% with one click?

 

Yes--I'd like to make something like that as easy as possible--including being able to sort and filter based on how long your items have been set at the current price. So for example you could see a list of everything you'd consigned that had been at the same price for at least 3 months without selling, and drop those prices 5% while leaving the newer stuff untouched.

[mycomicshop]

As for pricing--we provide the following info to help you set your pricing: what any other copies currently in stock are priced at, any recent sales made through mycomicshop or our eBay store for that issue, and any recent GPA info (assuming it's an issue where we've linked our database ID to GPA's). Note that the GPA info is only available for issues you already have on consignment with us--you can't just look up any book you want.

 

Conan, thanks for the explanation, that was very helpful. My books are currently "Being scanned and filed" so I'll be seeing this soon first hand. Had a couple emails from Este, sounds friendly and helpful, so I'm looking forward to giving this a try.

 

Books graded out lower than I had estimated (and lower than folks in the PGM forum had thought), but I'm okay with most of them, given how I've taken advantage of those strict standards in my purchases.

 

Thanks again.

 

(thumbs u

[Barbarian]

I recently had a consignment transaction with mycomicshop for 13 Books.

Some early TWD and a Batman 232. This is what I can tell from my limited experience:

 

The good:

 

1- Great in terms of overall service. The consignment service is easy to understand and they provide excellent data on GPA and previous sales that help you get a good picture of how your books are currently valued.

 

2- Visibility: For a seller outside the US with a very limited Ebay FB like myself, I found that MCS offers great visibility to a large pool of customers. Apart from 1 book, all my items were auctioned so people would probably bid in them with more confidence than the new guy in Ebay from Portugal.

 

3- Easy: They do all the work in terms of scanning, grading, receiving payments and shipping the books. Fast in paying the items.

 

The not so good:

1- Grading. I´m not an expert by any means and inserted the same grade for all my TWD books as to indicate that I was not sure (as mentioned on the website), but I felt that most, if not all my books were undergraded by 1 to 2 full grades.

 

Overall I would probably use them again, especially if I had slabbed books on their list or a major key, but would probably think twice in sending raw books in the 50-100 value mark.

 

 

I'm glad that you decided to try us out and were pleased with the service, and thanks for providing your perspective.

 

You make a fair point about our tight grading--it's not uncommon for somebody consigning for the first time to feel their books were graded more tightly than they would expect. However, as a consignor you benefit from our grading in the form of faster sales and higher achievable prices due to buyers who know they'll get a well graded book from us and pay accordingly.

 

For example, one of the more expensive books you consigned was a WD #19 that we graded a FN 6.0. It sold for $185 in our January auction. According to GPA, a CGC 8.0 sold for $150 in January, a CGC 8.5 for $156 a couple weeks ago, and three CGC 9.0s sold for $159, $140, and $203 in December. Your $185 sale for a raw 6.0 looks pretty good in that company.

 

Another was your WD #3 that we graded VG/FN 5.0. It sold for $147.50 in the January auction. According to GPA, a CGC 8.5 sold for $130 in January, and a CGC 9.0 for $148 in February.

 

One more, WD #4, we graded VG/FN 5.0. Sold for $85 in the January auction. Per GPA, a CGC 8.0 sold for $81 in December, a CGC 9.2 sold for $128 in January, and four CGC 9.4s sold in December/January for $100, $101, $105, and $125. I think $85 was a strong price for your book even if you think we undergraded it somewhat.

 

It's a fine line grading tight enough to please grade-conscious buyers, and loose enough that sellers don't feel like we're being too harsh. We like where we have our grading calibrated, and think it's working well for us, our consignors, and our buyers.

 

Thanks Conan for taking the time for a detailed response.

Yes, it is true some items had strong results in comparison with other sales. Some did not, but I guess that is the Benefit /Risk of having books in auction format.

 

Regarding the grading, I am only familiar with what I see on these boards, CGC slabs and the “Spare me a grade section” so that is the standard I am used to have and it´s based on that, that I made my comment.

I understand that you might undergrade with consignees books as to also avoid any chance of returned books.

 

When I wrote that I would think twice in sending books in the lower end of the scale in terms of value is also because of the fact that sending books from Portugal to the US with registered post is expensive and I would have to factor that in my decision.

 

Any book that would sell for less or just over than 50 USD would probably be a bad choice for me to consign because since there is a minimum 5 USD consignment fee, anything lower would increase the commission cost % greatly. Plus adding international shipping cost to all of this would make those books a poor choice for consignment for me.

 

This said, I am happy with the overall result of my first consignment and it´s been a good learning exercise for possible future transactions.

 

Thanks again