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Please help me with a value estimation of this Comic collection

Started by Matthew42383,

76 posts in this topic

Bookery

Bookery

Posted
Posted
Donate them to some kid's who will love them, and take the small tax write off.

 

Hi Matthew!

 

I agree. Either keep them (from discussions with you, I assume you own thousands of pulps, so storing a few more long boxes of comics can't be a big deal)... but if you have no interest just drop them off at a local hospital or school (with their permission)... from this era there shouldn't be too much problem with "adults only" material. I'm not even sure I'd hassle with the write-off, since it won't be significant anyway. Since you have a reputation for dealing in high-end pulps, I'm not sure I'd even "sully" your eBay store with low-end comics... it may tend to detract from the image you want of dealing in better stuff.

 

Just an idea, anyway.

 

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RockMyAmadeus

RockMyAmadeus

Posted
Posted
Things to keep in mind...the books have been in an attic for 20 years. Environmental conditions? I just bought someone's "attic inventory", and the pages were rough. Tanning on 90's books. :eek:

 

Then "about half are bagged and boarded"...moving unbagged comics around is the death knell for condition.

 

"I bought these when I was 8-10 years old"...8-10 year olds aren't known for having the greatest eye for condition, so likely an 8-10 year old "MINT!" is likely a VF/NM at best (and that's being generous for a "picky kid.")

 

So, consider all those factors, and then consider these examples:

 

Rom 1-75 + Annuals sets have been selling for between $70-$120 on eBay.

 

Kazar #1-34 sets have been selling for about $25.

 

Secret Wars 1-12 have been selling for about $65-$70. Secret Wars II :sick: is essentially a $10 set, at most.

 

And all these prices are for high grade(ish) VF/NM copies. Midgrades take a huge plummet in value.

 

So, assuming top of the market prices, that's about $225 total...at best, assuming absolute top prices and VF/NM or better condition.

 

Minus 10-13% for fees, and not including time and labor. Assuming absolute best circumstances.

 

The bad news is, comic books from the 80's and 90's just aren't worth anything. There are always exceptions...but they are the exceptions.

 

Disillusionment sucks, but it does lead to letting go of our illusions, and not having unrealistic expectations which ultimately do more harm to us when unmet.

 

so your saying about $1000? got it.

 

No.

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01TheDude

01TheDude

Posted
Posted
I'm going to be different than everyone else.

 

Keep them. (Unless you have a reason that requires you to sell them). They have great memories for you. Once they are gone, you will never be able to get the originals back.

 

I think a lot of us wish we could have a few originals from our collections back regardless of their monetary value. I have maybe 25 books from when I was 10. I wish I had the first or second comics I ever read - I have since bought copies of them, however there is nothing like your originals.

 

 

I get the impression that while the guy remembers the time of his fondly, he has no real attachment to the books save the one he mentions. So hanging on to them probably won't change that. Also-- they state they paid about 3000 dollars for these books back then and it must be tough to hear these aren't close to what they were worth at purchase. But that again is partly their own fault for basically not being a custodian of the collection. That is one thing I can still enjoy-- looking over the books I acquired is something I can always rely on -- the chase is over but the books are still great fun to examine and catalog. I was never in it for the money but I sure as heck wasn't about to let books get destroyed/ruined under my watch. anyway...

 

We probably have all thought of selling the lot at one point or another. The first and only time I tried that was a mind blowing experience. Brought in all my books to the LCS and the guy offered me 10 cents a book and talked about the collection at the same time (the thing that pissed me off more so than the lowball offer). I never took my books into a LCS ever again. Bottom line is they are only worth what you are willing to let them go for or what someone is willing to pay for them.

 

The more I read this thread the better I feel about how things worked out for me-- I got to enjoy collecting comic books and keep all of mine from the beginning (save about 75-100 I have sold off along the way). Add to that that I quit actively collecting right before 1980 and missed out on buying/having a ton of what most people are calling drek.

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dupont2005

dupont2005

Posted
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Mainstream 90's comics unbagged in VF, I'd pass on the collection as a whole. I think you could sell some at a buck each locally though if you advertised on Craigslist and were willing to spend an hour letting someone root through your stuff to potentially make $40 a couple times. Could double the total realized value if you bothered to do that though. It's what I did when I had boxes of no value comics to get rid of until the few people who replied to my ad had their fill, then I sold the rest at about the price quoted in here, ten cents each roughly.

 

If this were a local ad and I could pick through the collection I'd probably get the Masters Of Kung Fu at a buck each

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Bookery

Bookery

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So the estimates here are about $100-$150 and somehow that comes out to $1,000 ?? These books even in NM would never be worth over $500 let alone $1,000. Am I missing something.

 

Matthew is a big-time collector (he's also been researching and sending me updated data should I ever get around to a new pulp guide edition. He's also the guy the Boards here helped finally get his pulps from Beerbohm). But comics aren't his specialty, and he's probably still thinking in terms of pulps, where even drek westerns and romances will probably still get you $1 apiece in bulk. The difference is eras... bulk comics drek from the '50s will probably also get you $1 apiece wholesale... but '80s and '90s is a whole different ballgame.

 

I have a discount division of my store in which we maintain a constantly changing level of 50,000 comics from the 70s to present for $1 each (bagged, boarded, and alphabetically organized) and we sell about 500 - 1,000 every week. So technically, yes, they can be worth $1 apiece, thus his $1,000 figure is accurate. But that's IF you have the time, variety and space to deal with them long-term... plus a location and level of organization where people can pick out exactly what they want at that price.

 

So quotes of his collection anywhere from $150 to $1,000 CAN be accurate... but only under certain circumstances. Like has been said many times in the past here... it all depends on what your time is worth.

 

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spidrvacc

spidrvacc

Posted
Posted
So the estimates here are about $100-$150 and somehow that comes out to $1,000 ?? These books even in NM would never be worth over $500 let alone $1,000. Am I missing something.

 

Matthew is a big-time collector (he's also been researching and sending me updated data should I ever get around to a new pulp guide edition. He's also the guy the Boards here helped finally get his pulps from Beerbohm). But comics aren't his specialty, and he's probably still thinking in terms of pulps, where even drek westerns and romances will probably still get you $1 apiece in bulk. The difference is eras... bulk comics drek from the '50s will probably also get you $1 apiece wholesale... but '80s and '90s is a whole different ballgame.

 

I have a discount division of my store in which we maintain a constantly changing level of 50,000 comics from the 70s to present for $1 each (bagged, boarded, and alphabetically organized) and we sell about 500 - 1,000 every week. So technically, yes, they can be worth $1 apiece, thus his $1,000 figure is accurate. But that's IF you have the time, variety and space to deal with them long-term... plus a location and level of organization where people can pick out exactly what they want at that price.

 

So quotes of his collection anywhere from $150 to $1,000 CAN be accurate... but only under certain circumstances. Like has been said many times in the past here... it all depends on what your time is worth.

 

Ofcourse if he had the time to sell them individually (years) and got anywhere from .50 cents to $1 a piece he may get $500-$600 but I got the impression he was trying to sell in bulk (hence his $250 shipping) and that where the collection has a $100 value (or so) as someone would need possibly years to sell 1,000 comics for $1 a piece to try to make his money back and a profit.

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Matthew42383

Matthew42383

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I based that 1000 number on splitting up the set into a couple hundred lots if you read my last post thoroughly. Something which I'm obviously going to be too lazy to do.

 

Many of those mini series aren't available on ebay which sadly is a place that thousands of comic enthusiasts get 99% of their . While im sure that you can buy those comics individually for 25 cents each or whatever, many people have to result to shopping online for some of it. Those miniseries can be a person_without_enough_empathy to put together. And no one wants to buy one book in a 4 books series from one place with 3 bucks shipping and another from another, etc...

 

So even though the whole set of 12 damage controls is only worth maybe 5 bucks at best, I bet I could get somewhere around 10 bucks a set or 25 for all 3 of them if I put the thing up on ebay and parked it there. And so on and so forth with the rest of the books.

 

There is a lot more wiggle room when you are one of a few people who have a complete set of something that is low value, low interest and you sell online. People factor in shipping costs, and their own laziness and impatience.

 

The estimates of around 300 and the individual interests of this or that from the rest of you guys helped me to put together this number of 1000 if I sold it separately on ebay. Again. I'm lazy. So one big bulk lot it goes.

 

To answer your other questions, I have 0 sentimental value placed on these minus that one action 1 83 reprint. I could care less whether they go for 10 dollars. I just want them out of the house. I have 100 comic long boxes with 6k pulps against the wall at the end of my bed (Anyone ever seen 750 issues of weird tales in one place before?). And that's only a tiny fraction of my junk. I don't need more clutter.

 

The small tax write off idea is worthless as the tax write off for individuals is something like 3900 or 6900 of whatever is it? and you can't go above that unless you start from scratch with donations. Meaning you can have 3900 for being single, or you can have whatever the resale value of your donations were for the year.

 

I made the mistake of giving 15k worth of books to a charity three years back, and come tax time, I had a choice of choosing the 3900 individual tax write off, or about 130 bucks ( really?) which is what uncle sam valued me 15k in books at for tax write off purposes but not both.

 

I wouldn't give the comics away in the area I live in anyway. I hate waste. The people around here would give them to their kids who would be more likely to destroy them then read them. They'd end up on craiglist or in the trash in under a week. I don't care where they go or what happens to them as long as they aren't destroyed.

 

I'm not confusing 80's comics with 50's pulps. I know the difference price wise between some drek pulp from the 50's that there is probably 500 copies left in existence floating around, and some drek comic from the 80's that there is probably 25,000-50,000 copies left floating around. Not po-tay-to, po-tah-to by any stretch of the imagination.

 

Frankly I needed a read on what the best parts of the set were worth and whether it was worth my time to break it up. I quickly got the answer to that once you guys started being a little more helpful along with your teasing. :-p And I appreciate your help.

 

Lastly Tim is right. I generally know what I'm talking about where pulps, hardcovers, and other stuff along those lines is concerned. But when I don't know, like with these comics, I find out. Had I planned to start selling comics on a regular basis, I would have done the research and the time and you never would have heard from me on here. Since I could care less, I decided to post a list to CGC and see what sort of prices and comments I got so I could decide what to do with them. As you could tell from my very first post with the comic master list, I was pretty sure they were going in a bulk sale on ebay even beforehand. I just needed to make sure from people who would know better first. I made a 20k+ mistake a few years ago with a near complete fine set of erb all story pulps (before I was into pulps), so now I try to be a little more careful.

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dupont2005

dupont2005

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Posted

There's really not a premium for complete sets on eBay. I buy complete sets and large lots on there for between ten and twenty five cents per issue all the time, and that includes shipping.

 

I don't sell drek on eBay at all, because it's absolutely not worth the time, and factoring in packaging it's not even worth it, you might even lose money on the deal, and you risk a neg from some unreasonable buyer the whole time.

 

Craigslist is where I sell my drek.

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