Is Con selling easier then on-line sales?

[jsilverjanet]

Dale did a great job of breaking it down. I've done smaller shows and really it's to clear out stuff, but the work is a pain. That being said, the experience is wonderful.

 

I said this before, to the dealers who set up at shows, big cons and/or small shows,

 

 

[kimik]

Yeah, there are a whole lot of books that make more sense to buy/sell in person because of shipping costs.

 

I could never understand why people would spend the hours it takes to list 100+ $0.99 cent auctions of drek on eBay instead of just moving them at shows..........

 

 

Convenience. If this is what you do, it sounds more enticing to sit at home and list than to lug around 80 long boxes.

 

To each their own, but I find listing $1 - $2 items on eBay to be a waste of time. More expensive or hot books are fine, but otherwise it is a waste of time as the sell through rates are low and the fees are exorbitant.

 

I only take 5 - 10 boxes of $1 books to shows and look to sell through as much as I can. You buy collections that are bagged and boarded, spend an hour or two pulling the keys/worthwhile books, then just blow the rest out in $1 boxes for much less hassle. At the end of the show if you have good stuff you can sell the remainder to other dealers. I have no problem letting them take the time to grade/rebag/price them and make a profit as long as I get my initial investment back - I keep the good books and get the cash back to quickly roll into better books or new collections.

[youmechooz]

Yeah, there are a whole lot of books that make more sense to buy/sell in person because of shipping costs.

 

I could never understand why people would spend the hours it takes to list 100+ $0.99 cent auctions of drek on eBay instead of just moving them at shows..........

 

 

Convenience. If this is what you do, it sounds more enticing to sit at home and list than to lug around 80 long boxes.

 

To each their own, but I find listing $1 - $2 items on eBay to be a waste of time. More expensive or hot books are fine, but otherwise it is a waste of time as the sell through rates are low and the fees are exorbitant.

 

I only take 5 - 10 boxes of $1 books to shows and look to sell through as much as I can. You buy collections that are bagged and boarded, spend an hour or two pulling the keys/worthwhile books, then just blow the rest out in $1 boxes for much less hassle. At the end of the show if you have good stuff you can sell the remainder to other dealers. I have no problem letting them take the time to grade/rebag/price them and make a profit as long as I get my initial investment back - I keep the good books and get the cash back to quickly roll into better books or new collections.

Yeah. I understand what your saying. It can be a waste of time. I actually cant remember the last time i bought a collection that was bagged and boarded.

[Stumptown]

Well, think of it this way. At cons, you have to have everything ready. You need everything bagged and boarded and priced. You need it to be alphabetized and presentable. You need to figure out what is worthy of being in a box and what's on the wall (or on another display). Then you have to figure out what other people are selling the same thing for (and figure out if you have to adjust your price accordingly).

 

If I bring 25 long boxes to a show, I hope to come home with 21 or 22. (But at least 2 of those are dollar books). That's a lot of loading and unloading.

 

Overall, it's nice to sell a lot of stuff at one time. But it's also a lot easier not having to do all the other stuff involved in setting up at a con.

 

Lets say you sell $10,000 worth of books at a show do you think you put in more work then it would take to sell $10,000 worth of books on e-bay or the boards considering all that goes into one of those mega sales threads?

 

I don't know if this was mentioned, but $10,000 at a single show is pretty astonishing. There are a handful of dealers who make that kind of money, but the smaller shows probably don't have that sort of clientele or even the stock.

 

Ideally, I like to make eight to ten times my expenses (table/booth, van rental, food, gas, etc). Because I only do smaller one-day shows, this is very doable. I just don't have the stock to do $10,000 worth of business. (Unless somebody comes up and buys me out completely. I'd love that.)

 

I've only gotten sales numbers from a couple people at the few local cons I've attended and most of them seem to be in the $8,000 - $10,000 range. I kind of assumed that was the general sales range for most of the larger dealers at the larger cons. Sounds like my figure could be a bit high. I plan on setting up at Heroes for the first time so I guess I'll get some real world data then.

Might be tough using heroes for data. Ive heard of dudes going with high grade silver keys and high grade hot "keys" coming home disappointed from sales.

Yea - I'm amassing a nice selection of cheaper Deadpool and Harley for that show since I hear they do well down south. It's all hit or miss especially my first con so I'm just going into it as a learning experience.

 

OP, not sure of your bandwidth or time, but you might test drive a flea market or smallish show before jumping into a bigger con like Heroes as your first show. Making "rookie" mistakes before smaller audiences might be helpful before your big league debut at Heroes. Even if you can't set up at something smaller, maybe you could help out and pick up some on the job experience?

[Foolkiller]

For a number of years, I really only sold here on the boards, and occasionally on ebay. But, as the amount I was buying went up in both quality and quantity, I discovered that I needed to have another outlet, so I decided to start setting up at the Baltimore Comic Con, because it's a) close to my house and b) a great show.

 

However, setting up, as Dale described, is an enormous amount of work. Grading, pricing, and even just pulling the books is a big effort. All I do is about 10 mag boxes of higher end material and maybe 5 boxes or so of slabs. I bring maybe 3 or 4 long boxes of bargain or "other" material.

 

Generally I do most of my sales before the show opens to other dealers. And frankly, of my sales, only roughly $15k was to the public, the rest to the dealers. This was a small percentage and unfortunately, a good deal of my material and set up appeals to dealers, not collectors. I'm also selling out of a lot of top material before the show opens.

 

Instead of board sales or ebay, I've just been selling to a handful of dealers who come by 3 to 4 times a year. It's still the easiest method available. They pick up a large quantity of material, spend a big chunk, and I don't have to pack or ship a book.

 

Still, I have more material than ever, and my wife has decided to leave her job and list books for me instead full time. Sure I will be reappearing on the boards with books for sale and a real organized shipping schedule since this will now be her job.

 

All in all, my preferred method is selling to other dealers, followed by a convention set up, followed by listing on the boards and then ebay. If I was full time, selling on a website/online would be easiest, but as a part timer who buys more than he sells, in person buys are best.

[Foolkiller]

I also should mention I'm not a fair comparison because I pay someone to carry my books, drive the van and basically do all the labor. So my convention experience isn't the same as "real dealers".

[Xela]

Anyone who wants the book we mutually grade and negotiate a price on the spot.

.

 

i've never heard of this before... does it work out okay?

[Bunky Brian]

I thought this post was a joke.

 

Have you ever spent a week or two getting your stuff ready for a convention, go rent a cargo van (or buy one), load the sucker up, drive for 12 hours, spend the night in a hotel, set up all day the day before the show opens, spend 12 hours on your feet answering "Do you have any Deadpool comics?, get back to the room early enough to collapse and do it again for 2 or 3 more days, before a load out in which you sit in line for an hour or two and then load all your back into the van, and drive 4 hours to a hotel, and drive back 8 more hours the next day, only to get to unload the van again, go inside, and try to get caught up on the week you got behind while you were gone?

 

Yeah, that's much easier than sitting on your butt in front of a computer, scanning books, printing out paypal, and scheduling a pick up from the post office.

 

(thumbs u

[Gatchaman]

Doing shows, what is your percentage of profit after purchase of book, table space, employee wages, if used, gas, rentals (van and/or hotel) or flight fare, food, etc.?

[Gatchaman]

Yeah, there are a whole lot of books that make more sense to buy/sell in person because of shipping costs.

 

I could never understand why people would spend the hours it takes to list 100+ $0.99 cent auctions of drek on eBay instead of just moving them at shows..........

 

 

Convenience. If this is what you do, it sounds more enticing to sit at home and list than to lug around 80 long boxes.

 

To each their own, but I find listing $1 - $2 items on eBay to be a waste of time. More expensive or hot books are fine, but otherwise it is a waste of time as the sell through rates are low and the fees are exorbitant.

 

I only take 5 - 10 boxes of $1 books to shows and look to sell through as much as I can. You buy collections that are bagged and boarded, spend an hour or two pulling the keys/worthwhile books, then just blow the rest out in $1 boxes for much less hassle. At the end of the show if you have good stuff you can sell the remainder to other dealers. I have no problem letting them take the time to grade/rebag/price them and make a profit as long as I get my initial investment back - I keep the good books and get the cash back to quickly roll into better books or new collections.

 

I've done better at small shows in malls and schools with dollar books. I did $500 in a mall show that cost me $35 a table. These are great places for dumping books and selling cheapies.

[jmg3637]

most of my sales are stacks os books. I pull out my newly purchased Overstreet and estimate, and give a discoubt. Then we begin negotiating. Most everyone wants to negotiate and I can almost always work out a win-win transaction. I think at the kas t show I was only not able to work out a deal once or twice, and those were with other dealers who wanted say both of my Secret Wars 8 for less than half guid.

 

So I would say that my system worked well. The total organization helped quite a bit.

 

Oh BTW I am pushing 60 and while I can still schlep long boxes I am finding that the slightly shorter draw boxes have another advantage as they weigh a few pounds less

[youmechooz]

most of my sales are stacks os books. I pull out my newly purchased Overstreet and estimate, and give a discoubt. Then we begin negotiating. Most everyone wants to negotiate and I can almost always work out a win-win transaction. I think at the kas t show I was only not able to work out a deal once or twice, and those were with other dealers who wanted say both of my Secret Wars 8 for less than half guid.

 

So I would say that my system worked well. The total organization helped quite a bit.

 

Oh BTW I am pushing 60 and while I can still schlep long boxes I am finding that the slightly shorter draw boxes have another advantage as they weigh a few pounds less

Ahh, met a few dealers that did pricing like that. Give them a stack of books, takes them forever to look up prices. There's always that guy.

[thehumantorch]

most of my sales are stacks os books. I pull out my newly purchased Overstreet and estimate, and give a discoubt. Then we begin negotiating. Most everyone wants to negotiate and I can almost always work out a win-win transaction. I think at the kas t show I was only not able to work out a deal once or twice, and those were with other dealers who wanted say both of my Secret Wars 8 for less than half guid.

 

So I would say that my system worked well. The total organization helped quite a bit.

 

Oh BTW I am pushing 60 and while I can still schlep long boxes I am finding that the slightly shorter draw boxes have another advantage as they weigh a few pounds less

Ahh, met a few dealers that did pricing like that. Give them a stack of books, takes them forever to look up prices. There's always that guy.

 

While it can work it wastes a lot of time for the buyer and it's difficult for the seller if it's a busy show. Can't spend an hour pricing and negotiation one deal when there's a line to buy. I do get that a collector who's just setting up to sell at one show doesn't want price tags on all his books.

[skypinkblu]

most of my sales are stacks os books. I pull out my newly purchased Overstreet and estimate, and give a discoubt. Then we begin negotiating. Most everyone wants to negotiate and I can almost always work out a win-win transaction. I think at the kas t show I was only not able to work out a deal once or twice, and those were with other dealers who wanted say both of my Secret Wars 8 for less than half guid.

 

So I would say that my system worked well. The total organization helped quite a bit.

 

Oh BTW I am pushing 60 and while I can still schlep long boxes I am finding that the slightly shorter draw boxes have another advantage as they weigh a few pounds less

Ahh, met a few dealers that did pricing like that. Give them a stack of books, takes them forever to look up prices. There's always that guy.

 

While it can work it wastes a lot of time for the buyer and it's difficult for the seller if it's a busy show. Can't spend an hour pricing and negotiation one deal when there's a line to buy. I do get that a collector who's just setting up to sell at one show doesn't want price tags on all his books.

 

I know Jim is really good at statistics, so he's probably very fast...but as a buyer at a show, if the books are not marked,or at least in a box that says something, I leave because it's too confusing for me.

 

I don't want to have to look up each book and take out a calculator with the seller. I'd rather have an idea of what it's going to cost when I go to check out.

[Doktor]

I know Jim is really good at statistics, so he's probably very fast...but as a buyer at a show, if the books are not marked,or at least in a box that says something, I leave because it's too confusing for me.

 

I don't want to have to look up each book and take out a calculator with the seller. I'd rather have an idea of what it's going to cost when I go to check out.

 

Same here. If it's not marked, I'm not interested. I want to have a set price in front of me before I even talk to the vendor to know whether or not it's even worth me negotiating, whether or not it's worth the time, and whether or not I'm comfortable with any reasonable % of the pricetag that we might work out after a negotiation as well.

 

And for cheaper books that I wouldn't bother to negotiate on? I just want to pick it up, check the price, make a decision, buy & move on. I don't want to spend 20 minutes waiting to find out the price. I'm all business about it & I value MY time too much to waste it waiting to find out if this vendor wants $15 or 20 for Hot Book Z when I can walk to a dozen other vendors & know their price the second I get there.

 

No matter how good the books are at a vendor's booth, if I don't see prices, they've lost any potential for my business. Maybe I'm weird? I don't know.

[1Cool]

I know Jim is really good at statistics, so he's probably very fast...but as a buyer at a show, if the books are not marked,or at least in a box that says something, I leave because it's too confusing for me.

 

I don't want to have to look up each book and take out a calculator with the seller. I'd rather have an idea of what it's going to cost when I go to check out.

 

Same here. If it's not marked, I'm not interested. I want to have a set price in front of me before I even talk to the vendor to know whether or not it's even worth me negotiating, whether or not it's worth the time, and whether or not I'm comfortable with any reasonable % of the pricetag that we might work out after a negotiation as well.

 

And for cheaper books that I wouldn't bother to negotiate on? I just want to pick it up, check the price, make a decision, buy & move on. I don't want to spend 20 minutes waiting to find out the price. I'm all business about it & I value MY time too much to waste it waiting to find out if this vendor wants $15 or 20 for Hot Book Z when I can walk to a dozen other vendors & know their price the second I get there.

 

No matter how good the books are at a vendor's booth, if I don't see prices, they've lost any potential for my business. Maybe I'm weird? I don't know.

 

There is one guy at the Cons in my area that has a list that he consults for each book. I love this guy because he gets overloaded with request and then starts pulling numbers out of the air. Marvel Spotlight 32 in VF - lets go $10. Nova 1 in FN - lets go $8. This format also keeps away the other dealers since they don't have time to wait and sift thru his books so all the good deals are not gone.

[1Cool]

Well, think of it this way. At cons, you have to have everything ready. You need everything bagged and boarded and priced. You need it to be alphabetized and presentable. You need to figure out what is worthy of being in a box and what's on the wall (or on another display). Then you have to figure out what other people are selling the same thing for (and figure out if you have to adjust your price accordingly).

 

If I bring 25 long boxes to a show, I hope to come home with 21 or 22. (But at least 2 of those are dollar books). That's a lot of loading and unloading.

 

Overall, it's nice to sell a lot of stuff at one time. But it's also a lot easier not having to do all the other stuff involved in setting up at a con.

 

Lets say you sell $10,000 worth of books at a show do you think you put in more work then it would take to sell $10,000 worth of books on e-bay or the boards considering all that goes into one of those mega sales threads?

 

I don't know if this was mentioned, but $10,000 at a single show is pretty astonishing. There are a handful of dealers who make that kind of money, but the smaller shows probably don't have that sort of clientele or even the stock.

 

Ideally, I like to make eight to ten times my expenses (table/booth, van rental, food, gas, etc). Because I only do smaller one-day shows, this is very doable. I just don't have the stock to do $10,000 worth of business. (Unless somebody comes up and buys me out completely. I'd love that.)

 

I've only gotten sales numbers from a couple people at the few local cons I've attended and most of them seem to be in the $8,000 - $10,000 range. I kind of assumed that was the general sales range for most of the larger dealers at the larger cons. Sounds like my figure could be a bit high. I plan on setting up at Heroes for the first time so I guess I'll get some real world data then.

Might be tough using heroes for data. Ive heard of dudes going with high grade silver keys and high grade hot "keys" coming home disappointed from sales.

Yea - I'm amassing a nice selection of cheaper Deadpool and Harley for that show since I hear they do well down south. It's all hit or miss especially my first con so I'm just going into it as a learning experience.

 

OP, not sure of your bandwidth or time, but you might test drive a flea market or smallish show before jumping into a bigger con like Heroes as your first show. Making "rookie" mistakes before smaller audiences might be helpful before your big league debut at Heroes. Even if you can't set up at something smaller, maybe you could help out and pick up some on the job experience?

 

I was definitely worried about this. I'm going to help out at a couple booths over the next couple months and I've got a "mentor" at Heroes that will help me set up and answer any of the questions that pop up. I'm sure I will stand out as a newbie seller at Heroes but hopefully that will entice the big sharks to come grab some books. I never seem to have any issues selling books on the boards so I'm hoping that translates over to doing well at a Con.

[FineCollector]

Anyone who wants the book we mutually grade and negotiate a price on the spot.

 

I stopped dealing with Marc the Comic Hunter, typical sweatpants and bad attitude-type Montreal dealer because he used to do this. He said, leave me your stack, come back in about half an hour. He got a grade wrong because he missed a back cover stain on a book, and when I called him on it, he argued, "well, you can't always see all the defects on a book when you grade!" Haven't looked in his direction since.

[gcstomp]

I need to work smarter. Reading Foolkiller say "I pay someone to carry my books, drive the van and basically do all the labor." while also stating he does "only" 15k at the show to public, the much larger percent to dealers blows my mind.

 

I deal mostly in trades/hc's. Dozens of boxes. A box of absolutes can weigh 60 lbs. Last year at Mega I was offered a deal too good to pass, a couple of hundred DC HC Archives at $5 each, I sell those at 1/2 cover with some going online fo good coin, and I tend to move piles so I cant pass that up, right? Blew out both back tires on trip home. Following few days after show I had crazy back spasms, could barely get out of bed. I solo everything.

 

I will start to slowly try to transition to Foolkiller model as I dont want a massive coronary event at some point.

[1Cool]

I need to work smarter. Reading Foolkiller say "I pay someone to carry my books, drive the van and basically do all the labor." while also stating he does "only" 15k at the show to public, the much larger percent to dealers blows my mind.

 

I deal mostly in trades/hc's. Dozens of boxes. A box of absolutes can weigh 60 lbs. Last year at Mega I was offered a deal too good to pass, a couple of hundred DC HC Archives at $5 each, I sell those at 1/2 cover with some going online fo good coin, and I tend to move piles so I cant pass that up, right? Blew out both back tires on trip home. Following few days after show I had crazy back spasms, could barely get out of bed. I solo everything.

 

I will start to slowly try to transition to Foolkiller model as I dont want a massive coronary event at some point.

 

If you have ever seen a Foolkiller sales thread you know why he sells a ton of books to dealers. I don't know how he finds so many sweet books but its even rarer to find someone offering up those caliber of books are rock bottom prices. Its virtually impossible to get many books at his threads due to the competition but I do miss the craziness.