The Story of My GLORIOUS 9/21/15 Copper/Modern Sale.

[revat]

A chronicle of the steps involved with having a huge sale on the CGC Boards

 

I'm having a huge alphabetized copper/modern sale starting on the boards starting 9/21/15, and running about a week.

 

Available will be the vast majority of my collection, about 2.5 long boxes and 30-50 slabs, somewhere between 600-800 comics I think?

 

This journal will be me cataloguing my steps and thoughts along the way.

 

Before I get to the actual journaling, here is a list of topics I think I'll address, although there may be more and some of the topics might end up being discussed in parts, and they'll be somewhat chronological.

 

1. Selecting a date(s) for the sale.

2. Organizing your comics.

3. Taking pictures of or scanning comics. Then uploading them.

4. Grading comics.

5. Pricing comics.

6. The actual running of the sale.

7. Organizing the sold comics.

8. Marketing (interspersed throughout)

 

See more journals by Revat

[revat]

before the 1st real entry, another note: This journal is obviously meant also to serve as some type of advertisement for the sale, but I'll do my best to keep from laying it on too thick. Whenever possible, I'm going to focus on the processes. If the pictures or descriptions make you want to stop by my sales thread when the times comes..... so be it.

[revat]

Journal 1: Select a Date

 

The first and most key thing is obviously your own availability. For 800 books, the sorting, pictures, pricing, posting, shipping can take a lot of time. So that means that you need a stretch of time where you're more likely to have uninterrupted availability, for at least the duration of the actual sale. I wanted to give myself about a week.

 

Now I'm recently married, so I love spending nearly all my free time with my wife. So if possible, I wanted to choose a time when my wife is likely to be occupied. It turns out that the week I chose she's going to a musical and a wedding (she's a bridesmaid). Add in Monday/Wed Yoga and I've got 3 (2hrs per night at least) weekdays and 1 full Saturday available (that you know of way ahead of time). Maybe slip in a bit of selling on my lunch break and maybe 1 hour per on the other nights, and that week is about the best chance I've got and a contiguous situation.

 

Additional considerations: You want to give yourself enough to time to prep ahead of time with the sorting and pics and price research before the actual sale. This to me is the less fun part, I'm giving myself about a month to do it whenever I have pockets of free time. The biggest issue here is space. We don't have a big house, so laying out all the books while alphabetizing and grading takes up a lot of space, which believe or not isn't appreciated by all members of the household.

 

Other Considerations: I think generally the summer is slow for internet comic sales, as is the period between THanksgiving and Christmas, so I was hoping to avoid those if possible (it is).

 

 

[n2wdw]

I'm looking forward to reading your journal. I'm fascinated reading about things like this. Something I'm curious about is why you've decided to sell your collection. Have your collecting interests changed?

[revat]

I'm looking forward to reading your journal. I'm fascinated reading about things like this. Something I'm curious about is why you've decided to sell your collection. Have your collecting interests changed?

 

Thanks for reading

 

It's pretty common to buy a few to pay for a few when I get comics. its been adding up and as I said above, our space, even for 2.5 long boxes, is somewhat limited. And I don't want the size of the sale to become unmanageable. Also, I've got a ton of walking dead which will probably sell better w two walking dead shows on the air

 

 

 

Next entry on Monday: organizing

[revat]

Journal 2: The Big Sort....

 

My goal is to make my sale alphabetical. This makes it easier for me to find and track things, and hopefully easier for my potential customers to anticipate things coming up or search for things they might be looking for. The only issue is that 600-800 books is a lot to sort, and takes up a lot of space do it. Its not the most complicated process in history... but here's what I did.

 

1. Pick out a few days when we don't have company coming over.

2. Get wife's approval to occupy dining table for a few days.

3. Clear off dining table, cover it with a clean table cloth or bedsheet (if you don't have table cloths). If your dining table isn't big enough, feel free to use the ground (if your back can handle it), or a bed, if its firm enough and big enough.

4. Turn on air condition/fans.

5. Turn on baseball game (anything but the Red Sox, you don't want to vomit on your comics).

6. Move all boxes of comics from your garage/man cave/closet to the dining table area.

7. Make 'letter' stacks of all your comics on the table. One stack for 'A', one for 'B', etc. Sorry I should have taken pictures, but its pretty self explanatory.

8. At the same time, filter out some comics that might not be worth selling which will be given out as freebies, and also filter out some comics you want to keep for whatever reason.

9. At the end of sorting, you should have 26ish stacks, some 'letter stacks' can obviously be combined with other stacks, like 'V' or 'K', but some letter stacks need to be split apart like 'A', 'B', and 'S' for me.

10. Now the hard part, sort all of your 'letter stacks' alphabetically and numerically.

 

This entire process took me approximately the length of one American League baseball game.

 

[revat]

Marketing SubJournal:

 

This journal is sort of a marketing tool.

 

Also, I've re-written my sig line to be an advert.

 

Have no idea if these help or hurt anything, but I don't think its too big of a deal either way.

 

Of course, I'll post an announcement in the sales forum a day or so before the sale begins....

 

Next Journal(s): Pictures and grading

[revat]

Journal 3 Part 1: Pictures

 

 

At this point, all my comics are sorted alphabetically.

 

 

I don't have scanner. So I take pictures on my iphone which I then crop/rotate, then download to computer, then upload to photobucket. This style has occasionally caused me to lose the edits I've done, which is seriously frustrating since I hate editing in photobucket as its slow and takes things out of order.

 

Its been suggested that I should upload directly from my iphone via app. I have some concerns that the pictures will stay in order or that I can only upload so many at a time, but I will try it soon.

 

I like to take pictures in batches like A-C or X-Z and upload those to separate photobucket folders so I can stay organized easier without having to take or upload too many pics at once.

 

I don't want to take millions of pics or make millions of posts, so whenever possible I like to group a series of comics together, or put the multiples in the same picture if applicable. I also tend to try to give a 'group' discount if you buy the 'run' or the multiples. sometimes I lay them out, sometimes I fan depending on how much space I have or the differences in grades. I generally take them out of the bags to photo, but sometimes leave them in if there's no price tag and I already know the grade.

 

 

I've already taken pics of A-C and G-I. I probably won't get to J-M til after Labor Day.

 

 

Thanks for coming by, I do the grading at the same time as taking the pics, so I'll start my grading journal entry this week at some point.

[revat]

Journal 4: Grading Part 1

 

This is the toughest part. The two most important things are accuracy and not damaging your comic in the process of checking it (or photographing it).

 

1. Wash you hands, then dry them thoroughly. Some people wear gloves. I generally don't, though I might if something was really delicate or high value. For moderns, generally not.

 

2. Take the comic out and look at it. Turn it over, look at the back. For my copper/moderns, I rarely do a page check. I briefly look inside to make sure no pages are folded or obviously marked, but most of my grading is done on the covers.

 

3. I'm pretty accurate and a bit conservative with the NM's (and surrounding grades) and such, so I generally don't give NM/MT grades, I stick with NM+ or higher just to be safe. Where I have the most trouble is the mid grades, VG to Fn. But I've gotten better by looking at the PGM thread. In most cases unless its a super key the price will be about right saying its a 'reader'. I'll occasionally mention if something is pressable, but only if I'm SURE there will be improvement. I generally try to grade using a mix of OSPG and what I THINK CGC does.

 

4. I understand there are some who don't apply grades to their comics for sale. Its up to them of course, but I want people to think they're getting a reasonable comic for the price and grade, I think that makes for more sales (and just makes more sense). I can't understand why someone wouldn't want that, or why you wouldn't want potential customers to know how you got your price. Of course you might get the occasional troublesome buyer, but if its happening soooo much that it bothers you, maybe it would make sense to learn to grade more to the tastes of your customer base. I'm always open to questions about grading or happy to give more pics.

 

5. For these larger sales, I've thought about making a database of comics and grades, but I'm actually just writing the grades in sharpie on the outsides of the bags, usually on the tape or price tag so I can see it better. When I actually do the selling, everything is ordered so I'm actually looking at the comic as post it, so I can inspect it quickly again against the grade written on the bag.

 

 

Note that grading is generally done at the same time as photographing, so I don't have to keep taking the comics in and out of the bags, as that's very tiring.

 

 

 

[revat]

Journal 5: More Pictures and Grading.

 

I've finished about half of the pictures and uploading and grading A-P. S and X are huge letters. So far I've been having a ton of trouble taking pics and formatting the pictures on my phone, then keeping the formatting once the pics are in photobucket. I could edit in photobucket, but everything is in order and editing messes up the order for some reason. I generally just take pictures of the front, unless the grade of the back is vastly different or matters for some other reason.

 

As for grading, I've been generally pleased with the grades of my comics, many of which I haven't looked at in years. I have some keys which I thought might be midgrade but are generally VF or better for the most part. I'm not a professional grader, but I use the grades to help me price the comics. And I've not had any real issues about grading in my sales except once when I mixed up low grade identical comics, one with water damage, and one without.

 

Side note: Another tough part has been filtering out which comics I want to keep and which I might want to give away as freebies (not worth the time to list). Some I know I can't sell for value so I feel like keeping them, but I really do need the space....

 

 

[revat]

Journal 6: Sale begins tonight!

 

Couldn't quite finish my pics, got all the way through R. Still have a lot in W and X though. BUT I will start the sale tonight promptly at 9pm eastern, probably watch the game while selling.

 

I'm very excited to make some space and clean up the mess of comics in my house.

 

Thanks for reading the journal.

 

Selling strategy:

I will post 1 book per post, with sometimes more if its a set or I have multiples. I will post a my estimated grade, and a picture, and will either provide pics or commentary of any additional defects. These will be posted with the pics.

I will post a price in the same post as the pic.

When claimed, I will try to promptly update my original posts as 'sold' if I can get to a computer.

 

Pricing Strategy: Usually a mix of OSPG, ebay sold prices, ebay available prices, what I've got into the book, and possibly Milehigh or MCS if I need a bit of additional guidance. Note that I generally (not always) try to get under these prices if possible. I don't have an exact formula or anything, but I'm looking to move most items. Hopefully once people buy a few, they'll keep buying more since they're paying for shipping anyways.

 

Everyday, I'll post at least 1 summary (probably more) to update the thread on what is still available. the summary will have hyperlinks to each page.

 

[revat]

Journal 7: The sale has begun.

 

The sale has begun, feel free to look at the sale in my sig line to check it out. But its always a surprise to see what goes first, and what stays. There's plenty of keys, which you're happy to sell, but you really hope people buy some of the 'lesser keys' alongside the more obvious 'keys'. It's going ok so, far but for some reason Batman sales appear to be lagging, considering I feel like Batman New 52 sells VERY strongly on Ebay and at conventions, I would think people want to replenish their stock or grab some at reasonable prices.

 

The front part of the sale is a little light in terms of keys and value and volume, things really start getting serious in the second half of the alphabet. I'm looking forward to getting there though.