Q for dealers/flippers

[romanheart]

What is an acceptable margin for you to make back on a book?

[AmazingComics413]

About tree-fiddy.

[1Cool]

Depends on the price of the book. If it's a X-Men 1 that I bought for $900 I'm happy to sell it for $1,000 after fees. It may be only about 10% more then I paid but $100 is a nice profit in my book. some books I need to get double what I paid or it's just not the time and risks.

[tmcneil82]

I only buy books to flip when I see them at a good price. Typically for books under $50 in value I need it to reliably sell for double that. If it's a higher value book I only look for smaller margins, but I don't often see too many high dollar books where there is enough room left.

[AKA Rick]

I'd probably think it's a bit of "what's your time worth to you?" and the measures to secure the inventory and then sell it as well as fulfill it.

 

The margins mean nothing if it's $1.00 to double to $2.00, to gain $1 profit or if it's $10,000 to gain 10% to sell at $11,000 for a $1k profit. So, I think it's a tolerance for a mixture that boils down to the dollar amount profit for the transaction.

 

Similarly, most people won't bend over while walking down the street to pick up a penny, but others may do it for a nickle, dime, quarter or more.

 

With all of the fees from eBay (10%) and Pay Pal (3%), as well as the minimal costs of your time and packaging materials, you're looking at breaking even with roughly 15-20% over the product cost, so if you bought a book for $100, you're probably losing at $120 and after that net profits occur.

 

The great thing about collectibles is there's generally no fixed MRSP fixed value, so at times those bidding wars can garner great profits, whereas if you're selling something that's mass produced and non-collectible, you're basically looking to take a loss and recoup some of your money.

 

I'd say with that if you're ever looking at buying a book with the sole purpose of reselling it to turn a quick profit, you need to have enough cushion in the price to guarantee it's worth your times... so, if a book generally sells for $100 in the market (check completed/sold eBay auctions for the high/low and avg as well as recent sales precedent) you'd need to buy that book for $60 to probably make it worth your while.

 

Those dollar bin books are sometimes good, if you're truly turning $1 into $5, so a higher ROI but lower Net Profit revenue where the sum of the parts equals a greater whole. But, remember, many sellers speculate, horde inventory they can't move and end up stock piling junk taking up storage space, so be choosy in how you approach the penny-stocks of comic reselling.

[oldmilwaukee6er]

At least 3x

1 for my cost

1 for overhead

1 for profit

 

"If you can't sell for 3x what you buy, then you are overpaying" (after Harry Rinker)

[Junkdrawer]

What is an acceptable margin for you to make back on a book?

Seriously it depends on what you paid for it. Each book obtained can accumulate addl' costs such as pressing and regrading shipping and commissions. I find that there is success in numbers. Some books I do quite well on, some I break even and more often than not I sell/auction at a loss. No a big deal if your wins out number your losses.

[lizards2]

I'd say minus 25% is about average.

[gaz973]

At least 3x

1 for my cost

1 for overhead

1 for profit

 

"If you can't sell for 3x what you buy, then you are overpaying" (after Harry Rinker)

 

If you can sell big key books for three times what you paid for them then could you let me know your secret please?

[Arkham]

I'd say minus 25% is about average.

 

#NailedIt

[makeminemego]

Bigger books-smaller margin

Smaller books ($20-$300) maybe @40%

 

Then again, if I selling books to fund a steal of a purchase, I'll not worry so much about the margin on the books I'm selling to leverage the cash for book I'm getting a great deal on.

[the blob]

like everyone else here, it depends on the book. i look at it in terms of how much per hour i can make with risk factored in. so that time is listing, packing, etc. time spent buying, not so much. and obviously acquisition costs. i don't factor in the space in my house storing these things as part of the cost, although maybe i should. i have no other purpose for that space right now anyway, but I could actually rent it out for about $900+ a month if i was willing to have a stranger live in my house, which i am not. essentially that lost rental income on that space wipes out anything i make selling those comics in a given month as a rarely top $1K.

 

while my real job pays more than $25/hr, i don't make overtime or anything like that, so if i can comfortably make $25+ per hour in profits on a stack of books in my spare time at home during times when i would just be watching the knicks losing, the yankees getting my hopes up for nothing or bad reality TV i am pretty happy with that (remember, i live in NYC, so that's almost a poverty level wage here...fast food workers will be making $15/hr in a year or two under some new law).

 

of course, i tend to sell the ones that are going to make me more profit, leaving more of the drek behind, but i suspect it all tends to even out. eventually i sell or give away the drek and those will be lower profit transactions.

 

 

[vaillant]

Sorry blob, but how can you calculate it in terms of "how much per hour I can make"? This puzzles me…

[1Cool]

Sorry blob, but how can you calculate it in terms of "how much per hour I can make"? This puzzles me…

 

Not an exact calculation but you can get pretty close. If you estimate it take 5 minutes to grade and scan a book. Another 3 minutes to post the book on E-Bay. Another 5 minutes to mail the package out. Buying books is pretty fun most of the time but lets say it takes 5 minutes to buy a single book (averaged out over a buying opportunity). So that 1 book took 18 minutes to sell. If he wants to average $25 an hour he need to have a profit of $7 to $8 per book to meet that goal.

 

Very rough estimates since he may need to spend time filling in a spreadsheet, filling in extra tax forms at the end of the year, dropping packages off at the post office but you get the idea.

[revat]

Sorry blob, but how can you calculate it in terms of "how much per hour I can make"? This puzzles me

 

Not an exact calculation but you can get pretty close. If you estimate it take 5 minutes to grade and scan a book. Another 3 minutes to post the book on E-Bay. Another 5 minutes to mail the package out. Buying books is pretty fun most of the time but lets say it takes 5 minutes to buy a single book (averaged out over a buying opportunity). So that 1 book took 18 minutes to sell. If he wants to average $25 an hour he need to have a profit of $7 to $8 per book to meet that goal.

 

Very rough estimates since he may need to spend time filling in a spreadsheet, filling in extra tax forms at the end of the year, dropping packages off at the post office but you get the idea.

 

but IF you're at the LCS or a yard sale anyways buying other stuff and you see something like, and something else you think you can sell for profit, or something you can read then sell, the MARGINAL extra time of buying or MARGINAL VALUE you get from selling after you've gotten value from reading and enjoying might also be worth something. ALso, if you're already having a HUGE SALES THREAD like some people who shall remain nameless, the MARGINAL additional time/cost of selling a single given item isn't too high, though obviously it adds up pretty quick.

[vaillant]

Sorry blob, but how can you calculate it in terms of "how much per hour I can make"? This puzzles me…

 

Not an exact calculation but you can get pretty close. If you estimate it take 5 minutes to grade and scan a book. Another 3 minutes to post the book on E-Bay. Another 5 minutes to mail the package out. Buying books is pretty fun most of the time but lets say it takes 5 minutes to buy a single book (averaged out over a buying opportunity). So that 1 book took 18 minutes to sell. If he wants to average $25 an hour he need to have a profit of $7 to $8 per book to meet that goal.

 

Very rough estimates since he may need to spend time filling in a spreadsheet, filling in extra tax forms at the end of the year, dropping packages off at the post office but you get the idea.

I have never sold on eBay, but I figure it would take more than a few minutes to writer a proper description, unless they are cheap books you sell in batches.

It also takes me a lot more than five minutes to prepare a package, but again I am not a seller and not equipped with fitting supplies and an adequate space to prepare things.

[shadroch]

Time held is a factor.

With new stock, if I can flip it for 25% profit, all is well an good.

After nintey days, I either have move the stock cheaper to recoup my investment or raise prices to justify my investment. I generally choose to sell at liquidation prices to keep my cash flow moving.

[Columbia Comics]

Time held is a factor.

With new stock, if I can flip it for 25% profit, all is well an good.

After nintey days, I either have move the stock cheaper to recoup my investment or raise prices to justify my investment. I generally choose to sell at liquidation prices to keep my cash flow moving.

 

I choose the opposite

[shadroch]

Time held is a factor.

With new stock, if I can flip it for 25% profit, all is well an good.

After nintey days, I either have move the stock cheaper to recoup my investment or raise prices to justify my investment. I generally choose to sell at liquidation prices to keep my cash flow moving.

 

I choose the opposite

 

 

Lots of people do. It's how some back issue sections become museums, rather than revenue makers. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

[the blob]

Sorry blob, but how can you calculate it in terms of "how much per hour I can make"? This puzzles me…

 

I have a degree in economics. I do a little bit of regression analysis and there you have it.