Comic Con sellers seem to be in the wrong business. SMH

[Doktor]

 

Interesting analysis. With tons of sales data instantly at people's fingertips nowadays, the days of dealers inflating the prices of books over market value are pretty much over. As a semi-regular con goer, I expect to pay prices that are less than I can find on eBay. The advantages to the buyer are obvious, but the seller doesn't have to pay eBay fees and the books don't have to survive the USPS torture chamber before getting into the hands of the buyer. Also, cash transactions incur no Paypal or CC fees.

 

I'd say that is much more of an advantage to the buyer.

 

Not having to worry if the seller will pack the book correctly and if it will arrive to my house with some freshly incurred spine ticks is damn near priceless, to me.

 

 

 

 

Why would it be a boon to the buyer? If it shows up damaged, buyers can just return it as INAD & it becomes the seller's problem to sort out with USPS since they (likely) packed it poorly or USPS mishandled it. The only thing that the buyer is out is the time they waited for the book to be delivered & a little disappointment. Because there's always another book with very rare exceptions.

 

As long as you pack a book well you will have no issues 99 out of 100 times so other then the time necessary to pack the books all the shipping cost is incurred by the buyer. I'd think the lack of wait time is a benefit to the buyer but I'd say the ability to hand grade a book is the number one reason to buy books at a Con.

 

The point I was making is that eliminating shipping damage risks isn't any sort of boon to the buyers. It's a boon to sellers by not having to worry about whether their packaging is good enough (for non-pro or new sellers) or whether the USPS is going to play Frisbee with their book or otherwise risk a return for whatever other reason. Buyers are covered when they're buying online. They lose that protection when buying in-person. They just gotta say "not as described" because they didn't bother to read the description & ebay makes you accept the return. They don't have the same protection from their own stupidity buying at a convention.

 

As for the rest of your argument, while it's accurate it also entire disregards the point I made in my other posts that the admission fee to the con is the premium buyers pay to hand-grade books themselves.

 

 

I do agree the price of admission (and travel cost) is the price you pay to get in the door but that is all the money and time you are on the hook for. A dealer has to pony up thousands of dollars and several days to set up at the Con you spent $5 and 4 hours to attend. The dealers time and expenses are of course none of your concern any more then you should worry about how much time it takes Wal-Mart to restock their shelves. But when people say prices are so high at certain Cons you can at least understand why a dealer can't give away books at 20% less then E-Bay prices or maybe even try to get a bit more then the going rates to make up for all the expenses. Of course its always up to you if you buy or not.

 

That does bring up a point. Isn't a comic con kind of like having 15 Ford dealers all set up new car displays under one roof? There may be 500 buyers walking thru the door but it's definitely not a good format to sell cars unless you have some inside discounts that make your prices more attractive or you are selling the hot color that no one else can get. A ton of people all trying to sell pretty much the exact same product doesn't seem to work anywhere unless you are at a Mexico flea market.

 

On the issue of dealer costs to set up vs buyer costs to attend a con, let's call it a wash. Dealers pay a premium to be get in the same room with a bunch of buyers with cash to spend & not have to hope they find his ebay store & want some of whatever part of their inventory they deign to actually list. Buyers pay a premium to get instant gratification & hand-inspect books. Both parties get to not deal with paypal or ebay or USPS. So now we're just looking at price. Not worrying about who should be compensated monetarily via a premium or a discount for the same product because of some sort of convenience.

 

I guess the question the dealer has to ask himself is this: is 80-90% of FMV NOW worth 100% of FMV MAYBE a few months from now? How do you value inventory turnover? And do you have enough margin on your prices that sales volume can easily make up for leaving that extra 10% on the table that you might or might not get anytime soon?

 

And yes, you're exactly correct on your Ford dealer comparison. I don't know how much sense it makes because you're all competing with every other ford dealer for a portion of the same set number of dollars in the room. And there's a lot of ways to compete.

[deathtohemingway]

Another thing that people seem to overlook in the whole Con vs eBay thing, is effort.

 

I think most people will agree (as someone has pointed out already) that most of eBay has turned into a Buy It Now game. List it higher, take best offers, sell the book. And that is all well and good.

 

But it is not directly comparable to setting up at a Con.

 

To simply say that people should not get 20% off an eBay price, because eBay fees are only 10%, is leaving out a large part of the math. The larger discount would also cover your scanning / photgraphing / listing time. Your answering questions time. Your fielding offers time. Your packing supplies cost. Your packing supplies time. And most importantly, your shipping across the country and rolling the dice on damage or returns time.

 

On a $100 book, that extra $10 seems a fair trade off for that, especially if you are counting your own personal time as billable. Which, if you are treating it like a business, you most definitely should be.

 

And yes, you are paying to set up at the con. But if you have desirable items, priced desirably, then they will sell. And the cost of the con should be spread evenly across those sold items. And at the end of they day, it will all be Ok.

 

What makes it not Ok, is pricing things in such a way that the cost of the Con is entirely borne by a handful of items. Then it does not matter what you sold the items for, since your profit is effectively reduced to zero, meaning you would have been no worse off staying home, and tossing those books out the window.

 

There is also another thing that, in business, I have found to be most pertinent to collectibles businesses. That is, a love of the item itself. I doubt that people who sell, let's say, lawn ornaments, have an emotional attachment to lawn ornaments. Maybe some do. But in the comic selling business, there is generally so much attachment, that objectivity is difficult. And because of a large portion of us crowing about the great deals we get somewhere, sometime, there is an added fear of leaving money on the table.

 

The fact is, a book that you COULD get $85 for on eBay, in theory, is worth less than a book that you CAN get $75 for in person at a con, right now. One is a negative asset, and one is not.

 

If your margins are such that the difference in those 2 numbers is a deal breaker, then there is an issue earlier in the chain of events.

 

I know it is not pleasant to sell something for an amount less than you feel you could have sold it for in a different setting. But I have seen many comic book dealers go out of business while screaming that they have so many great comics, that no one ever got around to buying.

 

Just my opinion.

[KPR Comics]

Agree 100%, other than w/r/t your board name. What's wrong w/Ernest?

[STORMSHADOW_80]

Also the benefit of selling at a con is if your prices are reasonable you can sell a lot of books really fast. Use that money to buy more stock. Rinse, repeat. How long would it take to get those sales on ebay?

[lemonman5]

Also the benefit of selling at a con is if your prices are reasonable you can sell a lot of books really fast. Use that money to buy more stock. Rinse, repeat. How long would it take to get those sales on ebay?

 

+1

 

This especially works if you're at a show where there is no one else with reasonably priced books. If most of the other dealers at the show are asking double FMV and you're priced at 10% below eBay then you'll make out pretty nicely.

[1Cool]

Another thing that people seem to overlook in the whole Con vs eBay thing, is effort.

 

I think most people will agree (as someone has pointed out already) that most of eBay has turned into a Buy It Now game. List it higher, take best offers, sell the book. And that is all well and good.

 

But it is not directly comparable to setting up at a Con.

 

To simply say that people should not get 20% off an eBay price, because eBay fees are only 10%, is leaving out a large part of the math. The larger discount would also cover your scanning / photgraphing / listing time. Your answering questions time. Your fielding offers time. Your packing supplies cost. Your packing supplies time. And most importantly, your shipping across the country and rolling the dice on damage or returns time.

 

On a $100 book, that extra $10 seems a fair trade off for that, especially if you are counting your own personal time as billable. Which, if you are treating it like a business, you most definitely should be.

 

And yes, you are paying to set up at the con. But if you have desirable items, priced desirably, then they will sell. And the cost of the con should be spread evenly across those sold items. And at the end of they day, it will all be Ok.

 

What makes it not Ok, is pricing things in such a way that the cost of the Con is entirely borne by a handful of items. Then it does not matter what you sold the items for, since your profit is effectively reduced to zero, meaning you would have been no worse off staying home, and tossing those books out the window.

 

There is also another thing that, in business, I have found to be most pertinent to collectibles businesses. That is, a love of the item itself. I doubt that people who sell, let's say, lawn ornaments, have an emotional attachment to lawn ornaments. Maybe some do. But in the comic selling business, there is generally so much attachment, that objectivity is difficult. And because of a large portion of us crowing about the great deals we get somewhere, sometime, there is an added fear of leaving money on the table.

 

The fact is, a book that you COULD get $85 for on eBay, in theory, is worth less than a book that you CAN get $75 for in person at a con, right now. One is a negative asset, and one is not.

 

If your margins are such that the difference in those 2 numbers is a deal breaker, then there is an issue earlier in the chain of events.

 

I know it is not pleasant to sell something for an amount less than you feel you could have sold it for in a different setting. But I have seen many comic book dealers go out of business while screaming that they have so many great comics, that no one ever got around to buying.

 

Just my opinion.

 

I love the "everyone has a different vantage point" discussion we have going on here. Does anyone else feel the huge amount of books available at any Con makes most buyers feel entitled to huge deals. It use to be "give me a book at 25% off guide and I'm happy" to "why would I pay over E-Bay prices" to now "better be 20% under E-Bay or I walk". I can understand that kind of attitude if you are talking about bronze Strange Tales or Western books but it seems to be spreading into everything other then the elite key books. I guess when supply exceeds demand the buyer is king.

 

Selling on E-Bay has the added benefit of being able to go on with your life and monitoring sales as the seller comes to you. Con sales feel more rushed and always to the buyers benefit (unless you get a guy who comes into your booth looking for a large run of high grade Bronze X-Men no matter what the cost). When POPs and cutie print people are making 5K while all but the high end dealers competing for the left overs you have to question why it makes sense to set up at Cons at all.

[1Cool]

Also the benefit of selling at a con is if your prices are reasonable you can sell a lot of books really fast. Use that money to buy more stock. Rinse, repeat. How long would it take to get those sales on ebay?

 

Sounds so easy. I went to a Con on Saturday with $2,000 in my pocket and walked out with $1,600 left over. If you have a way to talk down dealers who have desirable books priced at 2X FMV to a price you can sell them for 10% under FMV then you are better then me. I've gotten pretty lucky and have bought 2 pretty large collections from non dealers over the last year but trying to buy stock at wholesale is not something I have mastered yet. And for the record I thru out some pretty nice bulk deals with my $2,000 and not a nibble at wholesale prices.

[deathtohemingway]

Another thing that people seem to overlook in the whole Con vs eBay thing, is effort.

 

I think most people will agree (as someone has pointed out already) that most of eBay has turned into a Buy It Now game. List it higher, take best offers, sell the book. And that is all well and good.

 

But it is not directly comparable to setting up at a Con.

 

To simply say that people should not get 20% off an eBay price, because eBay fees are only 10%, is leaving out a large part of the math. The larger discount would also cover your scanning / photgraphing / listing time. Your answering questions time. Your fielding offers time. Your packing supplies cost. Your packing supplies time. And most importantly, your shipping across the country and rolling the dice on damage or returns time.

 

On a $100 book, that extra $10 seems a fair trade off for that, especially if you are counting your own personal time as billable. Which, if you are treating it like a business, you most definitely should be.

 

And yes, you are paying to set up at the con. But if you have desirable items, priced desirably, then they will sell. And the cost of the con should be spread evenly across those sold items. And at the end of they day, it will all be Ok.

 

What makes it not Ok, is pricing things in such a way that the cost of the Con is entirely borne by a handful of items. Then it does not matter what you sold the items for, since your profit is effectively reduced to zero, meaning you would have been no worse off staying home, and tossing those books out the window.

 

There is also another thing that, in business, I have found to be most pertinent to collectibles businesses. That is, a love of the item itself. I doubt that people who sell, let's say, lawn ornaments, have an emotional attachment to lawn ornaments. Maybe some do. But in the comic selling business, there is generally so much attachment, that objectivity is difficult. And because of a large portion of us crowing about the great deals we get somewhere, sometime, there is an added fear of leaving money on the table.

 

The fact is, a book that you COULD get $85 for on eBay, in theory, is worth less than a book that you CAN get $75 for in person at a con, right now. One is a negative asset, and one is not.

 

If your margins are such that the difference in those 2 numbers is a deal breaker, then there is an issue earlier in the chain of events.

 

I know it is not pleasant to sell something for an amount less than you feel you could have sold it for in a different setting. But I have seen many comic book dealers go out of business while screaming that they have so many great comics, that no one ever got around to buying.

 

Just my opinion.

 

I love the "everyone has a different vantage point" discussion we have going on here. Does anyone else feel the huge amount of books available at any Con makes most buyers feel entitled to huge deals. It use to be "give me a book at 25% off guide and I'm happy" to "why would I pay over E-Bay prices" to now "better be 20% under E-Bay or I walk". I can understand that kind of attitude if you are talking about bronze Strange Tales or Western books but it seems to be spreading into everything other then the elite key books. I guess when supply exceeds demand the buyer is king.

 

Selling on E-Bay has the added benefit of being able to go on with your life and monitoring sales as the seller comes to you. Con sales feel more rushed and always to the buyers benefit (unless you get a guy who comes into your booth looking for a large run of high grade Bronze X-Men no matter what the cost). When POPs and cutie print people are making 5K while all but the high end dealers competing for the left overs you have to question why it makes sense to set up at Cons at all.

 

 

Another important point is that the Seller at a Con is not the captive audience.

Why is it any different saying No to a person demanding what you feel is an unreasonable discount, than it is clicking No to someone with a Low Ball Best Offer on eBay?

 

Neither is bad customer service, in and of themselves.

 

It all comes back to what the other dealers have. If we are dealing with Hot Modern Book A, and there are 40 copies of Hot Modern Book A floating around a sealed environment, then whoever does decide to budge is going to make the sale. That is just supply and demand.

 

But if you have items that are some combination of A. Exceptional for quality reasons B. Exceptional for scarcity C. Exceptional for pricing .... then you have a leg up.

 

And just like people who make Low Ball offers on eBay, they often come back with a reasonable offer when refused. If your stock is what your stock needs to be, for the particular Con you are attending, all of this takes care of itself.

[revat]

Another thing that people seem to overlook in the whole Con vs eBay thing, is effort.

 

I think most people will agree (as someone has pointed out already) that most of eBay has turned into a Buy It Now game. List it higher, take best offers, sell the book. And that is all well and good.

 

But it is not directly comparable to setting up at a Con.

 

To simply say that people should not get 20% off an eBay price, because eBay fees are only 10%, is leaving out a large part of the math. The larger discount would also cover your scanning / photgraphing / listing time. Your answering questions time. Your fielding offers time. Your packing supplies cost. Your packing supplies time. And most importantly, your shipping across the country and rolling the dice on damage or returns time.

 

On a $100 book, that extra $10 seems a fair trade off for that, especially if you are counting your own personal time as billable. Which, if you are treating it like a business, you most definitely should be.

 

And yes, you are paying to set up at the con. But if you have desirable items, priced desirably, then they will sell. And the cost of the con should be spread evenly across those sold items. And at the end of they day, it will all be Ok.

 

What makes it not Ok, is pricing things in such a way that the cost of the Con is entirely borne by a handful of items. Then it does not matter what you sold the items for, since your profit is effectively reduced to zero, meaning you would have been no worse off staying home, and tossing those books out the window.

 

There is also another thing that, in business, I have found to be most pertinent to collectibles businesses. That is, a love of the item itself. I doubt that people who sell, let's say, lawn ornaments, have an emotional attachment to lawn ornaments. Maybe some do. But in the comic selling business, there is generally so much attachment, that objectivity is difficult. And because of a large portion of us crowing about the great deals we get somewhere, sometime, there is an added fear of leaving money on the table.

 

The fact is, a book that you COULD get $85 for on eBay, in theory, is worth less than a book that you CAN get $75 for in person at a con, right now. One is a negative asset, and one is not.

 

If your margins are such that the difference in those 2 numbers is a deal breaker, then there is an issue earlier in the chain of events.

 

I know it is not pleasant to sell something for an amount less than you feel you could have sold it for in a different setting. But I have seen many comic book dealers go out of business while screaming that they have so many great comics, that no one ever got around to buying.

 

Just my opinion.

 

I love the "everyone has a different vantage point" discussion we have going on here. Does anyone else feel the huge amount of books available at any Con makes most buyers feel entitled to huge deals. It use to be "give me a book at 25% off guide and I'm happy" to "why would I pay over E-Bay prices" to now "better be 20% under E-Bay or I walk". I can understand that kind of attitude if you are talking about bronze Strange Tales or Western books but it seems to be spreading into everything other then the elite key books. I guess when supply exceeds demand the buyer is king.

 

Selling on E-Bay has the added benefit of being able to go on with your life and monitoring sales as the seller comes to you. Con sales feel more rushed and always to the buyers benefit (unless you get a guy who comes into your booth looking for a large run of high grade Bronze X-Men no matter what the cost). When POPs and cutie print people are making 5K while all but the high end dealers competing for the left overs you have to question why it makes sense to set up at Cons at all.

 

I have the same issue with season tickets for football, it barely makes any sense to go to every game. Its fun, but the added costs and time it takes to get there and back, pay for parking, food, clothing, beer, waiting in lines, crowded/smelly bathrooms, transportation costs, potential to be be hot/cold/sick when you've paid more for your tickets this season than the cost of a brand new awesome tv....especially since your seats won't provide a great view compared to a big screen hi def tv....of course if your team wins, its ALL worth it....

 

I can't believe anyone goes to more than one game a year...or maybe my team just doesn't win enough.

[1Cool]

Another thing that people seem to overlook in the whole Con vs eBay thing, is effort.

 

I think most people will agree (as someone has pointed out already) that most of eBay has turned into a Buy It Now game. List it higher, take best offers, sell the book. And that is all well and good.

 

But it is not directly comparable to setting up at a Con.

 

To simply say that people should not get 20% off an eBay price, because eBay fees are only 10%, is leaving out a large part of the math. The larger discount would also cover your scanning / photgraphing / listing time. Your answering questions time. Your fielding offers time. Your packing supplies cost. Your packing supplies time. And most importantly, your shipping across the country and rolling the dice on damage or returns time.

 

On a $100 book, that extra $10 seems a fair trade off for that, especially if you are counting your own personal time as billable. Which, if you are treating it like a business, you most definitely should be.

 

And yes, you are paying to set up at the con. But if you have desirable items, priced desirably, then they will sell. And the cost of the con should be spread evenly across those sold items. And at the end of they day, it will all be Ok.

 

What makes it not Ok, is pricing things in such a way that the cost of the Con is entirely borne by a handful of items. Then it does not matter what you sold the items for, since your profit is effectively reduced to zero, meaning you would have been no worse off staying home, and tossing those books out the window.

 

There is also another thing that, in business, I have found to be most pertinent to collectibles businesses. That is, a love of the item itself. I doubt that people who sell, let's say, lawn ornaments, have an emotional attachment to lawn ornaments. Maybe some do. But in the comic selling business, there is generally so much attachment, that objectivity is difficult. And because of a large portion of us crowing about the great deals we get somewhere, sometime, there is an added fear of leaving money on the table.

 

The fact is, a book that you COULD get $85 for on eBay, in theory, is worth less than a book that you CAN get $75 for in person at a con, right now. One is a negative asset, and one is not.

 

If your margins are such that the difference in those 2 numbers is a deal breaker, then there is an issue earlier in the chain of events.

 

I know it is not pleasant to sell something for an amount less than you feel you could have sold it for in a different setting. But I have seen many comic book dealers go out of business while screaming that they have so many great comics, that no one ever got around to buying.

 

Just my opinion.

 

I love the "everyone has a different vantage point" discussion we have going on here. Does anyone else feel the huge amount of books available at any Con makes most buyers feel entitled to huge deals. It use to be "give me a book at 25% off guide and I'm happy" to "why would I pay over E-Bay prices" to now "better be 20% under E-Bay or I walk". I can understand that kind of attitude if you are talking about bronze Strange Tales or Western books but it seems to be spreading into everything other then the elite key books. I guess when supply exceeds demand the buyer is king.

 

Selling on E-Bay has the added benefit of being able to go on with your life and monitoring sales as the seller comes to you. Con sales feel more rushed and always to the buyers benefit (unless you get a guy who comes into your booth looking for a large run of high grade Bronze X-Men no matter what the cost). When POPs and cutie print people are making 5K while all but the high end dealers competing for the left overs you have to question why it makes sense to set up at Cons at all.

 

 

Another important point is that the Seller at a Con is not the captive audience.

Why is it any different saying No to a person demanding what you feel is an unreasonable discount, than it is clicking No to someone with a Low Ball Best Offer on eBay?

 

Neither is bad customer service, in and of themselves.

 

It all comes back to what the other dealers have. If we are dealing with Hot Modern Book A, and there are 40 copies of Hot Modern Book A floating around a sealed environment, then whoever does decide to budge is going to make the sale. That is just supply and demand.

 

But if you have items that are some combination of A. Exceptional for quality reasons B. Exceptional for scarcity C. Exceptional for pricing .... then you have a leg up.

 

And just like people who make Low Ball offers on eBay, they often come back with a reasonable offer when refused. If your stock is what your stock needs to be, for the particular Con you are attending, all of this takes care of itself.

 

The high cost of booth essentially makes the dealer a captive audience since they have a bullseye on their back to make X sales or they are giving their books away. A buyer can make an offer and move on but in the back of every dealer who is not selling briskly that even that low ball offer is better then nothing. That is not the fault of the buyer of course but when it cost $1,000 minimum to set up at a Con you better believe pretty much everyone in the room is sweating a bit when he has a terrible first day.

[1Cool]

Another thing that people seem to overlook in the whole Con vs eBay thing, is effort.

 

I think most people will agree (as someone has pointed out already) that most of eBay has turned into a Buy It Now game. List it higher, take best offers, sell the book. And that is all well and good.

 

But it is not directly comparable to setting up at a Con.

 

To simply say that people should not get 20% off an eBay price, because eBay fees are only 10%, is leaving out a large part of the math. The larger discount would also cover your scanning / photgraphing / listing time. Your answering questions time. Your fielding offers time. Your packing supplies cost. Your packing supplies time. And most importantly, your shipping across the country and rolling the dice on damage or returns time.

 

On a $100 book, that extra $10 seems a fair trade off for that, especially if you are counting your own personal time as billable. Which, if you are treating it like a business, you most definitely should be.

 

And yes, you are paying to set up at the con. But if you have desirable items, priced desirably, then they will sell. And the cost of the con should be spread evenly across those sold items. And at the end of they day, it will all be Ok.

 

What makes it not Ok, is pricing things in such a way that the cost of the Con is entirely borne by a handful of items. Then it does not matter what you sold the items for, since your profit is effectively reduced to zero, meaning you would have been no worse off staying home, and tossing those books out the window.

 

There is also another thing that, in business, I have found to be most pertinent to collectibles businesses. That is, a love of the item itself. I doubt that people who sell, let's say, lawn ornaments, have an emotional attachment to lawn ornaments. Maybe some do. But in the comic selling business, there is generally so much attachment, that objectivity is difficult. And because of a large portion of us crowing about the great deals we get somewhere, sometime, there is an added fear of leaving money on the table.

 

The fact is, a book that you COULD get $85 for on eBay, in theory, is worth less than a book that you CAN get $75 for in person at a con, right now. One is a negative asset, and one is not.

 

If your margins are such that the difference in those 2 numbers is a deal breaker, then there is an issue earlier in the chain of events.

 

I know it is not pleasant to sell something for an amount less than you feel you could have sold it for in a different setting. But I have seen many comic book dealers go out of business while screaming that they have so many great comics, that no one ever got around to buying.

 

Just my opinion.

 

I love the "everyone has a different vantage point" discussion we have going on here. Does anyone else feel the huge amount of books available at any Con makes most buyers feel entitled to huge deals. It use to be "give me a book at 25% off guide and I'm happy" to "why would I pay over E-Bay prices" to now "better be 20% under E-Bay or I walk". I can understand that kind of attitude if you are talking about bronze Strange Tales or Western books but it seems to be spreading into everything other then the elite key books. I guess when supply exceeds demand the buyer is king.

 

Selling on E-Bay has the added benefit of being able to go on with your life and monitoring sales as the seller comes to you. Con sales feel more rushed and always to the buyers benefit (unless you get a guy who comes into your booth looking for a large run of high grade Bronze X-Men no matter what the cost). When POPs and cutie print people are making 5K while all but the high end dealers competing for the left overs you have to question why it makes sense to set up at Cons at all.

 

I have the same issue with season tickets for football, it barely makes any sense to go to every game. Its fun, but the added costs and time it takes to get there and back, pay for parking, food, clothing, beer, waiting in lines, crowded/smelly bathrooms, transportation costs, potential to be be hot/cold/sick when you've paid more for your tickets this season than the cost of a brand new awesome tv....especially since your seats won't provide a great view compared to a big screen hi def tv....of course if your team wins, its ALL worth it....

 

I can't believe anyone goes to more than one game a year...or maybe my team just doesn't win enough.

 

You a fellow Brown's fan? Sounds like the stuff that goes thru all Browns fan's heads after yet another bad game.

[G.A.tor]

We sell 95% of our $50 and up inventory at the 6-10 conventions we set up at each year (maybe 5% sells in the store)...

 

Our avg expense to set up at a con is $5000-$10000 (sdcc, nycc)...I generally bring my wife, son and other kids if they have time, to shows we fly to (air fare is a big expense)...

 

Shows we drive to, have my store manager and usually at least 1 other person helping us...we have our company van, but often rent a second van...multiple hotel rooms, gas, food, etc...and of course, price of the booths...

 

my typical margin is 10%...sometimes its as low as 3%, on a rare occasion, 20%+... I don't like to "haggle"...I like to price the books at what I and make it easy for all...

 

but ultimately, I do the con circuit because I enjoy it...I rarely "make" any significant money with my expenses what they are and my margins what they are, but we do generally have fun, and sometimes, that intangible is enough for me

[the blob]

I look at it this way, my admissions fee to the convention WAS the premium that I paid to be able to inspect books up close & not pay for shipping. So paying an additional premium (essentially, still paying ebay prices) to the vendors isn't something I'm terribly interested in doing.

 

Because while the argument is that the vendors could be doing something better with their time, so could I. I could just as easily buy the book from the comfort of my recliner from my phone & get it in a few days. But I pay an admissions price, take time out of my day to hit the ATM, drive to a venue, possibly pay parking & gas, pay an admission fee for the privilege of buying products inside, wander through a hall, and maybe eventually find the book(s) that I want at a price I'm willing to pay in the grade that I want, and then drive back home.

 

Paying more to spend more of my time when I could just make a sandwich at home & buy the book(s) from the comfort of my couch for cheaper than my admission, parking, gas and the cost of the book(s)? Pass.

 

Funny you mention this. I wanted to go to the Hartford Comic Con this past weekend. I live close by so gas wasn't a huge expense. However, admission was $30 for one day ($30, one day. Are you kidding me? $30?) and then the parking fees on top of that. I decided to stay home.

 

Don't get me wrong. I still love going to cons. There's nothing like the anticipation of being in a room with dozens or hundreds of long and short boxes but these days I usually only go to the smaller shows.

 

$30 is shipping on a few books. So if you found 10 items you like at prices you like...

 

But I agree, that sounds like a lot for a local show like that. Then again, i guess some of the non-NYCC shows in NYC are getting like that and they are not really any different than the cons they used to have at the Penn Pavilion where admission was under $10, at least in terms of # of books, etc.

[deathtohemingway]

Keeping in mind that this is not a personal shot at anyone, is the cost of the booth being $1000.00 not the first part in the consideration of whether or not to set up at the con in the first place?

 

Knowing that you start out $1000.00 in the hole, do you not have to have a reasonable idea that you will EASILY sell $3000 to $5000 worth of merchandise, to even bother filling out the paperwork?

 

Or is it that you have $50,000 retail worth of cool things, and the assumption is that people will at the very least find 5% of them cool enough to purchase?

 

It seems like the conversation is turning into 2 separate ones.

 

#1 -- Does anyone agree that it is difficult to make money at a convention when no one wants to buy anything?

 

#2 -- Does anyone agree that the people wanting to buy things at the convention are being unreasonable in their want to buy things?

 

To really get much further into this, one would need to know what your particular profit margins are on items, which would be prying infinitely too much.

 

But if the profit margins are such that 10% or 20% off retail is not sufficient to make a profit (except on mega keys) then it would not matter where the item sold. No profit at a Con. No profit, after fees, on eBay.

 

Or, as mentioned before, filling some boxes with items that you paid a nickel for (modern bulk) and selling those items for 20x your investment, over and over and over, should more make up for the $10 deal off the $100 book you gave to another person.

 

[revat]

Another thing that people seem to overlook in the whole Con vs eBay thing, is effort.

 

I think most people will agree (as someone has pointed out already) that most of eBay has turned into a Buy It Now game. List it higher, take best offers, sell the book. And that is all well and good.

 

But it is not directly comparable to setting up at a Con.

 

To simply say that people should not get 20% off an eBay price, because eBay fees are only 10%, is leaving out a large part of the math. The larger discount would also cover your scanning / photgraphing / listing time. Your answering questions time. Your fielding offers time. Your packing supplies cost. Your packing supplies time. And most importantly, your shipping across the country and rolling the dice on damage or returns time.

 

On a $100 book, that extra $10 seems a fair trade off for that, especially if you are counting your own personal time as billable. Which, if you are treating it like a business, you most definitely should be.

 

And yes, you are paying to set up at the con. But if you have desirable items, priced desirably, then they will sell. And the cost of the con should be spread evenly across those sold items. And at the end of they day, it will all be Ok.

 

What makes it not Ok, is pricing things in such a way that the cost of the Con is entirely borne by a handful of items. Then it does not matter what you sold the items for, since your profit is effectively reduced to zero, meaning you would have been no worse off staying home, and tossing those books out the window.

 

There is also another thing that, in business, I have found to be most pertinent to collectibles businesses. That is, a love of the item itself. I doubt that people who sell, let's say, lawn ornaments, have an emotional attachment to lawn ornaments. Maybe some do. But in the comic selling business, there is generally so much attachment, that objectivity is difficult. And because of a large portion of us crowing about the great deals we get somewhere, sometime, there is an added fear of leaving money on the table.

 

The fact is, a book that you COULD get $85 for on eBay, in theory, is worth less than a book that you CAN get $75 for in person at a con, right now. One is a negative asset, and one is not.

 

If your margins are such that the difference in those 2 numbers is a deal breaker, then there is an issue earlier in the chain of events.

 

I know it is not pleasant to sell something for an amount less than you feel you could have sold it for in a different setting. But I have seen many comic book dealers go out of business while screaming that they have so many great comics, that no one ever got around to buying.

 

Just my opinion.

 

I love the "everyone has a different vantage point" discussion we have going on here. Does anyone else feel the huge amount of books available at any Con makes most buyers feel entitled to huge deals. It use to be "give me a book at 25% off guide and I'm happy" to "why would I pay over E-Bay prices" to now "better be 20% under E-Bay or I walk". I can understand that kind of attitude if you are talking about bronze Strange Tales or Western books but it seems to be spreading into everything other then the elite key books. I guess when supply exceeds demand the buyer is king.

 

Selling on E-Bay has the added benefit of being able to go on with your life and monitoring sales as the seller comes to you. Con sales feel more rushed and always to the buyers benefit (unless you get a guy who comes into your booth looking for a large run of high grade Bronze X-Men no matter what the cost). When POPs and cutie print people are making 5K while all but the high end dealers competing for the left overs you have to question why it makes sense to set up at Cons at all.

 

I have the same issue with season tickets for football, it barely makes any sense to go to every game. Its fun, but the added costs and time it takes to get there and back, pay for parking, food, clothing, beer, waiting in lines, crowded/smelly bathrooms, transportation costs, potential to be be hot/cold/sick when you've paid more for your tickets this season than the cost of a brand new awesome tv....especially since your seats won't provide a great view compared to a big screen hi def tv....of course if your team wins, its ALL worth it....

 

I can't believe anyone goes to more than one game a year...or maybe my team just doesn't win enough.

 

You a fellow Brown's fan? Sounds like the stuff that goes thru all Browns fan's heads after yet another bad game.

 

haha although to be fair, if the team was better, I'd probably be priced out of tickets and complain about that too. Either way, the moral of the story is that I prefer not to pay a premium to deny myself to take a nap whenever I want.

[STORMSHADOW_80]

Also the benefit of selling at a con is if your prices are reasonable you can sell a lot of books really fast. Use that money to buy more stock. Rinse, repeat. How long would it take to get those sales on ebay?

 

Sounds so easy. I went to a Con on Saturday with $2,000 in my pocket and walked out with $1,600 left over. If you have a way to talk down dealers who have desirable books priced at 2X FMV to a price you can sell them for 10% under FMV then you are better then me. I've gotten pretty lucky and have bought 2 pretty large collections from non dealers over the last year but trying to buy stock at wholesale is not something I have mastered yet. And for the record I thru out some pretty nice bulk deals with my $2,000 and not a nibble at wholesale prices.

Almost always the whole sale prices come from non dealers. It's been a while since I've bought a complete collection. If I had the capital and space I would do it more, but my daughter needs her closet back For now I mainly just enjoy collecting for the PC with an occasional sale here and there.

 

.... I too am finding it more and more difficult to buy books from dealers at 10% under fmv or even at fmv. So much so if I don't go to a con for signatures I'll probably stop going all together. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

[the blob]

At last year's Baltimore convention I went to one dealer's booth and saw a wall book that I liked. It was marked $400. I thought I had remembered seeing the same book on their website. This I walked away and checked his wensite on my phone. The exact same book was marked $300 on the web site. The book IMO was well worth the $300, however, I was not willing to pay the $400 he had it marked at the convention and I was not about to go back and show him on my phone how the book was $100 cheaper on his website.

 

I am certain he would have sold me the book for the $300, which I would have been happy with, however, the whole "negotiation" does not appeal to me.

 

-------

 

Well, you could have just said you're happy he brought the book because you saw it on the website and wanted to check it out in person. And then mention it is $300 on the website. At that point he probably just offers it to you for $300. it's hardly even negotiating at that point.

 

I tend to buy less expensive stuff so there is not much negotiating. maybe a little rounding down. When I went to cons to buy decent SA and GA books there was a lot of haggling.

 

 

[1Cool]

Keeping in mind that this is not a personal shot at anyone, is the cost of the booth being $1000.00 not the first part in the consideration of whether or not to set up at the con in the first place?

 

Knowing that you start out $1000.00 in the hole, do you not have to have a reasonable idea that you will EASILY sell $3000 to $5000 worth of merchandise, to even bother filling out the paperwork?

 

Or is it that you have $50,000 retail worth of cool things, and the assumption is that people will at the very least find 5% of them cool enough to purchase?

 

It seems like the conversation is turning into 2 separate ones.

 

#1 -- Does anyone agree that it is difficult to make money at a convention when no one wants to buy anything?

 

#2 -- Does anyone agree that the people wanting to buy things at the convention are being unreasonable in their want to buy things?

 

To really get much further into this, one would need to know what your particular profit margins are on items, which would be prying infinitely too much.

 

But if the profit margins are such that 10% or 20% off retail is not sufficient to make a profit (except on mega keys) then it would not matter where the item sold. No profit at a Con. No profit, after fees, on eBay.

 

Or, as mentioned before, filling some boxes with items that you paid a nickel for (modern bulk) and selling those items for 20x your investment, over and over and over, should more make up for the $10 deal off the $100 book you gave to another person.

 

In my case it was more of an assumption of the amount of books I would sell compared to previous Cons. I did reasonably well at my first 2 big Cons ($6,000 made compared to about $1,000 in expenses at both of them) but my last one (Baltimore) barely cleared $1,600 and had $800 in expenses. Weird thing is I sold $700 in slabs at Baltimore the previous year and I only had 7 - 8 slabs displayed in a corner of someone else's booth. I've sold $3,000 in books either here or on E-Bay over the last three weeks since getting back from Baltimore so I can't imagine it was a lack of quality books.

 

What is concerning is not only my experience at the last couple Cons but what I am hearing from dealers who I know that sell at local Cons this year. Buyers demanding 20% off already low prices and sometimes even 20% is not enough to get big sales.

[Fan Boy]

Also the benefit of selling at a con is if your prices are reasonable you can sell a lot of books really fast. Use that money to buy more stock. Rinse, repeat. How long would it take to get those sales on ebay?

 

+1

 

This especially works if you're at a show where there is no one else with reasonably priced books. If most of the other dealers at the show are asking double FMV and you're priced at 10% below eBay then you'll make out pretty nicely.

 

+1 this is what I used by that plan said above. It works good in our booth.

[KPR Comics]

Keeping in mind that this is not a personal shot at anyone, is the cost of the booth being $1000.00 not the first part in the consideration of whether or not to set up at the con in the first place?

 

Knowing that you start out $1000.00 in the hole, do you not have to have a reasonable idea that you will EASILY sell $3000 to $5000 worth of merchandise, to even bother filling out the paperwork?

 

Or is it that you have $50,000 retail worth of cool things, and the assumption is that people will at the very least find 5% of them cool enough to purchase?

 

It seems like the conversation is turning into 2 separate ones.

 

#1 -- Does anyone agree that it is difficult to make money at a convention when no one wants to buy anything?

 

#2 -- Does anyone agree that the people wanting to buy things at the convention are being unreasonable in their want to buy things?

 

To really get much further into this, one would need to know what your particular profit margins are on items, which would be prying infinitely too much.

 

But if the profit margins are such that 10% or 20% off retail is not sufficient to make a profit (except on mega keys) then it would not matter where the item sold. No profit at a Con. No profit, after fees, on eBay.

 

Or, as mentioned before, filling some boxes with items that you paid a nickel for (modern bulk) and selling those items for 20x your investment, over and over and over, should more make up for the $10 deal off the $100 book you gave to another person.

 

In my case it was more of an assumption of the amount of books I would sell compared to previous Cons. I did reasonably well at my first 2 big Cons ($6,000 made compared to about $1,000 in expenses at both of them) but my last one (Baltimore) barely cleared $1,600 and had $800 in expenses. Weird thing is I sold $700 in slabs at Baltimore the previous year and I only had 7 - 8 slabs displayed in a corner of someone else's booth. I've sold $3,000 in books either here or on E-Bay over the last three weeks since getting back from Baltimore so I can't imagine it was a lack of quality books.

 

What is concerning is not only my experience at the last couple Cons but what I am hearing from dealers who I know that sell at local Cons this year. Buyers demanding 20% off already low prices and sometimes even 20% is not enough to get big sales.

Sounds like lesson learned and you've adapted. I don't think your latest Baltimore experience is the same for everyone. Anecdotally from two good sources who set up there, it was in their words "like printing money".