Collections drying up? 4 4

[SteppinRazor]

9 hours ago, 01TheDude said:

it is weird to hear known dealers refer to other buyers as flippers. Isn't that pretty much what dealers are and have been since the get go?

The more I read the thread, the less I am inclined to continue filling out my runs or pursuing more books in general. Dealers seems to value books I think of as treasures as common and practically worthless. Perhaps they are to someone who has a stockpile of books and buys massive collections for pennies on the dollar all the time. The more I read these discussions, the more I feel like I am overpaying for everything I buy. Collections drying up? Maybe it is collectors giving up on this system that buys super low and sells at a premium. I understand it is your business but I doubt I will ever sell to a known dealer on this board. They are easy to spot-- only asking for key books in high grade and for a fraction of GPA. People talk about the great deals to be had here but I starting to get skeptical of that line of reason. Time to decide whether to hibernate (again) or offload the collection I guess. Or I could actually just enjoy what I already have and decide what I feel like keeping around.

It is almost like there should be two boards sometimes-- one with the "big shot" dealers (or the wannabes) and one for the basic collector types.

I'm not a dealer, but I do run my own business.  The sheer energy expended to provide a ready avenue for customers to buy what they want is almost universally underestimated.  Sure, you pay a $1 for a book that was bought for 20 cents.  But you get to know exactly where to go when you want a comic book.  You know which box to look through (hopefully there's at least some kind of organization).  Imagine if you were looking for X-Men 112, but you had to look on craigslist and drive to a person selling comics without knowing if they have XM 112.  How much time would it take you to locate one?  How much gas driving hither and yon?  Because you can safely assume I think that you won't necessarily find it at the first garage sale.  And that you might find one, but it's in unacceptable shape to you.  You can try ebay, but I would be very surprised if you could not only get it for less than a dollar, but less than a dollar shipped.

I build furniture and sculpture, and I regularly run across people who question my price.  My response is to question how much their time is worth.  Let's say you value your time - or your employer actually does so via paycheck - at $60/hr.  That means either you should be happy to pay $1 for a comic if it takes you more than one minute to find, or you think you're more valuable than other people.

edit - most people don't question price out of malice, they just don't even think to imagine how the thing got in front of them.

Edited June 16, 2017 by SteppinRazor

[Glassman10]

I'm looking at selling my entire collection but  not at a drastic discount. I'm not in a hurry, don't desperately need the money and have about 1000 books from 1967 to about 1974. It includes some nice keys. Only a few are slabbed and most were kept in boxes over 45-50 years. Now with the great help of a dealer in Maine, they are all backed and bagged.  While the collection has  Highly sought after keys like AF 15 in a 5.0 slabbed among others, The real difficulty for me is the stuff that isn't super valuable but based in either GPA or Overstreet would pull 30- 60 dollars retail individually. When you have about 850 like that, it adds up and selling off is an issue and I'm not willing to do ebay simply because I don't trust it.  Selling individual books ( which I've done) bring a good price if I take off ten percent which I would have coughed up in auction or on the bay. Selling here would take forever and the books get cherry picked leaving stuff that technically has value but few want ( Tomb of Dracula #1 perfect anyone?).  There's the problem for me. Every time I bring this up, I do get inquiries  understandably. I plan to auction the AF15 around christmas since I think it will have a good return then . The rest, as a collection is what the initial post described. A good sized collection held by a 67 year old forever and wanting to sell it off but to not do it cheap. Fair, not cheap.    It's enough books that they still have yet to be inventoried.

[1Cool]

30 minutes ago, Glassman10 said:

I'm looking at selling my entire collection but  not at a drastic discount. I'm not in a hurry, don't desperately need the money and have about 1000 books from 1967 to about 1974. It includes some nice keys. Only a few are slabbed and most were kept in boxes over 45-50 years. Now with the great help of a dealer in Maine, they are all backed and bagged.  While the collection has  Highly sought after keys like AF 15 in a 5.0 slabbed among others, The real difficulty for me is the stuff that isn't super valuable but based in either GPA or Overstreet would pull 30- 60 dollars retail individually. When you have about 850 like that, it adds up and selling off is an issue and I'm not willing to do ebay simply because I don't trust it.  Selling individual books ( which I've done) bring a good price if I take off ten percent which I would have coughed up in auction or on the bay. Selling here would take forever and the books get cherry picked leaving stuff that technically has value but few want ( Tomb of Dracula #1 perfect anyone?).  There's the problem for me. Every time I bring this up, I do get inquiries  understandably. I plan to auction the AF15 around christmas since I think it will have a good return then . The rest, as a collection is what the initial post described. A good sized collection held by a 67 year old forever and wanting to sell it off but to not do it cheap. Fair, not cheap.    It's enough books that they still have yet to be inventoried.

Just curious - you had a dealer help you bag and board the books but they have not offered to buy them or connect you to someone who could buy them?  I thinking a huge group of people would (myself included) would love to have a Tomb of Dracula 1 in nice shape and would be willing to pay well for books like that.  If you had a collection of 1,000 books that contained books like complete sets of Cable or Power Pack then you would get picked to death since some people may want a Power Pack 1 but the rest are $1 books at best.  You should have no problem selling your collection at a good portion of current FMV if you think TOD 1 is a hard to sell book.

Edited June 16, 2017 by 1Cool

[piper]

44 minutes ago, Glassman10 said:

I'm looking at selling my entire collection but  not at a drastic discount. I'm not in a hurry, don't desperately need the money and have about 1000 books from 1967 to about 1974. It includes some nice keys. Only a few are slabbed and most were kept in boxes over 45-50 years. Now with the great help of a dealer in Maine, they are all backed and bagged.  While the collection has  Highly sought after keys like AF 15 in a 5.0 slabbed among others, The real difficulty for me is the stuff that isn't super valuable but based in either GPA or Overstreet would pull 30- 60 dollars retail individually. When you have about 850 like that, it adds up and selling off is an issue and I'm not willing to do ebay simply because I don't trust it.  Selling individual books ( which I've done) bring a good price if I take off ten percent which I would have coughed up in auction or on the bay. Selling here would take forever and the books get cherry picked leaving stuff that technically has value but few want ( Tomb of Dracula #1 perfect anyone?).  There's the problem for me. Every time I bring this up, I do get inquiries  understandably. I plan to auction the AF15 around christmas since I think it will have a good return then . The rest, as a collection is what the initial post described. A good sized collection held by a 67 year old forever and wanting to sell it off but to not do it cheap. Fair, not cheap.    It's enough books that they still have yet to be inventoried.

Some comic shops will sell on consignment.

[Glassman10]

25 minutes ago, 1Cool said:

Just curious - you had a dealer help you bag and board the books but they have not offered to buy them or connect you to someone who could buy them?  I thinking a huge group of people would (myself included) would love to have a Tomb of Dracula 1 in nice shape and would be willing to pay well for books like that.  If you had a collection of 1,000 books that contained books like complete sets of Cable or Power Pack then you would get picked to death since some people may want a Power Pack 1 but the rest are $1 books at best.  You should have no problem selling your collection at a good portion of current FMV if you think TOD 1 is a hard to sell book.

I think I responded to this in a PM. It became a very curious story once Shanghai got involved. 

[Glassman10]

11 minutes ago, piper said:

Some comic shops will sell on consignment.

I make glass. On occasion, I used to sell stuff on consignment to stores and galleries. I had a policy that I wanted to completely change out that inventory once a year to "freshen " the display. What was always interesting would be how slow the sales were in the months leading up to the big switch and there would be a huge flurry of sales that "Just happened".  Thinking about consigning that many books and tracking them puts bees in my head. 

[FineCollector]

Maine doesn't have a lot of population density, so selling locally could be challenging.  When we vacationed there 15-20 years ago, there was a very short list in the yellow pages.  More stores are popping up on Google maps now, but they may not have the funds to buy a collection, or they may not expect to have the clientele for the collection.

The problem I see here is what price the seller considers "fair," and the problem buying collections in general.  This seller says he's sold books at 10% off FMV.  That'll work for a handful of books, but we all understand you can't sell a collection that way.  No collector wants exactly those books, and has the disposable income to pay for them in one fell swoop.  I'll pay full price when I visit a private collection, but if I have to take everything, I won't pay much or anything at all for the ones I don't want because I don't sell.  Is that better or worse than selling everything at a fraction to a dealer?  Depends on the books.

It's going to have to go on eBay one by one.

[Quicksilver Signs]

1 hour ago, Glassman10 said:

I'm looking at selling my entire collection but  not at a drastic discount. I'm not in a hurry, don't desperately need the money and have about 1000 books from 1967 to about 1974. It includes some nice keys. Only a few are slabbed and most were kept in boxes over 45-50 years. Now with the great help of a dealer in Maine, they are all backed and bagged.  While the collection has  Highly sought after keys like AF 15 in a 5.0 slabbed among others, The real difficulty for me is the stuff that isn't super valuable but based in either GPA or Overstreet would pull 30- 60 dollars retail individually. When you have about 850 like that, it adds up and selling off is an issue and I'm not willing to do ebay simply because I don't trust it.  Selling individual books ( which I've done) bring a good price if I take off ten percent which I would have coughed up in auction or on the bay. Selling here would take forever and the books get cherry picked leaving stuff that technically has value but few want ( Tomb of Dracula #1 perfect anyone?).  There's the problem for me. Every time I bring this up, I do get inquiries  understandably. I plan to auction the AF15 around christmas since I think it will have a good return then . The rest, as a collection is what the initial post described. A good sized collection held by a 67 year old forever and wanting to sell it off but to not do it cheap. Fair, not cheap.    It's enough books that they still have yet to be inventoried.

Unless you want to put the time and effort into selling your books you won't get top dollar. So many people want FMV for their books without the work. If you want full Overstreet for commons, it takes years to sell if you don't go to eBay. Even on eBay commons will not sell at close to Overstreet. Sell your keys, get top dollar and sell runs and sets at a discount. 

[Aweandlorder]

I had a couple of cats that drove from Dayton Ohio to NY to sell their dads collection. They emailed me through Craigslist and I gave them my work address (I never have people come to my home). The collection was nice. Nothing too rare or too insane for me to go "ok you're not leaving unless I buy this" but I recall many many Bronze HG books. At least 9.0s with almost a complete set if not complete of Star Wars with multiple 1s. Complete Iron Fist. Many others. 

Anyways, the books were packed in 2 suitcases which turned me off cause there were also no bags and boards. I gave them an AweandOffer which they turned down. 

Happens to me more than you'd think. I know my budget and know how much I would make out of a collection, and know not to spend a penny over it.

But I wasn't a sour buyer. It was around comiccon time when that happened and I advised them to go and try shop it there. Which is exactly what they did

point of the story, if you're location is not promising for selling comics it's probably not a bad idea to travel to a location where a big con is being held. You'll probably be able to sell a decent collection there for good coin 

[Glassman10]

Actually, I consider" fair" to be 60 to 70 percent of list. This is mostly silver age and some bronze up to '74.

I prefer to sell  the AF 15 to someone who actually wants the book, not someone who wants to flip it.  That leaves me a lot of latitude on the others. I'm not in any hurry. It may go to auction, it may not. I sold an ASM 129 last week for $950 to someone who really wanted it in an 8.5. We were both happy with that deal. My 9.4 will cost more as will the ASM16 in a 9.0. It's not a junk pile. I can be selective too. 

[1Cool]

24 minutes ago, Glassman10 said:

Actually, I consider" fair" to be 60 to 70 percent of list. This is mostly silver age and some bronze up to '74.

I prefer to sell  the AF 15 to someone who actually wants the book, not someone who wants to flip it.  That leaves me a lot of latitude on the others. I'm not in any hurry. It may go to auction, it may not. I sold an ASM 129 last week for $950 to someone who really wanted it in an 8.5. We were both happy with that deal. My 9.4 will cost more as will the ASM16 in a 9.0. It's not a junk pile. I can be selective too. 

Isn't a ASM 129 CGC 8.5 a $1,000 book (per GPA) - so you sold your copy for 5% less then GPA and it was a deal? 

[1Cool]

41 minutes ago, Aweandlorder said:

I had a couple of cats that drove from Dayton Ohio to NY to sell their dads collection. They emailed me through Craigslist and I gave them my work address (I never have people come to my home). The collection was nice. Nothing too rare or too insane for me to go "ok you're not leaving unless I buy this" but I recall many many Bronze HG books. At least 9.0s with almost a complete set if not complete of Star Wars with multiple 1s. Complete Iron Fist. Many others. 

Anyways, the books were packed in 2 suitcases which turned me off cause there were also no bags and boards. I gave them an AweandOffer which they turned down. 

Happens to me more than you'd think. I know my budget and know how much I would make out of a collection, and know not to spend a penny over it.

But I wasn't a sour buyer. It was around comiccon time when that happened and I advised them to go and try shop it there. Which is exactly what they did

point of the story, if you're location is not promising for selling comics it's probably not a bad idea to travel to a location where a big con is being held. You'll probably be able to sell a decent collection there for good coin 

Bet those cats looked like this.

[jsilverjanet]

37 minutes ago, 1Cool said:

Isn't a ASM 129 CGC 8.5 a $1,000 book (per GPA) - so you sold your copy for 5% less then GPA and it was a deal? 

It depends on the book - two books in the same grade can be vastly different and demand different prices

[Dick Pontoon]

45 minutes ago, 1Cool said:

 

1 hour ago, Glassman10 said:

Actually, I consider" fair" to be 60 to 70 percent of list. This is mostly silver age and some bronze up to '74.

I prefer to sell  the AF 15 to someone who actually wants the book, not someone who wants to flip it.  That leaves me a lot of latitude on the others. I'm not in any hurry. It may go to auction, it may not. I sold an ASM 129 last week for $950 to someone who really wanted it in an 8.5. We were both happy with that deal. My 9.4 will cost more as will the ASM16 in a 9.0. It's not a junk pile. I can be selective too. 

Isn't a ASM 129 CGC 8.5 a $1,000 book (per GPA) - so you sold your copy for 5% less then GPA and it was a deal? 

 

I took that sentence to mean the buyer felt he purchased the book at a reasonable price, and the seller was happy with the amount he received. They were both satisfied with the transaction, or deal.

[Foolkiller]

One thing we should definitely clarify too is what types of collections we are talking about.  If you mean high quality original owner or even secondary owner type collections then I agree these are going to auction houses.  But if you mean collections generally with silver/bronze and up in mixed condition, high and low, I think there are a lot out there.  We've seen a board member unearth a large collection in jersey -- and then a store in jersey got a 40,000 book collection as well (which they actually took possession of).  Greg Reece just bought 180 longs of quality high grade material.  

You can always maximize if you are willing to put in a lot of hours.  if it's a collection of material I saw referenced from the 60s to mid 70s, I wouldn't whole sale that either -- I'd bleed it out.

Finally, someone mentioned the days of when selling on the boards was different.  And it was.  I used to enjoy giving out deals to other board members, whether dealers or not, when it was a community.  But I found that it wasn't reciprocated, has become much less of a community and the folks I really knew well simply aren't present as much here any more.  There are still some top sellers here but I feel it's much more transactional in nature.  That's not really based on anything concrete so much as it is simply a feeling.  Selling to major dealers in large groups, having folks to the house and simply just holding material has been better than listing material here.  There are still some great people around the boards and new folks who have come on and been great contributors and buyers.  But for the most part, it just isn't the same feel as it used to be.  

[Glassman10]

1 hour ago, 1Cool said:

Isn't a ASM 129 CGC 8.5 a $1,000 book (per GPA) - so you sold your copy for 5% less then GPA and it was a deal? 

Given the amount I would have to pay either ebay or an auction house, it would nick me for $100, leaving me 900.00. $950 was in my mind the best I was going to do and the buyer was a happy camper. If I went with the vulture like assessment of value expressed here by some, which I think they need to run a business , you would think I should pay someone to haul it off. So, no, it's not full GPA. The replies I see here suggest that Overstreet is not reliable and I can certainly see that based on their descriptions of grading alone . If the value  in the book is only useful to the wholesale dealer, the book has relatively zero value for someone collecting beyond simple reference material. .

The question that I really have is whether the CGC board is inhabited solely by people flipping books or whether there are people who actually want to buy books and keep them but would like to buy at an attractive  price. That is how the sale of the 129 went.  I can see taking 70% of the GPA  on, say, an ASM 14 but I'd be hard pressed  to take 70% value on an AF15 given the demand. If the auction house is going to take 8 percent from the seller and then take another 15 percent more from the buyer It seems to me that there's room for everyone to find the happy price. It would only work if there are collectors and not simply jobbers. My sense of the board is that there aren't a lot of collectors here when you compare to the middlemen.  

So, if the collection is worth, say 40K theoretically, then take away the AF15 and figure the remainder to be at about 5K based on where I suspect this book could sell and I think it will likely continue to rise. I have enough other keys that would get me to the 40K number and I would still have 850 books left which it sounds like to me I could just chuck in a dumpster given the effort it would take to sell them.  It's probably the case that if I offered , say the entire ASM collection, or FF4  or whatever, that I have as a bundle that it would go OK. The AF alone will put me close to where I want to be.

So, now I've become my own enemy in the instant that I calculate... 

[piper]

2 minutes ago, Glassman10 said:

Given the amount I would have to pay either ebay or an auction house, it would nick me for $100, leaving me 900.00. $950 was in my mind the best I was going to do and the buyer was a happy camper. If I went with the vulture like assessment of value expressed here by some, which I think they need to run a business , you would think I should pay someone to haul it off. So, no, it's not full GPA. The replies I see here suggest that Overstreet is not reliable and I can certainly see that based on their descriptions of grading alone . If the value  in the book is only useful to the wholesale dealer, the book has relatively zero value for someone collecting beyond simple reference material. .

The question that I really have is whether the CGC board is inhabited solely by people flipping books or whether there are people who actually want to buy books and keep them but would like to buy at an attractive  price. That is how the sale of the 129 went.  I can see taking 70% of the GPA  on, say, an ASM 14 but I'd be hard pressed  to take 70% value on an AF15 given the demand. If the auction house is going to take 8 percent from the seller and then take another 15 percent more from the buyer It seems to me that there's room for everyone to find the happy price. It would only work if there are collectors and not simply jobbers. My sense of the board is that there aren't a lot of collectors here when you compare to the middlemen.  

So, if the collection is worth, say 40K theoretically, then take away the AF15 and figure the remainder to be at about 5K based on where I suspect this book could sell and I think it will likely continue to rise. I have enough other keys that would get me to the 40K number and I would still have 850 books left which it sounds like to me I could just chuck in a dumpster given the effort it would take to sell them.  It's probably the case that if I offered , say the entire ASM collection, or FF4  or whatever, that I have as a bundle that it would go OK. The AF alone will put me close to where I want to be.

So, now I've become my own enemy in the instant that I calculate... 

There are many collectors like me in the boards who are looking to buy at attractive prices good material with solid trustworthy graders. I rarely sell a book unless I'm upgrading or using the proceeds to buy something bigger.

I certainly would be interested in early Marvel SA if it was offered on the boards.

[F For Fake]

19 hours ago, Hamlet said:

Here is today's haul out of the dollar and 50 cent boxes (16 books for $14).  If read them all and then sell them in my own dollar box ten years from now, is that a win? ?

Frank Miller Cap cover, ASM's with Hobby covers, lots to love there!

[Ken Aldred]

And, for the price, at least there's some good reading material there.

[Aweandlorder]

2 hours ago, 1Cool said:

Bet those cats looked like this.

Actually here is a picture someone took of us during the negotiating stages. Me on the left