I Feel Bad For Shop Owners 0

[ADAMANTIUM]

1 minute ago, kav said:

the store credit books were priced about double ebay.  I stopped selling to LCS after that.

Have I got a deal for you! 

[kav]

There's nothing like walking into LCS with longbox of SA books and walking out with a small bag of SA books...

[kav]

Then there was the guy gave me $2 or maybe $5 for ASM 129 when i didnt know what it was worth-

Edited November 1, 2018 by kav

[ADAMANTIUM]

2 minutes ago, kav said:

Then there was the guy gave me $2 or maybe $5 for ASM 129 when i didnt know what it was worth-

Don't worry kav your scars will heal  I traded a silver surfer 8.0 cream to off-white AND an ASM 129 4.5 for a Hulk vs. Wolverine statue at a LCS  now the statue is in my sig line as a constant reminder....

I remember asking the LCS owner if he would be willing to do the trade straight out, and he goes "I am if you are!"  My first clue! Granted the statue is a $700 statue including shipping but still  

[kav]

1 minute ago, ADAMANTIUM said:

Don't worry kav your scars will heal  I traded a silver surfer 8.0 cream to off-white AND an ASM 129 4.5 for a Hulk vs. Wolverine statue at a LCS  now the statue is in my sig line as a constant reminder....

I remember asking the LCS owner if he would be willing to do the trade straight out, and he goes "I am if you are!"  My first clue! Granted the statue is a $700 statue including shipping but still  

u still did way better than me.   

[BabaLament]

@lighthouse It sounds like you are on point. I recently brought a large collection to the big guy in town, and he was kind enough to have one of his senior guys look it over. He pulled the keys + some items he knew he had customers for, and gave me a fair price based on the condition they were in; about 1/3 FMV, which I considered reasonable since he took them all in one shot, the condition was variable across the books, and he's in business to make money so paying retail is out of the question. He also had to pay his minion at the hourly rate to spend three days going through 10k+ books. I was happy because it was convenient, he was happy because he made full freight & they've since all sold.

Brought him a box of about 100 slabs in August; he took half. I covered my grading fees, and got about 2/3 FMV out of them. Its a win when everyone involved makes money, right?

[lighthouse]

3 hours ago, the blob said:

I'd think the "we have a lot of this stuff already and it isn't selling" should work, no?

 

It rarely does. Instead it comes across as "everything we have is valuable, and everything you have is trash". Unfortunately so many people have had bad experiences with the Comic Book Guy types that anything that smells vaguely bad to them just becomes a reason for a fight. They convinced themselves back at home that what they were sitting on was valuable, and once the endowment effect sets in, almost anything you say that is negative about their books is just another example of someone trying to rip them off.

If there is ANY chance of educating folks about which books are valuable and why, we jump at the chance. We keep two copies of ASM 300 on the wall with prices $200 apart just so we can explain that "as much as we might like to charge $400 for this copy, it has such-and-such flaws, and that's why it's $200 cheaper". Showing them what amounts to a $100 crease or a $150 tear can go a long way toward teaching them why condition is so important. But the ones that come in raving about what they "know" their books are worth? Even starting down that road is a disaster.

[kav]

15 minutes ago, lighthouse said:

It rarely does. Instead it comes across as "everything we have is valuable, and everything you have is trash". Unfortunately so many people have had bad experiences with the Comic Book Guy types that anything that smells vaguely bad to them just becomes a reason for a fight. They convinced themselves back at home that what they were sitting on was valuable, and once the endowment effect sets in, almost anything you say that is negative about their books is just another example of someone trying to rip them off.

If there is ANY chance of educating folks about which books are valuable and why, we jump at the chance. We keep two copies of ASM 300 on the wall with prices $200 apart just so we can explain that "as much as we might like to charge $400 for this copy, it has such-and-such flaws, and that's why it's $200 cheaper". Showing them what amounts to a $100 crease or a $150 tear can go a long way toward teaching them why condition is so important. But the ones that come in raving about what they "know" their books are worth? Even starting down that road is a disaster.

Yep.  I tried to explain to a lady why her Conan #2 wasnt worth anything.  BUT ITS CONAN #2!  Yes m'am but this is Conan #2 of like the 5th version of Conan.  He's had several titles over the years.  And even the real, first Conan #2 is only worth $10 bucks.  She just narrowed her eyes and looked at me like I was trying to rip her off.  Left angry.

Edited November 2, 2018 by kav

[kav]

Your average Joe thinks COMIC BOOKS ARE VALUABLE!  I SAW IT ON TV!!

They never stop and think wait a minute if all comics were valuable, no one would work.  Everyone would just buy a stack of comics off the stands, wait 5 years and retire-

When they see comics from 1990 they go OMG THESE COMICS ARE 30 YEARS OLD!!!  OMG OMG OMG.

I tell em 30 years is not old-get back to me when you have some 70 year old books-or older-

Edited November 2, 2018 by kav

[lighthouse]

Yeah, it's tough. About 95% of the time, I would rather someone brought me a collection of 100 books from 2016 than 100 books from 1992. I have far more demand for back issues from the last couple years than I do for any non-key books that are 25 years old. I'm excited when I get a call saying a customer has a long box of Rebirth they want to sell.  "I have a whole box of X-Men comics and they're like 30 years old!" Not so much.

[kav]

5 minutes ago, lighthouse said:

Yeah, it's tough. About 95% of the time, I would rather someone brought me a collection of 100 books from 2016 than 100 books from 1992. I have far more demand for back issues from the last couple years than I do for any non-key books that are 25 years old. I'm excited when I get a call saying a customer has a long box of Rebirth they want to sell.  "I have a whole box of X-Men comics and they're like 30 years old!" Not so much.

My LCS buddy got so sick of it he doesnt even ask what they have he just says A1 will give you the most for your books and gets off phone asap.

Edited November 2, 2018 by kav

[ADAMANTIUM]

37 minutes ago, kav said:

Your average Joe thinks COMIC BOOKS ARE VALUABLE!  I SAW IT ON TV!!

They never stop and think wait a minute if all comics were valuable, no one would work.  Everyone would just buy a stack of comics off the stands, wait 5 years and retire-

When they see comics from 1990 they go OMG THESE COMICS ARE 30 YEARS OLD!!!  OMG OMG OMG.

I tell em 30 years is not old-get back to me when you have some 70 year old books-or older-

When I went to half price books today to spend $30 for the coupon calendar and ended up with slabs, the cashier had to ask if he needed to take it out of the "casing" after I paid for it. He asked the cashier next to him, and that cashier said it was just the way that it was sold to half price books . Neither had a clue. I guess he thought it was a protective device that would set off the theft sensors

I politely said, maybe you've heard of graded cards? Well these are graded comics. He just looked at me and handed me my items. 

People might think of comics as valuable but cgc is still definitely still a niche. 

Of course one of the slabs was halfway cracked open, so I wonder if half price books were cracking them open to see condition when they were sold to them. Sigh

Edited November 2, 2018 by ADAMANTIUM

[kav]

2 minutes ago, ADAMANTIUM said:

When I went to half price books today to spend $30 for the calendar and ended up with slabs, the cashier had to ask if he needed to take it out of the "casing" after I paid for it. He asked the cashier next to him, and that cashier said it was just the way that it was sold to half price books . Neither had a clue. I guess he thought it was a protective device that would set off the theft sensors

I politely said, maybe you've heard of graded cards? Well these are graded comics. He just looked at me and handed me my items. 

People might think of comics as valuable but they're definitely still a niche. 

Of course one of the slabs was halfway cracked open, so I wonder if half price books were cracking them open to see condition when they were sold to them. Sigh

They only know one thing: 'comics are valuable'.  They dont know anything about slabs, condition, or anything else just that one data point.

[kav]

When I read comics at coffeeshop people see its in a plastic bag 'thingy' and invariably go WOW that must be valuable!!!!  Then I get to tell em no its just a plastic bag-most comics are in bags like this and the most valuable thing about em is the bag.  Its worth lik 20 cents.

[kav]

Then I get to further tell the story of guy with several long boxes (you have to say long boxes not longboxes) of 90s comics and I advised him the best thing he could do was take all the comics out of the bags, throw the comics away, and maybe sell the bags and boards to a comic shop-

They are always stunned by this type news.

[ADAMANTIUM]

Just now, kav said:

When I read comics at coffeeshop people see its in a plastic bag 'thingy' and invariably go WOW that must be valuable!!!!  Then I get to tell em no its just a plastic bag-most comics are in bags like this and the most valuable thing about em is the bag.  Its worth lik 20 cents.

It reminds me of an episode of comic book men (probably scripted of course), where a guy brought in comic book cards, and some were in those plastic cases. 

The comic book men remarked at how thick the cases were and another joked that the case is probably worth more than the card inside. Sad but true. They ended up offering comic cards to the seller for free, from old stock from when they moved in...

 

[kav]

6 minutes ago, ADAMANTIUM said:

It reminds me of an episode of comic book men (probably scripted of course), where a guy brought in comic book cards, and some were in those plastic cases. 

The comic book men remarked at how thick the cases were and another joked that the case is probably worth more than the card inside. Sad but true. They ended up offering comic cards to the seller for free, from old stock from when they moved in...

 

Its in my nature to disabuse people of urban myths.  No, comics are not valuable, mostly.  The plastic bag 'thingy' offers no special indication of value.

Sometimes I get to then move on to condition and state that while this strange adventures 195 or whatever is only worth $5-the price of a comic on the stands now, if it was in mint condition it would be worth $100 or more.  And by mint I mean not a scratch, bend, tiny scuff-nothing.  Then I point out tiny flaws in the book and they are astonished.  THAT LITTLE THING???  Yes that little thing.

[FlyingDonut]

A friend of mine sells lots of jerseys on eBay. To get them, he's constantly trolling Facebook Marketplace and a bunch of other places. He knows I'm always looking for comics, so he is always sending me the comic people. I had an email interaction with a person who had OMG 15 LONG BOXES OF COMICS WORTH TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS. I didn't have the heart to tell the guy that his long boxes were worth - realistically - $25-50 each. Seeing as we were off by roughly nineteen grand, I smiled and sent him on his way.

[kav]

21 minutes ago, FlyingDonut said:

A friend of mine sells lots of jerseys on eBay. To get them, he's constantly trolling Facebook Marketplace and a bunch of other places. He knows I'm always looking for comics, so he is always sending me the comic people. I had an email interaction with a person who had OMG 15 LONG BOXES OF COMICS WORTH TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS. I didn't have the heart to tell the guy that his long boxes were worth - realistically - 25-50c each. Seeing as we were off by roughly nineteen grand, I smiled and sent him on his way.

FTFY

[the blob]

I would have a tough time not checking out the 90s stuff when offered because nowadays so many books have gotten a little pop you just never know, in your average box of drek there are probably 5 $7-15 books. But then you have to either get them off their delusions or cherry pick the box if they let you.

About 14 or 15 years ago metropolis offered 6000 80s comics here for $600. Obviously the big books had been culled, but back then metropolis was not selling cheap 80s and later books. They might occasionally bundle cheap silver and bronze into lots. I didn't pull the trigger because I just didn't have room for 25 long boxes. Most of it is Derek now, but so many books that were worthless then have popped. I wonder what was in there?

Edited November 2, 2018 by the blob