Harnish affiliate speaks...

[ArAich]

The guy posted in the WaterCooler so I thought I'd perform a public service by providing a quick link to the post...

 

ComicalGems link...

[Sal]

they've been able to cost-average lots in the past and figure they paid $20 for an ASM #1 in VF, he says.

 

okely-dokely

[Stronguy]

they've been able to cost-average lots in the past and figure they paid $20 for an ASM #1 in VF, he says.

 

okely-dokely

 

That's not hard to believe. Example: A collection contains 1 ASM #1 VF and 999 '90s drek books. You pay $20,000 for the collection thus you have cost-averaged the ASM to $20. However, you have also cost-averaged the '90s drek to $20.

[Sal]

they've been able to cost-average lots in the past and figure they paid $20 for an ASM #1 in VF, he says.

 

okely-dokely

 

That's not hard to believe. Example: A collection contains 1 ASM #1 VF and 999 '90s drek books. You pay $20,000 for the collection thus you have cost-averaged the ASM to $20. However, you have also cost-averaged the '90s drek to $20.

 

point noted and appreciated, but my definition of "hard to believe" and yours are off by a bit. what you have described is "realm of possibility," which i place in the "anything's possible" pile, which is subtly but importantly different than the phrase in question. way different, if you get me

[comicalgems]

It's exactly that type of realm of possibility with which I was referring. It's not unfathomable to get a bunch of books that are only valued at 10-15 cents when buying a book worth $20,000 to average out the price to $20 per book. Many of those 10-15 centers can be put in quarter bins for comic shops or even better yet put into an ebay store and sold for a dollar each over time. The only way the ebay store would become non-profitable would be if the dollar books that you're selling get re-listed more than 30 months in a row. If you list 1,000 books in an ebay store at the cost of $1.00 each you're bound to sell at least 1/4 of them the first three months. Someone somewhere is always looking for Darkhawk 35 to round out their run.

[Sal]

It's exactly that type of realm of possibility with which I was referring. It's not unfathomable to get a bunch of books that are only valued at 10-15 cents when buying a book worth $20,000 to average out the price to $20 per book. Many of those 10-15 centers can be put in quarter bins for comic shops or even better yet put into an ebay store and sold for a dollar each over time. The only way the ebay store would become non-profitable would be if the dollar books that you're selling get re-listed more than 30 months in a row. If you list 1,000 books in an ebay store at the cost of $1.00 each you're bound to sell at least 1/4 of them the first three months. Someone somewhere is always looking for Darkhawk 35 to round out their run.

 

okay, i see what you're saying, but isn't characterising the dollar-cost average for the ASM #1 in this way disingenuous?

[comicalgems]

When you're buying? Or when you're selling? I would think that if I'm making 85 cents per 1,000 books then I could easily drop the price of the ASM 1 by at least $850 dollars and not lose money.

[comicalgems]

Further more if it's a case of buying 10,000 books at that price I should be able to drop the price by $8,500 without incident. Where you lower the cost on some items you make up for it in other areas. I learned this from a very competitive company you may know as Wal-Mart.

[ArAich]

 

As many of you saw over the past month there was a seller on ebay called harnishauctions which got NARU'd. Indeed I was in the middle of that company when ebay and paypal shut it's online selling down. I was then shut down myself for being associated with that company, even though comicalgems had not sold any items like the ones that harnishauctions was shut down for selling. Very strange indeed.

 

As I've looked over the ebay terms of use again and again I have not came across the section of their terms of use that states you may not have an account if you are "ASSOCIATED" with a suspended member, which is the reasoning for my suspension outlined in the nice little email I received from them. With the word "ASSOCIATED" being such a broad term couldn't that mean that any and all of the 700+ members that exchanged feedback with harnishauctions is subject to beins suspended?

 

With all that aside...I'm sure a lot of you are wondering how goes the filling of a lot of the orders from that wave of full run auctions. Well in all honesty at first only about 70% of the buyers immediately canceled their orders when ebay and paypal suspended harnishauctions. The other 30% decided to stick it out.

 

Then after we began work on filling many of the orders there were customers who began filing disputes with paypal which paypal promptly decided in their favor refunding all customers who filed a dispute and leaving the harnishauctions paypal account with a negative balance. Which if these customers had canceled their orders immediately would not have been a problem.

 

Now here we are with thousands of dollars in comic books that we can not sell, that we would not even have possession of if these buyers had backed out immediately. These problems would not be an issue if ebay and paypal had not suspended us in the first place causing the massive panic that they did cause. Ebay states that the reason for their suspension of our account was because of a violation of policy number 9 that states "users may not sell things that will cause themselves or ebay loss of money" follwed by "because you sold items for under market value". Which means to me that they were implying that if the items weren't selling for "fair market value" (which must be what these types of items generally sell for on ebay) that the auction prices should have been manipulated in some sort of fashion since we have no control over what potential buyers are willing to bid, which again is a violation of their terms of service.

 

So it looks as if it's a user agreement paradox and that ebay itself is flawed in this matter. Now the reason for our suspension from paypal stemmed from their 20 days or less policy which was instituted in February 2003. Our paypal account was created in 2001 and at that time there was no such policy. To my knowledge we were never notified by email that there was a change in policy or that such a policy even existed. So yes I'll agree perhaps we majorly goofed in overlooking that paypal policy. However, I do not believe we are at fault for the final bid price of an auction that had no reserve and was open to all ebay bidders. Maybe the market is too skeptical and that's why there were so few bids.

 

In fact that's what I believe to solely be the problem. There have been too many scams in the past for someone like us to try to initiate a viable service on ebay. Why is it unreasonable to believe that you can get Silver Surfer 1 all day long at 25% of guide value if you are buying enough volume, but yet you are unable to accomplish a similar feat when dealing with full runs? It's not impossible as many people believe. We've been buying in bulk for years and getting amazing deals for books. Sometimes we average it out to where we've only paid 20 dollars for an ASM 1 in VF condition. We've even sold comics of that caliber to where the buyer averages out paying a mere 35 to 45 cents for the same book.

 

At the moment we're still filling the orders of some of the customers who have stuck with us while concurrently sitting on thousands of dollars of merchandise that we can not move. We've discussed the entire situation with several attorneys who all believe there is legal recourse that can be taken against both entities. Those entities being paypal and ebay. Personally I would prefer having our IDs reinstated so that we can move some of the stuff that we're sitting on. If not I'm loading up the truck and in November will have a hefty supply of Silver Age key issue books to sell at Wizard World Dallas.

 

I realize that the candidness with which I'm discussing the issues at hand may cause some of our remaining runs customers to panic. That should not be the case as I have just indicated all paypal disputes are being automatically honored and we are working to fill all orders that still stand with us. I know the posters on this forumn as well as the ebay forumn are interested in knowing what's going on whether it is to chuckle with glee that they have helped to take part in the temporary demise of a legitimate ebay seller or just general curiousity. But believe me you haven't seen the last of harnishauctions. There will be a resurrection and a redemption. Who got screwed here? We did. Cut and dry.

 

[Sal]

When you're buying? Or when you're selling? I would think that if I'm making 85 cents per 1,000 books then I could easily drop the price of the ASM 1 by at least $850 dollars and not lose money.

 

right, no, i understand that. you were just using the $20 averaging on the ASM #1 book as an example of the volume, and i was just being nitpicky.

 

in answer to your poll in the WC, i think that the majority of folks were scared off of your auctions because of past scams. from what i remember being posted here, there were a lot of people who could not understand how these runs would be put together in the time frame you set up in your auctions, and thus it had to be some sort of scam.

 

high amount of caveat emptor on ebay, understand

[comicalgems]

Simple asnwer. We had already squared away with someone who has many of these books on hand and the buying power to get many more to be our silent partner. As I've stated before the ninety day period was a long estimate only on filling out some of the holes in some of the runs. We were planning to offer these full runs continuously for quite a while. The fact that the auctions ended so low was not expected but not surprising at the same time on the first couple of runs of auctions based on the skepticism of ebay buying. We were like I said going to make up for any losses in other areas. The silent partner was interested based on our feedback rating and power seller status. As feedback were going to come in we were expecting the runs to start selling at fair prices. Both profitable and fair. But now it appears we'll never know.

[Point Five]

Simple asnwer. We had already squared away with someone who has many of these books on hand and the buying power to get many more to be our silent partner. As I've stated before the ninety day period was a long estimate only on filling out some of the holes in some of the runs. We were planning to offer these full runs continuously for quite a while. The fact that the auctions ended so low was not expected but not surprising at the same time on the first couple of runs of auctions based on the skepticism of ebay buying. We were like I said going to make up for any losses in other areas. The silent partner was interested based on our feedback rating and power seller status. As feedback were going to come in we were expecting the runs to start selling at fair prices. Both profitable and fair. But now it appears we'll never know.

 

Man alive, can you guys ever play the victim.

 

If you had this incredible, exclusive access to all these great books at low prices:

why not 1) buy the books, then 2) sell them? It seems to work for everyone else.

 

Or if trust and pos feedbacks is what you were counting on, and you were determined to run the auctions this way, why not try a couple of auctions to see how it went, instead of running hundreds of auctions of books you didn't own at the same time? (Surely your 'partner' must have been a touch curious at just exactly how you thought this would all play out?)

 

I don't particularly have anything against you personally, and I wish you guys well in digging out of this hole... I sincerely do. But IMHO, it's a hole of your own making.

[Stronguy]

Bring you books to Dallas if things don't work out. You might be able to make some deals if everything is on the up and up.

 

Personally your auctions looked like a scam. I was skeptical then and am still skeptical. If things are as you say you should start showing off what you have. Once word gets out you might be able to make this whole thing work.

[goldust40]

If you had this incredible, exclusive access to all these great books at low prices: why not 1) buy the books, then 2) sell them? It seems to work for everyone else.

 

Exactly. I'd like to know the answer to that question, too.

[comicalgems]

Capital issues were the main problem with buying the books outright. Our operation in general was costing between 60-70 thousand bi-monthly to operate. So freeing up cash to buy the books outright was an issue. The possibility of the silent partner using another venue was another issue as well.

[Sal]

ummm....consignment?

 

[comicalgems]

That's actually probably an idea that never crossed our minds. I probably should've consulted some message boards before suddenly blowing up on ebay. Live and learn I guess. And yes I have four tickets to Wizard World. I've never been so I don't know how much they'll actually let you bring in without being a vendor so we shall see.

[OldGuy]

I have four tickets to Wizard World. I've never been so I don't know how much they'll actually let you bring in without being a vendor so we shall see.

 

Why not buy a vendor table?

[Flaming_Telepath]

I have four tickets to Wizard World. I've never been so I don't know how much they'll actually let you bring in without being a vendor so we shall see.

 

Why not buy a vendor table?

 

Good idea!

 

And then he could wait 90 days to see if they actually had one for him....

[FFB]

Capital issues were the main problem with buying the books outright. Our operation in general was costing between 60-70 thousand bi-monthly to operate. So freeing up cash to buy the books outright was an issue. The possibility of the silent partner using another venue was another issue as well.

 

How are you spending $30-35K per month in operating expenses? It costs $9K in recurring monthly expenses to run my three-attorney law firm in downtown San Francisco (one of the more expensive real estate markets in the country), and our rent on our 3,300 square foot office space is half of that.