Our Recent Experience Selling Comics Through Mycomicshop 23 23

[Dergrosse13]

On 6/15/2022 at 10:15 AM, mycomicshop said:

Two, I would encourage potential consignors deciding whether to send their raw books to us to look at it in terms of where can you get the most money for your comics relative to your investment (labor, shipping, slabbing costs, etc). Focus on that return rather than whether we grade something differently than you would. Because of our reputation for grading, buyers really like buying raw books from us. You can often sell a raw book through us for as much as a slabbed book in the same grade would go for, and in some cases, for somewhat more, and that's without the time and expense of slabbing. But if you prefer slabbing first, we support that too, can submit to CGC for you, and then list your slabs when they come back.

As a frequent MCS raw buyer, I can definitely confirm this.  
 

My only beef was I once bought a raw comic from MCS, it never left the sleeve they sent it to me in (which had a sticker identifying the grade they had assigned it), I sent it back to them a year or so later to consign, and they graded it a half grade lower.  I suppose it could have been damaged in transit or something (although it was carefully packed).  Generally, though, I have no complaints.  Ive consigned both slabbed and raw books, and been happy with the results. 

[mycomicshop]

I can see how that could be irritating, but stuff like that will happen. From our perspective, I see it as a good thing that we're actually grading the books we receive and not just looking at our old label and slapping the same grade on it without looking at the comic. Once a book is out of our possession anything could happen to it in terms of handling, inadvertent damage, or even being swapped out. That doesn't mean we mistrust the submitter, it's just not a workable policy to list books for sale based on an old label when the book was not in our custody.

It's the same with CGC--if you crack a CGC book out and send it back in at a later time accompanied by the original label, CGC's under no obligation to give it the same grade. With us, with CGC, or anybody else, the same book looked at at different points in time might get a slightly different grade.

[thehumantorch]

On 6/15/2022 at 9:37 AM, DBizzle said:

Hi everyone, great information in here, thanks so much for posting.  I'm in a similar spot, too many slabs that I had the intention of selling but no time.  

I'm also from Canada and was thinking of using MCS for consignments, so it was really helpful to find this.   @thehumantorch question for you -- who do you use to ship and do you have to pay customs to get your comics down to MyComicShop?  I've looked through shipping options and customs and the cost seems really high.  For example I have about 30-35 slabs to send down, bought a big box, and was quoted $400 to ship.  I didn't ship it and am looking for other options now.

I use Canada Post.  Think I paid a little over $100 to ship 28 slabs (used a box CGC used to ship slabs to me).  Shipper never pays customs fees and I don't believe mycomicshop does either.  Don't ever use UPS to ship to them or to ship comics to you.  They charge exorbitant customs border fees and the few times I've had books shipped to me via them it cost me time and money (I have a horror story from 2 years ago)

[thehumantorch]

@mycomicshop  Conan, can I request mycomicshop to hold purchased items until I request shipment to save money on shipping?

[shadroch]

On 6/15/2022 at 5:41 PM, thehumantorch said:

@mycomicshop  Conan, can I request mycomicshop to hold purchased items until I request shipment to save money on shipping?

This is a problem. You can hold off on paying your auction wins so you can can combine two or three auctions together, but that means the consigner doesn't get paid-which doesn't seem fair. I wish there was a way to pay, but still be able to combine shipping. At one point, I was buying some of their dollar books each week but because I waited to combine two auctions, the sale expired and I was charged full price for them.  Now I no longer even look at the $1 sales, so their policy didn't help sales, it hurt them and pissed off a good customer.

 

[mycomicshop]

On 6/15/2022 at 7:41 PM, thehumantorch said:

@mycomicshop  Conan, can I request mycomicshop to hold purchased items until I request shipment to save money on shipping?

No, not currently, though that's something we'd like to add as soon as we can support it well.

[Black_Adam]

On 6/15/2022 at 8:37 AM, DBizzle said:

Hi everyone, great information in here, thanks so much for posting.  I'm in a similar spot, too many slabs that I had the intention of selling but no time.  

I'm also from Canada and was thinking of using MCS for consignments, so it was really helpful to find this.   @thehumantorch question for you -- who do you use to ship and do you have to pay customs to get your comics down to MyComicShop?  I've looked through shipping options and customs and the cost seems really high.  For example I have about 30-35 slabs to send down, bought a big box, and was quoted $400 to ship.  I didn't ship it and am looking for other options now.

Another good option, if you are near one of their Canadian locations, is Chit Chats. They take the shipments over the border and ship them USPS which I find to be way cheaper than Canada Post. The only caveat is the shipment has to have a declared value of $800 or less.

https://chitchats.com/en

 

[kimik]

On 6/15/2022 at 6:41 PM, thehumantorch said:

@mycomicshop  Conan, can I request mycomicshop to hold purchased items until I request shipment to save money on shipping?

Aren't you supposed to just be selling there? 

[KirbyTown]

On 6/16/2022 at 8:59 AM, mycomicshop said:

No, not currently, though that's something we'd like to add as soon as we can support it well.

 

Conan, I have a few questions that will eventually relate to combined shipping by the end of this post. 😜

 

When I check the new listings page and see various MCS inventory books scattered throughout the day that were purchased within 1 minute of being listed, am I seeing the result of purchasing bots or are they humans with an auto-refresh who can click through the payment process extremely quickly? Is it possible to tell the difference on your end?

Bot or not, is it the same account(s) performing this behavior throughout the week, week after week, month after month, and if so do you consider it a problem?

As for the relation to combined shipping...are these intra-day buyers of moderately-priced single issues really paying full shipping on multiple shipments of single books throughout the day/week/month as they pop up?

Thanks for taking the time

Edited June 17, 2022 by KirbyTown

[mycomicshop]

I think it's a combination of:

- some people refreshing the new listings page frequently looking for books they want to jump on immediately

- some people getting want list notifications and acting quickly

- possibly somebody's using a bot of some sort

If anybody is using a bot to buy from us quickly, as long as their activity isn't creating excessive traffic and a negative impact on our server performance, the buying itself isn't a problem. Anybody buying, however, they're buying, is buying at our posted asking prices, or our consignors' posted asking prices. Something selling quickly is either a sign that we priced fairly to market and have an efficient market, or it's a sign we priced too low and it's on us to adjust according to the supply and demand we see.

Re: combined shipping, it depends who and what items. We do offer a "piggyback" shipping option for people with ongoing subscription/preorder purchases from us. You can buy books and have them ship out with your next shipment of preordered new comics at no additional shipping cost. This option is not available for consignment items, auction items, or most heavy or oversize items like hardcovers. However, we'll be making some changes to this option in the somewhat near future, possibly replacing/merging this option into a more general and more flexible system for holding items for combined shipping that doesn't require you to be a sub service customer. There will be marginal non-zero shipping costs for each item you add to your shipment, but it would be significantly cheaper than if you didn't combine them and were paying multiple separate shipping charges.

[Ryan.]

On 6/17/2022 at 11:13 AM, mycomicshop said:

This option is not available for consignment items, auction item

Conan, I can confirm that I actively avoid consignment items and second guess auction bids due to the inability to piggyback shipping with them.

[dover]

I would really like a way to build a cart, secure the books and then do one final checkout. As it is, I have to place the book in a cart, then use the "save for later" and hope when I am ready to buy the books are still available. I see books every day, I just do not want to buy 1 and ship. Buy one and ship, etc....

I work with several dealers that will allow me to build up a stack and then at some point pay up and ship all as one. 

 

[KirbyTown]

On 6/17/2022 at 10:13 AM, mycomicshop said:

There will be marginal non-zero shipping costs for each item you add to your shipment, but it would be significantly cheaper than if you didn't combine them and were paying multiple separate shipping charges.

This would significantly increase the amount of money I spend at your shop, especially towards stale/esoteric inventory and less-expensive items in general. I imagine that the flood of untapped revenue will be stunning. Thanks for the information!

Edited June 17, 2022 by KirbyTown

[KirbyTown]

On 6/17/2022 at 11:01 AM, dover said:

I would really like a way to build a cart, secure the books and then do one final checkout. 

I work with several dealers that will allow me to build up a stack and then at some point pay up and ship all as one. 

 

I would hope the shipping solution he proposed would fix this for you as tying up books without paying for them doesn't seem viable on any level when other people are ready to purchase...

[KirbyTown]

On 6/17/2022 at 10:13 AM, mycomicshop said:

or it's a sign we priced too low and it's on us to adjust according to the supply and demand we see.

I didn't mean to make a separate post on this, but regarding quick adjustment to market are you considering a way to more quickly update minimum consignment grades in the future? I understand that we can submit individual requests using comps, but seeking out those copypaste links for each book that hasn't yet been updated can be a slog.

Also, with raw consignment submissions, is there any reason the approvers would reject a book that already meets the minimum? I'm asking because the new system for auto-submitting slabs is brilliant and means I can put out a shipment to you same-day, but on raws I still have to wait for next morning's approval even when I do meet grade. I'm sure you have a good reason for this but I'm just mentioning it. Thanks

[jaxcomics]

On 6/17/2022 at 2:17 PM, KirbyTown said:

I didn't mean to make a separate post on this, but regarding quick adjustment to market are you considering a way to more quickly update minimum consignment grades in the future? I understand that we can submit individual requests using comps, but seeking out those copypaste links for each book that hasn't yet been updated can be a slog.

Also, with raw consignment submissions, is there any reason the approvers would reject a book that already meets the minimum? I'm asking because the new system for auto-submitting slabs is brilliant and means I can put out a shipment to you same-day, but on raws I still have to wait for next morning's approval even when I do meet grade. I'm sure you have a good reason for this but I'm just mentioning it. Thanks

I would imagine that they run into inexperienced consignors who think that all of their books are 9.2, when in reality none of them are. Being able to manually look at each submission would help to identify this and avoid potentially upset consignors who realize after their books are graded by MCS that many of the books aren't eligible for consignment in their actual grade. There's also the possibility of individuals wanting to consign huge amounts of a single book - more than MCS would probably want to take on unless it was a valuable key - and a manual review allows them to read any notes included by the potential consignor before finalizing things. 

[mycomicshop]

On 6/17/2022 at 1:17 PM, KirbyTown said:

I didn't mean to make a separate post on this, but regarding quick adjustment to market are you considering a way to more quickly update minimum consignment grades in the future? I understand that we can submit individual requests using comps, but seeking out those copypaste links for each book that hasn't yet been updated can be a slog.

Also, with raw consignment submissions, is there any reason the approvers would reject a book that already meets the minimum? I'm asking because the new system for auto-submitting slabs is brilliant and means I can put out a shipment to you same-day, but on raws I still have to wait for next morning's approval even when I do meet grade. I'm sure you have a good reason for this but I'm just mentioning it. Thanks

At some point within the next 6 months or so one of the things we'd like to get done is to update our online want list to incorporate current market pricing data in a faster and more automated way. This would improve not just the buying prices we show as offering, but would also be relevant to what you're asking about, the minimum consignable grade that's listed.

To your second point, normally no there's not a reason to reject a raw book offered for consignment--one of the reasons as jaxcomics guessed is to give us a chance to step in when an inexperienced seller offers stuff at grades way higher than they're realistically likely to be. A good percentage of the inexperienced sellers just want to list all their books as NM. We can definitely do a better job of streamlining the process and allowing raw submissions without review delays for sellers who don't need that oversight, or where the books appear to be reasonably graded, and only involving a review and approval step for brand new sellers who aren't familiar with comics.

 

[thehumantorch]

On 6/16/2022 at 4:24 PM, kimik said:

Aren't you supposed to just be selling there? 

I'm weak 

[dover]

On 6/17/2022 at 4:02 PM, mycomicshop said:

 

I see comments about non-payers. Are there any penalties or repercussions for people that secure a book but then do not pay?

[KirbyTown]

On 6/19/2022 at 8:16 AM, dover said:

I see comments about non-payers. Are there any penalties or repercussions for people that secure a book but then do not pay?

The only time I know of that a buyer would have anything in their cart that they secured but didn't yet purchase would be any auction wins they haven't paid for yet. Bidders obviously have to pay for what they win, but if for some reason you don't then obviously MCS can keep you out of auctions (amongst other things that you've agreed to in advance, see below.) 

 

That being said, Conan's shop is probably the most flexible and accommodating you'll find, you just need to communicate potential issues as far in advance as possible.

 

Also, you have two weeks to pay for the auction you win today. That gives you a chance to ship three sets of auction wins together. Furthermore, if you happen to want to buy something else from the store at some point after you win an auction but before you've paid for the auction wins, you can move the auction wins to the "save for later" section of the cart and bring them back when you're ready to pay.

 

Here's the agreement they ask you to sign before you can bid:

 

https://www.mycomicshop.com/auctions/bidderagreement

Edited June 19, 2022 by KirbyTown