Our Recent Experience Selling Comics Through Mycomicshop 23 23

[s-man]

I would like to give a big shout out to MCS!  When I decided to sell a large chunk of my collection. I was going to manage the process myself through ebay.  Thankfully a fellow boardie ( @The_Beyonder  ) suggested using MCS for the daunting task and I decided to do just that.  It has been a month now and so nice not to have to deal with ebay and shipping/handling.  I have been very pleased with the ease of process and highly recommend their services!  Also a big shout out to @Ryan. for his help in getting the books to MCS!

[davidpg]

I'm thinking about selling a number of keys and semi-keys in the next prime auction...when do I have to start preparing to get them down there to you guys?

[thehumantorch]

On 1/30/2023 at 10:37 AM, davidpg said:

I'm thinking about selling a number of keys and semi-keys in the next prime auction...when do I have to start preparing to get them down there to you guys?

@mycomicshop

[shadroch]

On 1/30/2023 at 10:37 AM, davidpg said:

I'm thinking about selling a number of keys and semi-keys in the next prime auction...when do I have to start preparing to get them down there to you guys?

There is no reason to wait.  Send them now and when they are ready, you can consign them to the auction or do a BIN for a while until the auction is closer. 

The earelier you enter the auction, the more chance they accept the books. Some popular books appear to have long waiting lists for the Prime Auctions as they limit tnhe number of c opies they auction.

I'm down to a single book left with MCS - a Spiderman 298 that I now have listed for much less than I paid.

[Beastfeast]

On 2/9/2023 at 10:54 AM, Totiyolo said:

This is where Mr. Covid has done business. Online sales have grown significantly, which has affected not only book sales, but also sales of any goods. I haven't ordered from mycomicshop yet, but I haven't sold it. I will leave a review later about this resource.

wut

[graffix13]

Is MCS having staffing issues? My recent shipment of books to them was denied because "the business was closed" even though it was a Friday (March 3).

I have also had some books in the "Item set up in progess" category for 2 weeks now. It has never taken this long before. 

[Dergrosse13]

On 3/6/2023 at 8:36 AM, graffix13 said:

Is MCS having staffing issues? My recent shipment of books to them was denied because "the business was closed" even though it was a Friday (March 3).

I have also had some books in the "Item set up in progess" category for 2 weeks now. It has never taken this long before. 

Haven’t there been some crazy weather issues down there in the last week or two?  Maybe that’s it. 

[mycomicshop]

On 3/6/2023 at 7:36 AM, graffix13 said:

Is MCS having staffing issues? My recent shipment of books to them was denied because "the business was closed" even though it was a Friday (March 3).

I have also had some books in the "Item set up in progess" category for 2 weeks now. It has never taken this long before. 

No staffing issues and we definitely were not closed. That sounds like a delivery/tracking error.

[ADAMANTIUM]

On 3/6/2023 at 10:01 AM, mycomicshop said:

No staffing issues and we definitely were not closed. That sounds like a delivery/tracking error.

Thanks for being prompt to answer. I know you don't have too, still appreciated

[Ryan.]

On 3/6/2023 at 8:36 AM, graffix13 said:

Is MCS having staffing issues? My recent shipment of books to them was denied because "the business was closed" even though it was a Friday (March 3).

I have also had some books in the "Item set up in progess" category for 2 weeks now. It has never taken this long before. 

I've had a bunch of slabs in set up for close to two weeks now, which is abnormal. 

[Bird]

I have been trying to get items sent back to me for almost a month now. First Este was on vacation or something, so it just sat and wasn't addressed when she returned. Then I emailed and she asked why I didn't try someone else but she would take care of it. Another week and my items are still for sale and no word on them being returned.

[Ryan.]

On 3/11/2023 at 7:47 AM, Bird said:

I have been trying to get items sent back to me for almost a month now. First Este was on vacation or something, so it just sat and wasn't addressed when she returned. Then I emailed and she asked why I didn't try someone else but she would take care of it. Another week and my items are still for sale and no word on them being returned.

Any particular reason you want them returned?

[Bird]

On 3/11/2023 at 8:00 AM, Ryan. said:

Any particular reason you want them returned?

One has been there a year and I wouldn't mind having it back so I asked for about 10 other items as well. Just things I'll put in my new Live Auctioneers auctions rather than wait for them to sell there. I'd rather use them to get eyes on my auctions than sell them there.

[mycomicshop]

On 3/11/2023 at 6:47 AM, Bird said:

I have been trying to get items sent back to me for almost a month now. First Este was on vacation or something, so it just sat and wasn't addressed when she returned. Then I emailed and she asked why I didn't try someone else but she would take care of it. Another week and my items are still for sale and no word on them being returned.

I'll check on Monday to make sure this is taken care of. If you are emailing Este as an individual, I'd recommend instead using consign@mycomicshop.com, which is the group contact point for everything consignment related that is fielded by multiple people, including Este. Este was recently out on a two week vacation and sounds like your request happened to come in during the middle of that.

[mycomicshop]

On 3/11/2023 at 5:56 AM, Ryan. said:

I've had a bunch of slabs in set up for close to two weeks now, which is abnormal. 

We had a brief pause recently to open up some additional storage locations for slabs. We have over 50,000 consigned slabs right now, an all time high, so we needed to allocate more space for them. It wasn't that long ago we had fewer than 25,000 consignments total, slabs & raws combined.

We're pretty close to rolling out a combination of new price management tools + new consignor policies that are going to create conditions where overpriced slabs can't sit around forever. There's a lot of unrealistically priced inventory that we're effectively just storing for consignors right now, some of it multiple years old. Although our current consignment terms allow for the possibility of charging consignors storage fees for unsold inventory that we've had a long time, we really don't want to use that if we can find alternatives. I'd rather create incentives/requirements that lead to eventual sell through than be charging consignors to store an unsold book.

 

Outline of likely new policies:

- Once we have finished recording your book and it's ready for sale, the consignor has to assign it a price or put it in auction within 14 days. If not, the item switches from consignor-managed to MCS-managed. There's a decent quantity of consigned material that's been submitted to us and then just sits there and is never given a price by the consignor. This will eliminate that.

- For books 1980 and newer, the consignor has a 6 month runway (from the point of being ready for sale) where they can price however they want. After 6 months, the required options are: book switches to MCS-managed and begins receiving automatic 5% monthly price reductions; goes in auction; or returns to consignor.

- For books older than 1980, same as above except it's a 12 month runway where the consignor has full freedom.

There will be exceptions and special handling for books where a consignor has multiples in the same grade, and also exceptions for some especially high end material.

My impression is that anybody that can't work within those constraints either has an unrealistic idea of what their book is worth, or isn't that serious about selling.

[Bird]

On 3/11/2023 at 2:57 PM, mycomicshop said:

We had a brief pause recently to open up some additional storage locations for slabs. We have over 50,000 consigned slabs right now, an all time high, so we needed to allocate more space for them. It wasn't that long ago we had fewer than 25,000 consignments total, slabs & raws combined.

We're pretty close to rolling out a combination of new price management tools + new consignor policies that are going to create conditions where overpriced slabs can't sit around forever. There's a lot of unrealistically priced inventory that we're effectively just storing for consignors right now, some of it multiple years old. Although our current consignment terms allow for the possibility of charging consignors storage fees for unsold inventory that we've had a long time, we really don't want to use that if we can find alternatives. I'd rather create incentives/requirements that lead to eventual sell through than be charging consignors to store an unsold book.

 

Outline of likely new policies:

- Once we have finished recording your book and it's ready for sale, the consignor has to assign it a price or put it in auction within 14 days. If not, the item switches from consignor-managed to MCS-managed. There's a decent quantity of consigned material that's been submitted to us and then just sits there and is never given a price by the consignor. This will eliminate that.

- For books 1980 and newer, the consignor has a 6 month runway (from the point of being ready for sale) where they can price however they want. After 6 months, the required options are: book switches to MCS-managed and begins receiving automatic 5% monthly price reductions; goes in auction; or returns to consignor.

- For books older than 1980, same as above except it's a 12 month runway where the consignor has full freedom.

There will be exceptions and special handling for books where a consignor has multiples in the same grade, and also exceptions for some especially high end material.

My impression is that anybody that can't work within those constraints either has an unrealistic idea of what their book is worth, or isn't that serious about selling.

These sound spot on!

Unpriced material is insane!

My returns (Thanks for the helpl) are in the unrealistically priced category. Not all are expensive either. But they don't make sense to sit at high prices for either of us, so I'll sit on some and use a few for other purposes as stated above. I will say that the subtle thing mcs does where they highlight and then change the color on the my consignment page as items age is brilliant, it really causes cognitive dissonance that begs to be resolved. It is very smart yet simple.

.

[Ryan.]

On 3/11/2023 at 2:57 PM, mycomicshop said:

We had a brief pause recently to open up some additional storage locations for slabs. We have over 50,000 consigned slabs right now, an all time high, so we needed to allocate more space for them. It wasn't that long ago we had fewer than 25,000 consignments total, slabs & raws combined.

We're pretty close to rolling out a combination of new price management tools + new consignor policies that are going to create conditions where overpriced slabs can't sit around forever. There's a lot of unrealistically priced inventory that we're effectively just storing for consignors right now, some of it multiple years old. Although our current consignment terms allow for the possibility of charging consignors storage fees for unsold inventory that we've had a long time, we really don't want to use that if we can find alternatives. I'd rather create incentives/requirements that lead to eventual sell through than be charging consignors to store an unsold book.

 

Outline of likely new policies:

- Once we have finished recording your book and it's ready for sale, the consignor has to assign it a price or put it in auction within 14 days. If not, the item switches from consignor-managed to MCS-managed. There's a decent quantity of consigned material that's been submitted to us and then just sits there and is never given a price by the consignor. This will eliminate that.

- For books 1980 and newer, the consignor has a 6 month runway (from the point of being ready for sale) where they can price however they want. After 6 months, the required options are: book switches to MCS-managed and begins receiving automatic 5% monthly price reductions; goes in auction; or returns to consignor.

- For books older than 1980, same as above except it's a 12 month runway where the consignor has full freedom.

There will be exceptions and special handling for books where a consignor has multiples in the same grade, and also exceptions for some especially high end material.

My impression is that anybody that can't work within those constraints either has an unrealistic idea of what their book is worth, or isn't that serious about selling.

I support these policies. 

[THE_BEYONDER]

On 3/11/2023 at 4:02 PM, Ryan. said:

On 3/11/2023 at 2:57 PM, mycomicshop said:

We had a brief pause recently to open up some additional storage locations for slabs. We have over 50,000 consigned slabs right now, an all time high, so we needed to allocate more space for them. It wasn't that long ago we had fewer than 25,000 consignments total, slabs & raws combined.

We're pretty close to rolling out a combination of new price management tools + new consignor policies that are going to create conditions where overpriced slabs can't sit around forever. There's a lot of unrealistically priced inventory that we're effectively just storing for consignors right now, some of it multiple years old. Although our current consignment terms allow for the possibility of charging consignors storage fees for unsold inventory that we've had a long time, we really don't want to use that if we can find alternatives. I'd rather create incentives/requirements that lead to eventual sell through than be charging consignors to store an unsold book.

 

Outline of likely new policies:

- Once we have finished recording your book and it's ready for sale, the consignor has to assign it a price or put it in auction within 14 days. If not, the item switches from consignor-managed to MCS-managed. There's a decent quantity of consigned material that's been submitted to us and then just sits there and is never given a price by the consignor. This will eliminate that.

- For books 1980 and newer, the consignor has a 6 month runway (from the point of being ready for sale) where they can price however they want. After 6 months, the required options are: book switches to MCS-managed and begins receiving automatic 5% monthly price reductions; goes in auction; or returns to consignor.

- For books older than 1980, same as above except it's a 12 month runway where the consignor has full freedom.

There will be exceptions and special handling for books where a consignor has multiples in the same grade, and also exceptions for some especially high end material.

My impression is that anybody that can't work within those constraints either has an unrealistic idea of what their book is worth, or isn't that serious about selling.

I support these policies. 

@mycomicshop

[Ryan.]

In other news, weekly auction results have been hilariously brutal lately. Could be the time of the year. Nice time to be a buyer though.

[SeniorSurfer]

On 3/11/2023 at 2:57 PM, mycomicshop said:

We had a brief pause recently to open up some additional storage locations for slabs. We have over 50,000 consigned slabs right now, an all time high, so we needed to allocate more space for them. It wasn't that long ago we had fewer than 25,000 consignments total, slabs & raws combined.

We're pretty close to rolling out a combination of new price management tools + new consignor policies that are going to create conditions where overpriced slabs can't sit around forever. There's a lot of unrealistically priced inventory that we're effectively just storing for consignors right now, some of it multiple years old. Although our current consignment terms allow for the possibility of charging consignors storage fees for unsold inventory that we've had a long time, we really don't want to use that if we can find alternatives. I'd rather create incentives/requirements that lead to eventual sell through than be charging consignors to store an unsold book.

 

Outline of likely new policies:

- Once we have finished recording your book and it's ready for sale, the consignor has to assign it a price or put it in auction within 14 days. If not, the item switches from consignor-managed to MCS-managed. There's a decent quantity of consigned material that's been submitted to us and then just sits there and is never given a price by the consignor. This will eliminate that.

- For books 1980 and newer, the consignor has a 6 month runway (from the point of being ready for sale) where they can price however they want. After 6 months, the required options are: book switches to MCS-managed and begins receiving automatic 5% monthly price reductions; goes in auction; or returns to consignor.

- For books older than 1980, same as above except it's a 12 month runway where the consignor has full freedom.

There will be exceptions and special handling for books where a consignor has multiples in the same grade, and also exceptions for some especially high end material.

My impression is that anybody that can't work within those constraints either has an unrealistic idea of what their book is worth, or isn't that serious about selling.

A question:  Would this be applied immediately to books that are in stock or would they continue under the older policy when they were accepted (currently I believe the guidelines were that a book could remain in consignment for 2 years if over 1K and up to one year if less than 1K) ?