Our Recent Experience Selling Comics Through Mycomicshop 23 23

[musicmeta]

I'm getting ready to drive down to MCS and drop off some CGC books and some raws in a few weeks.  
So much better then stressing about mailing them out to another auction house and hoping they get there without being damaged despite my 
tight packaging and it's much cheaper.  I'm fortunate to live close enough to justify driving there. 

[ttfitz]

On 11/5/2023 at 10:47 PM, Nick Furious said:

On 11/4/2023 at 4:27 PM, The humble Watcher lurking said:

I love this store. Grading is very good, plus you can save so much money with shipping.  Way better than eBay. Highly recommend. 

Another thing I find very valuable is that MCS keeps an online history of your purchases.  I can sort it by title or by date and see everything I ever purchased from them going back to my first purchase in July 2019. 

Can't say whether it was my first purchase from them, but my order history goes back to 2013.

EDIT - October 24, 2013, so just passed a decade (at least) of being a customer!

Edited November 6, 2023 by ttfitz

[Black_Adam]

On 11/6/2023 at 12:16 PM, ttfitz said:

Can't say whether it was my first purchase from them, but my order history goes back to 2013.

EDIT - October 24, 2013, so just passed a decade (at least) of being a customer!

I've been a loyal and happy customer of MCS since Dec. 8/2016, when I paid the princely sum of $265 to add this Thor #162 (which I still have) to my collection!

[Nick Furious]

On 11/6/2023 at 2:16 PM, ttfitz said:

EDIT - October 24, 2013, so just passed a decade (at least) of being a customer!

I think my history with MCS actually goes back to about 2009.  IIRC, they had something called "The Trading Post" on their website and trading in books for credit was a pretty robust business, even more than consignment at the time.  A local back issue dealer (Nick Scotto) was loading up long boxes of unbagged multiples from his distributor days and shipping them to Lone Star for trade credit.  He was basically sending hundreds, maybe even thousands of illiquid books from his huge inventory and trading them for credit towards a handful of slabbed books that could be sold quickly and easily.  I did some of this trading for credit for a while but got frustrated by the tight grading on raw books.  Sometimes getting $4 in credit on a book that I expected to get maybe $20 for when my "9.0 or better" turned out to be an MCS 7.0.  Several years later, in 2018 I had forgotten all about MCS (Lone Star) until I bought a couple of their BIN listings on Ebay.  After my second or third purchase arrived, I realized who I was buying from and returned to their website to save money buying directly rather than through Ebay.     

[ttfitz]

On 11/6/2023 at 10:24 PM, Nick Furious said:

On 11/6/2023 at 3:16 PM, ttfitz said:

EDIT - October 24, 2013, so just passed a decade (at least) of being a customer!

I think my history with MCS actually goes back to about 2009. 

I was speaking here, of course, of my experience under their MCS name; my first experience with Lone Star Comics goes back to the late 80s. My wife worked for Mobil Oil in their headquarters in Fairfax, VA, and occasionally had to go to Dallas on business (for those fans of the television show Dallas, Ewing Oil's headquarters was the Mobil Oil building). I went with her one time, and spent part of my time while she was working visiting various Dallas/Fort Worth comic shops, including many Lone Star locations. I discovered then how availability could have a regional component - many times I would look thru the back issue bins with my want list in hand, and discover long runs of stuff I needed, with the stuff I already had missing. Even better, at the time Lone Star had a thing where they would put a colored sticker on a book when it went in their stock, and as time went by a particular color would go on sale. I probably needed to get a new suitcase to bring all the books I bought on that trip home!

[Nick Furious]

On 11/6/2023 at 2:16 PM, ttfitz said:

EDIT - October 24, 2013, so just passed a decade (at least) of being a customer!

Curious if you are still able to access the purchase information and images from the purchases back as far as 2013?  

[ttfitz]

On 11/6/2023 at 10:46 PM, Nick Furious said:

On 11/6/2023 at 3:16 PM, ttfitz said:

EDIT - October 24, 2013, so just passed a decade (at least) of being a customer!

Curious if you are still able to access the purchase information and images from the purchases back as far as 2013?  

[Telegan]

On 11/6/2023 at 9:46 PM, Nick Furious said:

Curious if you are still able to access the purchase information and images from the purchases back as far as 2013?  

FYI : I can see stuff going back to 2006 for sure.

[Telegan]

@Nick Furious One thing I just noticed and a possible clarification - My purchases back around 2006 weren't auction purchases.  They were just purchases of back issues that weren't that old.  In some cases, there are "generic images".  In some cases, there are no records returned (in other words - no picture at all).  I do have pics/purchases from auctions starting in 2011, though.  In all cases there is a purchase price, however.

I've always thought I needed to go back and update my Collectors/CLZ software entries with purchase prices from back then, but dang if that isn't a bit of task. lol.

Edited November 7, 2023 by Telegan

[Ryan.]

2011 

[Nick Furious]

On 11/6/2023 at 11:58 PM, Telegan said:

@Nick Furious One thing I just noticed and a possible clarification - My purchases back around 2006 weren't auction purchases.  They were just purchases of back issues that weren't that old.  In some cases, there are "generic images".  In some cases, there are no records returned (in other words - no picture at all).  I do have pics/purchases from auctions starting in 2011, though.  In all cases there is a purchase price, however.

I've always thought I needed to go back and update my Collectors/CLZ software entries with purchase prices from back then, but dang if that isn't a bit of task. lol.

It's pretty common that standard MCS stock won't have images in the lower price ranges.  Seems that imaging is for consignments and higher dollar MCS stock items.  Also for auctions of course, but I think all auction books are consignment items.

[Telegan]

On 11/7/2023 at 6:56 AM, Nick Furious said:

It's pretty common that standard MCS stock won't have images in the lower price ranges.  Seems that imaging is for consignments and higher dollar MCS stock items.  Also for auctions of course, but I think all auction books are consignment items.

Yeah, but in this case, there were 8 issues in a series that I bought.  They were all really cheap.  Most of them have the usual "generic" image for cheaper comics.  The 2 cheapest ones returned "generic" images, but in the case of 2 other issues, all that's returned is "We're sorry, no results were found matching your search."

No big deal in any case.  Just clarifying what I said earlier because technically I was mistaken.  As long as they have prices, that's all I really care, tbh.

[Nick Furious]

@mycomicshop Conan, two of my books from a recent submission were sent to CGC for reholdering.  I didn't request this, but I understand it is something MCS does if the cases are in bad enough shape.  One of the books had a charge of $20 but the other had a grading charge of over $125.  Is this a mistake on the part of CGC, or is this something that happens from time to time for specific reasons?  It has the same grade now as it did before reholdering.  

[mycomicshop]

On 12/13/2023 at 8:23 PM, Nick Furious said:

@mycomicshop Conan, two of my books from a recent submission were sent to CGC for reholdering.  I didn't request this, but I understand it is something MCS does if the cases are in bad enough shape.  One of the books had a charge of $20 but the other had a grading charge of over $125.  Is this a mistake on the part of CGC, or is this something that happens from time to time for specific reasons?  It has the same grade now as it did before reholdering.  

A grading charge of $125 for something that was supposed to be a reholder sounds like a mistake somewhere along the way but without knowing the account details I can't provide a concrete answer.

If you PM me the email address on your account and the book in question I can ask about it, or you can email consign@mycomicshop.com and they should be able to look into it and let you know what's going on and fix it if something was done in error.

[SkOw]

On 11/6/2023 at 7:52 AM, musicmeta said:

I'm getting ready to drive down to MCS and drop off some CGC books and some raws in a few weeks.  
So much better then stressing about mailing them out to another auction house and hoping they get there without being damaged despite my 
tight packaging and it's much cheaper.  I'm fortunate to live close enough to justify driving there. 

@mycomicshop - Do you have a list of shows you will be at in 2024 where customers can drop consignments off?  I know you were at Heroes and Baltimore last year, same this year?  Chicago?

[mycomicshop]

We have Heroes and Baltimore on our schedule again for 2024, and would be nice to add a Chicago area convention. Any recommendations or requests about shows in the Chicago/upper midwest area we should consider? C2E2, Chicago Fan Expo, Motor City?

Priorities for us are accessibility of load in/load out both for us and for consignors wanting to bring boxes to us to drop off, and the show having a large enough presence of comics people and comic dealers and not just pop culture stuff.

Edited December 15, 2023 by mycomicshop

[Happy Noodle Boy]

So, about consigning comics to MCS...

I've consigned a bunch of golden age books and I'm happy with the experience. Most of them have sold and MCS is very communicative and helpful when I have questions. My last three remaining books haven't drawn any interest, and I'm wondering: for those who consign to MCS regularly, how long do you leave books up before you decide to either take them back or put them in the MCS auction? It's only been a month, but the reason I seem so impatient is because two out of three of the books--Buccaneers 21, graded 5.5, and Marvel Family 38, graded 4.0 with water damage--seem like they might sit for a long time. Buccaneers has nothing to recommend it really except a nice Reed Crandall GGA cover, while the Marvel Family book has a Sivana cover and it looks nice and is priced to sell, but Marvel Family stuff doesn't exactly light people's worlds on fire anyway. I know some people leave their stuff up for years but I don't want to hold onto these that long. I've heard though, that books put into the MCS auction can sometimes sell very low. Any advice would be appreciated...

Edited December 15, 2023 by Happy Noodle Boy

[mycomicshop]

Buccaneers 21 raw 5.5- we sold a much lower graded copy, FR/GD, for $65 Nov 27. Your $189 asking price isn't unreasonable, but you've only had the book listed since Dec 5, only lowered the price to $189 earlier today, and last GPA for a CGC 5.5 was $169 in October. I would drop the price another 10-15% or so in 5% increments over a span of maybe 2-3 months before I would put it into auction, unless you just want to be done with it.

Marvel Family 38 raw 4.0, price lowered today to $64. I think your price is fine, could sell there to the right person, or might need to drop to the $50ish range. Just depends how quickly you want to move it. Like with the Buccaneers I'd give it another 2-3 months and another few 5% drops down to around $50 or so before I'd auction it.

 

[Happy Noodle Boy]

On 12/15/2023 at 1:41 PM, mycomicshop said:

Buccaneers 21 raw 5.5- we sold a much lower graded copy, FR/GD, for $65 Nov 27. Your $189 asking price isn't unreasonable, but you've only had the book listed since Dec 5, only lowered the price to $189 earlier today, and last GPA for a CGC 5.5 was $169 in October. I would drop the price another 10-15% or so in 5% increments over a span of maybe 2-3 months before I would put it into auction, unless you just want to be done with it.

Marvel Family 38 raw 4.0, price lowered today to $64. I think your price is fine, could sell there to the right person, or might need to drop to the $50ish range. Just depends how quickly you want to move it. Like with the Buccaneers I'd give it another 2-3 months and another few 5% drops down to around $50 or so before I'd auction it.

 

Thanks so much for the advice! Seriously, you guys are great. One quick question: I'm considering taking back the Marvel Family 38, as I really like the book, but the water damage notation gives me pause. Is there any way to access "graders notes" of some sort so I know where exactly the water damage is and how bad it is?

[mycomicshop]

On 12/15/2023 at 12:51 PM, Happy Noodle Boy said:

Thanks so much for the advice! Seriously, you guys are great. One quick question: I'm considering taking back the Marvel Family 38, as I really like the book, but the water damage notation gives me pause. Is there any way to access "graders notes" of some sort so I know where exactly the water damage is and how bad it is?

Unfortunately, no. The only graders notes we record are any defects that are mentioned in the public item notes you can already view--and those notes are usually limited to things that are A) not readily apparent from the cover scan or B) especially problematic for some buyers even when acceptable within the assigned grade. Nobody is paying us $20+ to grade and slab their comic, so we aren't able to put as much detail into describing grade issues as CGC sometimes does.