Our Recent Experience Selling Comics Through Mycomicshop 23 23

[Ryan.]

On 4/7/2024 at 8:16 AM, Number 6 said:

Anyone know what’s going on with their Prime Auction?  Auction listings say they open on the 6th but we’re several hours into the 7th and bidding still isn’t open. Is this normal for them?

Someone forgot to hit the start button. 

[musicmeta]

On 4/7/2024 at 7:16 AM, Number 6 said:

Anyone know what’s going on with their Prime Auction?  Auction listings say they open on the 6th but we’re several hours into the 7th and bidding still isn’t open. Is this normal for them?

I think it finally started from what I see.

[comicstock]

I think the delay was because of the eclipse.  

[shadroch]

I recently sent in a bunch of moderns that I'd picked up for almost nothing, and they were buying. I reviewed the books with a magnifying glass and only sent books I was confident would be VF or better. Nearly all of them were called Fines or worse.  Absurd. I'll give away my books before I send them any more raw books, and I've sold over $100K on their site as one of the earlier consigners. I was tempted to have them returned, but the round-trip shipping would have been more than they offered me.

[shadroch]

MCS has announced an auction devoted to the distinguished competition to celebrate its 10th anniversary.  It will be interesting to see how that goes. 

[FigaroToe]

Just got to say that my experience w/ MCS has been amazing. I do wish they were a bit faster w/ processing slabs to be available for auction/eBay and there was a better way to look up past sales data for slabs without having to hunt them down within each auction group (if you can find them). But those are pretty minor issues, still love using them for selling and their CS is fantastic. 

[Ryan.]

On 4/9/2024 at 1:13 PM, shadroch said:

I recently sent in a bunch of moderns that I'd picked up for almost nothing, and they were buying. I reviewed the books with a magnifying glass and only sent books I was confident would be VF or better. Nearly all of them were called Fines or worse.  Absurd. I'll give away my books before I send them any more raw books, and I've sold over $100K on their site as one of the earlier consigners. I was tempted to have them returned, but the round-trip shipping would have been more than they offered me.

I too have noticed that grading has somehow gotten even tighter than it was, which was already ultra conservative. At this point I mostly just shrug at their assigned grade and price consignments according to what I had them graded at.

[shadroch]

On 4/9/2024 at 10:55 AM, Ryan. said:

I too have noticed that grading has somehow gotten even tighter than it was, which was already ultra conservative. At this point I mostly just shrug at their assigned grade and price consignments according to what I had them graded at.

That works for consignments, but these were books I sold them.  Books they were buying at $1 for VFs and instead became F- and bought for sixteen cents. I submitted some lots, which were also knocked quite hard but in an auction, people understand and bid accordingly.  One door closes, and another opens.

[Ryan.]

On 4/9/2024 at 2:04 PM, shadroch said:

That works for consignments, but these were books I sold them.  Books they were buying at $1 for VFs and instead became F- and bought for sixteen cents. I submitted some lots, which were also knocked quite hard but in an auction, people understand and bid accordingly.  One door closes, and another opens.

Ah, gotcha. From a direct selling perspective I keep my expectations low and usually just send them small batches of books I got to read and don't feel like piecemealing out so I'm happy with whatever credit I can get back.  

[Axelrod]

On 4/9/2024 at 1:13 PM, shadroch said:

I recently sent in a bunch of moderns that I'd picked up for almost nothing, and they were buying. I reviewed the books with a magnifying glass and only sent books I was confident would be VF or better. Nearly all of them were called Fines or worse.  Absurd. I'll give away my books before I send them any more raw books, and I've sold over $100K on their site as one of the earlier consigners. I was tempted to have them returned, but the round-trip shipping would have been more than they offered me.

That is kind of sad, but appears to be the M.O.  If you are selling to them, they will always undergrade you and pay you less.  Too many stories about people sending them the exact same book back that they previously bought from MCS and yet now it gets a lower grade.

And I also have little doubt that when the book subsequently goes up for sale it will magically have become the higher grade again - possibly I'm too cynical there.  

They assign tight grades on consignments too, I gather, but probably not as much as when they are buying themselves.

[shadroch]

Conan says if they buy a book as a F, it gets sold as a F.  I've no reason not to believe him.

[mycomicshop]

On 4/9/2024 at 2:47 PM, Axelrod said:

That is kind of sad, but appears to be the M.O.  If you are selling to them, they will always undergrade you and pay you less.  Too many stories about people sending them the exact same book back that they previously bought from MCS and yet now it gets a lower grade.

And I also have little doubt that when the book subsequently goes up for sale it will magically have become the higher grade again - possibly I'm too cynical there.  

They assign tight grades on consignments too, I gather, but probably not as much as when they are buying themselves.

This is 100% not the case and has never been the case, and I give the same response any time this accusation is made. Shadroch is referring to selling to us via our online want list system, which involves full transparency on price and grade: we show up front the prices we pay in various grades, and once we receive your books we report to you what grades we have given them. Any that we graded lower than the seller did, the seller has the option of having the books returned to them. Every book bought under this system in which we bought the book from the seller at a specified grade will be listed for sale at that same grade. The only exceptions would be the occasional much higher value book we decide to send to get slabbed, and if we somehow encountered a flaw later after purchase that we didn't see while buying the book, then of course we'd grade it down accordingly.

Depending on how common the book is, it's easy to monitor our behavior on this yourself. You can watch our new listings page to see when we eventually post your book for sale (although that page isn't targeted at showing sub $5-10 books because there are too many of them and they're less interesting than the higher value ones). Or, just look at the issue listing itself, and wait til you see new inventory get added. Nobody has ever posted a "gotcha" of us relisting their purchased books at a higher grade because this is something we never do. If we did do that, people would have reported a lot of examples by now across the literally millions of comics we've bought over the years via this system.

 

This system does not guarantee that a book you bought from us months or years ago will receive the same grade when you sell it back to us. We don't have perfect consistency just like CGC and other graders aren't going to produce perfectly consistent repeatable grades across multiple gradings, and our graders just grade the book in front of them. If we do grade a book at a lower grade than you bought it from us some time ago, it's not because anybody has their thumb on the scale. It's just because whoever graded your book this time selected the lower grade.

I've relayed shadroch's feedback about his transaction to the head of our want list buying department, and he's going to take a look at the books and report back to me.

[mycomicshop]

Our want list buying department manager's feedback on shadroch's transaction was that first, he's always welcome to raise concerns like that directly with us, and we'd be happy to review and provide additional info or correct any errors we find.

As to the books, he reviewed them and is in agreement with the grades that were assigned, but said that our grader should have provided grade notes on some of the larger downgrades and failed to do so. He's discussed that with the grader as well as reminding the rest of the department.

Here are some of the relevant grading notes on books I asked about that had larger grade reductions. These notes were not included in the feedback shadroch originally received on his transaction, but our grader should have provided some of these notes while grading:

Gizmo 6 - color breaking spine stress, edge damage, minor crease, denting, and fingerprints
Grendel 36 - color breaking spine stress, scuffing, denting, accumulation of minor creases, foxing, and water spot
Torg 2- scuffing, soiling, heavy denting, spine roll, and abrasions on back cover
Wave Warriors 1- cover length creases, foxing, denting, and 1" spine split

Our largest downgrade was on the Wave Warriors, from VF down to GD. I'm sure there are sellers that would grade this higher than GD, but I also know we'd have unhappy buyers if they received this book from us as a VF.

 

 

I don't deny that we're tight graders and grade many books lower than other sellers might, and lower than CGC might. We do our best to grade consistently to our own grading standard and we're not trying to grade exactly the same as CGC. We buy 50-60K comics a month via this want list system, so it may not work for everybody but a lot of sellers make heavy use of it.

 

For anybody that prefers to sell comics in larger quantities or through channels other than our online want list, our Seller Services department buys collections of any shape or size, based on whatever info you provide. Since that system doesn't involve individually reporting specific grades on each issue as part of the purchase process, there's never any friction or disagreement about grade. The seller gives us whatever info is appropriate: list, pictures, sometimes we travel for an in-person examination--and then we make an offer for the group. As long as our offer beats anybody else's the seller will likely choose to sell to us, and it doesn't matter how we'll eventually grade the comics.

[manetteska]

On 4/10/2024 at 10:13 AM, mycomicshop said:

For anybody that prefers to sell comics in larger quantities or through channels other than our online want list, our Seller Services department buys collections of any shape or size, based on whatever info you provide. Since that system doesn't involve individually reporting specific grades on each issue as part of the purchase process, there's never any friction or disagreement about grade. The seller gives us whatever info is appropriate: list, pictures, sometimes we travel for an in-person examination--and then we make an offer for the group. As long as our offer beats anybody else's the seller will likely choose to sell to us, and it doesn't matter how we'll eventually grade the comics.

Is there a minimum potential buy price or maximum mileage to have an in-person examination?

[1Cool]

On 4/10/2024 at 11:13 AM, mycomicshop said:

Our want list buying department manager's feedback on shadroch's transaction was that first, he's always welcome to raise concerns like that directly with us, and we'd be happy to review and provide additional info or correct any errors we find.

As to the books, he reviewed them and is in agreement with the grades that were assigned, but said that our grader should have provided grade notes on some of the larger downgrades and failed to do so. He's discussed that with the grader as well as reminding the rest of the department.

Here are some of the relevant grading notes on books I asked about that had larger grade reductions. These notes were not included in the feedback shadroch originally received on his transaction, but our grader should have provided some of these notes while grading:

Gizmo 6 - color breaking spine stress, edge damage, minor crease, denting, and fingerprints
Grendel 36 - color breaking spine stress, scuffing, denting, accumulation of minor creases, foxing, and water spot
Torg 2- scuffing, soiling, heavy denting, spine roll, and abrasions on back cover
Wave Warriors 1- cover length creases, foxing, denting, and 1" spine split

Our largest downgrade was on the Wave Warriors, from VF down to GD. I'm sure there are sellers that would grade this higher than GD, but I also know we'd have unhappy buyers if they received this book from us as a VF.

 

 

I don't deny that we're tight graders and grade many books lower than other sellers might, and lower than CGC might. We do our best to grade consistently to our own grading standard and we're not trying to grade exactly the same as CGC. We buy 50-60K comics a month via this want list system, so it may not work for everybody but a lot of sellers make heavy use of it.

 

For anybody that prefers to sell comics in larger quantities or through channels other than our online want list, our Seller Services department buys collections of any shape or size, based on whatever info you provide. Since that system doesn't involve individually reporting specific grades on each issue as part of the purchase process, there's never any friction or disagreement about grade. The seller gives us whatever info is appropriate: list, pictures, sometimes we travel for an in-person examination--and then we make an offer for the group. As long as our offer beats anybody else's the seller will likely choose to sell to us, and it doesn't matter how we'll eventually grade the comics.

Who had that Wave Warrior a VF with a full length crease?  I'm assuming that is a typo that should be a VG to GD since I'd say quite a few would call it a VG.

[shadroch]

I have that Wave Warriors as a VG, so I might have hit the wrong key.  It was just a bunch of modern drek that I paid four cents each for, but it was eye-opening and most likely will be the last time I send in any books under that phase of their business.  I have a few lots coming up in auctions. Hopefully I get closer to the prices I was expecting.

I absolutely believe the books they buy as VG are sold as VG, and every other grade. That is not an issue.

I appreciate that someone from MCS reached out and asked me if I wanted the books back.  I can't say enough about their customer service.

[mycomicshop]

  

On 4/10/2024 at 10:44 AM, manetteska said:

Is there a minimum potential buy price or maximum mileage to have an in-person examination?

Mostly depends on what you have and where you're located, but to give you a general idea this is a reasonable rough approximation:

Buy in the $50K-100K or more range--we'll travel anywhere in the US as needed
Buy in the $20K-50K range--lots of these can be conducted remotely (meaning you provide a list/summary, pictures, and ship the books to us if we have a deal), but depending on where you are and what the books are we might travel ourselves or send a buying partner who is in your area. Our buying partners are knowledgeable collectors who do a lot of business with us that we trust to represent us well, report to us what they see, and can help facilitate getting books shipped to us if we buy the collection.
Buy in the $5K-20K range--increasingly likely it can be conducted remotely, or we can come to you or send a buying partner depending on location and what the collection is (eg $20K of high value slabs handled very differently from $20K of raw comics)
Buy under $5K--most of these are conducted remotely, but sometimes buying partners might be called on to help the seller avoid having to mess with shipping

Our Seller Services buyers traveled to CA last week for a collection, and in two weeks they're traveling to NYC area for two big collection pickups, and then have scheduled a number of other stops (either potential buys, or consignment pickups) along our route back through the NYC, NJ, PA, OH corridor before angling down toward Texas. Other times of the year we make similar trips back from Baltimore Comic Con and Heroes in Charlotte, and we may add another convention or two to our calendar in the next year or two.

We can also travel to pick up major consignment collections if the value justifies the travel. Eg we don't want to incur $2000 of travel expenses to pick up $20K of consignments where we'll earn in the ballpark of $2000 as commission. But if the value justifies the travel expense, or the seller is willing to contribute to pick-up costs because it's cheaper/safer/easier than trying to ship everything commercially, we are happy to pick up consignments too.

[1Cool]

On 4/10/2024 at 12:49 PM, shadroch said:

I have that Wave Warriors as a VG, so I might have hit the wrong key.  It was just a bunch of modern drek that I paid four cents each for, but it was eye-opening and most likely will be the last time I send in any books under that phase of their business.  I have a few lots coming up in auctions. Hopefully I get closer to the prices I was expecting.

I absolutely believe the books they buy as VG are sold as VG, and every other grade. That is not an issue.

I appreciate that someone from MCS reached out and asked me if I wanted the books back.  I can't say enough about their customer service.

Let us know about the bolded part.  They could call a book GD all day long as long as I get VG prices then no harm no foul.  A bunch of people report that is what they experience even though I have a hard time believing it since the grade difference can be VF+ to FN which is a world difference in price.  I'd love to hear how it goes for raw books.

[ttfitz]

Hey, here's a question for @mycomicshop sellers, and maybe Conan will chime in if  he has any thoughts. I had 15 books I gave them in Baltimore last year for consignment, and 10 of them have sold. The other 5 are getting to the point that I were I would probably drop the price to get it listed as "new in stock". There's a Prime auction going on now, and I wonder if anyone has any thoughts on when a good time to drop the price might be. Last time, I dropped prices right after the auction ended, thinking maybe I wasn't the only one who looked thru the listings to add something to my auction winnings, but only 1 book sold around then.

So, anyone have any thoughts on whether I should change now, change after the auction ends, or wait a few weeks?

[Axelrod]

Well, I'm rescinding any insinuation that MCS undergrades when buying and then re-lists the same book at a higher grade. I misread Shadroch's above comment to mean that they had undergraded books he previously had bought from them, and then recalled other complaints in this thread of that happening.  I just re-skimmed the entire thread of 3 1/2 years and there were only two times people claimed that MCS had now graded a book lower than what the seller had bought it from MCS as.  

Many more people complaining/remarking about how tight they grade (as compared to what CGC would give a book), but that's really something different altogether.