Our Recent Experience Selling Comics Through Mycomicshop 23 23

[bpc3qh]

On 9/28/2021 at 9:35 PM, Ryan. said:

Buzzkills. 

How are you pricing your books? At GPA, slightly above GPA, or something different? I'm likely sending in a few to MCS (this thread having convinced me) and I'm curious about your approach.

[ttfitz]

On 9/28/2021 at 11:46 PM, bpc3qh said:

How are you pricing your books? At GPA, slightly above GPA, or something different? I'm likely sending in a few to MCS (this thread having convinced me) and I'm curious about your approach.

One really nice thing about MCS selling is they show you prices that they have sold the same issue for in the past, and what other copies on the site are listed for.

[Ryan.]

On 9/28/2021 at 11:46 PM, bpc3qh said:

How are you pricing your books? At GPA, slightly above GPA, or something different? I'm likely sending in a few to MCS (this thread having convinced me) and I'm curious about your approach.

Of the last six consignments I sold, two were rare Golden Age romance books, three were original art pieces, and one was a rare TMNT comic signed and sketched by Eastman & Laird, so GPA doesn't apply. I tend to buy and stuff like that instead of the normal superhero carp with lots of sales history. Maybe I left money on the table but when there's no comparables to establish baseline prices that's not really knowable. 

In the event that I did send in GPA heavy stuff I would price above recent sales and take offers. For particularly hot books I would price aggressively. 

[bpc3qh]

On 9/29/2021 at 1:57 AM, ttfitz said:

One really nice thing about MCS selling is they show you prices that they have sold the same issue for in the past, and what other copies on the site are listed for.

This is just encouraging me more and more to sell with them. That latter point, especially, is useful--if there are multiple copies listed of a book and I'm willing to sell for 10% under what the others are, that's an advantage to me I'd think.

[LudaToke]

I would really like to get into selling a few comics here and there that I have picked up along the way but the stories about Ebay and getting ripped off are absolutely terrifying.  I don't have the money or heart to deal with that.

Good to know that most people enjoy using this service and that it is available to use in Canada.

[shadroch]

On 9/29/2021 at 6:07 AM, bpc3qh said:

This is just encouraging me more and more to sell with them. That latter point, especially, is useful--if there are multiple copies listed of a book and I'm willing to sell for 10% under what the others are, that's an advantage to me I'd think.

I find a lot of people who think like that. They see a popular book and think they will undersell everyone. It works great for them as they get some money quickly, and works great for me because I get a popular book at a discount and then simply relist it. 

[bpc3qh]

On 9/29/2021 at 1:46 PM, shadroch said:

I find a lot of people who think like that. They see a popular book and think they will undersell everyone. It works great for them as they get some money quickly, and works great for me because I get a popular book at a discount and then simply relist it. 

I call that a win-win!

[thehumantorch]

On 9/29/2021 at 7:07 AM, bpc3qh said:

This is just encouraging me more and more to sell with them. That latter point, especially, is useful--if there are multiple copies listed of a book and I'm willing to sell for 10% under what the others are, that's an advantage to me I'd think.

As Shad stated, they give you a lot of information when you go to price your books.  I had prepared with detailed notes from GPA sales and books currently listed on ebay but I didn't need any of it.  They show you GPA sales and they show you what they have for sale on their site and if it's consignment or inhouse owned and how long it's been on the site.  If you have a book that they don't have and/or is unusual you can price it on the high end with a reasonable chance of selling  and if you have a book that they have 10 copies on consignment - my New Mutants 87 9.6 for example - you might want to price it cheaper than anyone else's

[Bird]

On 9/29/2021 at 6:46 AM, Ryan. said:

three were original art pieces

this certainly intrigues me, how was this different than comics? Did they offer any pricing guidance or restrictions on the art? published art?

I am going to consign as well perhaps, it is a good way to make some space but set my own pricing and not force anything now. I looked up some slabs I would maybe send them, and prices are aggressive on the ones they do have so maybe...

[Ryan.]

On 9/29/2021 at 8:53 PM, Bird said:

this certainly intrigues me, how was this different than comics? Did they offer any pricing guidance or restrictions on the art? published art?

I am going to consign as well perhaps, it is a good way to make some space but set my own pricing and not force anything now. I looked up some slabs I would maybe send them, and prices are aggressive on the ones they do have so maybe...

They were commission illustrations. No restrictions on what they will accept as far as I know. They don't offer any pricing guidance on art since each piece is unique. It's the first time I've sent art to them to consign and all three sold quickly and at prices higher than I believe I would have gotten selling elsewhere. 

[graffix13]

I pretty much sell all my comics through their consignment services. Overall, I have been very pleased with their service. The fees are reasonable and I don't have to mess with the hassle of shipping the book to a buyer (which presents another host of potential problems).

My only complaint is the time it takes for them to actually list the books. I just sent in two books for consignment, and it took them around a week to get them scanned and ready for me to set the price. I understand that they have to scan the book and then file it, but if there was a way they could shave a few days off the process that would be great. But I'm nitpicking. 

[shadroch]

You can shave a few days off the whole process by taking your payments thru paypal, but it will cost you 3%. Not much anyone can do about the delay in getting the books listed unless they want to hire more people, which isn't easy these days. 

As I found out about Bisbee- Everyone wants a job, few people want to work.

[thehumantorch]

On 9/30/2021 at 8:14 AM, graffix13 said:

I pretty much sell all my comics through their consignment services. Overall, I have been very pleased with their service. The fees are reasonable and I don't have to mess with the hassle of shipping the book to a buyer (which presents another host of potential problems).

My only complaint is the time it takes for them to actually list the books. I just sent in two books for consignment, and it took them around a week to get them scanned and ready for me to set the price. I understand that they have to scan the book and then file it, but if there was a way they could shave a few days off the process that would be great. But I'm nitpicking. 

They deal with a large number of consignment items.  I think I read somewhere that they take in 70k plus consignment items per year and sell about 30k consignment items per year.  That would mean approximately 200 items come in each day and I'd imagine that would be at least a full time job just imaging consignment items.  That ignores all the other time required to enter the item into their database etc.

[graffix13]

On 9/30/2021 at 1:05 PM, thehumantorch said:

They deal with a large number of consignment items.  I think I read somewhere that they take in 70k plus consignment items per year and sell about 30k consignment items per year.  That would mean approximately 200 items come in each day and I'd imagine that would be at least a full time job just imaging consignment items.  That ignores all the other time required to enter the item into their database etc.

Oh, I know it's a process. I'm just nitpicking to nitpick. They have treated me very well and I highly recommend their service. 

[shadroch]

We all want a more perfect experience!

[mycomicshop]

On 9/30/2021 at 1:05 PM, thehumantorch said:

They deal with a large number of consignment items.  I think I read somewhere that they take in 70k plus consignment items per year and sell about 30k consignment items per year.  That would mean approximately 200 items come in each day and I'd imagine that would be at least a full time job just imaging consignment items.  That ignores all the other time required to enter the item into their database etc.

We're currently at 9,000-12,000 incoming consignment items a month, average of 400-550 per working day (closed on weekends). That's in addition to our own inventory, which is graded by the same people and systems handling consignments.

We've sold 99K consignment items over the previous 12 months to today, up from 72K this time a year ago (up 37%).

They definitely have a lot to keep up with. and we're focused on preventing our processing times from slipping, as they unfortunately did to some degree last year when covid was a much more active concern.

Our current turnaround on getting slabbed items filed can be 5-10 business days. We're working on getting that down to 2-3 business days with additional hiring. Not there yet but working on it.

[thehumantorch]

On 9/30/2021 at 1:16 PM, mycomicshop said:

We're currently at 9,000-12,000 incoming consignment items a month, average of 400-550 per working day (closed on weekends). That's in addition to our own inventory, which is graded by the same people and systems handling consignments.

We've sold 99K consignment items over the previous 12 months to today, up from 72K this time a year ago (up 37%).

They definitely have a lot to keep up with. and we're focused on preventing our processing times from slipping, as they unfortunately did to some degree last year when covid was a much more active concern.

Our current turnaround on getting slabbed items filed can be 5-10 business days. We're working on getting that down to 2-3 business days with additional hiring. Not there yet but working on it.

Glad your business is growing.  Clearly it offers value.  My partner and I are planning to send in another box of graded books and we're debating sending in some magazines and fanzines as we have tons.

[waver99]

Just curious. What does mycomicshop do when a sale like this go through? I suppose some error in the listing?

 

GSX1 7.0

[mycomicshop]

On 10/2/2021 at 2:56 AM, waver99 said:

Just curious. What does mycomicshop do when a sale like this go through? I suppose some error in the listing?

 

GSX1 7.0

I hadn't seen that til you brought it up, but that was a price error by the consignor. The book sold at the consignor's asking price and shipped 10+ days ago, so somebody got a really good deal.

Had the consignor noticed the error himself, he could have immediately changed his price, or if we were made aware of it before the book shipped we would have canceled the order, for an error involving that much money.

To be clear on our policy: if a book is a $10 book, but then there's a media rumor of some kind at it goes to $100 and our stock at gets bought up at $10--we never would cancel an order under those circumstances in order to price the book higher. The only orders that get canceled when something like that happens is when there's a crush of purchases due to the sudden surge in demand, and we receive more orders than we can actually fill, because the orders come in too fast for our software to keep inventory in sync (since we sell on our site and eBay).

But, in a case like this, where due to either technical error or human error something is mispriced and off by thousands of dollars, we'd usually cancel the order and let the item be corrected.

For pricing our own books, we have safeguards against this--if you try to price something lower than the system thinks it should be, it'll alert you and you have to confirm "yeah I really want to set that price" before it'll allow what appears to be a too low price to be entered. Looks like we need to extend that protection to consignors setting their prices as well.

[Ride the Tiger]

Well I'm gonna send in some books for consignment. I  like what I've read thus far and I'll never go back to ebay. Let do this!