After 30 year sabbitacal, help me w/ a grading strategy. List included 2 2

[sckao]

Lots of good advice here.

Some of the books on your list are what I would term "in a window of opportunity" where they are currently "hot" due to external factors (rumor, movie news, future appearances, re-appearances in the current comic universe, etc.). Others aren't as time sensitive and will always tend to be in demand. (Spider-Mans)

It also sounds like you want to sell some comics initially to finance the rest of the sale. That being said, I'd probably identify the currently hot books (keys) and see which books could benefit from a press. Then find someone local or online who can press them for you who doesn't have a huge backlog since you're somewhat time sensitive it seems. MyComicShop seems like they can do the rest for you. All you would have to do is do the research and set the prices. (A GPAnalysis Account,  GoCollect.com account possibly, latest Overstreet Guide, even a Key Collector account, etc. will help with that.)

Edited September 24, 2021 by sckao

[Bird]

I grade to get increased return, but it is because of my buying/selling habits as much as the slab. I can squeeze more of the mythical "top dollar" from books once slabbed because I myself grade conservatively (aka poorly) and cgc grading is after pressing from joey as well as that is how I roll. So that IH182 in his list MIGHT be a book I would slab to increase value, as I usually cannot get top dollar for my raws (+ undergrading, + not being pressed, etc.) and subscribe to gpa so I can be more aggressive on a slabbed price.

Looking at his list quickly I might sell Eternals 1 now as it is relatively hot, use whatever I get from that and slab a few books (3 or 4 maybe...sign up and use the $150 credit). Then use those proceeds to slab some more including the best 1 or 2 maybe. But you have to be judicious as having a few sitting unsold means loss of much of that profit. But if you have been sitting on the books, who cares how long it takes to sell them now? But that is one approach to be out of pocket only a few dollars in the slabbing portion.

 

[Delzy]

On 9/24/2021 at 1:03 PM, Bird said:

...Looking at his list quickly I might sell Eternals 1 now as it is relatively hot, use whatever I get from that and slab a few books (3 or 4 maybe...sign up and use the $150 credit). Then use those proceeds to slab some more including the best 1 or 2 maybe. But you have to be judicious as having a few sitting unsold means loss of much of that profit. But if you have been sitting on the books, who cares how long it takes to sell them now? But that is one approach to be out of pocket only a few dollars in the slabbing portion.

 

No hurry at all, but this is the kind of idea I was looking for when posting. I wouldn't mind giving up a few books to have some graded books to display. At this point, after watching quite a few "unboxing" videos, I'm envious of having sealed and professionally graded books since I'm probably not going to be thumbing through these old books maybe ever again. I have been buying some 'reader' lots of ebay lately to slake that thirst.

Edited September 24, 2021 by Delzy
grammar

[Bird]

On 9/24/2021 at 3:20 PM, Delzy said:

No hurry at all, but this is the kind of idea I was looking for when posting. I wouldn't mind giving up a few books to have some graded books to display. At this point, after watching quite a few "unboxing" videos, I'm envious of having sealed and professionally graded books since I'm probably not going to be thumbing through these old books maybe ever again. I have been buying some 'reader' lots of ebay lately to slake that thirst.

the godzilla lot is a good seller too especially if higher grade and you care nothing for it, check ebay sold. Eternals 1 might be a keeper! It all depends on you and what you like.

I do agree many book are likely not worth slabbing

you could just sell it all raw and slab 5 books for personal collection too

 

 

[alexgross.com]

if you have any interest in getting books returned this year, or even in six months, you might read some of the other threads about turnaround times at cgc on this forum. it appears to be a frustratingly slow process. i have stopped submitting books myself, not that i usually subbed very many before. 

[vheflin]

[William-James88]

In many cases where a book would sell for more graded, the increase (compared to selling it raw) is less than the cost of grading.

@Delzy if you want fast cash just sell raw.  And CGC preserving a book's condition value over time is just marketing. Other cheaper methods work just as well. If you really want to give your money away though, please send it my way.

On 9/24/2021 at 2:19 PM, Point Five said:

I'm not sure where the 5x figure is coming from... that is wildly unrealistic. 

 

A book that you could sell for 4$ raw could be sold for 20$ if graded. 

Kaching!

Edited September 25, 2021 by William-James88

[djzombi]

On 9/24/2021 at 1:18 PM, shadroch said:

What would be the point of selling books in order to get others graded? Are you looking to sell the books or keep them in your collection?

Cost.  
To pay for the entire collection to get graded would cost a fortune.  
A way to fund that is to sell some of them.  

[shadroch]

On 9/25/2021 at 8:05 AM, djzombi said:

Cost.  
To pay for the entire collection to get graded would cost a fortune.  
A way to fund that is to sell some of them.  

The OP said he wanted to slab them for protection. I dont think it makes sense to sell part of your collection to pay for protecting the rest, when other forms of protection are just as effective and far cheaper. Too many people think they somehow have to get their books slabbed just because. In this case, the OP seems to have thought getting his books graded would increase their value five fold. 

[Delzy]

On 9/25/2021 at 9:21 AM, shadroch said:

The OP said he wanted to slab them for protection. I dont think it makes sense to sell part of your collection to pay for protecting the rest, when other forms of protection are just as effective and far cheaper. Too many people think they somehow have to get their books slabbed just because. In this case, the OP seems to have thought getting his books graded would increase their value five fold. 

I didn't mean to imply the collection value would increase 5-fold. I was referring to some of the key issues that seem to be available for less than 1/5th the price of graded copies in the same condition. I would never consider slabbing the entire collection, but I can see a scenario where slabbing several select books at the cost of sacrificing a few other books could dramatically increase the liquidation value of the collection as a whole. One need only look at the price difference between CGC-graded copies and their ungraded counterparts for some higher-grade books to see how I could think this. Like I said, I'm just learning how this hobby currently works and thank you for your input and comments. Are you suggesting that you can sell ungraded issues at any price near their graded counter-parts? I'm not seeing that at all for books that are going for anything more than $100 or so.

Edited September 25, 2021 by Delzy

[LowGradeBronze]

Plus there is the Netflix Effect, whereby a previously unregarded comic is thrust into the limelight owing to something that featured in one of the recent crop of superhero TV programmes. Its like bingo, you can study your list against that backdrop! Its all fun.

Edited September 25, 2021 by LowGradeBronze

[shadroch]

On 9/25/2021 at 10:22 AM, Delzy said:

I didn't mean to imply the collection value would increase 5-fold. I was referring to some of the key issues that seem to be available for less than 1/5th the price of graded copies in the same condition. I would never consider slabbing the entire collection, but I can see a scenario where slabbing several select books at the cost of sacrificing a few other books could dramatically increase the liquidation value of the collection as a whole. One need only look at the price difference between CGC-graded copies and their ungraded counterparts for some higher-grade books to see how I could think this. Like I said, I'm just learning how this hobby currently works and thank you for your input and comments. Are you suggesting that you can sell ungraded issues at any price near their graded counter-parts? I'm not seeing that at all for books that are going for anything more than $100 or so.

Where are you looking? On ebay? I've sold plenty of raw books on mycomicshop.com at or near GPA for a graded book.  It depends on the books and the grades. Plenty of books are sold here raw and the sellers do very well, considering they don't have to spend six months and sixty dollars on getting the book graded. 

[William-James88]

On 9/25/2021 at 1:22 PM, Delzy said:

I didn't mean to imply the collection value would increase 5-fold. I was referring to some of the key issues that seem to be available for less than 1/5th the price of graded copies in the same condition. 

Could you please post the examples you saw?

[Delzy]

On 9/25/2021 at 12:46 PM, William-James88 said:

Could you please post the examples you saw?

No, I don't have specific examples, but it's a general sense in looking at completed eBay auctions. Maybe 5 times was a bit of an exaggeration, but these are 2 examples (at the top and bottom grade) found barely looking. I'm seeing that there are a lot of people willing to pay quite a premium for graded books. Are you suggesting this isn't the case? I'm just learning here, so my ask is sincere. I do appreciate the feedback.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/133771794504?hash=item1f256b9848

https://www.ebay.com/itm/284404040929

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/124795041251?hash=item1d0e5d35e3:g:PEoAAOSwP2Bg10Ux

https://www.ebay.com/itm/313684277003?hash=item49090a370b:g:IG0AAOSw7PxhS8jV

Edited September 25, 2021 by Delzy
wrong link

[sckao]

He doesn't have the name recognition or experience/reputation to garner the raw pricing. Maybe MyComicshop could do it for him since they have the eBay rep. That's why people slab in the first place. 

An example that seems to be coming up a lot these days is X-Men #4 (1991). Raw, you see people paying around $30 or so for a hit or miss high grade copy. It still GPAs for 90-Day for over $250. Even at $50 that's 5X. (Of course, if you can't get a 9.8, there's no point in slabbing it.)

Edited September 26, 2021 by sckao

[MattTheDuck]

I may have to start asking for big discounts on the raw books I'm buying around here.

[zzutak]

In my opinion, you've gotten ahead of yourself.  Two suggestions:

1. How confident are you in your assessments of condition grade?  Before you go any further, how about sharing a dozen or so of your books in the Please Grade My (PGM) Forum?  Not all at once, naturally.  Be certain to include low-, mid, and high-grade examples.
2. Once you have confidence in your ability to estimate condition grades, complete your spreadsheet by adding two additional columns: Column 6 = Current Overstreet Price Guide Value; and Column 7 = Estimated Market Value (based on a review of actual sales).  This is something you can do without our help.

Once you've completed these tasks, you'll be in a much better position to decide how best to raise whatever funds you're looking to raise. 

[shadroch]

On 9/25/2021 at 5:07 PM, sckao said:

He doesn't have the name recognition or experience/reputation to garner the raw pricing. Maybe MyComicshop could do it for him since they have the eBay rep. That's why people slab in the first place. 

An example that seems to be coming up a lot these days is X-Men #4 (1991). Raw, you see people paying around $30 or so for a hit or miss high grade copy. It still GPAs for 90-Day for over $250. Even at $50 that's 5X. (Of course, if you can't get a 9.8, there's no point in slabbing it.)

His list has a lot of 7-8-9.   It doesn't sound like he has any true HG books. For most of the books on his list, selling raw with MCS would be his best bet.  If he sends them something they think is worth slabbing, they'll let him know.

[William-James88]

On 9/25/2021 at 8:07 PM, sckao said:

He doesn't have the name recognition or experience/reputation to garner the raw pricing. Maybe MyComicshop could do it for him since they have the eBay rep. That's why people slab in the first place. 

An example that seems to be coming up a lot these days is X-Men #4 (1991). Raw, you see people paying around $30 or so for a hit or miss high grade copy. It still GPAs for 90-Day for over $250. Even at $50 that's 5X. (Of course, if you can't get a 9.8, there's no point in slabbing it.)

I wouldn't bring 9.8s to this discussion. Not only because they don't apply to the OP who doesnt have high grade books but by current market definitions, a 9.8 only applies to a graded book. No one is selling a raw 9.8. People sell "potential 9.8s" or "NM or better", sure, but not an actual 9.8 since the only "legitimate" 9.8s would be those graded by CGC. There's no raw comparison to a CGC 9.8 for us to use here.

On 9/25/2021 at 3:33 PM, Delzy said:

No, I don't have specific examples, but it's a general sense in looking at completed eBay auctions. Maybe 5 times was a bit of an exaggeration, but these are 2 examples (at the top and bottom grade) found barely looking. I'm seeing that there are a lot of people willing to pay quite a premium for graded books. Are you suggesting this isn't the case? I'm just learning here, so my ask is sincere. I do appreciate the feedback.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/133771794504?hash=item1f256b9848

https://www.ebay.com/itm/284404040929

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/124795041251?hash=item1d0e5d35e3:g:PEoAAOSwP2Bg10Ux

https://www.ebay.com/itm/313684277003?hash=item49090a370b:g:IG0AAOSw7PxhS8jV

Thanks and those are excellent examples which I would not have believed if I was not presented with them since they are both super wack. But that doesn't stop them from being real of course and if it was possible for them to be achieved for those sellers, it could be achieved by you too.

To answer your question, I haven't found it to be consistent. For a fun example, here is one where (as I wrote in the example above) a seller sells a raw book claiming that it is at least a 9.4 and it sells for the same price as a slabbed 9.4. 

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/274862211383?hash=item3fff108137:g:FQkAAOSwW-Zg6LZK

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/284404010484?hash=item4237cccdf4:g:wRYAAOSwSwthDrRb

I just thought it was a cute example to share here since it was the exact same price.

But here are even better examples of the power of raw books. You see because the slab market is indeed crazy (as you perfectly showed) this craziness is reflected on comics that are not yet slabbed. Slabbing a comic cements its fate in a way but an unslabbed comic has potential. It's like the Shroedigner comic where in it's raw state it could be a 4.0, a 4.5 or a 5.0 maybe. So the potential is them worked into the price that comic sells for so you end up with cases where raw comics sell for more than slabbed books. You see this phenomenon happen a lot with keys. Here are two examples, check which copies brought in the bigger bucks:

 

[sckao]

It's true that a raw comic can be thought to be undergraded or possibly improved. That comparison seems to be only from Heritage though and from different years. (The comparison is probable still valid though although possibly an outlier.)

The Showcase comparison show a tighter time range. The same Showcase in 5.0 sold for $489 in April-2021 and $483 in March 2021 from MyComicShop according to GPA, considerably higher than the realized Heritage prices.