Did u change from Collector to Flipper? 5 5

[FlyingDonut]

On 11/2/2021 at 6:45 PM, Joe Peck said:

So, it seems many folks here are both.  Question:  A lot of people here have money.  Why flip for a few bucks?

I like having more money.

[october]

Every single comic in my collection was funded by profits from buying/selling others. It's the only way I can justify spending the money on the things I want, which aren't cheap unfortunately. Plus it's all so much fun.

[ThothAmon]

On 11/2/2021 at 11:38 AM, valiantman said:

If I see something that's $5 and I know I can sell it immediately for $10, I still have to think about getting it listed somewhere, waiting for a buyer, responding to inquiries, getting paid, probably losing fees to the selling venue or PayPal, getting it packaged up (correctly, protected, boxed, not just slapping it into an envelope), getting the mailing label entered and printed.  Putting it out for pickup or taking it to a post office.

All those parts of the sale could take me 30 minutes, and I'll net $4 if I sell a book I paid $5 for $10.  I wouldn't work for someone else for less than minimum wage, so why would I pay myself less than minimum wage?

Yes, there's profit out there... but if the cost of profit is too great, it's a net loss.  A net gain is when I make closer to $40, not $4.

What's your minimum profit?

I like to view this a little differently. I pay more attention to my average sale price than I do the individual prices that items sell for. I figure a raw comic takes me about ten minutes max to sell. $100 an hour is my goal.  That way I can feel good about finding a new home for my $.99 sale of Spidey 176 in GD+ condition! 

Edited November 3, 2021 by ThothAmon

[valiantman]

On 11/3/2021 at 11:04 AM, ThothAmon said:

I like to view this a little differently. I pay more attention to my average sale price than I do the individual prices that items sell for. I figure a raw comic takes me about ten minutes max to sell. $100 an hour is my goal.  That way I can feel good about finding a new home for my $.99 sale of Spidey 176 in GD+ condition! 

Help me understand this better.  Are you saying that you can literally get everything done for a comic book - original purchase, photos, listing, communication, sale, packaging, shipping data entry, labeling, and handoff to shipping service in 10 minutes total, start to finish?

You've made $492.62 in 90 days from 22 sales of 27 books.  What was the cost of those 22 books?  What about the cost of the other 5?

[valiantman]

On 11/3/2021 at 9:50 AM, october said:

Every single comic in my collection was funded by profits from buying/selling others. It's the only way I can justify spending the money on the things I want, which aren't cheap unfortunately. Plus it's all so much fun.

Are you working from an original one-time purchase of one comic for 10 cents... or what was your total starting cost? 

Perhaps you've built an empire from comics received as a gift.  Now, that would be something.  

"Gee, that's a nice house and car... how did you pay for it?  I got some comics as a gift when I was a kid.  Sold them, bought others, sold them, etc., before I knew it, I was a millionaire and never spent a penny."

[Randall Dowling]

On 11/3/2021 at 9:50 AM, october said:

Every single comic in my collection My drug use was funded by profits from buying/selling others. It's the only way I can justify spending the money on drugs the things I want, which aren't cheap unfortunately. Plus it's all so much fun.

Alternatively...

[ThothAmon]

On 11/3/2021 at 12:16 PM, valiantman said:

Are you saying that you can literally get everything done for a comic book - original purchase, photos, listing, communication, sale, packaging, shipping data entry, labeling, and handoff to shipping service in 10 minutes total, start to finish?

You've made $492.62 in 90 days from 22 sales of 27 books.  What was the cost of those 22 books?  What about the cost of the other 5?

Time for original purchase (water under the bridge) not included. That is the max time it takes me (usually while watching the premiere or champions league).  Shipping is at least half the time but those 24 books were sold to 5 different buyers speeding the average time way up. The $100 is not my profit per hour but cash flow per hour.  Keep in mind these are books I generally feel are unworthy of slabbing and am letting fly with a $.99 auction with $6.75 Gemini USPS First Class shipping. This is not the way I sell my slabs. Selecting the 25 or so books I auction at a time takes some time but as Scrooge McDuck said is a lot of fun. 

[troydivision1]

Yes and no.
I don't really have the time to hit the stores / garage sales / shows like I did when I was younger.
So, instead via DCBS I order multiple copies of the #1s of various indie books (that the synopsis reads like it could translate to visual media).
If they get optioned, or take off well as 9.8s due to low print run, the books then get graded and flipped to enhance / upgrade my ever-evolving 50 piece personal collection.

[ExNihilo]

I'm a collector.  I've only ever sold a handful of books, but I'm increasingly thinking it might be time to sell off much of my collection because I just don't have the room for it.  Also, because I'm slowly coming to this realization that certain books make me happy while others I've completely forgotten about.  So why not recoup some money on those books and use it to buy new books (or art) that i'll actually care about?  The only reason why I don't is because I like holding on to all my books.  Even the ones I don't appreciate are like a snapshot of what I was interested in back at a given moment in time.

[Tghutcn]

I think the only time I really did flip some comics was when first Silk was really popular I used to pick up them up at £5 each and sell them on for £50 the people who bought them thought they where getting a bargain and I bought some keys I wanted with the profit 

[ADAMANTIUM]

On 11/3/2021 at 1:02 PM, Tghutcn said:

I think the only time I really did flip some comics was when first Silk was really popular I used to pick up them up at £5 each and sell them on for £50 the people who bought them thought they where getting a bargain and I bought some keys I wanted with the profit 

A perfect 400 post with the new update~  

[ADAMANTIUM]

silk goes for some real money now, I guess.

Still  glad those used to be easy to come by. I remember trying to sell my raw to the LCS, and they told me, "is that a key? I have a stack of them in back!" and offered me $3  

I should have bought more! ha!

[Tghutcn]

On 11/3/2021 at 6:10 PM, ADAMANTIUM said:

silk goes for some real money now, I guess.

Still  glad those used to be easy to come by. I remember trying to sell my raw to the LCS, and they told me, "is that a key? I have a stack of them in back!" and offered me $3  

I should have bought more! ha!

I know how you feel I really should of kept some back with the prices there at now 

[october]

On 11/3/2021 at 11:18 AM, valiantman said:

Are you working from an original one-time purchase of one comic for 10 cents... or what was your total starting cost? 

Perhaps you've built an empire from comics received as a gift.  Now, that would be something.  

"Gee, that's a nice house and car... how did you pay for it?  I got some comics as a gift when I was a kid.  Sold them, bought others, sold them, etc., before I knew it, I was a millionaire and never spent a penny."

I started with maybe $200 and got my "break" at a local warehouse sale. I spent $160 of it on dollar bronze books that I sold on the boards back in 2007 or so and quadrupled my money. That was it. It all snowballed from there.

Break number two came when I found a super high grade silver collection. Slabbed over 100 top census books out of it and brought it all to C2E2. Some board members might remember it. That took my buying and selling to the next level.

I've chased comics more or less ever single day for the past decade plus. Obsession can lead to some positive things.

Edited November 3, 2021 by october

[october]

On 11/3/2021 at 11:28 AM, Randall Dowling said:

Alternatively...

The parallels are undeniable.

[Joshua33]

On 11/1/2021 at 11:38 PM, The Heckler said:

I’ve been collecting since the late 70s. I am not a wealthy man but the older I get, the more expensive my tastes have become. There is no way I could fund the books I want without canibalizing my collection and taking advantage the massive gains my books have accumulated in the last 40 years. If I can make a few duckets off a trending book I will absolutely do that, dirty flipper label be damned  The profits are just going back into the stacks anyway.  I often ask myself what I would do if I won a million dollars, and the answer is always the same. Two chicks man. And bigger books.

At the same time?

[MattTheDuck]

On 11/3/2021 at 6:39 PM, Joshua33 said:

At the same time?

Well, hopefully at least consecutively, as you risk damaging the books.

[badback83]

On 11/3/2021 at 8:16 AM, 1Cool said:

It's definitely not for everyone (looking at you Gabe).  

Been quite some time since he was on.

[RickSp]

I started collecting as a kid so it was always purely for the stories and getting as many comics as I could for the money I had. Simply collecting was addictive and so much fun with amount the variety out there.

Even as I got older and understood more about ‘keys’ etc I would still take £50 to a comic show and buy as many as I could because I just never considered I’d ever be able to afford the big ones anyway.

It was actually only very recently during the pandemic boom that I joined these boards and got back into comics quite heavily again. I soon realised that plenty of what I had was now worth decent money so I started selling with the aim of picking up a few big books that had always been out of reach. Then it got addictive again!

Ive since dabbled slightly in flipping to build up those funds but ultimately it’s all leading back to being a collector and finally owning some of those special keys.

[MAR1979]

The only Flipper I ever liked was a Bottle-nose Dolphin and even then not big fan.

 

P.S. Anyone who holds the book for a while is not a Flipper in my mind. Example you purchased a lot in 2018 and are selling some off now.  To me a flipper is someone who begins to sell the books pretty much the moment they first acquire them.

 

 

 

Edited November 7, 2021 by MAR1979