Shifting the focus of my collection 2 2

[jas1vans]

I got back into collecting about seven years ago and have watched the prices of most books rise. It has made me think about what books I'd really like to have in my collection and what books I can do without. I feel very lucky to own the books I do, but I would like to downsize and focus on a smaller, more meaningful collection.

Does anybody have any experience turning the books you own into the books you want? What advice did you get that helped you? What would you do differently if you would change the focus of your collection again?

Thanks!

[oakman29]

All I ever shift is the focus, not the books. I keep everything or mostly everything. 😍

[Randall Dowling]

On 2/27/2022 at 9:22 PM, jas1vans said:

Does anybody have any experience turning the books you own into the books you want? What advice did you get that helped you? What would you do differently if you would change the focus of your collection again?

The first answer that come to mind to all these questions is- sell them.  However, as I look back at the last 20+ years of buying and selling, I have to acknowledge that I would have been better off if I never sold anything at all.  

[BlowUpTheMoon]

On 2/27/2022 at 10:28 PM, Randall Dowling said:

However, as I look back at the last 20+ years of buying and selling, I have to acknowledge that I would have been better off if I never sold anything at all.

[lizards2]

On 2/27/2022 at 7:26 PM, oakman29 said:

All I ever shift is the focus, not the books. I keep everything or mostly everything. 😍

You sound like the CDC...,

[Joshua33]

If you're going at this from a swapping lesser keys or books, into greater keys or books standpoint, then use the math vs emotion approach. 

I started doing this with my collection 3 years ago with books I've owned for a decade or more. Worked out pretty well. Wasn't absolute apex timing, but I turned a lot of common Marvel books into a collection of stuff you're lucky to ever own. 

If you want a book that costs X, and it takes you ten of your current books to afford the cost, weigh it emotionally and ask if it's worth the cost of selling the ten to own the one? If so, pull the trigger.

The only other suggestion I could make, is chase the condition if you can. Buying anything in low grade appreciates at a snails pace compared to investment grade, respectively.

[Arkham]

I’ve done a similar thing and been happy to do things like turn a short box of nothing books into one big key. No regrets. 

There were times I sold keys outside of my core focus and it was the right decision at the time, and I’d do it again today, but I do miss some of those books and couldn’t afford to add them back to my collection again now. 

As a collector, storage space is often an overlooked premium. Downsizing to a smaller, more meaningful collection can be a great thing. At least, it was for me. I’d say go explore the idea with serious consideration and intent… Perhaps ease into it by offloading some nothing books and some drek - just don’t rush into flipping big books, even if they are not your core focus. 

[Stefan_W]

On 2/27/2022 at 10:22 PM, jas1vans said:

I got back into collecting about seven years ago and have watched the prices of most books rise. It has made me think about what books I'd really like to have in my collection and what books I can do without. I feel very lucky to own the books I do, but I would like to downsize and focus on a smaller, more meaningful collection.

Does anybody have any experience turning the books you own into the books you want? What advice did you get that helped you? What would you do differently if you would change the focus of your collection again?

Thanks!

I did this. 

I used a few different approaches, but one of the ones that worked best was sending in smaller books to auction and rolling the proceeds into a small number of grails. You have to be able to live with leaving money on the table since not all small books go for full value, plus there are grading and auction house fees. At the end of the day I was happy though since I did not have to pay anything out of pocket for big books that I always wanted, and it freed up some much-needed space. 

[Get Marwood & I]

On 2/28/2022 at 3:22 AM, jas1vans said:

I got back into collecting about seven years ago and have watched the prices of most books rise. It has made me think about what books I'd really like to have in my collection and what books I can do without. I feel very lucky to own the books I do, but I would like to downsize and focus on a smaller, more meaningful collection.

Does anybody have any experience turning the books you own into the books you want? What advice did you get that helped you? What would you do differently if you would change the focus of your collection again?

Thanks!

If you have a lot of comics and want to reduce the number to maintain and invest in a smaller, more focussed collection, then by definition you have to let some go. Your options are to give them away, sell them or trade. The first option is out, as you want to invest in new books. So you're down to selling or trading. In my experience, it is difficult to trade, say, ten $1,000 books for one $10,000 book. You need a buyer who values your ten books over their one. That's a hard situation to engineer. And in trades, you often have to offer more to get the 'better' book that the other person has, and you want. And their one will almost certainly increase in price faster than your ten, individually. It only woks well when you have two books, of similar values, both with similar future potentials, which doesn't help you reduce the collection size. And how often does that pan out anyway, though?

So the obvious way to do it is to sell. That clears away what you can 'live without' and gives you funds to reinvest without the complications of trading. You gather funds, you see a book you want, you buy it. 

For certain books, likely the ones you will want, it seems a certainty now that the prices will increase year on year until we all go up in a nuclear explosion or because the missiles fail to stop the massive meteorite. Or someone mucks up royally in a lab. This is why many say 'don't sell'. Only a fool sells! Thing is, if you don't sell at some point, you one day end up dying which can be quite inconvenient as far as your collecting habits are concerned. You have to accept that a book you sell today for $5K may get you $10K in a few years. If you wait a few years and sell at $10K, a few more years later and it's $20K. So you have to get over that inevitable escalation conundrum, sell, and be happy with it. If you want to put your thread plan into practice that is.

It's really, really hard to see a book that you owned go from one figure to another quite stratospheric figure, usually shortly after you have sold it, after years of modest increases. Welcome to the hobby.

So my advice is to work out if you have the stomach for selling that which may later quadruple, to fund your smaller, focussed collection strategy. If you do, crack on with it. Sell what you don't want, and use the money to buy what you do. If you do it wisely, any losses on what you sold will be offset by the increases of what you buy. Unless what you buy is Charlton. Which is what I did. But look, I'm wealthy in so many other ways, I like to think. 

[theCapraAegagrus]

I shift focuses often, but I rarely need to sell old acquisitions in order to accomplish future goals.

[troydivision1]

On 2/27/2022 at 10:22 PM, jas1vans said:

I got back into collecting about seven years ago and have watched the prices of most books rise. It has made me think about what books I'd really like to have in my collection and what books I can do without. I feel very lucky to own the books I do, but I would like to downsize and focus on a smaller, more meaningful collection.

Does anybody have any experience turning the books you own into the books you want? What advice did you get that helped you? What would you do differently if you would change the focus of your collection again?

Thanks!

I have done this.
Set about defining exactly what and why to collect right now.
This part will be hard....and will shift over time.

What worked for me was setting a firm number of total books to keep because I kept finding a reason to 'keep' each comic.
(even the number grew from 25 comics to 50 comics to keep)

Go through your books and let go of the books that don't matter to you by donating / selling / recycling.

Use the monies to reinvest into your focus.
The goal should be to sell more than you buy...aka sell XX books buy 1.

Edited February 28, 2022 by Troy Division

[Math Teacher]

At one time, I had a full run of ASM, FF, and DD. I realized that I was running out of space and I also realized that I was never going to read any of those books again. I have since reduced my collection to ASM #1 - #400, FF #1 - #300, and DD #1 - #200. Just as you plan to do, I used my proceeds to buy other books. At about the same time, I sold IH #181 CGC 8.5 and GSXM #1 CGC 7.5 to pay for my copy of SC #4 CGC 2.0. I realized that this may have been my last chance to own a copy of that historic book. And let's be honest, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting someone who is selling IH #181 and/or GSXM #1. It's possible that I may try to reacquire both of those books. They are two of the most important books of the Bronze Age. 

[shadroch]

On 2/27/2022 at 8:28 PM, Randall Dowling said:

The first answer that come to mind to all these questions is- sell them.  However, as I look back at the last 20+ years of buying and selling, I have to acknowledge that I would have been better off if I never sold anything at all.  

Sure. It's not like the money your books brought in did anything for you.  

[jas1vans]

Thank you all for the responses so far. I really appreciate the input.

I have 27 long and 20 short boxes, the majority came from two purchases. One, a father to son collection starter of undercopies of mostly mid-grade early bronze (1500 books) and the other an OO collection of mid to high grade bronze into copper (2900 books).

I have a list of about 300 comics that I'd like to make the main part of my collection. None of them are major keys, but a fair number of them are pretty tough to track down. There are a couple (an Action and a Detective under 150 ) that seem to be the toughest to find sales on, while something like Animal Comics 24 doesn't seem like it's going to be as difficult. In the end, I'd like to have a spinner rack with 3 or 4 short boxes that I can swap in and out for display. The books that I'd like to read will either be in GN or digital format.

The plan is to sell; likely the carp first while holding back anything with actual monetary or any sentimental value. I do not have the time, right now, to sell in a manner that would lead to continued sales success. Hopefully that will change in the next year or so. I missed out on the opportunity to cash in on my ASM 361s and a handful of other fly-by-night pan sizzlers. I'm sure that I will miss out on more. In the meantime, I will just try to continue learning as much as I can about the hobby.

Edited October 11, 2022 by jas1vans
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