I have the opportunity to catalogue a client’s 12,000 size book collection. How much should I charge. 6 6

[Dr. Balls]

On 11/2/2022 at 9:49 AM, THE_BEYONDER said:

It’s not fun grading someone else’s books, and 12,000 of them is a full time job 

 

Agreed. Years ago, I did a similar project for a collection of about 6,000 books back in 2013 I think (a few hours after work every night for, I dunno, a month or two) and it was drudgery towards the end. I can't remember what I charged, but I did ask the boardies here for advice at the time. I recall it being a time-suck, but I also recall I didn't have a lot going at the time, either.

[Dr. Balls]

On 11/2/2022 at 9:53 AM, BuscemasAvengers said:

Agreed. I think you have to present it to the owner as 'tiered' (ya, I know what that sounds like). But the amount of time required to assess with integrity a collection of this size is demanding. First tier could be a quick, 2-3 hr look at basic condition and presence of keys. Second tier might be (as was suggested earlier in this thread) an effort which assesses and catalogues a few titles, so that the owner sees the time needed to do a good job.

That's the idea right there. Streamline the process so you're not investing the same amount of time on a $1 book as you are on a $20 book.

[KCOComics]

I mentioned I did it with 5k books and that included the need to bag and board. 

The time commitment is over whelming. I had the luxury of doing it over months. I would do 800 or so books in a weekend and try to move them.  Selling or bringing to my local shop for pennies on the $$.  

I agree - having them at your house is a big advantage and you may want to insist on that.  

However, don't underestimate the space 12k comics take. My wife got really tired of those comics sitting on our dining room table. I had to find a home for them and only pull out the comics I wanted to work on. 

I will stress this again, it's a labor of love and you won't get a solid return for your time. 

 

Edited November 2, 2022 by KCOComics

[LowGradeBronze]

The unknown factor (although the OP may know) is what order the books are in, or in no order at all. That has a bearing on any 'quick' assessment. 

[speedcake]

This would just be a hard pass for me. If you are looking at maybe buying the collection, just evaluate it and work out a deal. If this person wants 12,000 comics individually sorted, graded, catalogued, evaluated, they should have done it themselves IMHO. 

[Mr Sneeze]

Teach the owner of the comics how to grade, maybe charge him 1000 bucks and spend a few days with him and then leave them to him.

[Dick Pontoon]

Doing this sounds about as exciting as kissing my grandmother. Or re-arranging my sock drawer. There's no way I would even consider taking this on. Processing a collection that I bought with the intent to sell or took on consigment - no problemo. It would be work, but tolerable and worth it for the return. I'd go running and screaming in the opposite direction if I were tasked with processing a collection this size for the sole purpose of processing it.

Edited November 2, 2022 by Dick Pontoon

[ThreeSeas]

A couple of years ago a friend gave me his collection. I hired my son to inventory it just over this last summer. I went and created a database to log them in as all I wanted to know was what I had. I initially paid my son by the hour but as he had many interruptions I ended up paying him by the long box. After he was done with the first few long boxes we figured out a good rate per long box. That way he could do them here and there as time permitted. I think that the collection had 17 long boxes and five or six short boxes.

These comics (all but a handful) were in 30+ year old poly bags with backing boards (they seemed to have held up pretty well).

The only data that I had my son put in the database was the title, issue number, printing (if not a first print), cover price, publisher, and date published. I think it took him about five hours or so per long box (but I'll have to ask him when I get home as I may not be remembering that time correctly). Anyways I didn't have him try to grade them, just inventory them and it took a long time.

As many comics were duplicates and were put away 30+ years ago, most appear to be 9.0 and better so I didn't bother slowing down the process by having him grade them. Plus I do not plan on selling any and all I wanted to know was what was there.

I'll have to post a story about this collection, maybe by the end of the year. My friend that gave them to me was a Marvel collector while at that time I was mainly a DC/independent collector, so now I filled a big hole I had missed in my Marvel part of my collection.

 

[Aman619]

On 11/2/2022 at 12:45 PM, ThreeSeas said:

A couple of years ago a friend gave me his collection. I hired my son to inventory it just over this last summer. I went and created a database to log them in as all I wanted to know was what I had. I initially paid my son by the hour but as he had many interruptions I ended up paying him by the long box. After he was done with the first few long boxes we figured out a good rate per long box. That way he could do them here and there as time permitted. I think that the collection had 17 long boxes and five or six short boxes.

These comics (all but a handful) were in 30+ year old poly bags with backing boards (they seemed to have held up pretty well).

The only data that I had my son put in the database was the title, issue number, printing (if not a first print), cover price, publisher, and date published. I think it took him about five hours or so per long box (but I'll have to ask him when I get home as I may not be remembering that time correctly). Anyways I didn't have him try to grade them, just inventory them and it took a long time.

As many comics were duplicates and were put away 30+ years ago, most appear to be 9.0 and better so I didn't bother slowing down the process by having him grade them. Plus I do not plan on selling any and all I wanted to know was what was there.

I'll have to post a story about this collection, maybe by the end of the year. My friend that gave them to me was a Marvel collector while at that time I was mainly a DC/independent collector, so now I filled a big hole I had missed in my Marvel part of my collection.

 

yes.  if they are moderns in bags, there are really only a few grades that matter. You don't even have to take them out of the bags. If it looks like a 9.8 candidate, call it conservatively a NM. If you see any cover damage, make a quick calculation and use 9.0, 8.0 or 7.0,  Anything that looks at all beat up or soft, stay VG.  and garbage is 2.0.  

I think the guy just wants a list of his comics. Then he can research his values.  If he has a few books that sell for 1000s in HG slabs, your VG grade will hip him to them having a much lower actual value than what he may see from GPA or any online sales.

The $500 for a prelim assessment sounds like the best option for the OP

Edited November 2, 2022 by Aman619

[bronze_rules]

On 11/2/2022 at 8:25 AM, fmaz said:

Well, then I’m nuts.

I’ve taken a look at some large collections and you know in two minutes if it’s all spoon.  I’m not saying he’s going to give the owner a detailed evaluation, but in two hours he can do a quick glance and know if it’s chock-full of major keys or long runs of silver age books, or just boxes upon boxes of copper age nonsense, etc. 

My point EXACTLY the same as yours - this isn’t to be entered into half- assed. So rather than do it on the cheap, or to spend thousands of dollars cataloging books that are worthless, pay a bit of money for someone to just give a quick high-level look and say ‘yeah there’s some value here, it’s worthy of investing some time in cataloging this” or not.

At $1 per book for evaluation (which is a reasonable rate) this owner would be $12k deep into this … you’d think he’d rather spend $500 to get an estimate up front so someone could say they saw real value in this so it would be worthy of going forward.

But maybe that’s just me. Apparently, I’m nuts. 😄

 

Reading the thread, this was my thought as well. I would expect someone with 12k books, to know enough to put the premium ones in a separate area than the less desirable ones. I wonder if anyone runs across a truly random placement of multiple boxes (to be fair I have seen this with an older collector but he still had multiples stacked together and there was enough to get a sense). 

[universal soldier]

As the owner of a 12K book collection I can tell you it's a ton of work to grade a collection that size and record the data. It took me years to work my way through it and I am now about 10% of the way though re-bagging/boarding/re-grading everything I purchased prior to 2009 when I made the switch to mylar and acid free backing boards. I'll, at a minimum give the books in mylar a look over to validate the grade given. 

Some excellent viewpoints in this thread.

[Lightning55]

On 11/2/2022 at 1:28 AM, fmaz said:

Charge a $500 flat fee for two hours of your time. In that time you will give him a quick evaluation of the collection.

I thought $50 per hour was way over the top.  Charging $500 for a 2-hour assessment?  Or any number of hours that actually accomplishes nothing toward the job to be done? That's borderline insane.

[Aman619]

On 11/2/2022 at 1:32 PM, bronze_rules said:

Reading the thread, this was my thought as well. I would expect someone with 12k books, to know enough to put the premium ones in a separate area than the less desirable ones. I wonder if anyone runs across a truly random placement of multiple boxes (to be fair I have seen this with an older collector but he still had multiples stacked together and there was enough to get a sense). 

well, I catalogued all mu moderns a few years back and its not a slam dunk figuring out which have real value.  If you track over street yeah, the higher priced ones can be searched for as potentially being worth a lot more in 9.8.  But we know that Overstreet lags the market for recent run uop key issues due to movie spec etc.  Key Collector can be helpful for this, but IMO they include ANY first appearance  including 1000s of very very minor characters with true keys.  And you have to look them up title by title or book by book.  My point is that its no longer so easy to pull the "keys" especially for someone not following the trends and the market like this guys collection he's sat on for decades.

[THE_BEYONDER]

On 11/2/2022 at 3:43 PM, Aman619 said:

well, I catalogued all mu moderns a few years back and its not a slam dunk figuring out which have real value.  If you track over street yeah, the higher priced ones can be searched for as potentially being worth a lot more in 9.8.  But we know that Overstreet lags the market for recent run uop key issues due to movie spec etc.  Key Collector can be helpful for this, but IMO they include ANY first appearance  including 1000s of very very minor characters with true keys.  And you have to look them up title by title or book by book.  My point is that its no longer so easy to pull the "keys" especially for someone not following the trends and the market like this guys collection he's sat on for decades.

GPA works well for this.  Pretty easy to see what books are commanding premiums over other surrounding books.

[shadroch]

You aren't looking to cherry pick the collection. Your job is to catalog each and every book, regardless of its value.  If the books are alphabetical, I suspect many of you would not get past the As. 

[Aman619]

On 11/2/2022 at 3:56 PM, THE_BEYONDER said:

GPA works well for this.  Pretty easy to see what books are commanding premiums over other surrounding books.

I use GPA all the time, but its book by book.  Do you have a shortcut to look up many books at a time?  I wish I could!  It'd be great to see a LIST of ISSUES at a time all showing one grade's average values...

or arranged one row per issue#  showing 12 month average for each book in 3 grades, or more! as an "overview" of a title at a time

Edited November 2, 2022 by Aman619

[THE_BEYONDER]

On 11/2/2022 at 4:37 PM, Aman619 said:

I use GPA all the time, but its book by book.  Do you have a shortcut to look up many books at a time?  I wish I could!  It'd be great to see a LIST of ISSUES at a time all showing one grade's average values...

or arranged one row per issue#  showing 12 month average for each book in 3 grades, or more! as an "overview" of a title at a time

The collection was completely organized and alphabetical.  So I would just grab a longbox of a title and pull up that title in GPA.  Anything over $250...pull the issues and pre-screen them.   Books that sold for less than that amount would be set aside and graded  later.

 

Would be great if GPA had tools to display the higher priced books in runs.  What I really can’t stand with GPA, is that they don’t just put the flagship titles first.   Endless scrolling 

Edited November 2, 2022 by THE_BEYONDER

[Lightning55]

Yeah, GPA is clunky for this type of job.  If you have 300 issues in a title, you have to look each one up one by one off the drop down list.  Ugh.

Key Comics is a good tool.  Yes, they show very minor 1st appearances as keys, but you look at the high retail price to exclude those "suggestions".  If it says it's a key with a high retail of $3, it's not a key yet, but a potential key.  Just something significant took place in that issue, but maybe no financial value attached to that.  So you don't jot that one down.  Just filter out the actual keys based on price, write the issue number and value, next. And only within the range of the collection you are looking at.

You can do the same with mycomicshop.  See where their price bumps are as you scroll through their offerings for a title, which is likely fairly complete.  If they don't have any stock in a particular issue, that's a good sign that it's in demand, and you should look that one up elsewhere, like GPA, GoCollect, or ebay.

[PopKulture]

On 11/2/2022 at 3:56 PM, Lightning55 said:

You can do the same with mycomicshop.  See where their price bumps are as you scroll through their offerings for a title, which is likely fairly complete.  If they don't have any stock in a particular issue, that's a good sign that it's in demand, and you should look that one up elsewhere, like GPA, GoCollect, or ebay.

Yes and no. It depends on the era. I search MCS often for Dells and other 1950’s books. It’s not uncommon for them not to have a single issue in a whole run of an unremarkable, shorter title, and when they do have multiple issues, sometimes they grade no higher than G/VG. Just for kicks, look up Four Color and choose a chunk of fifty - say 151 to 200 - and look at how many holes there are. None of those books are rare, and few could even be considered remotely scarce. They’re just not trading hands at quite the clip of bronze and up.  

Edited November 3, 2022 by PopKulture

[revat]

Lot of great info here, but I'd work 'backwards', independent of how valuable the books are.  Maybe start with a 2hr review (paid)  as stated so you can make a good estimate.

Estimate how long it will take you to do all the books, add on maybe 20% for when you fatigue or for tough-to-grade books.

Then work out how much money someone would have to PAY YOU to give up your evenings and weekends for X weeks/months based on your estimate.  Everyone is different.

Then make the offer, if they take it then great.  If they don't take it then its not your problem.  Make it about how much your time is worth.