SELLING: Auction House Opinions? 3 3

[AGGIEZ]

Auction house opinions wanted:

I'm to the point of culling the herd quite a bit. Thinking about sending some of my mid-keys and lesser slabs to MyComicShop to sell, however, I think best path for some of my SA DC keys is likely one of the auction houses (Heritage, Comic Link, Comic Connect, etc.). Thoughts on where these might get the most visibility and bang for the buck?

I've only sold on E-bay and these boards so not all that familiar with the auction sites.

Thanks in advance!

 

[comicstock]

I'm going thru the same thing tho probably won't start the let go until later this year at the earliest.

Is it true Heritage takes 20% off the back end but also 20% off the front end?

[MattTheDuck]

While I think it's fair to say that there's a comparatively small audience in the sales forums here, and probably especially for DC, I'd encourage you to try these books here first.  Two reasons: 1) You can set a price you would be happy to get and eliminate the chance for disappointment if the auction doesn't attract enough bidding action, and 2) 100 percent of the money goes into your pocket.

[Phicks]

Comic Connect shills their auctions.  Not sure if that only helps them, or if it also results in you getting more money.

[AGGIEZ]

On 1/10/2024 at 7:16 PM, Phicks said:

Comic Connect shills their auctions.  Not sure if that only helps them, or if it also results in you getting more money.

I've heard shenanigans going on with Heritage as well.

I would think shilling would benefit sellers as well at CC.

[Dr. Balls]

On 1/10/2024 at 6:47 PM, AGGIEZ said:

I've heard shenanigans going on with Heritage as well.

I would think shilling would benefit sellers as well at CC.

I'd guess anything being bid up is done by a cadre of people on certain books - not necessarily across the board with lots of random books?

As far as sending books off, if you have a good margin worked in - the 10% fees on Clink are reasonable, but it will depend on your shipping costs to send them there. I have not sold through CC or HA. Not sure if you have to have an "in" with Heritage, but I inquired about selling a piece of (non-comic book) art on HA, and they said they don't list anything with a value under $1500 and told me to pound sand. So... I sold it on Ebay for $3000 two weeks later.

[Courageous Cat]

HA is the best if you dont mind waiting about 6 months from sending , to listing, to receiving payment.

ComicLink, great folks and SA does really well, but in my experience not the best results for GA or bronze

CC? unsure , never used 'em

[1Cool]

On 1/10/2024 at 6:20 PM, AGGIEZ said:

Auction house opinions wanted:

I'm to the point of culling the herd quite a bit. Thinking about sending some of my mid-keys and lesser slabs to MyComicShop to sell, however, I think best path for some of my SA DC keys is likely one of the auction houses (Heritage, Comic Link, Comic Connect, etc.). Thoughts on where these might get the most visibility and bang for the buck?

I've only sold on E-bay and these boards so not all that familiar with the auction sites.

Thanks in advance!

 

These books look right up ComicLink's alley.  They don't seem high priced or rare enough to go with Heritage and I'm not hearing a lot of positives about Comic Connect lately.

[Stefan_W]

Heritage will probably realize the best prices but that site has the highest fees and customer service kind of swirls the drain for the most part.

Comic Link has much lower fees but the final price for a lot of books will be well below GPA. Big keys are usually fine though. You also have the option of using their marketplace and controlling the price that way. 

Comic Connect is a bit of a nightmare to navigate so I have not been able to effectively use is and cant really comment beyond that.

You ruled out MCS for bigger slabs so I will leave that one aside, although I think you may be surprised at well those books do there. 

Selling direct on the boards here is probably the best option for a first pass.

[ThothAmon]

Can any auction house touch eBay’s current fee structure for a $5000 comic sale?  Easy peasy (at least after you sweat out the post office). 
 

[joeypost]

ComicLink 

[Ryan.]

On 1/10/2024 at 9:31 PM, Dr. Balls said:

Not sure if you have to have an "in" with Heritage, but I inquired about selling a piece of (non-comic book) art on HA, and they said they don't list anything with a value under $1500 and told me to pound sand. So... I sold it on Ebay for $3000 two weeks later

I had a similar experience with some Golden Age slabs.

[1Cool]

On 1/11/2024 at 9:11 AM, ThothAmon said:

Can any auction house touch eBay’s current fee structure for a $5000 comic sale?  Easy peasy (at least after you sweat out the post office). 
 

I looked at sold copies of his books on E-Bay and I couldn’t find any recent copies that have sold which shows you how rare it is to see this level of books to sell on E-Bay.  Letting them sit for awhile is always and option but I just see these type of books selling on E-Bay.

[paperheart]

sold my entire HG DC Silver Age CGC collection through ComicConnect, first class all the way

[shadroch]

I've dealt almost exclusively with MCS for the last few years. Unlike the other auction houses, they pay lightning-quick.  The last time I dealt with Comic Link, I was told my check was on Josh's desk, waiting to be signed. He must have gone on safari or something, as the check arrived almost a month and three phone calls later.

My really big books- AF15, TTA27, JIM 85, ect- I consigned to Bob Storms and am pleased with the results. He gets top dollar for key stuff.

 

[mycomicshop]

Obviously biased take coming from me, but I think what I say here is accurate.

Given these choices:
HA auction
CL auction
CC auction
MCS auction
MCS buy it now

For most books out there the option I would recommend, and the one we use most often for selling our own inventory, is MCS BIN. MCS and our consignors together sell 4x more $1000+ books by BIN than by auction. That's the reverse of the other venues, which are strongly auction-centric, and probably sell 5-10X or more via auction than BIN. Auction is easier for auction houses than BIN because it requires little upfront investment and produces an immediate guaranteed sale for them with little need for longer term inventory management and storage.

In terms of what option puts the most money in the seller's pocket, for the vast majority of books that aren't super scarce, MCS BIN is going to average out as the winner. Assuming the market itself is flat rather than on a strong upward trajectory, the average of all results from anybody's auction (MCS, HA, eBay, etc) does not exceed the GPA average. MCS BIN results do exceed the GPA average, it's that simple. 

MCS has far and away the most successful BIN platform in comics.

- all MCS BINs listed both on MCS and eBay, so huge customer base
- for anything with significant demand, lots of people have that issue on their want list. They'll be notified when you post it for sale as well as each time you lower the price at least 5%.
- if you choose to allow offers, offers can come in from both MCS and eBay

Result is that it's generally easy to make 5-15% more via BIN than auction, sometimes more.

BIN also doesn't have to mean a slow sale. If you price fairly within GPA range, you can often sell within a month or two, sometimes much faster. The mistake some consignors make is aiming too high, listing at 150-200% of GPA, then after there are no takers, they give up too early and instead of lowering the price to a more reasonable range they throw the book into auction where they end up selling it for less than if they'd kept it as BIN but lowered the price to 100-120% of GPA.

 

The rest of this is me stepping through GPA and some of our recent relevant sales for each of the five books you mentioned. 

1) For your first book Action 242, the best comparable grade with multiple 2023 sales I can reference is 4.0. Here's GPA for Action 242 in 4.0:

Here's what those sales are:

Dec 2023 $1500 via HA auction CROW, seller takes home $1063 after 20% buyer's premium and 15% seller's commission (1500 / 1.2 * 0.85)

Nov 2023 $1616 OW, source unknown but probably an eBay auction, seller takes home $1402 after 13.25% final value fee (1616 * .8675)

Aug 2023 $1800 via HA auction OW, seller takes home $1275 after 20% buyer's premium and 15% seller's commission (1800 / 1.2 * 0.85)

May 2023 $2281 via MCS BIN CROW, seller takes home $2031.80 after 3% buyer's premium and 8.27% effective seller's commission (10% on first $300, 8% on amount past $300). This book sold in about a month and a half after it was first listed. The seller started it April 6 at $2600 and lowered the price incrementally until it sold at $2215 May 26.

May 2023 $2575 via MCS BIN LTOW, seller takes home $2294 after 3% buyer's premium and 8.24% effective seller's commission  (10% on first $300, 8% on amount past $300). This book also sold in about a month and a half. Seller (different from the first guy) listed it April 7 at $2750 and sold it via best offer for $2500 May 18.

Comparisons like this are not perfect. Books can vary in PQ, and appearance/desirability, and the market can move up or down over time. When I look to see whether there's a clear price trend at GPA for Action 242 from May 2023 to the end of 2023, I see a mix of some grades holding steady or moving up and some moving a bit down. I don't see any obvious major downward trend for the issue. So, I look at those sales and conclude that the two MCS BIN sellers came away with significantly more money in their pockets (with LTOW and CROW copies) than the other three sellers (two HA auctions, one probable eBay auction). 

 

2) Next book, Batman 121, not as frequent sales and not as clear of a comparison, but we sold a CGC 4.5 this year. Here's GPA for 4.5:

The $3193 sale is an MCS BIN sale. The consignor sold his book within less than a month via best offer. Looking at GPA, that seller did well.

 

3) Next book, Batman 181. Best comparable data I can find is in grade 7.0:

The May 6 for $2200 and Jun 22 for $2000 are MCS BIN sales. The $1920 Oct 9 is HA auction ($1360 to the consignor) and $1577 is Hakes. These two MCS sales were our books, not a consignor's, but had they been consigned, the consignor would have walked away with $2018 and $1834 respectively.

 

4) Next, Hawkman 4. Harder to find nice clusters for direct comparison, but we have these sales in the past year:

MCS consignor sold a CGC 9.6 for $11,400 via BIN best offer Jun 2023. Could it have done better in auction at HA or CL? It's certainly possible but hard to know for sure. A 9.4 sold for $10,800 in Jan 2022, and a 9.6 sold for $20K in 2021, but there was a lot of downward market movement from 2021/Jan 2022 to Jun 2023. I can say that it sold at a price the consignor was willing to take, or he wouldn't have accepted the offer.

MCS consignor sold CGC 8.5 for $2000 via BIN Feb 2023

MCS consignor sold CGC 8.0 for $2048 via auction Aug 2023

MCS consignor sold CGC 8.0 for $2350 via BIN Jan 2023

MCS consignor sold CGC 7.0 for $1065 via BIN Mar 2023, noted as having slab damage (peg chipped off)

GPA data for Hawkman 4 in CGC 7.0

The Mar 12 sale for $1056 with some minor slab damage is an MCS BIN consignor sale, in which the consignor netted $937 after BP and commission. Compared to HA sales of $1320 Jun 26 ($935 to consignor after BP and commission) and $840 Aug 14 ($595 after BP and commission). Even with this book that looks to be in the bottom 50% of 7.0 sales for 2023, the MCS consignor still came out even with the strong Jun 26 HA result and way ahead of the $840 Aug HA result.

 

5) And last of all, Superboy #68, not a lot of data but we do have these two in CGC 6.5 that sold in 2023:

MCS-owned BIN sale for an OWW copy $1864 Jan 2023 (would have been $1659 to the consignor after BP and commission if it was a consignment sale)

HA auction sale for an OW copy $1500 Dec 2023 ($1062.50 to the consignor after BP and commission)

Since our sale was early 2023 and the HA sale was late 2023, not a great comparison if the market for this book has weakened over the course of 2023. But, looking at GPA, I don't see any notable trend like that. This book seems to have held pretty steady during 2023.

 

If you negotiated a better rate with HA like 10% commission instead of 15%, every bit helps but MCS BIN sales in these examples would still come out ahead.

I'm not ragging on HA, they're an amazing auction house and good people. Since they report to GPA and have a lot of sales, their examples are the ones that come up most often for me to compare with. I'm just making the case that if you're selling a book in the $1,000-30,000 range and want to know which option puts the most money in your pocket, in many cases the right answer is MCS BIN rather than choosing whose auction to use.

Sorry for the lengthy post. 

Edited January 11 by mycomicshop

[Stefan_W]

On 1/11/2024 at 3:40 PM, mycomicshop said:

Obviously biased take coming from me, but I think what I say here is accurate.

Given these choices:
HA auction
CL auction
CC auction
MCS auction
MCS buy it now

For most books out there the option I would recommend, and the one we use most often for selling our own inventory, is MCS BIN. MCS and our consignors together sell 4x more $1000+ books by BIN than by auction. That's the reverse of the other venues, which are strongly auction-centric, and probably sell 5-10X or more via auction than BIN. Auction is easier for auction houses than BIN because it requires little upfront investment and produces an immediate guaranteed sale for them with little need for longer term inventory management and storage.

In terms of what option puts the most money in the seller's pocket, for the vast majority of books that aren't super scarce, MCS BIN is going to average out as the winner. Assuming the market itself is flat rather than on a strong upward trajectory, the average of all results from anybody's auction (MCS, HA, eBay, etc) does not exceed the GPA average. MCS BIN results do exceed the GPA average, it's that simple. 

MCS has far and away the most successful BIN platform in comics.

- all MCS BINs listed both on MCS and eBay, so huge customer base
- for anything with significant demand, lots of people have that issue on their want list. They'll be notified when you post it for sale as well as each time you lower the price at least 5%.
- if you choose to allow offers, offers can come in from both MCS and eBay

Result is that it's generally easy to make 5-15% more via BIN than auction, sometimes more.

BIN also doesn't have to mean a slow sale. If you price fairly within GPA range, you can often sell within a month or two, sometimes much faster. The mistake some consignors make is aiming too high, listing at 150-200% of GPA, then after there are no takers, they give up too early and instead of lowering the price to a more reasonable range they throw the book into auction where they end up selling it for less than if they'd kept it as BIN but lowered the price to 100-120% of GPA.

 

The rest of this is me stepping through GPA and some of our recent relevant sales for each of the five books you mentioned. 

1) For your first book Action 242, the best comparable grade with multiple 2023 sales I can reference is 4.0. Here's GPA for Action 242 in 4.0:

Here's what those sales are:

Dec 2023 $1500 via HA auction CROW, seller takes home $1063 after 20% buyer's premium and 15% seller's commission (1500 / 1.2 * 0.85)

Nov 2023 $1616 OW, source unknown but probably an eBay auction, seller takes home $1402 after 13.25% final value fee (1616 * .8675)

Aug 2023 $1800 via HA auction OW, seller takes home $1275 after 20% buyer's premium and 15% seller's commission (1800 / 1.2 * 0.85)

May 2023 $2281 via MCS BIN CROW, seller takes home $2031.80 after 3% buyer's premium and 8.27% effective seller's commission (10% on first $300, 8% on amount past $300). This book sold in about a month and a half after it was first listed. The seller started it April 6 at $2600 and lowered the price incrementally until it sold at $2215 May 26.

May 2023 $2575 via MCS BIN LTOW, seller takes home $2294 after 3% buyer's premium and 8.24% effective seller's commission  (10% on first $300, 8% on amount past $300). This book also sold in about a month and a half. Seller (different from the first guy) listed it April 7 at $2750 and sold it via best offer for $2500 May 18.

Comparisons like this are not perfect. Books can vary in PQ, and appearance/desirability, and the market can move up or down over time. When I look to see whether there's a clear price trend at GPA for Action 242 from May 2023 to the end of 2023, I see a mix of some grades holding steady or moving up and some moving a bit down. I don't see any obvious major downward trend for the issue. So, I look at those sales and conclude that the two MCS BIN sellers came away with significantly more money in their pockets (with LTOW and CROW copies) than the other three sellers (two HA auctions, one probable eBay auction). 

 

2) Next book, Batman 121, not as frequent sales and not as clear of a comparison, but we sold a CGC 4.5 this year. Here's GPA for 4.5:

The $3193 sale is an MCS BIN sale. The consignor sold his book within less than a month via best offer. Looking at GPA, that seller did well.

 

3) Next book, Batman 181. Best comparable data I can find is in grade 7.0:

The May 6 for $2200 and Jun 22 for $2000 are MCS BIN sales. The $1920 Oct 9 is HA auction ($1360 to the consignor) and $1577 is Hakes. These two MCS sales were our books, not a consignor's, but had they been consigned, the consignor would have walked away with $2018 and $1834 respectively.

 

4) Next, Hawkman 4. Harder to find nice clusters for direct comparison, but we have these sales in the past year:

MCS consignor sold a CGC 9.6 for $11,400 via BIN best offer Jun 2023. Could it have done better in auction at HA or CL? It's certainly possible but hard to know for sure. A 9.4 sold for $10,800 in Jan 2022, and a 9.6 sold for $20K in 2021, but there was a lot of downward market movement from 2021/Jan 2022 to Jun 2023. I can say that it sold at a price the consignor was willing to take, or he wouldn't have accepted the offer.

MCS consignor sold CGC 8.5 for $2000 via BIN Feb 2023

MCS consignor sold CGC 8.0 for $2048 via auction Aug 2023

MCS consignor sold CGC 8.0 for $2350 via BIN Jan 2023

MCS consignor sold CGC 7.0 for $1065 via BIN Mar 2023, noted as having slab damage (peg chipped off)

GPA data for Hawkman 4 in CGC 7.0

The Mar 12 sale for $1056 with some minor slab damage is an MCS BIN consignor sale, in which the consignor netted $937 after BP and commission. Compared to HA sales of $1320 Jun 26 ($935 to consignor after BP and commission) and $840 Aug 14 ($595 after BP and commission). Even with this book that looks to be in the bottom 50% of 7.0 sales for 2023, the MCS consignor still came out even with the strong Jun 26 HA result and way ahead of the $840 Aug HA result.

 

5) And last of all, Superboy #68, not a lot of data but we do have these two in CGC 6.5 that sold in 2023:

MCS-owned BIN sale for an OWW copy $1864 Jan 2023 (would have been $1659 to the consignor after BP and commission if it was a consignment sale)

HA auction sale for an OW copy $1500 Dec 2023 ($1062.50 to the consignor after BP and commission)

Since our sale was early 2023 and the HA sale was late 2023, not a great comparison if the market for this book has weakened over the course of 2023. But, looking at GPA, I don't see any notable trend like that. This book seems to have held pretty steady during 2023.

 

If you negotiated a better rate with HA like 10% commission instead of 15%, every bit helps but MCS BIN sales in these examples would still come out ahead.

I'm not ragging on HA, they're an amazing auction house and good people. Since they report to GPA and have a lot of sales, their examples are the ones that come up most often for me to compare with. I'm just making the case that if you're selling a book in the $1,000-30,000 range and want to know which option puts the most money in your pocket, in many cases the right answer is MCS BIN rather than choosing whose auction to use.

Sorry for the lengthy post. 

Just to add 2 cents to this, the trick to BIN formats is to set a realistic price. Higher end books that are sitting in MCS BIN formats are often priced above market value. Setting reasonable asking prices and moving down a touch (at or slightly below value) for a BIN is usually a recipe for success with desirable books. 

Apologies for forgetting the MCS BIN option in my summary earlier in this thread. I have no personal experience with it, but I know people who have used it and have nothing but good things to say about it. 

[Number 6]

On 1/11/2024 at 7:29 AM, paperheart said:

sold my entire HG DC Silver Age CGC collection through ComicConnect, first class all the way

What are their fees?

I was looking at them the other day and while I found a lot of "we're better than this venue, we're better than that venue", I for the life of me couldn't find their actual fee structure on their consignment facts page.

[paperheart]

On 1/11/2024 at 1:14 PM, Number 6 said:

What are their fees?

I was looking at them the other day and while I found a lot of "we're better than this venue, we're better than that venue", I for the life of me couldn't find their actual fee structure on their consignment facts page.

was 10% at the time (2020)

[musicmeta]

On 1/11/2024 at 3:14 PM, Number 6 said:

What are their fees?

I was looking at them the other day and while I found a lot of "we're better than this venue, we're better than that venue", I for the life of me couldn't find their actual fee structure on their consignment facts page.

I believe 8% for auctions.