Sweet Lou 14 Posted January 11 Share Posted January 11 On 1/11/2024 at 3:40 PM, mycomicshop said: - 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%. 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. I've never sold books through MCS (maybe I ought to try it!) but I will just comment on these two points from a buyer's perspective. I have a fully tricked-out want list on MCS and it works exactly as Conan describes above. I get notified real-time (not on a 24-hour cycle, like eBay and every other dealer that even supports the feature) and as long as the price is reasonable, I pounce. Put up anything I'm looking for and it will be sold within the hour. ttfitz, mycomicshop, Cosmic_Shel and 1 other 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Courageous Cat Posted January 12 Share Posted January 12 MCS. has the fastest payout of any auction venue I've used, I just wasn't all that impressed with the final sold results. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rsouxlja7 Posted January 12 Share Posted January 12 On 1/11/2024 at 9:47 AM, shadroch said: 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. For the books you consigned to Bob Storms - do you ship the books to him and then he brokers the sale or do you keep them until he has a deal in place? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sweet Lou 14 Posted January 12 Share Posted January 12 On 1/12/2024 at 11:08 AM, rsouxlja7 said: For the books you consigned to Bob Storms - do you ship the books to him and then he brokers the sale or do you keep them until he has a deal in place? I realize the question wasn't directed at me, but I can tell you Bob supports either model. I always ship (or hand deliver) my books to him because that is waaaaay cheaper and much less hassle than shipping each one when they sell. Hope that helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rsouxlja7 Posted January 12 Share Posted January 12 On 1/12/2024 at 1:26 PM, Sweet Lou 14 said: I realize the question wasn't directed at me, but I can tell you Bob supports either model. I always ship (or hand deliver) my books to him because that is waaaaay cheaper and much less hassle than shipping each one when they sell. Hope that helps. Thank you I may look into going that route for one of my books Sweet Lou 14 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PMMMAS Posted January 12 Share Posted January 12 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. Do you have to send the items to you in order to sell through the MCS BIN or will high res scans be sufficient ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buttock Posted January 12 Share Posted January 12 On 1/11/2024 at 3:58 AM, Courageous Cat said: HA is the best if you dont mind waiting about 6 months from sending , to listing, to receiving payment. Heritage sends a check 45 days after the auction ends like clockwork. They list my stuff ASAP. This just isn't true. Bumble Kitty and jimjum12 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bumble Kitty Posted January 13 Share Posted January 13 On 1/11/2024 at 7:47 AM, shadroch said: 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. Unfortunately, this did not happen to just you. I'm still waiting...for Josh to come back from safari...so he can sign the check...and maybe, I will get it before the end of January. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick Furious Posted January 13 Share Posted January 13 On 1/10/2024 at 5:20 PM, AGGIEZ said: 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 would try all of them at MCS first. Put them all in the car and drive them up to the warehouse, no worries about post office shenanigans. You can get them back if it doesn't work out. MCS is very consignor friendly and easy to transact with. Cosmic_Shel, AGGIEZ and Flanders82 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Courageous Cat Posted January 13 Share Posted January 13 On 1/12/2024 at 4:23 PM, buttock said: Heritage sends a check 45 days after the auction ends like clockwork. They list my stuff ASAP. This just isn't true. Relax Francis, results may vary from person to person. Read carefully....if u submit signature auction books and that action isn't for say 4 months, and payout isn't for roughly 45 days as u say, in my book, thats nearly 6 months. you must be selling low end Sunday auction funny books Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blazingbob Posted January 13 Share Posted January 13 Thank you for the people commenting on my consignment service. My consignment fees are 10% up to $9999, 8.75% up to $99,999, 7.5% over $100K I do not charge you the seller paypal fees etc. If you have any questions you can always message or give me a call. ADAMANTIUM 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buttock Posted January 13 Share Posted January 13 On 1/13/2024 at 7:02 AM, Courageous Cat said: Relax Francis, results may vary from person to person. Read carefully....if u submit signature auction books and that action isn't for say 4 months, and payout isn't for roughly 45 days as u say, in my book, thats nearly 6 months. How is that different from any other auction house? Quote you must be selling low end Sunday auction funny books Is that an attempt at an insult? I don't know why you're trying to turn this personal. I'm sorry I hurt your little feelings. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Changer Posted January 13 Share Posted January 13 one comment, my experience with Heritage, Rick in particular and obviously, the consignment rates have some flexibility especially if they are looking for your books for a particular themed auction or you have some big boys (or lots of volume) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shadroch Posted January 13 Share Posted January 13 On 1/13/2024 at 10:20 AM, buttock said: How is that different from any other auction house? Is that an attempt at an insult? I don't know why you're trying to turn this personal. I'm sorry I hurt your little feelings. I usually get paid in two weeks at MCS, assuming the buyer follows through. I'd rather turn stuff over four times a year than every six months.. Courageous Cat 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Legion of Goom Posted January 15 Share Posted January 15 On 1/10/2024 at 7:19 PM, comicstock said: 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? I have anecdotally heard of some sellers being able to negotiate getting a portion of the buyer's premium back, but I would presume that's for those with very big ticket items and/or very strong relationships. Not sure if that's something that's still done, and it's never happened with anything I've ever consigned. That exclusion aside, you're right as far as the concept. The "buyer's premium" is really a misnomer; in practice and as it relates to your net payout (the number that really matters), the seller pays it. Example: if you look in their archives and see a book that sold for $12k, the seller's payoff started at $10k. Then, their selling fees are deducted from that $10k. You could take a lower gross price from another selling house and still end up with more net proceeds at the end of the day due to that dynamic. My experience reflects that: for items in the range of the OP's books, anything extra that might shown up as a higher selling result didn't really translate to extra cash in my pocket, but YMMV. Out of HA, Clink, and MCS, MCS has been the best fit for me in terms of net results, customer service, and timely payment, but none of the three have been "bad", per se. I haven't tried CC or Bob Storms yet. Hope this helps! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thehumantorch Posted January 15 Share Posted January 15 On 1/12/2024 at 2:14 PM, PMMMAS said: Do you have to send the items to you in order to sell through the MCS BIN or will high res scans be sufficient ? Yes, you have to send the books in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shadroch Posted January 15 Share Posted January 15 On 1/12/2024 at 9:08 AM, rsouxlja7 said: For the books you consigned to Bob Storms - do you ship the books to him and then he brokers the sale or do you keep them until he has a deal in place? I've given them to him in person, so he can take them to shows as well as on his site. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
