Best auction house? 3 3

[Jollyroger65]

Hi, what is the difference between selling on Heritage Auctions vs Comiclink? Is the number of prospective buyers a lot of more for one of them?
Thanks!

[KCOComics]

Both venues have a wide audience for comics. 

Heritage seems to hammer better for GA but they also have higher fees.  You'll want to do your homework based on the genre and sales history. 

If you have big books Heritage might negotiate a lower fee. 

 

Edited April 29 by KCOComics

[revat]

On 4/29/2024 at 1:25 PM, KCOComics said:

Both venues have a wide audience for comics. 

Heritage seems to hammer better for GA but they also have higher fees.  You'll want to do your homework based on the genre and sales history. 

If you have big books Heritage might negotiate a lower fee. 

 

good advice

take the books you have, and research yourself which auction does better on similar books, and of course factor commissions and fees.

Also consider Mycomicshop, which might be pretty good for some books.

[zach1900]

I thought they were both 10% seller fee?

[zach1900]

I've been emailing with the guy at comic link,  he's pretty helpful. But I can't tell if comic link is mainly into high grade slabs or what. Most of their options seem to have nines and 9 1/2 and 9/8 s

[thehumantorch]

On 5/2/2024 at 7:00 PM, zach1900 said:

I thought they were both 10% seller fee?

Nope.  I believe Heritage has a 20% buyer and a 20 % seller fee.  They're expensive but they do a good job of promotion and have a lot of buyers.

[Grendel72]

If u have moderns think just go to mcs or comiclink. If its GA/SA, then go to Heritage. The profile of the buyers there are older farts with bigger wallets. I'm one of the older farts sans the big wallet. There is simply no contest between what Heritage puts out in their signature auctions vs the rest. Costs more buts it's worth it. And you have high value books, you can negotiate with them on the fees. 

[DougC]

You'll want to stay away from Heritage if your selling non-super key moderns. The cost is pretty outrageous for both buyer and seller, for reference I planned to buy a replacement copy of X-Men (1991) #54 and budgeted around $75 (around $100 for SS). Ebay had a couple for around that, Mycomicshop had a couple for $90, and comiclink didn't have any in the current auction (not counting shipping). I did find a SS copy for bid at Heritage and I put a $20 bid on it and won it for $16. Here are all the fee's after the fact:

[Gaard]

Live & learn.

I'll never buy off Heritage again. Fees killed me.

[Artboy99]

On 5/6/2024 at 12:14 AM, DougC said:

You'll want to stay away from Heritage if your selling non-super key moderns. The cost is pretty outrageous for both buyer and seller, for reference I planned to buy a replacement copy of X-Men (1991) #54 and budgeted around $75 (around $100 for SS). Ebay had a couple for around that, Mycomicshop had a couple for $90, and comiclink didn't have any in the current auction (not counting shipping). I did find a SS copy for bid at Heritage and I put a $20 bid on it and won it for $16. Here are all the fee's after the fact:

I won a single slab on Heritage a couple of months ago and the shipping was $125.00 + service and handling. I am in Canada

[Qalyar]

On 5/6/2024 at 3:56 AM, Gaard said:

Live & learn.

I'll never buy off Heritage again. Fees killed me.

I don't see anything wrong here. They advertise a 20% buyer's premium, and that's what you were charged. Well, plus tax and what is honestly a nomimal S&H fee. This is how auction houses -- as opposed to traditional merchants -- generally work, and a 20% BP isn't out of line with non-comics auction houses. For comparison, Christie's buyer's premiums are complicated for very high dollar items, but for anything up to $1,000,000, they currently change a 26% BP.

On 5/6/2024 at 1:14 AM, DougC said:

You'll want to stay away from Heritage if your selling non-super key moderns. The cost is pretty outrageous for both buyer and seller, for reference I planned to buy a replacement copy of X-Men (1991) #54 and budgeted around $75 (around $100 for SS). Ebay had a couple for around that, Mycomicshop had a couple for $90, and comiclink didn't have any in the current auction (not counting shipping). I did find a SS copy for bid at Heritage and I put a $20 bid on it and won it for $16. Here are all the fee's after the fact:

On the other hand, this is kind of annoying. Along with the 20% BP, Heritage also has a $29 minimum BP, which... I guess they argue allows them to include items with expected hammer prices under $150 in their auctions and still make a reasonable profit, but... ehhhh, I don't know. I hardly think HA is hurting financially, so this really just serves as a cautionary note that you should try very hard to buy anything < $150... somewhere else.

[DougC]

On 5/6/2024 at 7:40 AM, Qalyar said:

On the other hand, this is kind of annoying. Along with the 20% BP, Heritage also has a $29 minimum BP, which... I guess they argue allows them to include items with expected hammer prices under $150 in their auctions and still make a reasonable profit, but... ehhhh, I don't know. I hardly think HA is hurting financially, so this really just serves as a cautionary note that you should try very hard to buy anything < $150... somewhere else.

As long as you factor in the BP which I did with my obscenely low bid, as a buyer I did ok as it was still well under what I budgeted for. A seller on the other hand very likely made zero dollars on this transaction, where as if they sent it to comiclink it would have easily hit around $80+ (which is what ebay/mycomicshop had it listed around).

[Qalyar]

On 5/6/2024 at 7:59 AM, DougC said:

As long as you factor in the BP which I did with my obscenely low bid, as a buyer I did ok as it was still well under what I budgeted for. A seller on the other hand very likely made zero dollars on this transaction, where as if they sent it to comiclink it would have easily hit around $80+ (which is what ebay/mycomicshop had it listed around).

Honestly, from the perspective of both buyer and seller, this is why truly Big Boy Books may be best served by being auctioned at Heritage, but "normal" material generally belongs elsewhere. Which... makes sense, honestly. Outside of comics, you might own very nice antiques or jewelry or coins or whatever, but if they're not exceptional, you don't try to get them into a Christie's auction catalog.