Sellers who price your books at multiples of GPA -- What's your endgame? 0

[Off Panel]

 

Amazing Spider-man 99, CGC 9.8, for $5,325. It feels like this book has been on eBay as long as I have. Price seems a little nuts, but let's check GPA...

 

 

Okay, this is a $1,000 to $1,500 book. A couple of copies sell every year and the highest price paid on GPA over the last seven years is $1,800 (at the height of the comic boom). So, the seller is going with a price that's almost four and a half times the last sale. That's a bold choice.

Is this a rare book? Nope -- 30 9.8s on the census.

Anything special going on? First appearance? Classic cover?  Well, there's a cameo appearance by Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon, if that's your thing.

The buyer does have "Make Offer" turned on, so maybe he's just trying to anchor on a high value to discourage lowball bids? I tell myself that, but I've seen this book wasting away in this corner of eBay for years, so I don't really believe it.

I make an offer that is above the 2023 high sale. Auto-declined.

I make an offer that is above the 2022 high sale. Auto-declined.

I decide against making any other offers and leave eBay to come over here and crab on the boards.

Any sellers out there who understand and can explain the mindset here?

 

 

[CAHokie]

I am not a seller, but I vaguely remember a seller once saying that they do this with items they don't really care if they sell in case a sucker comes along.  There seems to be lots of items on Ebay like this.  

 

[Off Panel]

You may be right, although when I think of sellers trolling for suckers, I usually think of listings like this:

 

 

Ohmigod! An X-Men #1 in 9.8! I've heard of that book -- it's a GRAIL!

Edited May 16 by Off Panel
emphasis

[Chip Cataldo]

On 5/16/2024 at 1:16 PM, Off Panel said:

Any sellers out there who understand and can explain the mindset here?

Probably the same mental midget mindset that makes someone send me a $10 offer on a $200 item.

Dain bramage?

[lostboys]

I used to list my collections on Ebay for insane prices.

I knew they wouldnt sell but I liked being able to go on Ebay and look at them.

 

I always chuckled at the amount of "watchers" they would accumulate...none of you are gonna pay $25,000 for my Walking Dead collection. 

[Off Panel]

On 5/16/2024 at 1:52 PM, Chip Cataldo said:

Probably the same mental midget mindset that makes someone send me a $10 offer on a $200 item.

They do seem to be two sides of the same coin -- crazy lowball buyers and crazy highball sellers.

I put in a $1,400 bid on this $1,200 book and eBay said, "The seller will be more likely to accept a bid over $4,000" and I thought, "Yeah, I bet he would."

[Off Panel]

On 5/16/2024 at 1:59 PM, lostboys said:

I used to list my collections on Ebay for insane prices.

I knew they wouldnt sell but I liked being able to go on Ebay and look at them.

Thank you for sharing that. I had actually considered this as a possibility, but dismissed it. Now it's back under consideration.

[CAHokie]

This reminds me of something I see at flea markets now.  Some people that are obviously not comic dealers will sell some old, but not rare, comic books.  They will go on Ebay to find the value and put the 9.8 price they see on it even though it's an ungraded, beat-up reader copy.   

[comicjack]

Aim high and hope everyone is stupid and see if that works 

[Corvonie]

This is my favorite thread in a while because we’re each picturing VERY specific ppl.

as DOOM says:

Not to call the whole crowd out.

It’s just a few chumps.

And you know who you are, like a shout out.

[Corvonie]

On 5/16/2024 at 1:52 PM, Chip Cataldo said:

Probably the same mental midget mindset that makes someone send me a $10 offer on a $200 item.

Dain bramage?

Oh maaan this one took me back to being like 6 years old. Bob Nelson!

I had a link in here but then I watched it and I didn’t even remember how off-colour it was!  The things we were exposed to as kids (actually pale in comparison to what our kids are exposed to).

Thanks for taking me back!

 

Edited May 16 by Corvonie

[JollyComics]

On 5/16/2024 at 4:56 PM, comicjack said:

Aim high and hope everyone is stupid and see if that works 

I wished.

[grendel013]

https://www.ebay.com/itm/284324895257?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=4iirAuo7QAK&sssrc=2047675&ssuid=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

I tried negotiating with the seller a couple years ago with no budge. I ended up putting my own grail set together myself. Took 20 years but I saved like $16k.

 

[Hepcat]

On 5/16/2024 at 1:23 PM, CAHokie said:

I am not a seller, but I vaguely remember a seller once saying that they do this with items they don't really care if they sell in case a sucker comes along.  There seems to be lots of items on Ebay like this.  

 

The only way this would stop is if Ebay charged some sort of a listing fee that was a percentage of the BIN price.

[Hepcat]

On 5/16/2024 at 1:59 PM, lostboys said:

...none of you are gonna pay $25,000 for my Walking Dead collection. 

You're right.

[ExNihilo]

Not that I do it, but every book has a price.  I don't list random books for sale, but I could see a situation where I don't plan on selling a book, but would absolutely take some absurd amount for.  Like if you want to buy my Todd McFarlane Spider-Man #1 for $1000, who am I to stop you?

[Stefan_W]

I can think of four of reasons aside from trolling for suckers, which has already been brought up and is likely the most common reason. 

Sometimes seller buy too high are have a ton of cash sunk into a book. Good examples of that would be books bought in 2021-22 when the market was still at its high water mark. In the cases the seller can chose to just take the hit and move on, or they can just list it high and hope the market eventually catches up again. Ebay gives people 250 free listings so it costs nothing to sit and wait for a rise in the marketplace. 

A second reason is sometimes sellers may use big books to draw attention. There was a local pawn shop that had a few slabs on display including an X-Men 1, but everything was priced 4x or more actual value. I asked the owner about the pricing and he said it draws people into the store and led to extra sales on other items, so he didnt really want to part with it. For Ebay stores a similar thing would apply because high ticket items draw in followers who may buy the cheaper stuff along the way. 

The third reason is sometimes sellers are not really comic people, and they dont really get how much comics are worth. A local person had some slabs left to her when her husband passed so she listed them on kijiji as well as on Ebay. I spoke with her a bit and offered to help since she was asking 2x value and nothing was going to sell, but she was not interested because she trusted what her husband told her was the value ahead of what I was going to say. I dont blame her since there are less than honest people out there, but he kept her books for at least a year before the listings eventually disappeared. Not sure how that story played out in the end. 

Fourth reason I can think of, and that I used myself, is that Ebay shows images way better than sites like Facebook. A few years ago when I listed all of my slabs for sale on my Facebook group I uploaded them to Ebay with prices no one would possibly take, and then shared the link to my page along with a list of the real prices with my group. People were able to use the scans with hover-over blowups to examine the slabs closely and when I made a sale in my group I would just remove the listing. I eventually decided it was more of a hassle to keep up than it was worth, but it worked well while it lasted. 

[Corvonie]

On 5/17/2024 at 9:00 AM, Stefan_W said:

I can think of four of reasons aside from trolling for suckers, which has already been brought up and is likely the most common reason. 

Sometimes seller buy too high are have a ton of cash sunk into a book. Good examples of that would be books bought in 2021-22 when the market was still at its high water mark. In the cases the seller can chose to just take the hit and move on, or they can just list it high and hope the market eventually catches up again. Ebay gives people 250 free listings so it costs nothing to sit and wait for a rise in the marketplace. 

A second reason is sometimes sellers may use big books to draw attention. There was a local pawn shop that had a few slabs on display including an X-Men 1, but everything was priced 4x or more actual value. I asked the owner about the pricing and he said it draws people into the store and led to extra sales on other items, so he didnt really want to part with it. For Ebay stores a similar thing would apply because high ticket items draw in followers who may buy the cheaper stuff along the way. 

The third reason is sometimes sellers are not really comic people, and they dont really get how much comics are worth. A local person had some slabs left to her when her husband passed so she listed them on kijiji as well as on Ebay. I spoke with her a bit and offered to help since she was asking 2x value and nothing was going to sell, but she was not interested because she trusted what her husband told her was the value ahead of what I was going to say. I dont blame her since there are less than honest people out there, but he kept her books for at least a year before the listings eventually disappeared. Not sure how that story played out in the end. 

Fourth reason I can think of, and that I used myself, is that Ebay shows images way better than sites like Facebook. A few years ago when I listed all of my slabs for sale on my Facebook group I uploaded them to Ebay with prices no one would possibly take, and then shared the link to my page along with a list of the real prices with my group. People were able to use the scans with hover-over blowups to examine the slabs closely and when I made a sale in my group I would just remove the listing. I eventually decided it was more of a hassle to keep up than it was worth, but it worked well while it lasted. 

Yes, I would add to this that, in the end, its supply and demand.  As an example, I have a REALLY nice FF #31 soon to be going out for grading.  If I list it, I would probably list it at a premium - not only possibly based on lack of recent comps - but also because sometimes you have something that just doesn’t come up often even if it’s not a grail, so you can see if someone wants it badly enough.  These prices, in the end, are only based on how badly anyone wants a particular book.

Another initially confounding example might be ff 12, where I might pay a premium for a 7.0/5, as long as it was less than an 8.0.  Reason being that even though it’s far from the highest grade, all I ever see is 4-6 or 8-8.5, and 7.0/5 is my preferred grade for my PC

Edited May 17 by Corvonie

[Robot Man]

On 5/16/2024 at 12:56 PM, CAHokie said:

This reminds me of something I see at flea markets now.  Some people that are obviously not comic dealers will sell some old, but not rare, comic books.  They will go on Ebay to find the value and put the 9.8 price they see on it even though it's an ungraded, beat-up reader copy.   

Not that I see many old comics at flea markets anymore but yes. Coverage in the media causes that. But every once in a while, I run into folks that just don’t know any better or can’t be bothered. This is still what gets me up early on Sunday mornings…

[lostboys]

On 5/16/2024 at 10:50 PM, Hepcat said:

You're right.

I agree.