What is the best place to sell or auction my raw ( ungraded) golden and silver age comic books to achieve retail prices? 1 1

[Defunct Junk]

I have a large collection of raw ( ungraded) silver and golden age comic books I want to sell. 

If I offer the collection to a retail business, they will offer me only wholesale prices.

My question is where is the best place for me to sell the collection where I will receive retail offers for the collection.

Thanks for your help and suggestions,

 Joel Cook: Defunct Junk

[rumrunner71]

By "retail" prices, I'm assuming you mean fair market value from GPA or another source. This depends on how you want to sell the books. The local comic store will offer you "wholesale" probably because they are offering on the whole collection. Often, a whole collection will be sold at a discount because you, as the seller, save the time of selling them one by one. If you want fair market value for each comic, you will probably need to sell them individually. The sales forums here are great.

There are a ton of online options, but each will take a percent or charge fees.

The long and short is, if you want retail prices, you need to put in the work of being a retailer: grading (not slabbing, mind you), taking pics, posting to the forum here or Instagram or something, responding to inquiries, packaging for shipping, etc. For some people, that makes sense. For others, they want the convenience of selling the collection as a whole in one fell swoop and so are willing to take a discount for the saved time. 

Edited June 8 by rumrunner71

[rumrunner71]

It also depends on the collection. If your Golden Age collection is, say, an early run of a popular character, you might have luck selling it for close to FMV to a collector. Again, the selling forum is the best bet

[shadroch]

On 6/8/2024 at 5:13 AM, Defunct Junk said:

I have a large collection of raw ( ungraded) silver and golden age comic books I want to sell. 

If I offer the collection to a retail business, they will offer me only wholesale prices.

My question is where is the best place for me to sell the collection where I will receive retail offers for the collection.

Thanks for your help and suggestions,

 Joel Cook: Defunct Junk

Why would anyone pay you retail for your collection?  

Depending on what books you have and their quality, you can consign them to various auction sites. Some individual books might bring what you consider retail. If you have truly outstanding books, heritage might be the spot. I use Mycomicshop. I find they generally get me good prices.

[MattTheDuck]

"Large" is relative, but I can understand how grading/selling/shipping books is a daunting task if you have to do it all yourself.  I'd encourage you to take a shot at it, however.  Pick out a handful of books that you believe are among your best (quality) or more valuable, maybe 5 Golden Age, 5 Silver Age.  Figure out what grade you think they will earn (if you like, post them in the "Hey, buddy, can you spare a grade?" forum to see if people with experience agree with your assessment. Read the Guidelines first).  Then start a thread in the Golden/Silver/Bronze Age Only sales Forum where you can price them for what you'd like to get for them ("retail") and see how it goes.  As noted above, you will definitely have to invest some time, but I agree the Sales Forums are a great place to sell, even expensive books (I just bought a nice low 4-figure Golden Age book there today).  If that doesn't work for you, Heritage for the "big" books and MyComicShop for the less big ones and you'll make out fine.

[Semicentennial]

It helps to know what kind of books you have.  There is a big difference between having early golden age Action comics/Captain America and Silver Age Marvels than having golden age Western comics and silver age Bob Hope comics. 

I'd suggest going through such auction houses if it's the good key runs and books.