When is a good deal too good?

[shadroch]

When purchasing a collection, when does a good deal become a ripoff? As a dealer, I always try to buy as low as possible,and sell as high. If someone has books for sale, I will try to lowball them. Many people feel the Churchs were ripped off. I do not. they had an "agent" and did not sell to first person they contacted.

When looking at a collection, I first guessestimate book value,then figure in what % of the collection will be duplicated by my stock,figure the % o Hot books, and then try to figure out a resonable return on my investment should I tie up the money elsewhere. If the collection is made up of books I already have ,my offer may be quite low,if I need the books it will be higher. But rarely will it approach the 50% ratio that alot of collectors feel is fair. Any thougts?

[joe_collector]

Many people feel the Churchs were ripped off. I do not.

 

Then why bother asking?

[justiceleaguer]

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!! you know, people like you are the reason im broke.

[lighthouse]

For me it always comes back to opportunity cost...

 

If my money can do better in something other than that guy's collection, then the offer I am going to make is a function of that....

[BigMan]

When purchasing a collection, when does a good deal become a ripoff? As a dealer, I always try to buy as low as possible,and sell as high. If someone has books for sale, I will try to lowball them. Many people feel the Churchs were ripped off. I do not. they had an "agent" and did not sell to first person they contacted.

When looking at a collection, I first guessestimate book value,then figure in what % of the collection will be duplicated by my stock,figure the % o Hot books, and then try to figure out a resonable return on my investment should I tie up the money elsewhere. If the collection is made up of books I already have ,my offer may be quite low,if I need the books it will be higher. But rarely will it approach the 50% ratio that alot of collectors feel is fair. Any thougts?

 

Well my first thought is 50% or more is fair on some collections as a dealer. I do not mind turning a all silver age collection for half the price if possible. My concern of late in collection buying is looks are deceiving. I have unfortunately bought a lot of collections even from local dealers around my area as well as eBay, where after the fact, I realized I needed to lower my price I paid because of serious flaws on the interior of books. Bought one collection from a local dealer recently for about half price, a long box of nice silver and bronze books. I thought he was a legit guy and actually looked at the stuff he purchased. Got them home and graded them 25 of them missing pages and or Marvel Value Stamps cut out. I try to stay in the 10 % to 25% bracket for total value of books if getting Silver to Modern stuff but if all old it can be much much higher as we all know.

 

I do think there comes a point of ripping someone off and low balling to much. A buddy of mine does this and got one day 3 longs of bronze and silver books many HG for $100!!!!!!!!!!!!. He turned around and sold them to me for $500 which was still a killer deal since I made $1500 to 2,000 on the books but it took me two weeks of work to do so. I was kinda happy he did get them so cheap as was able to give me a deal so I could resell them but was kinda saddened at the same time that someone got so little for a obvious well taken care of childhood collection.

[jbud73]

This is quite the topic and made me think as I have purchased 2 collections and am a collector and not a dealer myself. Personally as a collector I would never sell my collection to a dealer (I plan on being buried with it but thats an aside). The reasoning is simple, a dealer will offer you based on profit margin, this has been illustrated by the posts above. A collector will usually want the books, they may flip or trade a few but I thought of it in terms of what I would have to pay for these books. This mind set alone should make it more attractive to sell to collectors, hmmm then why do so many collections go to dealers??

 

The anwer is the flip side of the coin. A collector, IE someone who plans on keeping the books, will have to absorb the cost of the books. If a collection costs you $5,000, a collector might flip or trade books a small portion of books for $1,000 but still absorbs the 4K, a dealer sees the profit potential and might flip the collection for 10K. IE the costs are more long term for a collector and they are many times not able to compete with dealers especially the larger ones.

 

The most important advancement for the collector who wishes to sell is Ebay and similar services. It means work for the collector bu eliminates the middle man in alot of cases and I think increased the sellable value of most collections. When I purchased my latest collection, I made the collector aware that in my opinion they could get anywhere from 10-30% more had they wished to sell it off piecemeal over a longer period of time. The response was that they wanted someone to come in a take it all (12 long boxes) out and have the lump cash in hand. I felt that In making them aware i was doing my service and probably paid 5% more than a dealer might have, but 50-50% less than it would have cost to purchase the entire thing off a dealer over time.

 

In summation if you work to amass, you must still work to profit from a collection. If you are unable to work by selling off your collection to its maximum potential, then in a way you deserve the dealer who gives you 10-20% of book value.

 

The collector who sold to me in this last instance said that they felt good in knowing that a fellow collector was buying their collection, as in it found a good home. They are right as I plan on kepping 80% of more of it, but will not purchase much back issues for about 6mo. Thats where the collector absorbing thing really comes in