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RE: What are your comics worth to a dealer? MileHighs buying prices

Aphelion — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:34:35 GMT

As a rough guess, I'd say I have probably 10,000 comics. Only 15% of that really interests me anymore. I wish I'd quit buying new comics in 1996. I wish I'd quit buying bulk deals on "average" stuff. I'd have had a lot more money to buy those classic gems that I do take pride in owning. I walk in comic shops now and I shrug my shoulders. They have nothing I even want.

RE: What are your comics worth to a dealer? MileHighs buying prices

texranger37 — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:59:17 GMT

[quote][b]Aphelion (10/18/2009)[/b][hr]My friend bought 52 long boxes from a collector that bought reading copies only. I went through all 52 boxes and nothing interested me at all. I would not have paid a dime a book for them. There were no gems. Far more dreck is out there than gems. I've seen collectors say "Well, if you won't buy them, can I just give them to you. I'm moving and I don't want to have to ever move them again."

[/quote]

Geez Aphelion,

You must be a man of refined tastes. I'd go nuts for 52 longboxes of comics! Drek or not! Gotta be some good reads in there!! LOL!! Ask me if you can just give it to me...HECK YEAH!!

I'm sorry, I'm only funnin' around.

TEX

RE: What are your comics worth to a dealer? MileHighs buying prices

expander — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:47:11 GMT

wow 52 long boxes? and nada? that is alot of dreck. When i read that i remembered a thought that ive often had about comics ( icall it my fight club theory) if marvel (or dc) bought back all the issues that they printed 9+million of and resold only the nicer condition ones and publicly destroyed the other ones out of shame would they be worth more at Lcs's ,conventions and cons???? just a thought it wouldn't change the cheesy stories or hurried art but if they were high grade books physically would that be enough to entice collectors and completionists? or would it have the opposite effect. do we really need 800,000 Star brands?

RE: What are your comics worth to a dealer? MileHighs buying prices

Aphelion — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 21:24:53 GMT

My friend bought 52 long boxes from a collector that bought reading copies only. I went through all 52 boxes and nothing interested me at all. I would not have paid a dime a book for them. There were no gems. Far more dreck is out there than gems. I've seen collectors say "Well, if you won't buy them, can I just give them to you. I'm moving and I don't want to have to ever move them again."

RE: What are your comics worth to a dealer? MileHighs buying prices

Robbie — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 19:53:49 GMT

A bag-n-board costs more than a dime. If you have to pay for a storage space, you've got a problem. Might want to just burn them for heat in the winter.

OTOH, it's a swell deal for new collectors that are put off by $4.00 cover price on new comics. They get to pick out a longbox of comics they want to read for about a quarter each.

RE: What are your comics worth to a dealer? MileHighs buying prices

Aphelion — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 18:44:22 GMT

What he should say is that he's not buying currently because he wouldn't be able to pay much. That way he coaxes you to beg him for that dime a book and you are glad you got something.

RE: What are your comics worth to a dealer? MileHighs buying prices

GrooFan — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 16:03:58 GMT

I can understand the 10 cents thing financially, but it is still insulting when the Comic Book Guy does not even leaf through what you brought in. He is just assuming it is crap, or worse, hopes you are assuming it is crap, and then later he will look to see if there any some diamonds in there that he got for next to free. :)

RE: What are your comics worth to a dealer? MileHighs buying prices

Aphelion — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 11:23:09 GMT

10 cents is the going wholesale rate on most moderns. There are enough dealers stuck on them that they can buy them in bulk from other retailers at that price. Plus modern back issues for the most part are not real fast sellers. Peoiple bought them new and there aren't a lot of new customers walking in the door looking for modern back issues. It's easier to buy a TPB if you want the story.

RE: What are your comics worth to a dealer? MileHighs buying prices

GrooFan — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 09:30:13 GMT

I've had bad experiences at several of my LCS. I once took in about 200 books when I was strapped for cash and the owner offered me 10 cents each. The sign said, "Free appraisals" on the front. It was just a pile of X-Men, X-Factor, Wolverine, but really, he did not even look at them, just made a blanket offer. I walked away.

Now I would probably print out a inventory list and current prices and bargin with them, but I still feel like they are trying to rip you off. 10 cents each is just like saying "I don't care, take it or leave it".

RE: What are your comics worth to a dealer? MileHighs buying prices

Aphelion — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 23:09:54 GMT

[quote][b]50AE DE (10/17/2009)[/b][hr]A few years ago at a convention (it was either WonderCon or a small show held at the Scottish Rite Center in Oakland)I witnessed a well known nationaldealer picking through another dealer's box. He pulledout what looked like 40-50 early Kaluta Shadow comics. There were quite a handful of #1s (at least 10) in thepile. The seller was all smiles until the buyer walked the pile over to the seller and told him "I'll give you 20 bucks." The seller responded "For each one?" to which the buyer said "No. For all." When the seller told him no the buyer gave a little bit of attitude to the seller and left the pile there. Even though I wasn't part of the transaction, I felt insulted by the buyer for such a low-ball offer.

Using this example to answer your question, apparently not much. It wasn't until I walked by the buyer's booth did I discover who he was (an Overstreet Advisor). I never have nor will I ever buy anything from this dealer.[/quote]

If they didn't know each other, that would be an insult. If they barter regularly, it might have been just exchanging favors or a failed attempt. I haven't sold comics at a show in years, but people will still give me deep discounts because I have so many connections.

RE: What are your comics worth to a dealer? MileHighs buying prices

50AE DE — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 22:54:43 GMT

A few years ago at a convention (it was either WonderCon or a small show held at the Scottish Rite Center in Oakland) I witnessed a well known national dealer picking through another dealer's box. He pulled out what looked like 40-50 early Kaluta Shadow comics. There were quite a handful of #1s (at least 10) in the pile. The seller was all smiles until the buyer walked the pile over to the seller and told him "I'll give you 20 bucks." The seller responded "For each one?" to which the buyer said "No. For all." When the seller told him no the buyer gave a little bit of attitude to the seller and left the pile there. Even though I wasn't part of the transaction, I felt insulted by the buyer for such a low-ball offer.

Using this example to answer your question, apparently not much. It wasn't until I walked by the buyer's booth did I discover who he was (an Overstreet Advisor). I never have nor will I ever buy anything from this dealer.

RE: What are your comics worth to a dealer? MileHighs buying prices

Aphelion — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 07:47:53 GMT

I'm saying that if you have a fast selling modern book that his customers want... and he can't get it due to demand.... you should be able to do a full trade for any older book that has been sitting in his store for a year or more. In some cases a retailer may not have even raised the prices on his older stock anyway.

I live in Atlanta and there aren't many stores left. Regardless, it is to his advantage to give a full value swap if he's got a book that's not selling and he can get one that'll sell tomorrow. There are some dealers that are jerks and stick by the percentages you mention above out of principle. I laugh in their face and walk away. I also won't buy books from them anyway.

Let's say you bought a Chew #1 and he can't get it replaced. He's annoying his customers every minute he can't fill their want list. If you had one and were willing to trade it, he should be willing to give you full market value in trade on some back issue at a comparable price that nobody ever asks about. If he's not willing to do that, you should laugh at him because that customer he's got that want to buy the Chew #1 can shift his business online or to a mail order company. If he's sitting back on everything going "Nope, have to get my percentages" you just remind him that he's getting his percentage out of the dead stock he's got in the store. Dead inventory and poor back issues sales are the biggest problem he has.

RE: What are your comics worth to a dealer? MileHighs buying prices

Silver Age Surfer — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 00:09:04 GMT

[quote][b]Aphelion (10/16/2009)[/b][hr][quote][b]Silver Age Surfer (10/16/2009)[/b]
The only way to maximize the value of a transaction with your friendly neighborhood LCS dealer is to trade. Period. And even then, you lose. [/quote]

You are only going to lose if it's something he doesn't need. I've done plenty of trades at full market value. If you have a modern hot comic going for $20 and he has a customer who needs it, you should be able to find any book worth $20 that's been sitting in his backstock awhile and he should be willing to trade a $20 book for a $20 book. It all depends upon how fast he can sell it. That's how I got $90 trade credits for Magnus #12 when I put it towards an Amazing Fantasy #15. Back when that book was hot, dealers had a line of customers waiting for it. I had $900 worth of modern comics that could sell instantly. He had a $900 book that I wanted and he'd paid a fraction of that that. He'd probably have had to sit on it for another 6 months or a year and walk away from the show he was at losing money. The dealer that traded me the Amazing Fantasy #15 sold $900 worth of my modern books within an hour and we both walked away from the trade very happy. It might've only been $300 profit, but he makes nothing until cash changes hands. A book sitting in backstock for a year or on a wall for 6 months is dead weight. The only books worth a dealer having are the ones which he can sell.[/quote]
Your comic book guy is amazing. Seriously. Full value, modern and a fast seller. Almost too good to be true. In any comic store in my entire city (and we have something like 50 of them within a 1 hour drive radius) not only would no one here ever take a hot modern book back because their customers would just buy new issues and $29 variants and keep trading it in for new ones free of charge, not one of them could move modern comics that fast even on their best day. As for the old stuff, I'd be lucky to get 70% trade-in value on most $30-$100 issues because they just simply don't move. Most comics, even the new ones, sit on shelves for months, and our guys have enough trouble selling their own stock to even consider most equal value trades.

Do you live in a small or medium size city by any chance? I find that in small towns like the one I used to live in, it's way easier to get away equal value trades with local dealers. Here the stores and in-house or independent dealers bilk us like there's no tomorrow. The store up the street has resorted to selling a rather high quality hash to stay in business. Their grass is sub-par.

RE: What are your comics worth to a dealer? MileHighs buying prices

Aphelion — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 21:48:44 GMT

[quote][b]Silver Age Surfer (10/16/2009)[/b]
The only way to maximize the value of a transaction with your friendly neighborhood LCS dealer is to trade. Period. And even then, you lose. [/quote]

You are only going to lose if it's something he doesn't need. I've done plenty of trades at full market value. If you have a modern hot comic going for $20 and he has a customer who needs it, you should be able to find any book worth $20 that's been sitting in his backstock awhile and he should be willing to trade a $20 book for a $20 book. It all depends upon how fast he can sell it. That's how I got $90 trade credits for Magnus #12 when I put it towards an Amazing Fantasy #15. Back when that book was hot, dealers had a line of customers waiting for it. I had $900 worth of modern comics that could sell instantly. He had a $900 book that I wanted and he'd paid a fraction of that that. He'd probably have had to sit on it for another 6 months or a year and walk away from the show he was at losing money. The dealer that traded me the Amazing Fantasy #15 sold $900 worth of my modern books within an hour and we both walked away from the trade very happy. It might've only been $300 profit, but he makes nothing until cash changes hands. A book sitting in backstock for a year or on a wall for 6 months is dead weight. The only books worth a dealer having are the ones which he can sell.

RE: What are your comics worth to a dealer? MileHighs buying prices

Aphelion — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 21:32:56 GMT

[quote][b]thatjerk (10/14/2009)[/b][hr]A dealer won't be in business long if he pays market value and sells at market value. They have to make a profit to stay in business. And an entire collection will be full of books that can't be moved immediately, so there is 'cost' in having them in inventory for any extended period of time that must be taken into consideration.

If you were to sell your entire collection as one auction on eBay, you probably would not make much more than a dealer would offer you for a lot of the same reasons. Unless you're selling individual books yourself (which takes more time and work on your part) you won't get anywhere near 'market value', and then only for hot, key or popular books.[/quote]

Exactly. The advantage of selling books to a dealer is to get someone to take them all. It's never a good idea to cherry pick ALL your best books and take them to a dealer either. You might be able to get more for the gems, but keeping some gems in the sale will bait them into paying more for the common dreck. Their eyes will get greedy if they see a few key buts and they'll rationalize to themselves that they can make more off the common books because the keys are harder to get cheap. Rozanski walks around and buys dealers out. His buy prices online are for the desperate guy that just wants to cash out his collection fast. Success through selling in the comics industry depends upon how cheaply you can get comics and how fast you can move it. Most comics can't be flipped very fast. So Rozanski may be offering low amounts, but he already has most of what you are selling him anyway. Why would anyone pay a lot for something they don't need?

RE: What are your comics worth to a dealer? MileHighs buying prices

Earl Davis — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 05:29:09 GMT

Back in the 90's my LCS would offer 50% of OPG for anything at all in trade for anything in his store that you were prepared to pay full OPG for. Sadly he went out of business;)

RE: What are your comics worth to a dealer? MileHighs buying prices

Silver Age Surfer — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 01:54:12 GMT

[quote][b]Smallville417 (10/14/2009)[/b][hr]I knew I would never sell books to a dealer just from watching transactions when I first started collecting. I used to hang out at the LCS and chat with the dealer way back in elementary school and was always surprised how little people got.

I understand it (not so much than), but I would feel like I was giving my collection away. Nowadays it doesn't matter, I'll never sell my collection to anyone.[/quote]
The only way to maximize the value of a transaction with your friendly neighborhood LCS dealer is to trade. Period. And even then, you lose. I learned that the hard way too. If I'm moving comics to a dealer in this city, I've managed to maneuver myself into a position where I'll get 75%/80% of the value of what I'm giving him in exchange for my stack... and that's [i]good[/i]. Most of them will give you 50% in cash and 60% in trade, which is ridiculous, but they justify it by saying that because they have the storefront to actually sell the comic much more easily than you can, that 40-50% margin is warranted.

I eBay my comics, if and when I sell them, and I only sell full runs, 1sts and keys when I find something in better condition to replace it, and the process of running the auction, paying the fee, shipping the comics and sometimes getting far less than you'd hoped for in the open-ended auctions to be extremely tedious. For a dealer, he/she has the marketplace and the access to more on-site customers than we as independent collectors do, so they pay peanuts and charge, from what I've seen, about 5-10% more than a comic is worth in whatever grade it's in.

RE: What are your comics worth to a dealer? MileHighs buying prices

c-mack — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 22:27:42 GMT

where does everything here sell yalls books?

i post at the CGC forums and i not sure about ebay and comic link and such....trying to sale my FF 5 but im not having luck at the CCG board:dontknow:

RE: What are your comics worth to a dealer? MileHighs buying prices

coffeeman27 — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:41:30 GMT

[quote][b]texranger37 (10/15/2009)[/b][hr][quote][b]coffeeman27 (10/15/2009)[/b]

The prices they'll pay are pretty small for most books (about 30 cents for most moderns), but they seem to have decent prices for some indi material ($1 to $2). You're not going to get rich, but for modern material you're not likely to do much better on eBay. [/quote]

You ain't kidding coffeeman27. They are offering $24 for a NM Walking Dead #1. That's about 10% of what you'd get for it on ebay. But that store credit thing is appealing. I wish that my LCS had that.

TEX[/quote]

My point was that I was able to sell off a lot of low value maderns that I wouldn't have been able to get rid of otherwise. I may not of gotten much for them, but I likely wouldn't have gotten anything for them if I tried to sell them off on eBay or my local dealer.

Now I certainly wouldn't recommend selling off high value moderns or most bronze age or earlier books which do still hold their value and are in demand on eBay. I certainly wouldn't sell them my copy of Walking Dead 1 even if I wanted to get rid of it :)

I am also holding off selling them individual issues of larger series were I have the complete sets. While I might make a little on the one issue, I'd end up getting stuck with the rest of the series. At some point I plan on selling of some complete sets or large runs on ebay. I still won't make much, but at least I won't be stuck with incomplete runs.

RE: What are your comics worth to a dealer? MileHighs buying prices

texranger37 — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:00:47 GMT

[quote][b]coffeeman27 (10/15/2009)[/b]

The prices they'll pay are pretty small for most books (about 30 cents for most moderns), but they seem to have decent prices for some indi material ($1 to $2). You're not going to get rich, but for modern material you're not likely to do much better on eBay. [/quote]

You ain't kidding coffeeman27. They are offering $24 for a NM Walking Dead #1. That's about 10% of what you'd get for it on ebay. But that store credit thing is appealing. I wish that my LCS had that.

TEX

RE: What are your comics worth to a dealer? MileHighs buying prices

coffeeman27 — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 16:06:24 GMT

You can do the same over at Mycomicshop.com. They allow you to list all the books you're willing to sell and you can see when Lone Star needs a book you have since it is added to a sell list.

The prices they'll pay are pretty small for most books (about 30 cents for most moderns), but they seem to have decent prices for some indi material ($1 to $2). You're not going to get rich, but for modern material you're not likely to do much better on eBay.

I just traded in about 850 unwanted/duplicate comics for about $1,100 in store credit. Then turned around and filled in my early Amazing Spider-Man collection. They are not currently offering cash back, but for my purposes that was fine.

I'm sure I could have made more for some of the books if I was willing to spend the time posting them on ebay, but most of the stuff I sold were single issues duplicates moderns or parts of series I picked up for cheep at local comic shop sales before I started running out of space. These types of things don't really do well on ebay.

Anyway, they have a decent set up. Like Mile High, they allow you to submit a book at a particular grade and then they'll grade the book themselves and allow you to choose whether you'll accept there counter offer or have the book returned. I found they accepted my grade in a bulk of my submitted books, but they seem to be stricter in their grading then I assumed based on books I'd bought from them.

RE: What are your comics worth to a dealer? MileHighs buying prices

thatjerk — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:23:19 GMT

A dealer won't be in business long if he pays market value and sells at market value. They have to make a profit to stay in business. And an entire collection will be full of books that can't be moved immediately, so there is 'cost' in having them in inventory for any extended period of time that must be taken into consideration.

If you were to sell your entire collection as one auction on eBay, you probably would not make much more than a dealer would offer you for a lot of the same reasons. Unless you're selling individual books yourself (which takes more time and work on your part) you won't get anywhere near 'market value', and then only for hot, key or popular books.

RE: What are your comics worth to a dealer? MileHighs buying prices

jesjet1969 — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:08:05 GMT

hmmmmmmm.

All I can say is my personal collection is worth more to me then someone else.

RE: What are your comics worth to a dealer? MileHighs buying prices

spruce213 — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 21:48:51 GMT

Comic dealers are like lawyers.

They'll take you for everything you got.

RE: What are your comics worth to a dealer? MileHighs buying prices

Smallville417 — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 20:36:40 GMT

I knew I would never sell books to a dealer just from watching transactions when I first started collecting. I used to hang out at the LCS and chat with the dealer way back in elementary school and was always surprised how little people got.

I understand it (not so much than), but I would feel like I was giving my collection away. Nowadays it doesn't matter, I'll never sell my collection to anyone.

What are your comics worth to a dealer? MileHighs buying prices

mark — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 19:53:47 GMT

Ever wonder how much a dealer would give you for your books? What is the real value of your collection to that dealer?

Well, you know that buying from dealers or ebay is market price or replacement price. But how much would a dealer pay you? I found this today and wonder what you all think.

Let me warn you, it is my expectation that they are not much different then anyone else. Hence the reason you never want to sell to a dealer if you can avoid it.

http://www.milehighcomics.com/buying/mv-buying-df.html