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Theoldcollector wrote:

Defiant1 wrote:

The most valuable thing a Golden Age dealer has is his customer list. Heritage sells high end & high dollar collectibles, so they attract customers with deep pockets.
Customers that spend a lot of money go back to sellers that have what they want and they go back to sellers they trust.
Comics shops that sell new comics every week used to say, they can't sell Golden age comics or they don't sell Silver Age well.
There's a reason. People who spend a lot of money aren't wasting their time with sellers who focus on new comics.
You have to build a clientele for expensive books before you will ever consistently sell expensive books.
I'd say Heritage has a clientele of buyers/bidders that will & can pay more for what they buy.

I understand Heritage themselves I guess I should've said I never understood the price these buyers pay. It makes no sense to me that buyers go on there and bid up books to ridiculous prices when if they had just took the time to look they could have bought the same book graded the same or even better for way less money. For instance one ASM 800 autographed book went for almost $400 on one of there auctions and that same book with the same autograph was up for sell on E-bay by multiple dealers for $180-$200 buy it now. If that is a book you want, why pay double and wait for the actual auction to start when you can just buy it immediately for less? Makes no sense. I understand it's Heritage's clientele that will and can pay more, it just seems like for rich people they aren't real savvy with their money. That's a low dollar book now think about how much money they are wasting for high dollar books. They will wait longer and pay way more on there for a book they could have just bought from A-1 or Reece or any one of the other many dealers that sell high end books.

Trust will outweigh price shopping if someone has a lot of money.

Despite that, I do believe there are some high end retailers working multiple business fronts and manipulating the market. If you sell a $400 comic to yourself at $800, eventually someone will believe $700 is a good deal.

This is from the 2009 case against Heritage.

"Defendants used N.P. Gresham as a sham bidder or shill to bid
against Hendershott at various auctions ... (A)s seen in Exhibit 4, N.P.
Gresham, which was in fact Heritage, was bidding on items when it
stated no house bids were to be made. N.P. Gresham actively bids in
almost every auction Heritage conducts"


If you google Heritage Shill there are a lot of different collectors talking about them. More on the coin collecting side than comics but there are comic collectors talking about them as well and how they raise the sale price to a dollar below the bidder's max proxy bids. Not on every single item but primarily on the higher value ones.