mycomicshop

He said "mycomicshop" in the thread title, but those aren't our stickers. Maybe Mile High's or some other retailer.

Mostly depends on what you have and where you're located, but to give you a general idea this is a reasonable rough approximation: Buy in the $50K-100K or more range--we'll travel anywhere in the US as needed Buy in the $20K-50K range--lots of these can be conducted remotely (meaning you provide a list/summary, pictures, and ship the books to us if we have a deal), but depending on where you are and what the books are we might travel ourselves or send a buying partner who is in your area. Our buying partners are knowledgeable collectors who do a lot of business with us that we trust to represent us well, report to us what they see, and can help facilitate getting books shipped to us if we buy the collection. Buy in the $5K-20K range--increasingly likely it can be conducted remotely, or we can come to you or send a buying partner depending on location and what the collection is (eg $20K of high value slabs handled very differently from $20K of raw comics) Buy under $5K--most of these are conducted remotely, but sometimes buying partners might be called on to help the seller avoid having to mess with shipping Our Seller Services buyers traveled to CA last week for a collection, and in two weeks they're traveling to NYC area for two big collection pickups, and then have scheduled a number of other stops (either potential buys, or consignment pickups) along our route back through the NYC, NJ, PA, OH corridor before angling down toward Texas. Other times of the year we make similar trips back from Baltimore Comic Con and Heroes in Charlotte, and we may add another convention or two to our calendar in the next year or two. We can also travel to pick up major consignment collections if the value justifies the travel. Eg we don't want to incur $2000 of travel expenses to pick up $20K of consignments where we'll earn in the ballpark of $2000 as commission. But if the value justifies the travel expense, or the seller is willing to contribute to pick-up costs because it's cheaper/safer/easier than trying to ship everything commercially, we are happy to pick up consignments too.

Our want list buying department manager's feedback on shadroch's transaction was that first, he's always welcome to raise concerns like that directly with us, and we'd be happy to review and provide additional info or correct any errors we find. As to the books, he reviewed them and is in agreement with the grades that were assigned, but said that our grader should have provided grade notes on some of the larger downgrades and failed to do so. He's discussed that with the grader as well as reminding the rest of the department. Here are some of the relevant grading notes on books I asked about that had larger grade reductions. These notes were not included in the feedback shadroch originally received on his transaction, but our grader should have provided some of these notes while grading: Gizmo 6 - color breaking spine stress, edge damage, minor crease, denting, and fingerprints Grendel 36 - color breaking spine stress, scuffing, denting, accumulation of minor creases, foxing, and water spot Torg 2- scuffing, soiling, heavy denting, spine roll, and abrasions on back cover Wave Warriors 1- cover length creases, foxing, denting, and 1" spine split Our largest downgrade was on the Wave Warriors, from VF down to GD. I'm sure there are sellers that would grade this higher than GD, but I also know we'd have unhappy buyers if they received this book from us as a VF. I don't deny that we're tight graders and grade many books lower than other sellers might, and lower than CGC might. We do our best to grade consistently to our own grading standard and we're not trying to grade exactly the same as CGC. We buy 50-60K comics a month via this want list system, so it may not work for everybody but a lot of sellers make heavy use of it. For anybody that prefers to sell comics in larger quantities or through channels other than our online want list, our Seller Services department buys collections of any shape or size, based on whatever info you provide. Since that system doesn't involve individually reporting specific grades on each issue as part of the purchase process, there's never any friction or disagreement about grade. The seller gives us whatever info is appropriate: list, pictures, sometimes we travel for an in-person examination--and then we make an offer for the group. As long as our offer beats anybody else's the seller will likely choose to sell to us, and it doesn't matter how we'll eventually grade the comics.

This is 100% not the case and has never been the case, and I give the same response any time this accusation is made. Shadroch is referring to selling to us via our online want list system, which involves full transparency on price and grade: we show up front the prices we pay in various grades, and once we receive your books we report to you what grades we have given them. Any that we graded lower than the seller did, the seller has the option of having the books returned to them. Every book bought under this system in which we bought the book from the seller at a specified grade will be listed for sale at that same grade. The only exceptions would be the occasional much higher value book we decide to send to get slabbed, and if we somehow encountered a flaw later after purchase that we didn't see while buying the book, then of course we'd grade it down accordingly. Depending on how common the book is, it's easy to monitor our behavior on this yourself. You can watch our new listings page to see when we eventually post your book for sale (although that page isn't targeted at showing sub $5-10 books because there are too many of them and they're less interesting than the higher value ones). Or, just look at the issue listing itself, and wait til you see new inventory get added. Nobody has ever posted a "gotcha" of us relisting their purchased books at a higher grade because this is something we never do. If we did do that, people would have reported a lot of examples by now across the literally millions of comics we've bought over the years via this system. This system does not guarantee that a book you bought from us months or years ago will receive the same grade when you sell it back to us. We don't have perfect consistency just like CGC and other graders aren't going to produce perfectly consistent repeatable grades across multiple gradings, and our graders just grade the book in front of them. If we do grade a book at a lower grade than you bought it from us some time ago, it's not because anybody has their thumb on the scale. It's just because whoever graded your book this time selected the lower grade. I've relayed shadroch's feedback about his transaction to the head of our want list buying department, and he's going to take a look at the books and report back to me.

We don't have nearly the volume of higher end art sales that HA and ComicLink do but we do sell plenty of it, and have sold 5 figure pieces via both auction and BIN for very respectable prices. When Steve Borock was with us one of his efforts was expanding our support for art and volume of art inventory. Part of that effort was significantly improving the data model and categories that we use to record our art listings, so it's easier to browse by category instead of them being in a single big list with low value prints mixed in with good OA pages. Our art section As with our comic listings, all art that's consigned with us for BIN sale is also cross-posted to eBay, so you're getting that exposure in addition to the MCS site. I would love to grow our art selection and do more with it, but can't devote much attention to it right now, and since Steve left we don't currently have anybody specifically spearheading that area.

Our terms say that after 12-24 months we may require either periodic price reductions, moving the item to auction, or else will begin charging storage fees. However, we haven't actually begun charging anyone storage fees and are working toward a different model that would still accomplish our goal of not allowing indefinite storage of overpriced consignments.

Excellent--thank you for bringing this to my attention and glad we could help!

Here's the full size image that is linked to from the listing on our website: https://d1466nnw0ex81e.cloudfront.net/n_ii/originalimage/7421948.jpg And here's the close up of the price box from that image: I see just a little bit of reddish/brownish tint to the left of the "25c" in the price box. A manager in our imaging department checked the book and says that image is an accurate reflection of what the book looks like in hand. I agree that HA has fantastic images. They have very talented, very experienced in-house photography capability and it shows. We capture many more comic images than HA does, and at a lower average price point, so the context isn't identical, but we are working on moving our process closer to HA's. It ends up being a fine line between making the book look as good as possible without going so far that a buyer feels the book is misrepresented.

Hi, We've replaced the images on your book. Here's the side by side of the before and after. We tweaked the brightness and contrast, and also found that one of our scanners was adding a little bit of a reddish/organish/pinkish color shift, which you can see in the image at left. We're taking that one out of commission and setting up a periodic imaging calibration test to make sure all our imaging stations are producing identical images.

Hi, don't have anything substantive yet, but just letting you know I've seen this and we're reviewing it.

Comparison of three Feb auctions for ASM 300 CGC 9.8 MCS: ASM 300 CGC 9.8 sold in our weekly auction ending Feb 19 for $3600 winning bid. Seller gets 92% of that = $3312. HA: The HA sale you referenced for a CGC 9.8 ended Feb 27 for $3840. Before 20% BP, that was a $3200 top bid. Seller gets 85% of $3200 = $2720. CL: The Feb CL sale for a CGC 9.8 referenced in the report above ended at $3350. Seller gets 90% of $3350 = $3015.

Condolences to Ed's family and friends, and work family at Heritage. Rest in peace.

Not a store and not open to the public on a walk-in basis, but if you'd like to tour MCS that could be arranged. We're located at 1800 Timberlake Dr. in Arlington, not far from DFW airport. PM me if interested arranging a time for that. My restaurant recommendation would be Hurtado BBQ in Arlington at 205 E Front St. I've really enjoyed everything I've had there. The best is if you go with a group and get one of the big party platters so you can try some of everything.

The three items you're referring to have been in stock with us since September 2023 and gone through a few price reductions since then. When you ask why they were listed "right now", I'm guessing you mean new listing on eBay, because the listings on MCS have been there since last September. The last time those three items got a price reduction was December 22, and I think all you're seeing is that our code is reposting the listings once they pass 30 days old. The sale you're talking about on June 19 2023 looks like a normal sale to a buyer that doesn't look suspicious. The buyer bought that one comic from this consignor, and one other comic from a different consignor. No pattern of other buying activity from the same consignor or anything suspicious. The consignor of those slabs is indeed from Texas and I have no reason to be suspicious of the consignor.

Obviously biased take coming from me, but I think what I say here is accurate. Given these choices: HA auction CL auction CC auction MCS auction MCS buy it now For most books out there the option I would recommend, and the one we use most often for selling our own inventory, is MCS BIN. MCS and our consignors together sell 4x more $1000+ books by BIN than by auction. That's the reverse of the other venues, which are strongly auction-centric, and probably sell 5-10X or more via auction than BIN. Auction is easier for auction houses than BIN because it requires little upfront investment and produces an immediate guaranteed sale for them with little need for longer term inventory management and storage. In terms of what option puts the most money in the seller's pocket, for the vast majority of books that aren't super scarce, MCS BIN is going to average out as the winner. Assuming the market itself is flat rather than on a strong upward trajectory, the average of all results from anybody's auction (MCS, HA, eBay, etc) does not exceed the GPA average. MCS BIN results do exceed the GPA average, it's that simple. MCS has far and away the most successful BIN platform in comics. - all MCS BINs listed both on MCS and eBay, so huge customer base - for anything with significant demand, lots of people have that issue on their want list. They'll be notified when you post it for sale as well as each time you lower the price at least 5%. - if you choose to allow offers, offers can come in from both MCS and eBay Result is that it's generally easy to make 5-15% more via BIN than auction, sometimes more. BIN also doesn't have to mean a slow sale. If you price fairly within GPA range, you can often sell within a month or two, sometimes much faster. The mistake some consignors make is aiming too high, listing at 150-200% of GPA, then after there are no takers, they give up too early and instead of lowering the price to a more reasonable range they throw the book into auction where they end up selling it for less than if they'd kept it as BIN but lowered the price to 100-120% of GPA. The rest of this is me stepping through GPA and some of our recent relevant sales for each of the five books you mentioned. 1) For your first book Action 242, the best comparable grade with multiple 2023 sales I can reference is 4.0. Here's GPA for Action 242 in 4.0: Here's what those sales are: Dec 2023 $1500 via HA auction CROW, seller takes home $1063 after 20% buyer's premium and 15% seller's commission (1500 / 1.2 * 0.85) Nov 2023 $1616 OW, source unknown but probably an eBay auction, seller takes home $1402 after 13.25% final value fee (1616 * .8675) Aug 2023 $1800 via HA auction OW, seller takes home $1275 after 20% buyer's premium and 15% seller's commission (1800 / 1.2 * 0.85) May 2023 $2281 via MCS BIN CROW, seller takes home $2031.80 after 3% buyer's premium and 8.27% effective seller's commission (10% on first $300, 8% on amount past $300). This book sold in about a month and a half after it was first listed. The seller started it April 6 at $2600 and lowered the price incrementally until it sold at $2215 May 26. May 2023 $2575 via MCS BIN LTOW, seller takes home $2294 after 3% buyer's premium and 8.24% effective seller's commission (10% on first $300, 8% on amount past $300). This book also sold in about a month and a half. Seller (different from the first guy) listed it April 7 at $2750 and sold it via best offer for $2500 May 18. Comparisons like this are not perfect. Books can vary in PQ, and appearance/desirability, and the market can move up or down over time. When I look to see whether there's a clear price trend at GPA for Action 242 from May 2023 to the end of 2023, I see a mix of some grades holding steady or moving up and some moving a bit down. I don't see any obvious major downward trend for the issue. So, I look at those sales and conclude that the two MCS BIN sellers came away with significantly more money in their pockets (with LTOW and CROW copies) than the other three sellers (two HA auctions, one probable eBay auction). 2) Next book, Batman 121, not as frequent sales and not as clear of a comparison, but we sold a CGC 4.5 this year. Here's GPA for 4.5: The $3193 sale is an MCS BIN sale. The consignor sold his book within less than a month via best offer. Looking at GPA, that seller did well. 3) Next book, Batman 181. Best comparable data I can find is in grade 7.0: The May 6 for $2200 and Jun 22 for $2000 are MCS BIN sales. The $1920 Oct 9 is HA auction ($1360 to the consignor) and $1577 is Hakes. These two MCS sales were our books, not a consignor's, but had they been consigned, the consignor would have walked away with $2018 and $1834 respectively. 4) Next, Hawkman 4. Harder to find nice clusters for direct comparison, but we have these sales in the past year: MCS consignor sold a CGC 9.6 for $11,400 via BIN best offer Jun 2023. Could it have done better in auction at HA or CL? It's certainly possible but hard to know for sure. A 9.4 sold for $10,800 in Jan 2022, and a 9.6 sold for $20K in 2021, but there was a lot of downward market movement from 2021/Jan 2022 to Jun 2023. I can say that it sold at a price the consignor was willing to take, or he wouldn't have accepted the offer. MCS consignor sold CGC 8.5 for $2000 via BIN Feb 2023 MCS consignor sold CGC 8.0 for $2048 via auction Aug 2023 MCS consignor sold CGC 8.0 for $2350 via BIN Jan 2023 MCS consignor sold CGC 7.0 for $1065 via BIN Mar 2023, noted as having slab damage (peg chipped off) GPA data for Hawkman 4 in CGC 7.0 The Mar 12 sale for $1056 with some minor slab damage is an MCS BIN consignor sale, in which the consignor netted $937 after BP and commission. Compared to HA sales of $1320 Jun 26 ($935 to consignor after BP and commission) and $840 Aug 14 ($595 after BP and commission). Even with this book that looks to be in the bottom 50% of 7.0 sales for 2023, the MCS consignor still came out even with the strong Jun 26 HA result and way ahead of the $840 Aug HA result. 5) And last of all, Superboy #68, not a lot of data but we do have these two in CGC 6.5 that sold in 2023: MCS-owned BIN sale for an OWW copy $1864 Jan 2023 (would have been $1659 to the consignor after BP and commission if it was a consignment sale) HA auction sale for an OW copy $1500 Dec 2023 ($1062.50 to the consignor after BP and commission) Since our sale was early 2023 and the HA sale was late 2023, not a great comparison if the market for this book has weakened over the course of 2023. But, looking at GPA, I don't see any notable trend like that. This book seems to have held pretty steady during 2023. If you negotiated a better rate with HA like 10% commission instead of 15%, every bit helps but MCS BIN sales in these examples would still come out ahead. I'm not ragging on HA, they're an amazing auction house and good people. Since they report to GPA and have a lot of sales, their examples are the ones that come up most often for me to compare with. I'm just making the case that if you're selling a book in the $1,000-30,000 range and want to know which option puts the most money in your pocket, in many cases the right answer is MCS BIN rather than choosing whose auction to use. Sorry for the lengthy post.