Anyone ever sell to mycomicshop.com?

[the blob]

mycomicshop has some interesting pricing...some head scratchers in either direction (high and low). from folks here it does not seem like they always bump down to VF, but I'd be worried about that as I could see how it could make a submission of 100 moderns basically worthless. The way I read it I'm guessing they see one spine tick and it's automatically a VF?

 

but putting aside the grading differential (and that on bronze comics it goes straight from NM- to VF, which leaves a lot of room for NM- to get bumped down to VF when they're really 9.0s on the low end) I'm a little worried about not understanding the whole set up as they have some 30 cent variants, for example, listed lower than their regular edition counterparts in NM.

[the blob]

What are people's experiences submitting NM BA books? I have some multiples of certain issues that they seem to pay nice prices for. Nowadays, with CGC upping the price of 1975-1979 submissions, not worth taking a crack a 9.6ses, probably not 9.8s, and usually a brute to sell on line as nobody believes the stated grade, so I'm pondering this route, though I'd probably list them here first.

[Engr62]

Here is my experience in purchasing from them.

[nocutename]

Here is my experience in purchasing from them.

 

I think everyone's had problems regarding grading issues with MCS. I have had to return a couple of books myself because even though the books were not expensive, the comics I received had major problems that I found unacceptable. They were very understanding and simply too back the books with question and even gave me a return shipping credit.

 

I admit I was nervous about trying them out again for my BA's but I figured that they were only fillers anyway. And when I post a WTB thread here for readers it normally goes unanswered.

[Broken Shakespear]

Well, I had some trouble buying from Lonestar about a year ago, but I was able to straighten everything out with Conan, where I couldn't with Buddy.

 

So I went back to trading with them a little, but have taken the past year off in buying or trading with them.

 

Last month, I decided to start submitting some trades to them. The first one I submitted went okay; most stayed the same grade, a couple went down and a couple went up by a single grade. No problems, since most of what I trade is moderns, so there are no in-between grades on those books.

 

But my second trade was an entirely different story. I sent in another batch of books, all the same quality as the previous batch. This time only 5 books remained the same grade, and everything else was downgraded (27 books submitted). Some books which were NM were graded to FN, with no explanation.

 

Now, I have been grading comics for 20 years (business and pleasure), I have all three editions of the Overstreet Grading Guide memorized, have a 92% success ratio in predicting the CGC grade my submissions are going to get, and if I give myself +/- 1 CGC grade (9.2-9.4, or 8.5 to 9.0), I am 98%. I'm by no means perfect, but I rarely miss anything. I would consider myself an expert grader.

 

Now, some of the books I did grade NM- and submitted as NM, knowing they might go to VF, but under no circumstances were they FN. Plus I think Lone Star has stated that on modern books a NM grade means anything from NM- to MT, so even a NM- should get a NM price, as that was my understanding on how they were sold too.

 

So I submitted a complaint about it and Este Bagato regraded my submission. He had entirely different results. About half of the books than had went from NM to FN, he graded as VF. I think a couple stayed NM. And he lowered one book by a grade that had previously been accepted at the submitted grade. But overall, I think he graded about 40% of the submission differently than the original grader had done. He ended up leaving 5 books with a NM to FN drop, which I still disagree with.

 

In the end, I believe the results were, Grader #1 graded 27 books, agreed with only 5 of my grades, and downgraded 12 books by more than one grade, and 10 books by one grade.

 

Este graded the same books and agreed with 10 of my grades, downgraded 6 books by more than one grade, and 11 books by one grade.

 

Those are two VERY different results (even though in the end it was only $3-$4 difference, that is still $3-$4). 11 books were graded higher by Este. There shouldn't be that much variance among graders. They differed on about 40% of the order.

 

So this has scared me off submitting again. I have 18,000 books that I wanted to move fairly quickly, and had hoped Lone Star would be part of that. But I was banned once for being too picky a buyer and my concern is that if I question too many trades, I would be banned as a seller. And based on this last trade, I've seen enough variance in graders that I will question (at least to myself) the validity of any downgrades I receive.

 

I don't know if it was a case of a bad grader, someone in a hurry who didn't care, if it always varies that much, or what the deal was. What exactly is the screening process for graders? Are these your most experienced people (at least 5-10 years in comics) or are the minimum wage temps that come and go where you try to teach them a grading standard in a day and put them to work? Are their grading skills tested in any way?

[DiceX]

Sounds like they grade through the bag.

This must be how they do it...

 

A: Eight point zero...

 

*Sound of Carnak opening the envelope*...

 

Q: How deep can we stick it up this guy's ?

 

 

[mycomicshop]

They seem to offer decent prices on a lot of very slow moving stuff. Anyone have any experiance selling or trading with them?

 

Thanks for posting this as I forgot that MCS did have a buying section. I had a lot of BA duplicates in VG to Fine condition that did not sell on ebay and traded them to complete 5 series plus nab some trades I was looking for.

 

The turnaround time was amazing as well. I submitted the list on-line on June 11th and mailed the comics the next day. They reviewed them quickly. While some grades remained unchanged, the split between the lowered and uppered were quite even. The end result was pretty much for the same credit amount and I placed an order which arrived today. Everything looks great. I got an array of books from BA up to MA and the grades are pretty decent. The trades look brand new and they sell those at a discount on their site.

 

I am very pleased with my transaction however, I just wonder how they can survive offering so much per comic. But I noticed before this transaction and definitely now that their prices seem higher and very uneven. A series with no special issues per say will have one or two issues marked a few bucks higher for no apparent reason.

 

Thanks for the praise!

 

We price according to our perception of supply and demand. Even though a price guide has a run of issues all at the same price, we may price some issues differently from their neighbors if we perceive the issue being more scarce or in demand for whatever reasons. It's also based on our stock level--more stock on hand = lower buying price and lower selling price.

[TheLiamSturgess]

They seem to offer decent prices on a lot of very slow moving stuff. Anyone have any experiance selling or trading with them?

 

Thanks for posting this as I forgot that MCS did have a buying section. I had a lot of BA duplicates in VG to Fine condition that did not sell on ebay and traded them to complete 5 series plus nab some trades I was looking for.

 

The turnaround time was amazing as well. I submitted the list on-line on June 11th and mailed the comics the next day. They reviewed them quickly. While some grades remained unchanged, the split between the lowered and uppered were quite even. The end result was pretty much for the same credit amount and I placed an order which arrived today. Everything looks great. I got an array of books from BA up to MA and the grades are pretty decent. The trades look brand new and they sell those at a discount on their site.

 

I am very pleased with my transaction however, I just wonder how they can survive offering so much per comic. But I noticed before this transaction and definitely now that their prices seem higher and very uneven. A series with no special issues per say will have one or two issues marked a few bucks higher for no apparent reason.

 

Thanks for the praise!

 

We price according to our perception of supply and demand. Even though a price guide has a run of issues all at the same price, we may price some issues differently from their neighbors if we perceive the issue being more scarce or in demand for whatever reasons. It's also based on our stock level--more stock on hand = lower buying price and lower selling price.

 

Makes sense

 

[mycomicshop]

mycomicshop has some interesting pricing...some head scratchers in either direction (high and low). from folks here it does not seem like they always bump down to VF, but I'd be worried about that as I could see how it could make a submission of 100 moderns basically worthless. The way I read it I'm guessing they see one spine tick and it's automatically a VF?

 

but putting aside the grading differential (and that on bronze comics it goes straight from NM- to VF, which leaves a lot of room for NM- to get bumped down to VF when they're really 9.0s on the low end) I'm a little worried about not understanding the whole set up as they have some 30 cent variants, for example, listed lower than their regular edition counterparts in NM.

 

I suggest you submit a small batch of comics as a test. You'll know before you send your books in how much we'll pay in the various grades. After we receive the books, you'll know how we graded them. If you like what you're getting paid for them as they grade out, great--you'll get paid and you're welcome to try additional transactions whenever you want. If you don't like how we grade your books (and the prices at the resulting grades), you have the option to have those books returned to you, and you're out only the effort of the trial and a little bit for return shipping.

 

 

I'm not sure what you mean by "not understanding the whole set up", but please feel free to ask me any questions by PM or email at webmaster@mycomicshop.com.

[Broken Shakespear]

That "little bit" is $4.50 plus $.05 per comic (or was it $.10 per comic). So unless you are making a high dollar trade, returning isn't an option.

 

For example, you are trading a single $50 issue. You submit, they offer $30 with a lower grade you disagree with. You return it and sell it on your own for $50. You are out the $2-$3 you spent sending it to them and another $4.50 to get it back. So poof, $7 is gone, But you still have a chance to sell it elsewhere, get the $50 (assuming your grade was correct) and come out $13 ahead of MCS's price.

 

Returning is an option, but not a great one. It's gets better the higher the value of your trade. If it was a $1000 book, the $4.50 return isn't a big deal.

 

But lets say you want to submit 25 comics for a $25 trade. They knock your grades down and end up offering you $18 in trade. Does it make sense to pay them $4.75 to get 5 books back that you could only sell for $1-$1.50 each). No. They have you over a barrel where the only logical thing to do is just let them have them for whatever.

 

The "return them if you don't like our grading" sounds nice on paper, but it isn't quite so nice for many types of trades.

[mycomicshop]

Hi Will,

 

Hope you're doing well since we last talked.

 

A downside of the transparency our buying system provides (showing you exactly how we graded your books) is that some sellers feel like we've wronged them if we downgrade a book, even if they would otherwise be happy with the price offered, and the price was better than they could get anywhere else and with less work. There's always eBay, Mile High, the boards, and your local shop.

 

My advice would be to focus on the price, not the grade. Look at the buying prices we're offering and take into account the fact that we may grade some books lower than you based on your past experience. With that in mind, if you believe that selling to us will be the easiest and quickest way to get a good price for some of your 18,000 comics, then you should keep selling to us. If not, don't continue. I suspect that you'd find we're your best bet regardless.

 

As far as our grading, I'll repeat something I've said before:

 

The grade we assign when buying a book is the grade at which the book is recorded into inventory and sold. A book bought as VF will NEVER be sold as NM. Period. For many comics, this can be confirmed by reviewing our recently restocked back issues page. Nobody has their thumb on the scale to cheat sellers out of the price differential between a VF and a NM. The books that sellers complain about us grading VF or FN rather than NM, are books that buyers would be likely to complain about if we sold them as NM. We can't grade loosely enough to please all sellers while simultaneously grading strictly enough to please all buyers.

 

In regard to the option to have your books returned if we downgrade them--yes, the $4.50 return shipping charge is non-trivial if you're talking about returning a handful of sub-$1.00 books. That's the nature of the beast, online buying and selling of low-priced comic books--shipping charges are prohibitive unless you batch up enough comics into a larger shipment. It's certainly not any scheme of ours to get somebody over a barrel.

 

The option to have your books returned to you has two main uses:

1) It's a confidence booster for new sellers, as they can easily try us out, and have their books returned if they don't like the results, after which they do not have to sell to us anymore.

2) If you're submitting a more expensive item, where the price differential between two grades is significant, and you think we graded something too harshly, you can pull it back. For expensive items the return shipping isn't significant.

 

The option to return books is not really intended to be used by people who sell to us on a regular basis and want some $1.00 books returned every time they don't like how we graded something. None of our regular sellers use the retraction option in this manner. If you find yourself disagreeing with our grading that much, you're probably better off selling elsewhere.

 

I'll be in San Diego and happy to buy you a drink if you (or any other boardies) want to talk. I think I may be at the forum dinner.

 

Conan

[Broken Shakespear]

Well, I do look at price. And I do take into consideration that you will always lower grades. But what am I to think when you lower grades on 81% of the shipment, and the another grader looks at it and says no, only 63% are lowered, and that when applying the same grading in the past, typically only 15-20% are lowered?

 

It makes it look to me like something in the process is broken. Did someone just rush through? Does someone not understand the grading standard? How can two people, applying the same standard, arrive at such a different result (40% of the shipment getting higher grades)?

 

When I'm selling to you, I don't really care if you are going to sell VF and NM books as FN. If you want to take that loss, that is your decision. It doesn't mean I want to sell my VF and NM books to you as FN books. And a return isn't an option, at least not a real one on those kinds of books.

 

I'm trying to decide if I will or won't try again. I mean, was a grader just hung over, forgot their glasses at home, watching World Cup? Was it a one time thing or a systemic problem? I took a year off for reasons not related to Lone Star. Now I'm back and I have had one good trade and one very bad. I'm just concerned it is a systemic problem.

 

Is there any way to add to the check-in, who graded the comics (MCS used to tell you the persons first name on the approval)? At least then if one guy keeps low balling everything and other graders are more agreeable to your grading, maybe we can point that guy out, or request he not grade our shipment, etc. I did that long ago in the past.

[the blob]

mycomicshop has some interesting pricing...some head scratchers in either direction (high and low). from folks here it does not seem like they always bump down to VF, but I'd be worried about that as I could see how it could make a submission of 100 moderns basically worthless. The way I read it I'm guessing they see one spine tick and it's automatically a VF?

 

but putting aside the grading differential (and that on bronze comics it goes straight from NM- to VF, which leaves a lot of room for NM- to get bumped down to VF when they're really 9.0s on the low end) I'm a little worried about not understanding the whole set up as they have some 30 cent variants, for example, listed lower than their regular edition counterparts in NM.

 

I suggest you submit a small batch of comics as a test. You'll know before you send your books in how much we'll pay in the various grades. After we receive the books, you'll know how we graded them. If you like what you're getting paid for them as they grade out, great--you'll get paid and you're welcome to try additional transactions whenever you want. If you don't like how we grade your books (and the prices at the resulting grades), you have the option to have those books returned to you, and you're out only the effort of the trial and a little bit for return shipping.

 

 

I'm not sure what you mean by "not understanding the whole set up", but please feel free to ask me any questions by PM or email at webmaster@mycomicshop.com.

 

I was confused as to why you state you pay less for some 30 cent variants than regular editions in the same grade. That confusion led me to believe that maybe I was reading the pricing the wrong way.

[the blob]

That "little bit" is $4.50 plus $.05 per comic (or was it $.10 per comic). So unless you are making a high dollar trade, returning isn't an option.

 

For example, you are trading a single $50 issue. You submit, they offer $30 with a lower grade you disagree with. You return it and sell it on your own for $50. You are out the $2-$3 you spent sending it to them and another $4.50 to get it back. So poof, $7 is gone, But you still have a chance to sell it elsewhere, get the $50 (assuming your grade was correct) and come out $13 ahead of MCS's price.

 

Returning is an option, but not a great one. It's gets better the higher the value of your trade. If it was a $1000 book, the $4.50 return isn't a big deal.

 

But lets say you want to submit 25 comics for a $25 trade. They knock your grades down and end up offering you $18 in trade. Does it make sense to pay them $4.75 to get 5 books back that you could only sell for $1-$1.50 each). No. They have you over a barrel where the only logical thing to do is just let them have them for whatever.

 

The "return them if you don't like our grading" sounds nice on paper, but it isn't quite so nice for many types of trades.

 

$4.50 return shipping I guess isn't such a big deal if you send them 25 books they'd pay an average of $15-$20 for in NM or NM- and you get back from them all Fines and VFs and you say "F-it, send them back", but I can see how it is a non-starter if you send them 25 books you were hoping to get $1 each for and they tell you they're 22 cent books or something.

 

On the other hand, I understand their situation. They'd go broke on returns/non-deals if they didn't charge to send them back as even the cheapest media mail option, in a box, is pushing $3 and then there's time/materials packing stuff to send back, etc. etc.

 

Anyway, we'll see, I literally have 10-12 copies of some of these BA books in nice shape and it will take forever to sell them otherwise and get myself down to the 1-2 I want for my collection, so maybe I'll send 2-3 of each over for a shot and see.

[Andy J.-migration]

Ordered a bunch of moderns said to be NM, in batches of up to 9 copies per book. Found ONE copy I graded above 9.0, the rest ranged from 7.5 to 9.0. One book even landed at 6.0 with some extremely obvious flaws. Cheap books, didnt bother to make a fuzz about it.

 

Buddy ordered around the same time, same story, same drop in grades. A NM batch from mycompicshop is likely to be a VF batch. If you take that into consideration and feel ok about it, shop away.

 

Me, I'm sticking to people who know how to grade, instead

[Ken Aldred]

+1

 

Exactly the same as my experience, albeit with single copies, and I reached the same conclusions and all too happily went elsewhere. (thumbs u

[JediTrix]

Ordered a bunch of moderns said to be NM, in batches of up to 9 copies per book. Found ONE copy I graded above 9.0, the rest ranged from 7.5 to 9.0. One book even landed at 6.0 with some extremely obvious flaws. Cheap books, didnt bother to make a fuzz about it.

 

Buddy ordered around the same time, same story, same drop in grades. A NM batch from mycompicshop is likely to be a VF batch. If you take that into consideration and feel ok about it, shop away.

 

Me, I'm sticking to people who know how to grade, instead

 

I bascially had the same experience with them. All NM books looked VF, VF looked F, and so down the list. Since all the books where just $1 or $2. I didn't make a fuss or return them. Lesson learned - I won't order from them again - or if I do I will have lower expectations.

[ft88]

Here are some recent Barks books I offered here on the boards with no takers and ebay prices were pretty low so MCS offered pretty near what I was asking for on the boards. I missed the centerfold detached on the 199 so I went ahead and took their offer. The FC 189 was downgraded from F- to VG/F but the price was close enough to my board asking price.

 

I received about 60% or so of the asking prices below and the grades they gave me are indeed what they now list them at. There were two books I declined their offer but that was prior to me sending them to them.

 

Jul 6 4:11 PM $334.00 Four Color (1942 Series 2) 386 VG 4.0

Jul 6 4:11 PM $63.00 Four Color (1942 Series 2) 199 GD+ 2.5

Jul 6 4:11 PM $207.00 Four Color (1942 Series 2) 189 VG/FN 5.0

Jul 6 4:11 PM $621.00 Walt Disney's Comics and Stories (Dell/Gold Key/Gladstone) 3 CGC 3.0

Jul 6 4:11 PM $199.00 Uncle Scrooge (1954 Dell/Gold Key/Gladstone/Gemstone) 29 CGC 9.0

 

So all in all a good experience. I have not bought from them so can't speak to grading. Still I have to think that those that are bad mouthing them publicly seem to only have a few complaints about overgrading on some cheaper items. Or that there was a disagreement on grade when selling to them. If that's the worst of it, c'mon guys that's pretty weak. This is an up and up business who are offering an invaluable service of buying comics at 60% or their asking price and have a pretty decent inventory of asking prices on mid tier and lesser books. I don't see anyone else doing the same thing at the same scale.

[Andy J.-migration]

Few complaints about overgrading? So you dont think the obvious light hearted grading is an issue?

 

I'm glad to hear you're happy with your dealings with said business, but its obvious that theres alot of people who disagree with the grading standards. Why is that "pretty weak"? Its a pretty pivotal point - if I buy a bunch of "NM" comics, I expect at least some of them to be up to par, I dont think thats an unreasonable expectation at all.

 

I think its good that people voice their opinions about said business, this way we can narrow down sellers who actually bring merchandise at the quality proclaimed, and avoid the rest.

 

[gaute]

bought/sold/traded several K's worth of comics with them, never had a problem.