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Moderns that are heating up on ebay!
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63,730 posts in this topic

Just now, FlyingDonut said:
10 minutes ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

Because 1. I can make "$12" once. Therefore, it's not "$144 per hour." 2. It's not $12. 3. It's not 5 minutes. 4. My time is better and more efficiently spent elsewhere.

Show me the scenario where I can repeat that $12, over and over again, and now you've got a proposition.

You've just described the Donut Business Model...our slogan the Flying Donut Trading Company, making an incremental twelve bucks per transaction since 1997!

Of course. We've known each other for a long time, after all. 

But one has to contend with all sorts of factors, like leverage (or its lack), repeatability, access, capital...all things which differ from person to person, and region to region.

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6 hours ago, Key Largo Comics said:

I don't know about Donut or blob but I scan all my books upon acquisition so they are ready to go at a moments notice. Pop them into a template, update a little text and boom auction listed. So a minute is about right if you plan ahead.

that is the smart way to do it. if off ebay or here I save the scans if they are any good. i listed 5 books in 5 minutes recently doing that. Packing was more than 5 minutes a book because they were expensive slabs and I needed to be extra careful. But I also made a lot more than $15 on each sale. I am lazy about my "in person" purchases though. If I scanned every book that would probably get me to buy less stuff, which might not be a terrible idea.

Edited by the blob
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2 hours ago, valiantman said:

5 minutes? It takes me half an hour to properly pack, get online to purchase the shipping, print out and attach the paid label, and schedule pickup.  If it's a $15 profit (minus 13% for fees), that's $13.05... this really is just working overtime for some lunch money. hm

comic mailers save some time. i don't schedule pickups, the p.o. is on my way to the subway.

i have down time at home in between loads of laundry, making dinner, etc. i have 2 kids and an enormous mortgage. $12 is two 6 pound chickens. $1.05 gets me a pound of broccoli. enough for 2 dinners and 2 sets of leftovers! every little bit helps. ideally it would be more money, sure.

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25 minutes ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

Of course. We've known each other for a long time, after all. 

But one has to contend with all sorts of factors, like leverage (or its lack), repeatability, access, capital...all things which differ from person to person, and region to region.

Wouldn't a few "hot" $15-$25 books at auction help drive traffic to your expensive fixed price slabs? probably a different market, but you never know. But I get it, I too am loath to spend $5 on a likely $15 sale for new books. Last time I did that was with that Wonder Women Federici variant cover that was hot a month ago...bought the last one off the rack. You know what I did not remember to do with that book? Try to sell it. And now it's 50/50 whether I can recoup the $4.99 cover price. Passed on 10 of the Deadpool Garbage Pail variant I could have flipped for $20-$25 then because I did not know it was hot. That one you can still make a little money on, but not much.

 

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2 hours ago, FlyingDonut said:
4 hours ago, valiantman said:

5 minutes? It takes me half an hour to properly pack, get online to purchase the shipping, print out and attach the paid label, and schedule pickup.  If it's a $15 profit (minus 13% for fees), that's $13.05... this really is just working overtime for some lunch money. hm

You're doing it wrong.

tenor.gif

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4 hours ago, valiantman said:

5 minutes? It takes me half an hour to properly pack, get online to purchase the shipping, print out and attach the paid label, and schedule pickup.  If it's a $15 profit (minus 13% for fees), that's $13.05... this really is just working overtime for some lunch money. hm

If you are selling a lot of books at once (like Donut) chances are multiple books will often go out in the same shipments, so you save time that way too. It takes about as much time to pack 5 books in 1 package as 1 book.

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4 minutes ago, the blob said:

If you are selling a lot of books at once (like Donut) chances are multiple books will often go out in the same shipments, so you save time that way too. It takes about as much time to pack 5 books in 1 package as 1 book.

I have multiple repeat customers who gang all their books for week up and pay on Saturday morning. Regional Rate Box A box holds about 20 books. Out they go!

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5 hours ago, valiantman said:

5 minutes? It takes me half an hour to properly pack, get online to purchase the shipping, print out and attach the paid label, and schedule pickup.  If it's a $15 profit (minus 13% for fees), that's $13.05... this really is just working overtime for some lunch money. hm

If you buy a bunch of shippers, you can pack pretty quickly. Of course, then you're also out the cost of those materials.

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14 minutes ago, GeeksAreMyPeeps said:

If you buy a bunch of shippers, you can pack pretty quickly. Of course, then you're also out the cost of those materials.

I ships slabs, but I buy bubble wrap in bulk and since I ship USPS Priority, I get them to deliver me a ton of boxes for free. I double box mine. Take me about 5 minutes to pack the books after printing off the labels. Sometimes, the longest part of it all is me finding the actual books in my boxes. I have a half-a55 inventory system. I need to make it better. 

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2 minutes ago, kevhtx said:

I ships slabs, but I buy bubble wrap in bulk and since I ship USPS Priority, I get them to deliver me a ton of boxes for free. I double box mine. Take me about 5 minutes to pack the books after printing off the labels. Sometimes, the longest part of it all is me finding the actual books in my boxes. I have a half-a55 inventory system. I need to make it better. 

I have a bunch of Priority boxes on hand too, but most of my sales are only a few books, and shipping is cheaper with the small shippers

 

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1 minute ago, GeeksAreMyPeeps said:

I have a bunch of Priority boxes on hand too, but most of my sales are only a few books, and shipping is cheaper with the small shippers

 

Yeah, thats where slabs are a little easier. They are automatically insured for a little bit and its 2 or 3 day delivery. I charge $12 or so for shipping and it normally costs about $8-10 to actually ship it. So, the rest covers the materials.

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26 minutes ago, kevhtx said:

Yeah, thats where slabs are a little easier. They are automatically insured for a little bit and its 2 or 3 day delivery. I charge $12 or so for shipping and it normally costs about $8-10 to actually ship it. So, the rest covers the materials.

It took me a while to get a system in place to save time for cheap lots, but I managed it. Even with packages under a pound, you can often ship priority for the same price as parcel select with the ebay shipping discount

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29 minutes ago, kevhtx said:

Yeah, thats where slabs are a little easier. They are automatically insured for a little bit and its 2 or 3 day delivery. I charge $12 or so for shipping and it normally costs about $8-10 to actually ship it. So, the rest covers the materials.

I love selling slabs as opposed to raw books, the slabs are bang bang, bubble wrap, double box and out the door lickety-split. I have to cut cardboard and wrap in brown paper for raws, take 2-3 times longer than a slab. Yes, I cut cardboard that I get for free from the LCS, and the diamond boxes are nice and thick. I sold a lot of Gen13, 1-77 and used a cut down old longbox for that (which the LCS also gave me for free).

Edited by Bird
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12 minutes ago, GeeksAreMyPeeps said:

It took me a while to get a system in place to save time for cheap lots, but I managed it. Even with packages under a pound, you can often ship priority for the same price as parcel select with the ebay shipping discount

All of my slabs are right at 2lbs after packed unless it's multples. Anything under a lb that I sell (usually something other than comics), I send first class USPS. Ive just had too many issues with UPS, but I do fedex on occasion.

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10 hours ago, valiantman said:

5 minutes? It takes me half an hour to properly pack, get online to purchase the shipping, print out and attach the paid label, and schedule pickup.  If it's a $15 profit (minus 13% for fees), that's $13.05... this really is just working overtime for some lunch money. hm

Half an hour? I'll start at the end, how long does it take to peel a precut sticker off a sheet. Wait, you are using sticker labels as opposed to cutting paper and taping, right?

 

 

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