Will dealers actually fly in to look at your collection?

[ninanina]

If and when it's time to sell, I've noticed many adds in overstreet where dealers will actually fly in from the US to look at a collection for sale. The question I have is how many books would have to be involved before they would take the time. Where do they draw the line? Would an 80's/90's collection interest them enough? Or would it have to be more of a 60's/70's collection? Or perhaps a combination of the two. Perhaps the seller just doesn't have the time or patience to sell on e-bay and would just be happy to sell all at once to a dealer. Total books would be in around the 10 to 15,000 range. If the seller would be thinking to simply sell to the highest bidder, 2 of the 3 would make the trip for nothing. Would they risk it? Seems like a bit of a gamble to me. What do you guys think? Heard any stories of dealers actually doing this? Coming back empty handed?

[FlyingDonut]

I flew to San Jose once to see a collection I was going to look at on eBay. There were several signficant caveats tho - I flew for free on a bump ticket that was going to expire, stayed for free in Marin County and got to hang in downtown San Francisco. The collection BLEW, the guy had vastly oversold what he had. I took back three long boxes, after expecting to have to ship back 50. I've driven to see collections a lot.

[ninanina]

Is it safe to assume that you are then actively going after Silver Age/Bronze age stuff constantly? Or is it mostly Golden Age?

 

From everything I've heard or experienced it seems that the best way for a surviving family to dump a collection is just to have someone just fly in and make an offer for lock, stock and barrel.

[FlyingDonut]

I would imagine that's the case, although you get a very high chance of having somebody prey on you. Like anything else, I would imagine it would be best to take some time and wait for the best deal.

 

And I'm always looking for stuff 1930-1980. I wish I had the deeeeeeeep pockets that some of the people here do, let me tell you!

[aardvark88]

Don't think it is realistic for a dealer to fly in to see a collection unless someone they know in that region has already scouted out the collection & deemed it worthy of a fly-in. Some hi-end dealers will drive their vans anywhere within a 7 hr. radius of their home base to scout out significant collections.

Or type up a master list of the significant titles for your family & have them hand them out at the local comicon to liase with the bigger independent buyer/collectors & to all the local retail comicshops. The biggest collector in town is usually the comicshop owner/partner.

[comicwiz]

I actually bought a collection from a guy out in Manitoba about 1 year ago; among the many searching techniques I used online (which are trade secrets , I discovered this great 280 lot underground comic collection. The seller listed the lot in a local paper, and when I called him from Toronto, Ontario, he was blown away that I actually found the listing. In any case, that ended-up being one of the best finds as it is extremely rare to come across a collection of 60's early print undergrounds in one sitting. The entire transaction occured over the phone and fax. I already knew his asking price as he indicated it in the ad; but I didn't have any idea what underground comix he had. Once I had a good look at the list of books he provided in a fax, I knew this was going to be a treasure. A few things to keep in mind -- I had some very specific questions about the books to distinguish printings, and this took some time to piece together -- at least to the point that I was confortable with the transaction. Keep in mind, the lot was initially purchased because there were a great many books I needed for my pwn collection, but just to give you an idea of how amazing this comix lot was, I ended-up pulling out about 30 books from that lot and selling them as a lot on ebay -- I generated more for those 30 books than I paid for the entire lot! I've had many stores like this, but I don't have nearly as many good stories for collections I've had to drive to... never flown to one, but that may happen in the coming months.

[ninanina]

Do you remember who the seller was? Just wondering if its anyone I know and was he from Winnipeg?

[aardvark88]

All the hi-roller collector/dealers know each other in Winnipeg b/c they meet every month to swap tall tales & beers.

[murph0]

I'd fly out to see you if you had some stuff I wanted, so I'm sure some people looking to make money would fly out to see you

 

Brian

[Crowzilla]

I actually flew to Chicago three times for the same collection.

It was a great Golden Age Collection (had the nice Wonder Woman #1 I'm always crying about, a solid Cap #1 plus 45 of the issues between 2 and 50, nicest graded Torch #1, and a bunch of other stuff).

 

Flew up once to double check the grades and make sure we agreed on the price,

but then he wouldn't take the cashier's checks I brought with me ("too much paperwork"), so I had to fly back home and cash them (my bank doesn't have any branches in IL) and since this was already a Friday, had to wait the weekend to fly back up with CASH in hand and was scared to death passing through the X-ray/security check that I would be pulled over but finally made it to his office to finish the deal.

 

About two weeks later, he calls me back and tells me he has more stuff he wants me to see, so I go back and he's got a 5-6 Batman's below 20, 5-6 Superman's below 20, Larson copy of Blue Beetle #1, etc - definitely worth the trip and probably my nicest buy ever.

 

But I would not fly to see 10,000 80s-90s books for anything. I agree you should call dealers who live within a 4-5 hour drive, but don't expect anyone to fly out to see it.

 

 

 

 

 

[FlyingDonut]

Fabulous story! One of the best I've heard. Although CI would make you give the guy more money. Where in Chicago?

 

Just a bit of advice - next time, you can transfer funds to yourself at American Express through an American Express office (assuming you have an American Express card). I don't know what the limit is (if there is one). You probably can do it on Visa as well, but I know you can do it on AMEX. There's a fee, of course, but it would probably be cheaper than flying back to Atlanta.

[murph0]

I assume this guy knew his books were worth some $$$ considering he had a pedigree book there?

 

Brian

[ninanina]

Yeah I kinda knew that about the 80's or 90's stuff. How would you feel about a couple thousand 60's or 70's. Would you fly out for that? And if you could "Just Imagine" would you make the trip for the 80's/90's stuff in 20 years or so. How about anyone else. Now, that's an interesting thought.

[murph0]

Depends on how far and where. If it's far away and in some place you wouldn't want to stay for a couple days just for fun (if the comics sucked), then I wouldn't.

 

Brian

[supapimp]

but then he wouldn't take the cashier's checks I brought with me ("too much paperwork")

 

sheesh! how picky can you be? BTW, can you release how much you paid for those lovely hotties?

[FlyingDonut]

he wouldn't take the cashier's checks I brought with me ("too much paperwork")

 

yeah, right. Read "I want to have a nice windfall profit tax free! If I have to cash the checks, the bank will have to notify the IRS if its over $10K."

 

cheating [!@#%^&^].

[Crowzilla]

He was up in Arlington Heights somewhere. I kinda know about the AmEx thing - haven't really checked into since I'm not buying big collections anymore, but of course if I had known there would have been a problem with a guy taking cashier's checks, I probably would have back then.

 

He didn't know he had any pedigrees (he had several Larson's) - he bought them from Joe before they started calling it the Larson collection. In fact, when I looked at them and pointed it out, he was like - yeah I hated the writing but it was a nice looking copy, thought about erasing it kinda attitude.

 

It was a little over $30,000 for everything - and this was back in 1993 dollars.

 

[Crowzilla]

yeah, right. Read "I want to have a nice windfall profit tax free! If I have to cash the checks, the bank will have to notify the IRS if its over $10K."

 

Exactly - and I had brought several of them with me - each under 5k, plus some cash, ready for the total to be some wierd amount, but it didn't matter - he was just whining over how it would take him a while to cash them or deposit them or whatever. he was a real whiney guy - and he was an insurance agent to boot - so i'm sure he knew all about cheating people.

 

[supapimp]

he was a real whiney guy - and he was an insurance agent to boot - so i'm sure he knew all about cheating people.

 

D'OH! so how many books did you keep out of that collection, i know you sold the WW 1, what was the profit margin too.

[Crowzilla]

The Wonder Woman was the only book I tried to keep - and that ended up going a few years ago (dammit). I think Jennie got her Cap #46 out of that collection though, and probably a few Plastic Man's too.

 

Profit margin? I marked everything up our usual 10% then ended up selling everything below cost just to create customer goodwill.