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Comics, Pulps, and Paperbacks: Why such a discrepancy in values?
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6,538 posts in this topic

On 4/26/2020 at 7:30 AM, Surfing Alien said:

Pretty much where i'm at, especially picking up lots that have a few I want for the permanent collection and selling off what I can live without.

Where do you sell them? hm

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6 hours ago, PopKulture said:

Where do you sell them? hm

Pretty much only feebay. Buddha63.  I've been a seller since '98 on and off - lately they're giving a lot of free listings so i'm taking advantage and clearing out lots of doubles and trying to whittle the holdings down to a more focused accumulation. The struggle is real though because every time I go to list stuff I end up getting distracted and buying more doh!

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7 minutes ago, Randall Dowling said:

As I said before, I’ve been on an acquisition phase as I’m finding some pretty good deals on high grade books right now.  Most of these are upgrades but a few are new, and some were just too good to pass up!  Water Witch and Wild to Possess are a couple of my favorites.

 

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Nice! Don't get started on Monarchs... you might regret it 🤣🤣🤣

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3 minutes ago, Randall Dowling said:

As I said before, I’ve been on an acquisition phase as I’m finding some pretty good deals on high grade books right now.  Most of these are upgrades but a few are new, and some were just too good to pass up!  Water Witch and Wild to Possess are a couple of my favorites.

I've looked at books on the Bay which I need more to fill gaps rather than keys, but the sellers are asking ten to twenty dollars or more for clean copies. I might break down on one or two early Dells or Avons at that price point, but not non-key run fodder. 

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6 minutes ago, Surfing Alien said:

Nice! Don't get started on Monarchs... you might regret it 🤣🤣🤣

Sheesh, there's so many good ones!  Same with Popular Library and Berkley books.  This will sound pretty stupid, but I had no idea how vast the material was for paperback books.  I practically grew up in bookstores but always stayed in certain genres.  And that was in the 70s and 80s.  I've been collecting paperbacks to one degree or another for over 20 years and I'm still stunned at the stuff I find.  (thumbsu

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4 minutes ago, PopKulture said:

I've looked at books on the Bay which I need more to fill gaps rather than keys, but the sellers are asking ten to twenty dollars or more for clean copies. I might break down on one or two early Dells or Avons at that price point, but not non-key run fodder. 

That does seem to be the going rate for nice looking, fresh feeling copies.

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8 hours ago, Randall Dowling said:

That does seem to be the going rate for nice looking, fresh feeling copies.

I look at it this way now - a brand new paperback book costs $10 these days. A nice clean copy of a 70 year old book has to be worth $10, both intrinsically and for it to be worth it to do the work of finding it and listing it. And today's $10 bill ain't 1985's $10 bill. If it has a cool cover, especially GGA it should be $15-$20. Keys obviously are more.

I'm like you guys, I love finding stuff for $1 to $5 a pop like the old days - but times change and circumstances vary. I usually only find those prices in lots, and even those are hard to sneak up on. I've thrown many a "solid" bid at a lot and gone down in flames and it sells for more than the collective value of the lot (to me at least).

I still sell a ton of books for less than $10 (in fact, probably the vast majority of my sales) but I like to actually sell stuff. I see many folks listing every book or digest for $20 - $40  and they sit and sit and sit. On average stuff I just want to get my money back and a little profit for my time and expertise. I'd rather have $ sittiing in my paypal account, ready so I can pounce when I see something that I really desire. I've "manned up" for the stuff I really wanted plenty of times as well as lucking into a classic for cheap. When you think about the relative values for other collectibles it's pennies but everybody has their brackets they're willing to enter into.

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3 hours ago, jimjum12 said:

I have a really good friend that I haven't seen in a few years who sold tons of Paperbacks on eBay. He dealt comics for years, but about 30 years ago he told me that the margins just weren't there for comics anymore... that the capital outlays had become too expensive for the rate of return. He had found that he could buy paperbacks, what he fondly referred to as "smut", for 25 to 50 cents apiece and get three or four dollars each on eBay... and he never looked back. A large portion of his material came from the smaller Buy/Trade Used Book shops  … he would reach out to them and explain what he wanted and had a lot of luck, it seemed what he wanted were the books that most of these shops felt "uncomfortable" putting on the shelf, so it was win-win for everyone. It wasn't unusual to visit him and see a stack of 20 packages ready to ship. Some of the stuff he turned up was rather robust …. covers and subjects that would really curl your eyelids lol GOD BLESS....

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)(thumbsu

I'm kind of amazed at the prices run of the mill 60's soft core books bring, especially if they have Bonfils or some other sought after artists covers. $10-$15 minimum it seems on a lot of them and they go way higher for some outrageous titles. I don't purposefully buy them but every once in a while there are a couple in a lot and they sell quickly when I list them.

I don't collect that stuff - I have a teen age daughter so my barometer is "what would my kid think if I croaked and she had to sell my stuff" lol But if it's sexy "and" classy I'm all over it, like those Maguire's Randall Dowling just posted, or the Schaare and DeSoto Monarch covers (or Heade, or Belarski or....) :smile:

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13 hours ago, Randall Dowling said:

Sheesh, there's so many good ones!  Same with Popular Library and Berkley books.  This will sound pretty stupid, but I had no idea how vast the material was for paperback books.  I practically grew up in bookstores but always stayed in certain genres.  And that was in the 70s and 80s.  I've been collecting paperbacks to one degree or another for over 20 years and I'm still stunned at the stuff I find.  (thumbsu

I know "about" a lot of titles because of the listings in the old catalogs (Hancer, Warren etc.) but the catalogs had few pictures so it's different seeing a good scan or holding one in your hand. I see books I hadn't seen before all the time and there are some amazing ones (that Dell Maguire you showed for example). Berkley's are fertile ground. I never had a lot of them, probably because I didn't consider them really as vintage in the 80's when I first collected but they seem very much so now and there are a ton of great covers, including reprints that have much better covers than the original paperback editions (Like those 2 Clarke's you just showed. The first Avon paperbacks of those two seem quaint compared to the Berkley editions) (thumbsu

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