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My road to success (Moving Update 2)
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Of course its up to you, and perhaps this is a clever marketing strategy, but posting your purchase prices will likely affect your future ability to collect a maximum price when you attempt to sell your wares.

 

I agree. I like the idea of reading about how you go through the process, but in my business experience, disclosing your margins isn't appropriate. You may not see it now, but as you find success in your endeavors, I think you'll see that letting everyone know the inner-workings of your business might do more unseen harm than good.

 

I tend to agree with Revat and the Doc. Besides this, they always give sound commercial advice. :)

 

What is your aim: to keep track and have some kind of public feedback?

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I have always been a believer that the financials of a transaction should be kept stealth. Especially if both the purchase and sale is on the Boards. Threads where Boardies brag about their biggest scores annoy me. While I sincerely feel you are an honest, hard working individual trying to get ahead, I just don't see any benefit to creating a public profit/loss statement. However, discussions about how your books graded with pics are very much welcome. It's about the books, not about the dollars !

 

Thanks I am a honest person and I'm trying to change my financial situation. So does that mean you want this journal to be about me getting the comics and seeing what they graded? so will you guys be able to know if I'm getting closer to my goal by what I post here?

It has nothing to do with what WE want. It's your journal. Just consider exercising judgment and you'll be fine.

 

As KPR said… And not sharing data is appropriate, not just because otherwise it’s "bad form", but even for the simple reason of preventing misunderstandings and wrong judgements.

Keep the data for yourself, and just try to determine on your own which buying and selling decisions will be better, considering you are trying to do this as a commercial activity, and not for the sake of collecting in the first place. :)

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I have always been a believer that the financials of a transaction should be kept stealth. Especially if both the purchase and sale is on the Boards. Threads where Boardies brag about their biggest scores annoy me. While I sincerely feel you are an honest, hard working individual trying to get ahead, I just don't see any benefit to creating a public profit/loss statement. However, discussions about how your books graded with pics are very much welcome. It's about the books, not about the dollars !

 

Thanks I am a honest person and I'm trying to change my financial situation. So does that mean you want this journal to be about me getting the comics and seeing what they graded? so will you guys be able to know if I'm getting closer to my goal by what I post here?

 

Instead of using monetary values why not get creative and use pie charts or graphs to track your progress by percentages. You can share the results without dollar values involved.

 

can you give a example?

 

sure.

 

1. Set out a monetary goal of how much money you want to make over a certain time period, say a year. Lets say you want to turn $500 into $5000. For example purposes, let say G = $5,000.

 

2. Going forward, every dollar spent or made will be assessed in units. $5,000 = 100 units. Therefore your starting capital is 10 units (1/10 of $5000=$500).

 

3. Every month or so (or less time if you have a lot of transactions), DO ONE JOURNAL, but in separate posts within that entry

a. post your purchases, post how much IN UNITS in aggregate (provided you bought at LEAST 5 comics) was spent on those purchases. Include any fees related to the purchasing including auction fees, shipping, customs, translation, finders fees, travel, etc.

b. post your AGGREGATE spent on fees IN UNITS for the time period, including but not limited to shipping not related to sales, customs, translation, ebay, paypal, cgc (or other grading company) fees, pressing

C. Post your sales for this time period, post your AGGREGATE net profit IN UNITS for the sales. Make sure you account for auction, ebay, translation, travel, dealer, etc fees.

D. Post your books, books at CGC, and books you got back from CGC. You probably shouldn't say what tier, if anyone cares about a specific book they'll pm you.

 

F. Post your running total of how many units you currently have, preferably with a breakdown of how much of your capital amount you have on hand and how much net profit you've made in aggregate. Note: Once you've sold something, then return your associated costs of that sale to your capital, everything else is profit.

 

 

 

This should be a reasonable start, of course I'm sure you'll be tracking all of these numbers in DETAIL anyways, so these will serve as a good summary for you, and give people an idea of what's going on with you and how well you're doing. Remember, don't post ANY actual dollar values publicly, and do all unit values in AGGREGATE, and only when there have been more than five purchases, five submissions, and five sales, otherwise people WILL figure out how much each unit is worth. They might do it anyways.

 

 

NOTE the above is only if you feel you MUST share the data.

 

Or you could simply report a

 

Bought this month.

Submitted this month.

Got back from CGC this month

sold this month

% of goal achieved this month, aggregate % of goal achieved.

 

with no numbers other than the percentage of goal at the end.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Revat
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I have always been a believer that the financials of a transaction should be kept stealth. Especially if both the purchase and sale is on the Boards. Threads where Boardies brag about their biggest scores annoy me. While I sincerely feel you are an honest, hard working individual trying to get ahead, I just don't see any benefit to creating a public profit/loss statement. However, discussions about how your books graded with pics are very much welcome. It's about the books, not about the dollars !

 

Thanks I am a honest person and I'm trying to change my financial situation. So does that mean you want this journal to be about me getting the comics and seeing what they graded? so will you guys be able to know if I'm getting closer to my goal by what I post here?

 

Instead of using monetary values why not get creative and use pie charts or graphs to track your progress by percentages. You can share the results without dollar values involved.

 

can you give a example?

 

sure.

 

1. Set out a monetary goal of how much money you want to make over a certain time period, say a year. Lets say you want to turn $500 into $5000. For example purposes, let say G = $5,000.

 

2. Going forward, every dollar spent or made will be assessed in units. $5,000 = 100 units. Therefore your starting capital is 10 units (1/10 of $5000=$500).

 

3. Every month or so (or less time if you have a lot of transactions), DO ONE JOURNAL, but in separate posts within that entry

a. post your purchases, post how much IN UNITS in aggregate (provided you bought at LEAST 5 comics) was spent on those purchases. Include any fees related to the purchasing including auction fees, shipping, customs, translation, finders fees, travel, etc.

b. post your AGGREGATE spent on fees IN UNITS for the time period, including but not limited to shipping not related to sales, customs, translation, ebay, paypal, cgc (or other grading company) fees, pressing

C. Post your sales for this time period, post your AGGREGATE net profit IN UNITS for the sales. Make sure you account for auction, ebay, translation, travel, dealer, etc fees.

D. Post your books, books at CGC, and books you got back from CGC. You probably shouldn't say what tier, if anyone cares about a specific book they'll pm you.

 

F. Post your running total of how many units you currently have, preferably with a breakdown of how much of your capital amount you have on hand and how much net profit you've made in aggregate. Note: Once you've sold something, then return your associated costs of that sale to your capital, everything else is profit.

 

 

 

This should be a reasonable start, of course I'm sure you'll be tracking all of these numbers in DETAIL anyways, so these will serve as a good summary for you, and give people an idea of what's going on with you and how well you're doing. Remember, don't post ANY actual dollar values publicly, and do all unit values in AGGREGATE, and only when there have been more than five purchases, five submissions, and five sales, otherwise people WILL figure out how much each unit is worth. They might do it anyways.

 

 

NOTE the above is only if you feel you MUST share the data.

 

Or you could simply report a

 

Bought this month.

Submitted this month.

Got back from CGC this month

sold this month

 

 

% of goal achieved this month, aggregate % of goal achieved.

 

with no numbers other than the percentage of goal at the end.

 

cool I'll give those both a try and see which one works for me :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Just another comment, not trying to give you a hard time or anything, but realize that many of us like to keep our private transactions private. Knowing that any dealings with you will be posted in your Journal will prohibit some of us from dealing with you. To be perfectly honest, I don't know why you feel the need to publish a journal ?

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Just another comment, not trying to give you a hard time or anything, but realize that many of us like to keep our private transactions private. Knowing that any dealings with you will be posted in your Journal will prohibit some of us from dealing with you. To be perfectly honest, I don't know why you feel the need to publish a journal ?

 

I'm going to change the journal so I won't be showing the transactions and will be kept private since it's not good business form according to a lot boardies that posted here. The reason why I want to keep a journal is to show that I'm not all talk, show my failures, my struggles and my successes I want to show that I'm not all talk but can actually achieve something and buying and selling a million dollar comic is my ultimate goal and showing my journey along the way to the million dollar comic :)

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I'm on the other side of this issue. I think it's interesting to know prices. I often state prices in my journal. But I do recognize the privacy issue of sellers of course.

 

So I see no problem with citing prices of anything I buy on ebay or the other auction house. That's all public information. But if the deal is done off-ebay, I don't say where I got it.

 

I tend not to give prices on buys through the boards. In fact, I don't think I ever have (unless I buy at the seller's advertised price, since that's public).

 

Now, I'm a collector, I'm not buying to resell. So I don't know if that affects the debate as to the OP.

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I'm on the other side of this issue. I think it's interesting to know prices. I often state prices in my journal. But I do recognize the privacy issue of sellers of course.

 

So I see no problem with citing prices of anything I buy on ebay or the other auction house. That's all public information. But if the deal is done off-ebay, I don't say where I got it.

 

I tend not to give prices on buys through the boards. In fact, I don't think I ever have (unless I buy at the seller's advertised price, since that's public).

 

Now, I'm a collector, I'm not buying to resell. So I don't know if that affects the debate as to the OP.

 

I think we would all like to know as much info as possible. But for the OP's bottom line, discretion will likely have more benefits

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I'm on the other side of this issue. I think it's interesting to know prices. I often state prices in my journal. But I do recognize the privacy issue of sellers of course.

 

So I see no problem with citing prices of anything I buy on ebay or the other auction house. That's all public information. But if the deal is done off-ebay, I don't say where I got it.

 

I tend not to give prices on buys through the boards. In fact, I don't think I ever have (unless I buy at the seller's advertised price, since that's public).

 

Now, I'm a collector, I'm not buying to resell. So I don't know if that affects the debate as to the OP.

 

I think we would all like to know as much info as possible. But for the OP's bottom line, discretion will likely have more benefits

 

so how do I show my success while keeping transactions discreet? the formulas you mentioned?

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I'm on the other side of this issue. I think it's interesting to know prices. I often state prices in my journal. But I do recognize the privacy issue of sellers of course.

 

So I see no problem with citing prices of anything I buy on ebay or the other auction house. That's all public information. But if the deal is done off-ebay, I don't say where I got it.

 

I tend not to give prices on buys through the boards. In fact, I don't think I ever have (unless I buy at the seller's advertised price, since that's public).

 

Now, I'm a collector, I'm not buying to resell. So I don't know if that affects the debate as to the OP.

 

I think we would all like to know as much info as possible. But for the OP's bottom line, discretion will likely have more benefits

 

so how do I show my success while keeping transactions discreet? the formulas you mentioned?

 

With all the stuff I said before, you should track that internally anyways.

 

To display without ruffling too many feathers or hurting your sales but still giving people an idea of how well your doing, consider posting:

 

1. The coolest thing you purchased this month (or whatever time period). Show a pic, maybe a story, but not a price, and no names without permission (unless its a shop).

2. The coolest thing you sold this month (or whatever time period). Show a pic, maybe a story, not a price, and no names without permission (unless its a shop).

3. Post your net revenue for the month, but not your total revenues or costs, just the NET (could be negative) on a cash basis.

 

People will know you're doing well when the quality of #1 and #2 start to improve, and when #3 starts to be consistently positive.

 

4. Maybe post the main lesson you learned this month.

5. Post about anything else interesting. A con you went to, a connection you made, a mistake you made.

 

That should be enough information to let people know generally how you're doing without hurting your prospective sales.

 

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I'm on the other side of this issue. I think it's interesting to know prices. I often state prices in my journal. But I do recognize the privacy issue of sellers of course.

 

So I see no problem with citing prices of anything I buy on ebay or the other auction house. That's all public information. But if the deal is done off-ebay, I don't say where I got it.

 

I tend not to give prices on buys through the boards. In fact, I don't think I ever have (unless I buy at the seller's advertised price, since that's public).

 

Now, I'm a collector, I'm not buying to resell. So I don't know if that affects the debate as to the OP.

 

I think we would all like to know as much info as possible. But for the OP's bottom line, discretion will likely have more benefits

 

so how do I show my success while keeping transactions discreet? the formulas you mentioned?

 

With all the stuff I said before, you should track that internally anyways.

 

To display without ruffling too many feathers or hurting your sales but still giving people an idea of how well your doing, consider posting:

 

1. The coolest thing you purchased this month (or whatever time period). Show a pic, maybe a story, but not a price, and no names without permission (unless its a shop).

2. The coolest thing you sold this month (or whatever time period). Show a pic, maybe a story, not a price, and no names without permission (unless its a shop).

3. Post your net revenue for the month, but not your total revenues or costs, just the NET (could be negative) on a cash basis.

 

People will know you're doing well when the quality of #1 and #2 start to improve, and when #3 starts to be consistently positive.

 

4. Maybe post the main lesson you learned this month.

5. Post about anything else interesting. A con you went to, a connection you made, a mistake you made.

 

That should be enough information to let people know generally how you're doing without hurting your prospective sales.

 

oh cool that sounds great :)

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I'm on the other side of this issue. I think it's interesting to know prices. I often state prices in my journal. But I do recognize the privacy issue of sellers of course.

 

So I see no problem with citing prices of anything I buy on ebay or the other auction house. That's all public information. But if the deal is done off-ebay, I don't say where I got it.

 

I tend not to give prices on buys through the boards. In fact, I don't think I ever have (unless I buy at the seller's advertised price, since that's public).

 

Now, I'm a collector, I'm not buying to resell. So I don't know if that affects the debate as to the OP.

 

I think we would all like to know as much info as possible. But for the OP's bottom line, discretion will likely have more benefits

 

so how do I show my success while keeping transactions discreet? the formulas you mentioned?

 

 

Post photos of your new girlfriends and the cars you are driving.

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I'm on the other side of this issue. I think it's interesting to know prices. I often state prices in my journal. But I do recognize the privacy issue of sellers of course.

 

So I see no problem with citing prices of anything I buy on ebay or the other auction house. That's all public information. But if the deal is done off-ebay, I don't say where I got it.

 

I tend not to give prices on buys through the boards. In fact, I don't think I ever have (unless I buy at the seller's advertised price, since that's public).

 

Now, I'm a collector, I'm not buying to resell. So I don't know if that affects the debate as to the OP.

 

I think we would all like to know as much info as possible. But for the OP's bottom line, discretion will likely have more benefits

 

so how do I show my success while keeping transactions discreet? the formulas you mentioned?

 

 

Post photos of your new girlfriends and the cars you are driving.

 

haha no way man they both cost too much money

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