• When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.

I bought a collection!
5 5

247 posts in this topic

BTW this happens ALL. THE. TIME. The numbers are always wildly inflated because people do not think about just how big the storage would be for that many books.

Figure 4 long boxes = 1000 books, so a guy saying he has 40000 books would need to have 160 long boxes. Think of it that way. 9000 books= 36 long boxes. That, coincidentally, is about how many long boxes you can fit in a minivan (maybe 40).

Further, you can safely stack boxes about four high crisscrossed, so you can do a pile of 16 long. Again 160 long would be 10 of those piles.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I wonder if people just do not know how many books fit in a long box.  They look at a long box and think "that must be a 1,000 books" when it really is about 275.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

These books were not in comic boxes but paper boxes. But 10K vs 40K is a large miscount anyway you cut it!

I had the comic yard sale today. Monetary results were very very good but traffic was poor; I listed online craigslist, nj.com, and yardsalesearch.com but no signs in the neighborhood. I will make sure to post more signs next month (8/26).

I had 7 guys come and 6 bought comics, even the guy who was at least in his mid to late 60s who bought two lots of Incredible Hulk, a $7 lot and a $20 lot. He cam at 11 am and was a surprise. Everyone else was before 9:30 and one guy got here at 6:55 for 7:30 open. That unnerved me a bit and I forgot to bring out 3 boxes of comics! I noticed that some were missing when one guy at 9 am or so was buying some Iron Fist and I wanted to point out the Marvel Premiere issues. So the DC short box, an assorted long box and another short of lots went unseen for the most part. I am going to list some of the runs/lots on the modern/copper forum along with some recent slabs. I did sell a ASM300 CGC 9.0 newsstand that I just got back from FLA this past week along with a Dr Strange 13 slab that I have had as long as I have had slabs for $25. Both great sales, glad to make a little room. And I sold 53 comics from the collection including the Doc 169, Doc 1, & Doc 2...which brings me up to about 300 comics sold so far. I am doing well so far so all is well here. I will have way too many books for this upcoming convention, I have some hard thinking to do about what goes where and will probably put the sets on the floor under my table. I can put 8 long on the table and have one long of ASM, Captain America, and X-Men each. I hate to bring some and not others as I prefer to move the later issues but know people want the earlier issues.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 7/20/2017 at 11:17 PM, Hekla said:
On 7/20/2017 at 5:57 AM, srezvan said:

Gilbert

I'm in Chandler; send time & directions for your comic yard sale :smile:

I would be interested in checking this out also--- Ahwatukee area. What kind of selection are you talking about srezvan?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, 01TheDude said:

I would be interested in checking this out also--- Ahwatukee area. What kind of selection are you talking about srezvan?

I'm not trying to take over Bird's thread. I'll post something on the boards as I get closer to having things organized. It'll be a few boxes of stuff pulled from my collection and a bunch of books that I'm letting go from recent yard sale purchases. Silver to Modern. Plus toys and trading cards, 80's to Modern. It sounds like there's a bunch of boardies in the Phoenix area. Anyone ever try to organize a get together or something? Now I'm done crapping in Bird's thread. Sorry, Bird.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, srezvan said:

I'm not trying to take over Bird's thread. I'll post something on the boards as I get closer to having things organized. It'll be a few boxes of stuff pulled from my collection and a bunch of books that I'm letting go from recent yard sale purchases. Silver to Modern. Plus toys and trading cards, 80's to Modern. It sounds like there's a bunch of boardies in the Phoenix area. Anyone ever try to organize a get together or something? Now I'm done crapping in Bird's thread. Sorry, Bird.

I went to one way back in 2014 when I first moved to Phoenix. The level of books and original art there were well outside my own level of collecting. It was fun but was quite humbling-- not that I ever considered myself anything of note as a collector to begin with.

The get together was organized via the Event forum on these boards and boardie ciorac hosted at his house in Scottsdale.

Also have met up a couple of times with other folks from the board to pick up books I bought through ebay from them.

I doubt Bird minds us talking about this a little bit in his thread. I would be interested in another get together if you get one going.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 7/22/2017 at 10:54 PM, 01TheDude said:

I went to one way back in 2014 when I first moved to Phoenix. The level of books and original art there were well outside my own level of collecting. It was fun but was quite humbling-- not that I ever considered myself anything of note as a collector to begin with.

The get together was organized via the Event forum on these boards and boardie ciorac hosted at his house in Scottsdale.

Also have met up a couple of times with other folks from the board to pick up books I bought through ebay from them.

I doubt Bird minds us talking about this a little bit in his thread. I would be interested in another get together if you get one going.

I tried to organize a board dinner for Baltimore Comic Con a few years ago shortly after I joined. I never really got enough interest. I think I even suggested other meetups, and never got any traction. I started a thread about the show in Tucson later this year. I'd be willing to help organize a team dinner there, but so far there have not been any replies to who plans on going.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

26 minutes ago, srezvan said:

I tried to organize a board dinner for Baltimore Comic Con a few years ago shortly after I joined. I never really got enough interest. I think I even suggested other meetups, and never got any traction. I started a thread about the show in Tucson later this year. I'd be willing to help organize a team dinner there, but so far there have not been any replies to who plans on going.

The two I was apart of , one of which Dude came too, took a lot to get together and I even gave away a framed signed litho. When I tried to do a third everyone was too busy so I threw in the towel. Hopefully you guys can get something going.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

UPDATE: He was away and then I went away and now we are both back in town again. Yes, he lives in my town. I was somewhat disingenuous in the beginning but now the deal is 85% done as I made another run yesterday. I have now procured the first box of Avengers, thankfully. From 1 up but no 2. I have not looked them over yet. So I have about 1500 comics left to pick up on one more trip. I have now purchased approximately 8000 comics. I have sold 568. I am happy as I sold 250 this week and have been able to use the collection to help buy the collection. 

So essentially the story is that there was a multi-family garage sale early in the spring in my town and some of the folks had posted about it online. No mention of comics, just yard sale stuff. I don't know where online but it was likely either Facebook or Rutgers University staff classifieds as my wife saw the listing and asked about comics. Someone from the sale, but not the person who posted the online ad, replied to my wife asking what I was interested in as he had 40000 comics all Marvel 1960s-1990s. I told my wife to tell him I wanted them all and forward my email. He replied that day and off we went. Basically my dogged pursuit of comics and my wife getting to work early enough to first read the classifieds resulted in her looking for comics for me and it paying off bigtime. It turns out that my daughter and his and in the same grade at school and I see him around town all the time. So we have a good relationship and everything is on the up and up. I have no intention of asking him how he overestimated the number of comics so much as it seems poor form. When I did my comic yard sale a few weeks ago I was a bit worried that he would come by. Although he knows I am selling the bulk of it I think it may have been awkward. I negotiated on 40000 comics and factored in the liabilities of all those comics; if he had represented the collection for EXACTLY what it is I think I may have offered the same or even more. Not much more but we will never know. It was a good buy but not great. I wish there were more potential 9.8s but who wouldn't. I should have some books from this collection back from CGC in a few weeks (graded/QC right now) so I will know how the bronze books fare. I used a few as a kind of litmus test. The moderns are better but I want to see what is what. Plus I can compare my mind grade to actual grade. I have over a short box of comics I am holding and have decided to keep most keys, or more accurately perhaps semi-keys. I sold THE CAT 1 and SHE-HULK 1 but consider them necessary sacrifices. That She-Hulk looked sweet to me! And The Cat 1! I regret them already! Oh poor poor me.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well if you got Avenger's 1 and the like then I wouldn't feel too bad!

IMO the deal is yours and as long as the key's you want to keep and the one's (anything really) that you are selling DO recoup your initial purchase to your liking.... then all's well! 

I'd want to keep any key's I could personally, but it's up to you to determine between what you had to start out with and what you can gain from the purchase :) Hope the grades turn out well, and I also hope the price to grade at cgc was figured into the initial purchase price lol:) 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No, I was being facetious. I am great. So far I have a comfortable multiple of purchase price on the books that I have sold and I expect to have a great time with these comics. I am going to read What If for over 100 issues!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I took a few books from the collection and subbed them a little over a month ago to see what kind of condition I was looking at. With some outliers the bronze books appear to be 6.5-8.5. Moderns went 9.4 (Secret Wars 8) & 9.8 (1st Carnage, got lucky there I think). So I guess that is about what I expected. 5 X-Men subbed and a 5.0 on 100 was disappointing with no good surprises, the other 4 fell right about where I expected. So now I can see what is what with pressing and such and will expect the keys are in the same range hopefully. I also have 5 books on another invoice that should be about 2-3 weeks out now. Here are the three from this collection and my guesses: Silver Surfer 1 that is about 4.0-4.5, ASM 129 which was generally thought to be a 6.5 in the PGM thread so I will go with that - 6.5-7.0, and ASM 121 which I will put at 8.0 but that was graded now from memory and not book in hand.

Everything is great on this. I was lucky to score it and am having a blast. It is a hobby for me and I have been thinking hard about the upcoming con on 8/27 that I am selling at...a lot of work for a hobby! I expect it to be okay though, the wife will help load in and out (she watches the stuff while I am mobile in other words) and she will also come by so I can take a break and get some lunch. I plan on having a short box of key and/or cool comics or more when all is said and done and I have about 2 longboxes now which will have to be culled to get down to that shortbox. I am trying to sell few keys and more large runs. People seems intimidated by buying 60+ book runs but I will keep trying.

Edited by Bird
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The small local convention in Old Bridge NJ is next weekend so I have my stuff mostly ready to go. I will also have a comic yard sale again the day before on Saturday 8/26. So Saturday at my home and Sunday in Old Bridge NJ. I am repricing each and every comic from the first yard sale as I think that I had some too high and I want to move them rather than squeeze every dollar out of them. So hopefully I can blow out some of these books before I hunker down for the winter and finish sorting everything. I sold a slab here today, ASM 361 first carnage and it was from this collection! So that worked out well. I was pleased that 6/7 books subbed from this collection came back white pages; I was worried about the page designation on these subs but am pleased with the results so far. I also have 3 books in "graded" that are a bit more valuable so that should be fun to see what they get! I know the SS1 will be 4.0-5.0 but hopefully the others will be a bit better.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

26 minutes ago, Bird said:

The small local convention in Old Bridge NJ is next weekend so I have my stuff mostly ready to go. I will also have a comic yard sale again the day before on Saturday 8/26. So Saturday at my home and Sunday in Old Bridge NJ. I am repricing each and every comic from the first yard sale as I think that I had some too high and I want to move them rather than squeeze every dollar out of them. So hopefully I can blow out some of these books before I hunker down for the winter and finish sorting everything. I sold a slab here today, ASM 361 first carnage and it was from this collection! So that worked out well. I was pleased that 6/7 books subbed from this collection came back white pages; I was worried about the page designation on these subs but am pleased with the results so far. I also have 3 books in "graded" that are a bit more valuable so that should be fun to see what they get! I know the SS1 will be 4.0-5.0 but hopefully the others will be a bit better.

I was just at a convention and was talking to a guy who seemed to have as many books as you. 

He was saying often, he just wants to get rid of excess stuff so anything under 5 he prices at 1 dollar and 30 for 20...   He throws it all in bunch of long boxes and just sits there and watch people demolish  them...

Not sure if that is helpful to you in getting rid of stuff, but just a thought.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I just packed up from a moderately successful sale in the driveway. It was a good test run for selling at Pug's show in Old Bridge tomorrow. I sold 55 comics for $326. That maintains the desired % over investment cost that I am pursuing, the exact number which I will keep to myself for now. I am thinking about how I can approach the other dealers best about trading quantity for quality. I would love to spend all day trading 100 $2 books for one slab at a time, or a whole box or two for one or two comics, or $500 in stock for 2 or 3 books...that type of thing. We'll see how the guys in the room feel about my books I guess. 

Some fun fun books in the last batch that I got last night. 1500 more books, What If and Longshot miniseries and stuff like that. Nothing WOW but fun groovy comics.

 

 

edited to add that I have now sold 789 books, give or take a few, and appear to have used those sales to pay for 49.8% of the collection. That includes todays yard sale but hopefully tomorrow's small convention can get me closer to paying it off. But I am pleased that I was able to use the collection itself to essentially buy half of it and only pay out half myself in actual money money. I have sold some minor keys but am focusing on the runs and such for now. I have 5 groovy books coming in the mail now from cgc and my sales to date include 6 books from the collection that I slabbed and sold here. ASM 361 was 9.8 and that was a sweet sale. (Thanks again to the buyer!)

 

Edited by Bird
Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 minutes ago, Bird said:

. I am thinking about how I can approach the other dealers best about trading quantity for quality. I would love to spend all day trading 100 $2 books for one slab at a time, or a whole box or two for one or two comics, or $500 in stock for 2 or 3 books...that type of thing. We'll see how the guys in the room feel about my books I guess. 

 

 

I wish you the best of luck Bird. Its a very hard thing to do. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
5 5