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Are the days of wholesaling drek over?
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52 posts in this topic

So you know the scenario, purchase a collection - keep/sell the keys, wholesale the drek for dirt cheap. This strategy is more evident when trying to conserve space for another big collection.

But is it wise to adapt this method today when prices of yesterday's drek are soaring?

References: Liefeld's X-Force/New Mutants, Spawn, Newsstand image drek

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MIt depends on your business plan and the method of operation. 

Some people do well by  buying large collections, cherry picking them and moving the rest at a small loss. 

The money from the sale lets them buy more collections.

 

If, instead of selling today in the hope that a book or two will increase in value down the road, they end up holding all books- two things need to happen.

1) A  lot more storage space, which increases expenses

2) They need to replace the income stream they no longer are generating.  

If someone has a successful business, its foolish to ditch the whole MO in the hope that a few obscure books might go up in value. 

If I hold all the books I get ,hoping some skyrocket, I'll soon run out of operating funds. 

This goes back to the argument that Mile High Chuck should have sat on the Church collection. 

Comic sellers sell. It's what they do. 

Can holding some books work out? Yes, but that's not really important.

 

Edited by shadroch
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Just now, mysterio said:

Is it worth it to have a garage full of BS that might have a couple of books that might someday pop to $10 for 3 days?

pretty much.

Worse yet if you are paying for storage.

Although some of those books pop to 100

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15 minutes ago, Aweandlorder said:

So you know the scenario, purchase a collection - keep/sell the keys, wholesale the drek for dirt cheap. This strategy is more evident when trying to conserve space for another big collection.

But is it wise to adapt this method today when prices of yesterday's drek are soaring?

References: Liefeld's X-Force/New Mutants, Spawn, Newsstand image drek

If i say "yes, this method is still applicable today", will you buy my drek?

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2 minutes ago, Bronty said:

pretty much.

Worse yet if you are paying for storage.

Although some of those books pop to 100

Exactly the point of this thread. Sure if it costs you x to store them and you make less than x annually lets say from said drek than no point in storing (+labor listing etc)

But in the past year i think its pretty evident that many  books have elevated from drek status to (at least) 10$ mark or higher, sometimes much higher, and this is not even factoring grading them and yielding an even higher premium (look at Ghost Rider #1 for instance).

Again, the key words here are last year & many 

So a better question would be: do you recall any other time in history where selling worthless secondary market books by the hundreds have made for a great investment?

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1 minute ago, Aweandlorder said:

Pretty sure I wont since I formulate buying collections which consist of keys & drek in them and they are relatively easy to come by 

I was just kidding anyway :)

Maybe someday I'll have a few of these "keys" to work with.

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10 minutes ago, Jimbo749 said:

If i say "yes, this method is still applicable today", will you buy my drek?

Case in point. I recently bought a collection with many high end books. In fact I could tell you that at least 60% of that collection which was beautifully preserved would grade 9.8.

The odds are the usual - 20 percent keys 80 percent modern popular drek.

What do I do with those 9.8 candidate dreks? 

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1 minute ago, shadroch said:

Lets just say I'm prepared for that Boris the Bear solo in a blockbuster film.

Haha

But you did bring an excellent point. 

Based on the trends that we saw this year, I can say that most drek that has peaked this year was 90s drek. Not to discount 80s drek. But 90s Liefeld, McFarlane, Valiant, and Image newsstands have taken off this year big time.

Had I had those books in potential 9.8 condition laying around by the hundreds, which is not a far fetched scenario, would I be better off today than wholesaling them last year for 300$?

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27 minutes ago, mysterio said:

No Spawn is drek. 

Is it worth it to have a garage full of BS that might have a couple of books that might someday pop to $10 for 3 days?

Exactly....and even if they do pop, how much time and effort does it take to clear longboxes of $5 and $10 books? 

Having a garage full of borderline junk, then having to retail said junk for $5-15 a pop, gives me heart palpitations. HARD pass.

YMMV

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1 minute ago, SteppinRazor said:

No one seems to want my X-Force or Ghost Rider stuff, so I don't get your point of reference, but it seems like just being a way station for drek is still a good idea.

 

A better question would be what to do with keys that aren't major, like Batman 497. 

Ghost Rider #1 fetches anywhere between $5-25 today. You will have no problem getting 10 bucks for a 9.6-9.8 raw. X-Force 8 & 11 are solid $10 books, Some New mutants btw 85-100 (excluding the big ones of course) are solid $10 books in NM... Newsstand image books are all the rage... Plenty other examples

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7 minutes ago, october said:

Exactly....and even if they do pop, how much time and effort does it take to clear longboxes of $5 and $10 books? 

Having a garage full of borderline junk, then having to retail said junk for $5-15 a pop, gives me heart palpitations. HARD pass.

YMMV

None at all

https://www.ebay.com/sch/Comics/63/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=new+mutants+99&_in_kw=1&_ex_kw=&_sacat=63&LH_Sold=1&_mPrRngCbx=1&_udlo=10&_udhi=10000&_samilow=&_samihi=&_sadis=15&_stpos=11357&_sargn=-1%26saslc%3D1&_salic=1&_sop=13&_dmd=1&_ipg=50&LH_Complete=1

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