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Getting divorced - Need appraisal information
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154 posts in this topic

As the title suggests, I am in the process of a divorce. I won't go into any details on that subject but I wanted to reach out because I want to educate myself as my husband and I navigate dividing our comic and collectibles business. We have been buying and selling comics, comic art, toys, Legos and baseball cards for several years and have built a successful business up to this point.

My soon-to-be ex-husband has offered me a buy out for the current business inventory. How do I go about valuing this inventory and locating all parts of the current inventory in order to make certain that the buy out offer is fair to ensure the well-being of our two children?

If anyone has any suggestions, please message me or discuss in this thread. 

Thank you in advance!

Mary

P.S. Moderators, if this belongs somewhere else, please let me know. Thank you!

Edited by nookworm
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1 hour ago, nookworm said:

As the title suggests, I am in the process of a divorce. I won't go into any details on that subject but I wanted to reach out because I want to educate myself as my husband and I navigate dividing our comic and collectibles business. We have been buying and selling comics, comic art, toys, Legos and baseball cards for several years and have built a successful business up to this point.

My soon-to-be ex-husband has offered me a buy out for the current business inventory. How do I go about valuing this inventory and locating all parts of the current inventory in order to make certain that the buy out offer is fair to ensure the well-being of our two children?

If anyone has any suggestions, please message me or discuss in this thread. 

Thank you in advance!

Mary

P.S. Moderators, if this belongs somewhere else, please let me know. Thank you!

counter with triple the value of his offer.  If he accepts, double that.  If he declines, ask for a counter and work from there.  He obviously knows what the actual value is so using this method you can get him near a fair price.

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1 hour ago, oakman29 said:

This may have possibilities. :popcorn:

I was reading the first post, and when I got to the part about divvying up comics, became violently ill. I was faced with the immediate decision about whether or not I'd still have time to run for the vomit pail if I couldn't get the Nauzene down fast enough. My gamble paid dividends, I'm OK now, but still feeling queasy just thinking about it.

 

 

 

feeling-sick-gif-13.gif

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10 hours ago, nookworm said:

As the title suggests, I am in the process of a divorce. I won't go into any details on that subject but I wanted to reach out because I want to educate myself as my husband and I navigate dividing our comic and collectibles business. We have been buying and selling comics, comic art, toys, Legos and baseball cards for several years and have built a successful business up to this point.

My soon-to-be ex-husband has offered me a buy out for the current business inventory. How do I go about valuing this inventory and locating all parts of the current inventory in order to make certain that the buy out offer is fair to ensure the well-being of our two children?

If anyone has any suggestions, please message me or discuss in this thread. 

Thank you in advance!

Mary

P.S. Moderators, if this belongs somewhere else, please let me know. Thank you!

The bolded part stands out.  Are you asking if there is a database that all dealers use in terms of maintaining an inventory?  The answer is no especially if you do not own a physical store.  My ex-wife and i ran a online store which encompassed me doing all the work and she letting me do it without griping.  I'm guessing this is the case so finding a value of an inventory that has an unknown amount of books is very, very difficult.  As I'm sure you know the "value" of the items is how much someone can sell them for which takes a lot of time and energy to completely sell at full market price.  Divorce sucks in so many ways so I hope it goes smoothly for your kids sake.
"

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10 hours ago, nookworm said:

As the title suggests, I am in the process of a divorce. I won't go into any details on that subject but I wanted to reach out because I want to educate myself as my husband and I navigate dividing our comic and collectibles business. We have been buying and selling comics, comic art, toys, Legos and baseball cards for several years and have built a successful business up to this point.

My soon-to-be ex-husband has offered me a buy out for the current business inventory. How do I go about valuing this inventory and locating all parts of the current inventory in order to make certain that the buy out offer is fair to ensure the well-being of our two children?

If anyone has any suggestions, please message me or discuss in this thread. 

Thank you in advance!

Mary

P.S. Moderators, if this belongs somewhere else, please let me know. Thank you!

:fear:

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I am curious, it seems, the business is ongoing and viable, at this time. True? If so, that would impact any decisions or advice, I would think.

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to the OP in regards to receiving PM's about selling things.

 

Just an update for the viewers of this thread.  Chip Cataldo is currently in the Hall of Shame which can be viewed in the selling forums.  This is my one post per thread on this subject.

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8 hours ago, Tony S said:

Well - as Oak said, "this may have possibilities" 

I'll take a stab at attempting to offer reasonable advice. If anything I say seems harsh, my apologies in advance. Having gone through a divorce most likely it will get worse for the two of you than anything  I say. I mean to be direct, but not rude. . 

First, if "we" includes you and your husband - like in building a successful business together - then it doesn't seem like you should need to ask how to value the inventory.  Just sayin... Something you might keep in mind with any settlement. Were you an active partner? Or more a silent one? If you were an active partner including the purchase and selling, it might be simplest to just divide the inventory I pick, you pick, I pick, you pick. Then you have half the stuff and can sell it yourself however you please. In one lump to another dealer. On eBay a few items at a time. Your stuff. Your choice. 

OK - that aside.... The first and most obvious place to look at  (valuation of inventory) is your federal tax returns.  The "profit or loss" from the business should  clearly list the beginning and ending balances of your inventory.  If your taxes filed aren't close to accurate - or you didn't file taxes - then I'm not sure you have a "successful" business. You just have a bunch of collectibles and the two of you bought  and sold some under the radar. If Federal tax returns don't apply then.... 

Standard  business practice is to value inventory at either cost or market value. (This is also how the IRS approaches inventory) Most businesses use cost, as it's a lot easier to determine.  Especially with collectibles, market value can vary greatly based on how quickly one needs to sell. If you have to sell collectibles quickly - like in a few weeks or months - they are worth much, much less than if you operate as a business with inventory with monthly sales and expenses.  So simplest (not necessarily the most $$) would be to look at what your business has PAID for the inventory and look at  one half of that as a settlement. It probably wont' t be as much money as market value. But then you aren't putting any work into your settlement and it should be far easier to arrive at a number.   

Last observation..... Extremely valuable collections/inventories in a divorce often end up looking for buyers. When Bob Overstreet got a divorce, his (ex) wife wanted half. The business and the collection was sold to Gemstone and Steve Geppi. I have no idea if your inventory is worth thousands, hundreds of thousands or millions. But if half is a number impossible for your soon to be ex you may need to go look for buyers instead. 

Good luck . Maybe you might post up here when the divorce is done letting us know if you were able to reach a mutually agreeable settlement. 


 

This is good info.  Unless you are in possession of the inventory it will be really tough to get a complete picture of how much is there but if you think a quarter of the inventory sold each year and you guys claimed $30,000 in sales from the store each year you can start out by estimating the full price inventory is $120,000 (example sake).  If everything is put up for sale at once it may be worth $60,000 so seek $30K in a buy out.  It will at least get you a starting point but its a big he said she said issue that most of the time will need to be resolved in court by expensive lawyers.

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Jut to ad an answer in simple terms regarding your original question

11 hours ago, nookworm said:

 How do I go about valuing this inventory

Just to add a simple answer...

eBay Sold Listings, Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, Auctions at My Comic Shop, Heritage, Comic Connect, Comic Link, etc.

(You will need to know exactly what books you have and place a grade (or approx grade) on each  before you can determine an approximate value.)

https://comics.ha.com/overstreet/comic-book-price-guide.s?type=google_overstreet price guide_nid-g-cid-283263975812-mt-e-device-c-ap-1t1-dm--clksrc-kw-cmpnid-1021425543-adgpid-49727158989-fditm--locphys-9003849&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIvdilrM613QIVR18NCh0o0Aj5EAAYASAAEgJy1vD_BwE

https://www.amazon.com/Overstreet-Comic-Book-Price-Guide/dp/1603602216

https://comics.ha.com/tutorial/comics-grading.s?show=comicdefinitions

https://www.comicconnect.com/

http://www.comiclink.com/Auctions/default.asp?Focused=1

https://comics.ha.com/?type=-COMICSHA.COM

https://www.mycomicshop.com/?gclid=CLS_6I_Q8cUCFYYUHwodbhUAag

Edited by marvelmaniac
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1 minute ago, 1Cool said:

This is good info.  Unless you are in possession of the inventory it will be really tough to get a complete picture of how much is there but if you think a quarter of the inventory sold each year and you guys claimed $30,000 in sales from the store each year you can start out by estimating the full price inventory is $120,000 (example sake).  If everything is put up for sale at once it may be worth $60,000 so seek $30K in a buy out.  It will at least get you a starting point but its a big he said she said issue that most of the time will need to be resolved in court by expensive lawyers.

I don't think it will or can work that way. Those pesky 1040s and attachments, and all.

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1 minute ago, marvelmaniac said:

I don't think so, in a divorce case where the business is an ongoing enterprise.

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I'm not sure about divorce assets, but the laws about the immediate liquidation of anything of value (such as bankrupcy) do not require using the most profitable method in the world.  They require using a reasonable estimate from something like a local sale to a dealer or even a yard sale in the community.  $120,000 in comics might be $20,000 in obvious keys and 20,000 books worth about $5 each.  Those 20,000 books worth about $5 each might be $0.05 to $0.50 in an immediate liquidation and the bulk of the "$120,000 in value" could be more realistically turned into $1,000 to $10,000 with a quick sale.  Getting anywhere near $100,000 for 20,000 $5 books would be basically impossible if you don't have competing dealers in your community.  Then, selling $20,000 in obvious keys would still require a discount over the going rate, since it's an immediate liquidation, and a portion of the sales go to the venue (basically half goes to Heritage).

In other words, everyone who can put a dollar amount on their collection should assume they can get 10% to 15% from an immediate liquidation (within a few weeks) and up to half for a few months of "getting rid of it all".

No one gets over half their total collection value (quickly) unless they own a stack of CGC slabbed keys and nothing else... you can get close to market value (minus 10% commission) if you can get your stack of CGC slabbed keys to a major auction... but that usually takes time, and who has a big collection/inventory that isn't full of longboxes of $5 and under?

Edited by valiantman
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22 minutes ago, valiantman said:

I'm not sure about divorce assets, but the laws about the immediate liquidation of anything of value (such as bankrupcy) do not require using the most profitable method in the world.  They require using a reasonable estimate from something like a local sale to a dealer or even a yard sale in the community.  $120,000 in comics might be $20,000 in obvious keys and 20,000 books worth about $5 each.  Those 20,000 books worth about $5 each might be $0.05 to $0.50 in an immediate liquidation and the bulk of the "$120,000 in value" could be more realistically turned into $1,000 to $10,000 with a quick sale.  Getting anywhere near $100,000 for 20,000 $5 books would be basically impossible if you don't have competing dealers in your community.  Then, selling $20,000 in obvious keys would still require a discount over the going rate, since it's an immediate liquidation, and a portion of the sales go to the venue (basically half goes to Heritage).

In other words, everyone who can put a dollar amount on their collection should assume they can get 10% to 15% from an immediate liquidation (within a few weeks) and up to half for a few months of "getting rid of it all".

No one gets over half their total collection value (quickly) unless they own a stack of CGC slabbed keys and nothing else... you can get close to market value (minus 10% commission) if you can get your stack of CGC slabbed keys to a major auction... but that usually takes time, and who has a big collection/inventory that isn't full of longboxes of $5 and under?

Giving my own smart aleck answer:  I'll tell you who has a big collection/inventory that isn't full of longboxes of $5 and under... it's the people who switched to shortboxes! :kidaround:

Edited by valiantman
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Sorry to hear about your situation.  My immediate thought was whether you have hired a good divorce attorney to protect your interests.  Even if you have a cordial relationship with your soon to be ex, I highly recommend getting some solid legal advice and counsel.

As others have noted, if you don't already have a reasonable sense of the value of the current inventory, then this could be a very tricky exercise.  So perhaps another approach would be to consider what you will need to live comfortably and support the kids on an annual basis.  Also, what are your immediate plans ie do you plan on starting another comic or hobby shop?  Is the store/business going to continue?  Again, I would seek counsel to determine possible options.  

I do think looking at any records like tax returns, average spent on annual purchases over the past 3 years, monthly revenue and income (profit), any current debt/loans should give you some idea of what the inventory might be worth.  Best of luck on what can hopefully be a relatively seamless but challenging process.    

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