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How to best sell lower priced items
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16 posts in this topic

Hi all,

I recall a previous thread where people gave advice on the best places to sell collections.

I was given a collection from a friend who passed away.  He would collect usually lower priced items like from Heritage Sunday auctions or Comic Link.  

I was going to sell most of the items but I am trying to figure out the best way to do this.  I don't really have the time to list every item on ebay and mail them out.  I'm sure some would not get bids.  

I suppose I could bundle a bunch of it up and sell it together. 

Or would it be easier to sell on Comic Link or Heritage?   If it is easier and I don't have to package or mail out the items separately sounds appealing.

If I use Comic Link or Heritage, do I just mail the boxes of items to them?  

There are about six portfolios of art, and 3 boxes of slabbed books and 3 boxes of raw books.

Any advice would be helpful.

 

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if you don't have time to individually list and mail out each item, I think that leaves you either consigning with an auction house or dealer.

In those cases, after you work out the details or sign the contract, you would typically ship them all the art.

Malvin

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Low priced comic book art from 10 years ago can carry significant value today. This write-up might help you get a feel for a fair price.

Spoiler

You might want to explore the following resources

  • The website Comic Art Tracker can help you find art and look at current asking prices for similar pieces.
  • The OA auction archive at Heritage Auctions – This archive presents the results from all of their OA auctions.. Once you sign-up and get an id, you can search for pieces by your artist and see what they have sold for.
  • The CAF Market Data - More auction results (more than 1,000,000) are available if you join the Comic Art Fans site, pay for Market Data access, and access eBay and other auction sites as well as Heritage.
  • The Comic Art Database. It contains transaction records entered by the owners of Comic OA.
  • Dealer sites. Dealers, generally, post their art with fixed prices though there are exceptions. There is a list of dealers on CGC OA board and the Dragonberry site has a list as well. The CAF site will search the inventories of several dealers for you. [Of course, Comic Art Tracker is better.]
  • Blouin Art Info which tracks sales at major art auctions. It can turn up some Comic OA as well. Look for the “Art Prices” item on the top right of the screen
  • Jerry Weist's Comic Art Price Guide - Heritage published a third edition of it. In my opinion, it's a good history book and might be useful for comparison work, but it was out of date a year before it was printed.
  • A topic  on the CGC OA boards, A-level panel page valuations by artist/run - thoughts/additions/changes?, holds a discussion that relates to your question. It provides some "generally agreed upon" ranges for popular runs by popular artists on popular characters.
  • The Biggest OA Prices thread tracked some of the largest sales in the OA space. While that particular thread has stopped; it's probably worth reading for the discussions. Meanwhile , the information is still being updated - just with a different mechanism.
New buyers and sellers often find that OA is too hard to price. I agree that it is difficult. However, I think that there is a valid reason. Each piece is unique. Uniqueness make art sales generally and OA specifically non-linear.

 Examples of how piece can differ in ways that impact pricing include:

  • Content: Consecutive pages could and do sell for radically different amounts based on their content. 
  • Page Layout: In general, you might say:

           Covers > 1st Page Splash > Other Splash > 1/2 splash > panel page

However, that's not always true either. The right panel page can be much more compelling than a bland splash.

  • Penciler vs. character: There are "A-list" artists, but not all of their books/characters have the same value. Kirby FF pages generally go for more than JIM/Thor pages which go for more than Cap pages (2nd run) which go for more than ...
  • Pencilers/inkers combinations - Kirby/Sinnott FF pages rank above Kirby and anyone else on FF, but a Kirby/InkerX FF page might be more or less than a Kirby/Stone Thor page. Hard to tell.

 

Finally, you should join the comic book OA community. The three main points of Internet contact are:

The main points of physical contact are probably:

One last comment, if you are looking to buy or sell, spend the time to learn the market. That might take 6 months, but it's worth the time.

 

 

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Packaging and shipping is a pain ...

Heritage and CLink sound like the best option as they can handle all the art and comics at once.  Let's face it, people will try to cherry pick your art and comics.  At auction, everyone will have a shot at what they want.  

Depending on where you are located, both attend conventions.  You can walk right up to them and hand it off and get a receipt.  They can answer your questions on the spot.

If you can not attend a show, call or email them.

All the best.

Cheers!

N

 

 

Edited by NelsonAI
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If you collect OA yourself you could try trading it all to a bigger dealer for one or a few pieces. Anthony Snyder would do that as he takes anything and everything last I dealt with him. You may be able to work something out with Albert Moy but at a lesser margin likely.

You could also just sell it all at once to someone here. :whistle:

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I would also add it depends on your definition of "Low End Art"

I know some people here think anything under about 5k is low end art.

I'd also take into consideration the % of retail you're willing to take.  Just sending a stack of art to Clink might get you a lot closer to retail vs selling wholesale to a dealer.  But you'll get money a lot faster.

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3 hours ago, Pete Marino said:

I would also add it depends on your definition of "Low End Art"

I know some people here think anything under about 5k is low end art.

I'd also take into consideration the % of retail you're willing to take.  Just sending a stack of art to Clink might get you a lot closer to retail vs selling wholesale to a dealer.  But you'll get money a lot faster.

Why not split the difference? Post individual pieces here and invite offers. If no offer is high enough, sell on Clink?

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Hand it off to Heritage or Comic Link... let the market decide and you will receive full value - 10% consignment which is fine considering that they are doing the eBay work for you. 

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In my experience, lower end art does better on ComicLink and higher value stuff does well at Heritage. But I know someone who sold a lower end-mid level art collection on Heritage and took a beating. I think it has to do with ComicLink not having buyer fees,

Good luck, and sorry for your loss.

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Thanks for the comments and the many private messages everyone.  

I have not found any Hulk art.

I haven't decided what to do yet but ComicLink does sound appealing.  He bought a good number of things through ComicLink and many of the CGCs have ComicLink stickers on them.

 

 

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