Am I asking too much for this ASM collection? 1 1

[Martin Sinescu]

Selling individually sounds great moneywise, but I sift through Spidey books every day on the Bay and see tons of single issues that get relisted and go nowhere. It can be a real purgatory for filler books and, to me, that's the part that's really going to hurt.....when you get to the books that seemingly *no one* wants and you have nothing good to sweeten the deal. Also, it's a lot of work on your part: Scanning, listing, shipping. I'd compromise and consider listing in sequential lots, maybe 10 or so per group. For some of those lots, you'll have a key(ish) book and a few filler books, but at least you get rid of the group. I've bought plenty of lots to get that "one" gem out of the batch. Those fillers are going to be tough for you to move otherwise, even at a dollar (or pound) 'cause shipping negates a bargain in a heartbeat. I think selling them as one huge lot, though, is hoping to catch a one-in-a-thousand customer that wants an instant ASM run, or, again, hoping for a dealer, but unless it's a dealer who's starting out and looking to build stock, they're most likely going to be looking at laying out 10% of FMV in order to make it worth their time. Good luck whichever way you go, hope it works out!

[FlyingDonut]

On 8/19/2019 at 12:45 PM, Dan82 said:

After 4 grand for them. I think that's fair. 20 watchers on eBay. I had two guys I thought I had sold them to but they turned out to be tyre kickers, both of them. Don't really want to sell them but I need the money.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/202738826977?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649

And a link to scans of all 311 books - 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/clouddrive/share/sOdpLRKIuYyxY6KZrCrzP5nvzuUq39QcHPVQ5nQPWeT

What do you lot reckon? Many of them have been bought multiple times and I've always then sold the lesser copy. So some really high grade books and even a couple double covers. £12.86 is the average price per book, so why the bloody hell has no one bought!?

Because you're about 60% too high on the price.

[FlyingDonut]

5 hours ago, Dan82 said:

I took the comicbookrealm valuation with a nice pinch of salt... and then discarded two thirds. Am I still way off?

Yes.

[kav]

I would break them up into lots. all the US issues before 151 in one lot, UK editions in another lot, annuals in one lot and all the others in one lot.  

[Dan82]

18 minutes ago, FlyingDonut said:

Because you're about 60% too high on the price.

So they're worth 1600... Or five quid each! Ok Ron whatever you say Ron  

I'm not giving them away, that's for sure, someone can buy them for £3,500 or they will sit on eBay forever.

I had an offer earlier for £2,200 which I declined and an offer for £2,500 a couple weeks back which I passed on too. The two 'tyre kickers' in both cases, we had agreed on £3,500 a video game store owner in the south of France and an insufficiently_thoughtful_person just over the Pennines in Sheffield. No idea why they would agree to buy them and then not do. Not cricket in my book. Does seem sport for these insufficiently_thoughtful_persons though and some of the messages I've had from other folk have been quite amusing.

[Park]

1 hour ago, Martin Sinescu said:

Selling individually sounds great moneywise, but I sift through Spidey books every day on the Bay and see tons of single issues that get relisted and go nowhere. It can be a real purgatory for filler books and, to me, that's the part that's really going to hurt.....when you get to the books that seemingly *no one* wants and you have nothing good to sweeten the deal. Also, it's a lot of work on your part: Scanning, listing, shipping. I'd compromise and consider listing in sequential lots, maybe 10 or so per group. For some of those lots, you'll have a key(ish) book and a few filler books, but at least you get rid of the group. I've bought plenty of lots to get that "one" gem out of the batch. Those fillers are going to be tough for you to move otherwise, even at a dollar (or pound) 'cause shipping negates a bargain in a heartbeat. I think selling them as one huge lot, though, is hoping to catch a one-in-a-thousand customer that wants an instant ASM run, or, again, hoping for a dealer, but unless it's a dealer who's starting out and looking to build stock, they're most likely going to be looking at laying out 10% of FMV in order to make it worth their time. Good luck whichever way you go, hope it works out!

I think it is worth a shot to try selling here for the individual issues.

And lots of 5 or 10 books of the lower grade or lower value books is a solid idea as well.

Either way, there are options.

[Park]

43 minutes ago, Dan82 said:

So they're worth 1600... Or five quid each! Ok Ron whatever you say Ron  

I'm not giving them away, that's for sure, someone can buy them for £3,500 or they will sit on eBay forever.

I had an offer earlier for £2,200 which I declined and an offer for £2,500 a couple weeks back which I passed on too. The two 'tyre kickers' in both cases, we had agreed on £3,500 a video game store owner in the south of France and an insufficiently_thoughtful_person just over the Pennines in Sheffield. No idea why they would agree to buy them and then not do. Not cricket in my book. Does seem sport for these insufficiently_thoughtful_persons though and some of the messages I've had from other folk have been quite amusing.

Looking at your pics, you have a lot of UK editions which are a bit harder to move. 

There are tons of Spidey collectors but I don't know how many want am instant collection with mixed UK and US books. I collect Spidey and I don't like the UK editions. And like Martin Sinescu said, there are tons of Spidey books all over eBay.

So while Dan might be off on the value of your collection, he might be closer to reality than where your price is at now. Even splitting the difference puts you at $2800 which is close to where you have had offers.

I would say that if you want to sell them at all, I would try a few of the suggestions in here.

[Martin Sinescu]

2 hours ago, Dan82 said:

So they're worth 1600... Or five quid each! Ok Ron whatever you say Ron  

I'm not giving them away, that's for sure, someone can buy them for £3,500 or they will sit on eBay forever.

I had an offer earlier for £2,200 which I declined and an offer for £2,500 a couple weeks back which I passed on too. The two 'tyre kickers' in both cases, we had agreed on £3,500 a video game store owner in the south of France and an insufficiently_thoughtful_person just over the Pennines in Sheffield. No idea why they would agree to buy them and then not do. Not cricket in my book. Does seem sport for these insufficiently_thoughtful_persons though and some of the messages I've had from other folk have been quite amusing.

Despite the round nature of his handle, Donut's pretty sharp and has a great deal of experience moving books. I wouldn't dismiss his input outright.

[FlyingDonut]

7 hours ago, Dan82 said:

So they're worth 1600... Or five quid each! Ok Ron whatever you say Ron  

I'm not giving them away, that's for sure, someone can buy them for £3,500 or they will sit on eBay forever.

I had an offer earlier for £2,200 which I declined and an offer for £2,500 a couple weeks back which I passed on too. The two 'tyre kickers' in both cases, we had agreed on £3,500 a video game store owner in the south of France and an insufficiently_thoughtful_person just over the Pennines in Sheffield. No idea why they would agree to buy them and then not do. Not cricket in my book. Does seem sport for these insufficiently_thoughtful_persons though and some of the messages I've had from other folk have been quite amusing.

Not to be too much of a tool, but if you have an offer for $3,000 for those books you should jump all over it. You have, in all those books, one key, the 300, and a couple minor keys (238, 212, 25 in low grade, etc.), plus 100 or so books in high-ish grade that can be bought literally any day of the week for $1 each - if you don't think so, just watch - and you're telling people they have to take UK versions which carry a 30-40% price stigma across the board.

You're doing yourself a great disservice by grouping them, in that someone who wants the 238, or the 300, or the high grade 212 has to buy all of them, including the mid- to low-grade UK versions. That, and you're overvaluing your books - just picking one of them at random, your 57. Is that nicer than this one?

Nobody ever wants to hear this, but your books aren't worth what you think they're worth, especially now in this market. If I was trying to maximize my return on these, I'd break them into singleton units and start going to work - you'd probably want to slab some of them to increase your sales.

 

[mrc]

43 minutes ago, FlyingDonut said:

if you have an offer for $3,000 for those books you should jump all over it.

..........this.

[1Cool]

I don't blame you for being high on your price - I blame ComicBookRealm for just being high when assigning prices.

[Dick Pontoon]

You really, really, really should listen to FlyingDonut. He gave you solid advice and has probably sold tens of thousands of books over the many years he’s been at it.

[Krismusic]

I think the OP mentioned he doesn't want to sell them in lot or by themselves as it would be to hard for him emotionally to see his collection slowly decrease. I think he wanted to rip the band aid off in one fast clean pull. 

So to the OP I think the best thing to do is to consign them to a shop or somebody you trust and let them do the work of selling them individually or slabbing them.

If you have a trusted friend or person you know they could list the books for you on eBay or here on the boards individually and you hand over the entire box so its out of sight and out of mind and just let the friend send you the money when its all said and done because the best way to sell the collection like many have mentioned is to do it in lots and individually. 

[ADAMANTIUM]

I didn't click on the listing, but are we talking pounds or dollars?

[ADAMANTIUM]

4,000 Pound sterling equals

4,847.31 United States Dollar

[wombat]

3 minutes ago, ADAMANTIUM said:

4,000 Pound sterling equals

4,847.31 United States Dollar

Pound has tanked. 

[Krismusic]

9 minutes ago, wombat said:

Pound has tanked. 

probably the Brexit stuff... 

[Harry Lime]

1 hour ago, Krishosein said:

probably the Brexit stuff... 

Definitely Brexit. The falling value of Sterling has seriously limited my buying from the boards, to the detriment of all US low-grade sellers.

To the OP, if you want to sell them as a lot you'll have to seriously lower the asking price. GoCollect is a better site to use if you haven't got GPA but remember that's graded copies they're tracking. Raw I would go 70-75% FMV for keys and 50% for the rest.

You will realise a much better return by selling them off individually especially if listing a lot of items at the same time on e-bay uk. Pence copies do fairly well there, certainly better than selling them here where shipping costs and innate dislike for anything non-centified tends to put off most American buyers (although not all).

Edited August 21, 2019 by Harry Lime

[Lazyboy]

5 hours ago, Pontoon said:

You really, really, really should listen to FlyingDonut. He gave you solid advice and has probably sold tens of thousands of copies of just these specific books over the many years he’s been at it.

Fixed.

[Lazyboy]

20 hours ago, Dan82 said:

21 hours ago, FlyingDonut said:

Because you're about 60% too high on the price.

So they're worth 1600... Or five quid each!

That's bad math. Being 60% too high on an ask of 4000 means value is around 2500.