question for dealers who have looked at/ maybe purchased a lot of collections. 0

[musicmeta]

6 hours ago, Artboy99 said:

far more likely to be the left over inventory from one (or more) closed comic stores.

Yes there would have been gems within but the cost would have been more than we wanted to spend. Time, storage, etc.

Even at 10 cents a book it would have cost us $50,000 dollars just to make the purchase

I was just kidding.  50K is a lot of money and I can see why the headaches out weigh the benefits.  

[Artboy99]

6 minutes ago, musicmeta said:

I was just kidding.  50K is a lot of money and I can see why the headaches out weigh the benefits.  

yeah I know you were. I posted the financial number for the shock value. It was approximately 425,000 comics after all 

Edited August 24, 2019 by Artboy99

[musicmeta]

1 hour ago, Artboy99 said:

yeah I know you were. I posted the financial number for the shock value. It was approximately 425,000 comics after all 

Correction - It was the entire run of Action Comics, Detective Comics, Flash comics, Planet comics, Marvel Mystery comics...etc...all would grade out as 9.8 white of course.  but mercy, the slabbing costs! 

[robocard]

I have learned that I should just keep my mouth shut when looking at large bulk collections but that doesn't mean that I do. Unfortunately, I love buying large bulk deals and most people do not. Over the past 18 years since moving to Phoenix, I bought collections of books totaling 7000, 10,000, 12,000, 20,000, and 55,000 plus dozens from 2000-5000.  It has been my retirement hobby since 2008 and has kept me reasonably physically fit and mentally sharp.

Several years ago a friend of mine needed quite a bit of money to pay for family health expenses. I agreed to buy his collection sight unseen which ended up being over 300 long boxes. I loaded them up and hauled them to a 10 x 30 storage unit only to get a call that night that I didn't take the boxes in his barn. I asked him what was in there (I am in Phoenix and figured the books could not be worth much stored without A/C). After some debate, I returned a few days later and loaded up a 28 foot U-haul truck. I took my shop vac and painter's mask to blow off all of the dust I could, but they were still pretty gritty.

I quickly realized that most of the books were bought as speculation with long boxes full of the same Valiant issue (not pre unity unfortunately) and other 90s gems. In addition to dozens of boxes of toys, magazines, etc. i ended up donating 331 long boxes to a local charity just starting up. In all, there were around 650 long boxes of comics. The good news of sorts was that some of the LBs were full of McFarlane Spider-man 1s (at least 100 silver and close to that in gold and easily 200 or more regular), Jim Lee X-men (2-3 full boxes) and Spawn 1s (a full box at least), and over a box of NM 87 2nd prints. 

I paid a very high price for the books but it was better than a loan as I could do what I wanted with the books rather than hold them as collateral. Was it worth it? Probably, but I would not do it again. It took me 6 months just to get the donated books out and I had to build one storage shelf at a time to get them where I could sort them as the entire 10 x 30 was stacked 3 boxes by 5 boxes and 6 rows high. It took me another 6 months to get the boxes somewhat organized.  

 

[kimik]

21 hours ago, Artboy99 said:

@kimik

One of the 4 of us was Kimik, and around the time we were talking about buying the 1561 longbox collection Kimik went on a trip out of town with his family. As a joke the other 3 of us were going to get a palette and stack it full of empty longs and then wrap it in shipping wrap and put a note on it and leave it in his driveway so when he got back he would see it and the note:

"We decided to buy the collection!

Here is the first palette of books which is part of your share of the books you need to start processing.

We can have the other palettes dropped off, let us know when you are ready for them."

As long as it was the palette that had the CGC 9.8 AF 15s in it all would be forgiven. 

Edited August 25, 2019 by kimik