Heritage less beneficial to seller than CL/CC for Golden GGA Comics 1 1

[lou_fine]

2 hours ago, buttock said:

16 hours ago, cheetah said:

Each auction house has pros and cons.  Depending on the book, CLink might be the obvious choice.  For others, Heritage is the clear better option.  Trying to make broad conclusions about which is better is kind of a fool’s errand.  The more you know about your books and the people likely to buy them, the better your chances of choosing the best site for your auction.  I greatly appreciate both Heritage and CLink and think both do an excellent job for their customers.  There are books that I think will achieve better results on one over the other, but they both have an important role in maximizing your results.

Everyone thinking about selling needs to just save this post.  Picking and choosing examples to validate otherwise is pointless.  Way too many external factors.  

I would tend to agree with you here if you also include CC since they are definitely the market maker when it comes to certain GA books, and definitely much more so than CL which definitely also has their own niche.     

Edited March 15, 2020 by lou_fine

[William-James88]

The original post only looks at this from a sale price point of view, but there are some services one offers that the other may not. Plus loads of other factors. Does Comic Link settle estates? Will they travel to you to take your books and look at them? What is the difference between the companies in time to payout, do they both give advances? If you want money NOW, then Heritage would be your way to go. For some, money now is worth a lot more than money later.

As for e-bay, many people have better things to do than sell their collection on e-bay bit by bit, and have to deal with customers wanting to return items or want partial refunds. There's a bunch of time consuming elements that some people just don't want. And dealing with Heritage could be worth it to them. 

The market has a way to correct itself. If Heritage was truly worse for sellers, people would not sell through them. You're just looking at one of many factors people would choose someone else over them.

 

As for me as a buyer, I don't trust e-bay in general, there's just been too many dishonest transactions to make up for the good. And while I did bid on comic link back in the day, I found their user interface to be really poor. Seeing that spider jpeg would always make me rage. So I went with heritage for a while. And now I will instead just buy off these boards and at shows/locally and mycomic shop which is suprisingly decently priced/stocked.

Edited March 16, 2020 by William-James88

[LearnedHand]

So many of the threads on this same topic have the same assumption - that there is a difference in fees between auction houses that affect the seller's profit or the buyer's purchase price.  

All auction houses are negotiable on fees, full stop.  They all realize they have competition; and also that sellers know that sophisticated buyers will add the vig and State tax to their top bid so that overall cost will be no greater than buying elsewhere.

My experience: no difference in the deduct from any auction house through which I've sold.  And, I believe my yield is highest through Heritage, perhaps due to their multi-faceted approach (internet, phone, and in-person bidding).  I also like HA's website due to visual presentation.

Whereas, eBay, my former fave buy/sell source, has become the most expensive sales avenue for the typical, as the all-in deduct includes both eBay and Papyal fees.  And, buying is almost non-existent these days for me.  Most books in which I'm interested rarely come up on eBay and when they do, most are not auction style / start at prices that far exceed GPA.  

   

Edited March 16, 2020 by LearnedHand

[G.A.tor]

The real crux of the initial premise is flawed. If you are selling low demand, low value comics on heritage, maybe you get 70% net. But if you are selling high demand, quality material , heritage will make your net approximately the same as clink or connect. 

[LearnedHand]

40 minutes ago, G.A.tor said:

The real crux of the initial premise is flawed. If you are selling low demand, low value comics on heritage, maybe you get 70% net. But if you are selling high demand, quality material , heritage will make your net approximately the same as clink or connect. 

Well, I think you can expand that - I mean, if you take out the word "heritage" this would still be true.     

[manetteska]

2 hours ago, G.A.tor said:

The real crux of the initial premise is flawed. If you are selling low demand, low value comics on heritage, maybe you get 70% net. But if you are selling high demand, quality material , heritage will make your net approximately the same as clink or connect. 

So the OP's examples of $2k+ items don't count?

I'm sure you were able to cut a good deal when selling your collection, but what about the "average" seller taking Heritage at what their agreement says?

(Speaking of which, is it just me, or is it rather difficult to find on ha.com what fees they actually take on a consignment?)

[manetteska]

11 hours ago, William-James88 said:

The original post only looks at this from a sale price point of view, but there are some services one offers that the other may not. Plus loads of other factors. Does Comic Link settle estates? Will they travel to you to take your books and look at them?

Sure, but that isn't free. They charge per hour of appraisal plus all travel costs.

[G.A.tor]

1 hour ago, manetteska said:

So the OP's examples of $2k+ items don't count?

I'm sure you were able to cut a good deal when selling your collection, but what about the "average" seller taking Heritage at what their agreement says?

(Speaking of which, is it just me, or is it rather difficult to find on ha.com what fees they actually take on a consignment?)

I’m guessing material that is warranted being offered in a featured auction could be negotiated to equality (or close to)  to other auction houses. So that would include lots of 2k comics. But I’m speculating, outside of selling my collection (obviously a one time experience for me) I’ve not used auction houses  

I know someone that submitted about 20 comics for a Sunday auction and got the 15% sellers waived and still got a piece of the buyers ... but that might not work for everyone 

[lou_fine]

36 minutes ago, G.A.tor said:

2 hours ago, manetteska said:

So the OP's examples of $2k+ items don't count?

I'm sure you were able to cut a good deal when selling your collection, but what about the "average" seller taking Heritage at what their agreement says?

(Speaking of which, is it just me, or is it rather difficult to find on ha.com what fees they actually take on a consignment?)

I’m guessing material that is warranted being offered in a featured auction could be negotiated to equality (or close to)  to other auction houses. So that would include lots of 2k comics. But I’m speculating, outside of selling my collection (obviously a one time experience for me) I’ve not used auction houses  

It should be pointed out though that your actual one time experience with selling through an auction house was with ComicConnect and not even with Heritage.  

[William-James88]

2 hours ago, manetteska said:

Sure, but that isn't free. They charge per hour of appraisal plus all travel costs.

How does this in any way change my point? They have services others dont, and that could be the reason people choose them over others. That's it.

[manetteska]

10 minutes ago, William-James88 said:

2 hours ago, manetteska said:

Sure, but that isn't free. They charge per hour of appraisal plus all travel costs.

How does this in any way change my point? They have services others dont, and that could be the reason people choose them over others. That's it.

Sure; and what does your point have to do with the final amount paid to sellers?

[cheetah]

Not trying to sell myself as an expert but I have sold a LOT of books.  My thoughts on the best places to sell:

1:  CGC Boards -  I have cleared 5-10% profit in books sold here.  I also get the enjoyment of knowing the people buying the books and making long-term relationships with folks on the boards.  Only con is that some of you lot are a bit squirrelly and you have to deal with folks not paying promptly.  You also have to do your own shipping.

2a.  Heritage - Definitely the way to go for high end GA books with an older clientele.  Some old farts don’t like CLink’s format and don’t like to stay up late to bid frantically at the last minute to win a book.  The Signature auctions give you a fairly accurate assessment of the value of your book.  Barry Sandoval is top notch and their catalogs are awesome if you want to look back on books you’ve sold in the past.  High-grade SA and BA books might get lost in the volume of books offered in their Sunday night auctions.  My results are typically a 0-10% loss after BP.

2b.  CLink - The place to go for High-grade SA and BA.  The last-second bidding wars can lead to some truly outrageous results.  Hard to say if there is money left on the table due to the lack of one-on-one bidding.  Josh Nathanson is top-notch and pays attention to his clients.  My perception is that high-grade and pedigreed GA books don’t do as well on the site, maybe due to old farts not wanting to stay up late to bid on books.  Some of my BA and modern books got killed here.  My results are usually a 0-10% loss after commission.

3.  Everyone else.  I’ve never sold in eBay and did not enjoy my experience on CC.  I never tried anyone else as CLink and Heritage seemed to provide everything I needed.

I should add that I sold my Avengers set through Metro and made an excellent profit, mostly due to my Avengers 1.  I’ve not always been a fan of the folks at Metro but they did fine by me in that deal.  None of those books have ever shown up on the market since and I was led to believe one of the Avengers cast bought the lot.  The lot was over 500 issues with 475 being highest graded copies.

[Math Teacher]

On 3/15/2020 at 10:24 PM, William-James88 said:

And now I will instead just buy off these boards and at shows/locally and mycomic shop which is suprisingly decently priced/stocked.

I'm not in agreement with your statement about MyComicShop. Yes, they have a large inventory, and they are very accurate graders. However, I find their prices on books to be very high, almost in Ebay territory.

[William-James88]

3 hours ago, Joe Ankenbauer said:

I'm not in agreement with your statement about MyComicShop. Yes, they have a large inventory, and they are very accurate graders. However, I find their prices on books to be very high, almost in Ebay territory.

Maybe for what you are looking for, but for what I wanted, they were the cheaper option. 

But if you kbow of an online seller who has better prices, please let me know, I would rather save as much as I could 

Also their large inventory makes me save a lot on shipping since I can get eveything in one shipment rather than have to pay 20+ shipping for each book sent to canada.

[Math Teacher]

27 minutes ago, William-James88 said:

Maybe for what you are looking for, but for what I wanted, they were the cheaper option. 

But if you kbow of an online seller who has better prices, please let me know, I would rather save as much as I could 

Also their large inventory makes me save a lot on shipping since I can get eveything in one shipment rather than have to pay 20+ shipping for each book sent to canada.

My two go-to dealers are Reece's Rare Comics (https://reececomics.com/) and ComicLink.

[William-James88]

1 hour ago, Joe Ankenbauer said:

My two go-to dealers are Reece's Rare Comics (https://reececomics.com/) and ComicLink.

I havent used ComicLink in a while are they still only slabbed books? I mainly look for non slabbed mid grade golden age. Reece didn't have too much and for what I was looking for (ex Captain marvel Jr, Master Comics), and they were more expensive than other places, including My comic shop. I guess it really depends on what you are looking for. 

Edited March 18, 2020 by William-James88

[Math Teacher]

1 minute ago, William-James88 said:

I havent used ComicLink in a while are they still only slabbed books? I mainly look for non slabbed mid grade golden age. Reece didn't have too much and for what I was looking for (ex Captain marvel Jr, Master Comics), and they were as expensive as anywhere else.

Yes, ComicLink sells raw issues. The keys, for the most part, are all slabbed.

[mycomicshop]

One thing that that to me seems often overlooked in discussions like this, is people tend to act like auction is the only way to sell. In my opinion auction is a great way to sell in certain circumstances: if you're pressed and need the money ASAP, or if your books are in a seller's market: rare or rare in high grade, highly sought after and rarely available. When you auction it there will be pent up demand for your books, probably a nice bidding war, and because the book doesn't come to market frequently you may be comparing your sale to prices from several years ago, so after the auction's over you'll feel good about the strong price you got.

But if what you have is a buyer's market book, more frequently traded and available, then the bidding war won't be as aggressive. By putting your book in auction, your price will be set by the second place bidder in that auction. The winning bidder will usually have been willing to pay more, but the second place bid determines what the winning bid will be. Whereas with a buy it now sale, you only need one buyer to meet your price, and you have zero price risk since you control your sale price.

My sense as a seller looking at the sales that constitute the GPA average (or any market average) is this: broadly speaking, auctions tend to average around 90-93% of GPA. Some will be higher, and some will be lower, but around 90-93% is roughly the average for a good, highly visible auction from a reputable venue/seller. Buy it now sales tend to be higher than auction sales, and combining higher BIN sales with lower auction sales is what produces the GPA average.

We do both auctions and BIN, and we sell our own inventory in both formats, but we sell significantly more as BIN than as auction, which is probably the reverse of what HA, CC, CL do. For any book that sells for more than $300 our rates are lower than 10%, 8% $300-3000 and 6% over $3000. If I were a seller with books in that price range, rather than trying to guess which auction might result in a higher net to me after fees, I'd go with the option where I fully control the price and pay less than 10%. I think a lot of buyers have done so much buying from auctions at HA, CL, CC, that inertia and habit tend to focus them on those being the only ways to sell.

If I'm a seller with lots of books to sell: I can auction them all, averaging 90-93% of GPA, minus 10% fees (or more with HA if not negotiated down). I get 80-83%ish of market value after fees. Or I can do BIN sale, sell at 100% of GPA, and pay 10%, 8%, or 6% commission depending on sale price, keeping 90-94% of market value. (or sell on the boards and pay no fees, but that's more work and the market is smaller). I'd choose the BIN option as my default unless I'm in an especially big hurry to sell the book, or it's a really desirable seller's market book where I'm content to let the auction dictate the price, or if I've already tried BIN sale at 100% of GPA for some amount of time and haven't gotten a buyer.

 

Regarding our own pricing, if anybody's interested in a book you think we have overpriced, feel free to PM me and I may be able to bump it down. One of the things I'm currently working on is refocusing our pricing to track more closely to current market and GPA, often starting in the range of 5-10% above GPA average (not GPA high), and dropping from there if not sold after 2-3 months. There's some stuff with very little sales data to go on where we sometimes price higher based on what we think it will get, but if it doesn't sell we'll usually drop it after a month or two. There's also some titles where we consistently get on the high side of GPA, and we'll price accordingly based on what we know we can sell it at.

Edited March 18, 2020 by mycomicshop

[Tri-Color Brian]

I am a collector, not a seller (mostly).  I have bought a lot of books from MyComicShop.com.  I never buy from them on ebay however, because their prices are lower on their website.  I appreciate their grading (most of the time) but have noticed their trend to raise prices in the last couple years, even on some common books.  This has made me very selective in what I purchase from them, just like when I buy on ebay, however, I did not know that I could ask MCS for a lower price.  I might have to try that option.    It's a buyer beware world out there, and if you have more money than you know what to do with you can buy anywhere and take your chances.  The rest of us have to do our homework before hitting the BIN button.  I have never used any of the auction houses, so I cannot comment on those.  Like many of us, I have my favorite dealers to buy from, and I purchase many comics from shops, usually at a large discount because comic shops usually don't have a large GA clientele.   All that said, I especially like buying on the boards because I can communicate easily with sellers and make deals. 

Edited March 18, 2020 by Tri-ColorBrian

[LearnedHand]

2 hours ago, mycomicshop said:

One thing that that to me seems often overlooked in discussions like this, is people tend to act like auction is the only way to sell. In my opinion auction is a great way to sell in certain circumstances: if you're pressed and need the money ASAP, or if your books are in a seller's market: rare or rare in high grade, highly sought after and rarely available. When you auction it there will be pent up demand for your books, probably a nice bidding war, and because the book doesn't come to market frequently you may be comparing your sale to prices from several years ago, so after the auction's over you'll feel good about the strong price you got.

But if what you have is a buyer's market book, more frequently traded and available, then the bidding war won't be as aggressive. By putting your book in auction, your price will be set by the second place bidder in that auction. The winning bidder will usually have been willing to pay more, but the second place bid determines what the winning bid will be. Whereas with a buy it now sale, you only need one buyer to meet your price, and you have zero price risk since you control your sale price.

My sense as a seller looking at the sales that constitute the GPA average (or any market average) is this: broadly speaking, auctions tend to average around 90-93% of GPA. Some will be higher, and some will be lower, but around 90-93% is roughly the average for a good, highly visible auction from a reputable venue/seller. Buy it now sales tend to be higher than auction sales, and combining higher BIN sales with lower auction sales is what produces the GPA average.

We do both auctions and BIN, and we sell our own inventory in both formats, but we sell significantly more as BIN than as auction, which is probably the reverse of what HA, CC, CL do. For any book that sells for more than $300 our rates are lower than 10%, 8% $300-3000 and 6% over $3000. If I were a seller with books in that price range, rather than trying to guess which auction might result in a higher net to me after fees, I'd go with the option where I fully control the price and pay less than 10%. I think a lot of buyers have done so much buying from auctions at HA, CL, CC, that inertia and habit tend to focus them on those being the only ways to sell.

If I'm a seller with lots of books to sell: I can auction them all, averaging 90-93% of GPA, minus 10% fees (or more with HA if not negotiated down). I get 80-83%ish of market value after fees. Or I can do BIN sale, sell at 100% of GPA, and pay 10%, 8%, or 6% commission depending on sale price, keeping 90-94% of market value. (or sell on the boards and pay no fees, but that's more work and the market is smaller). I'd choose the BIN option as my default unless I'm in an especially big hurry to sell the book, or it's a really desirable seller's market book where I'm content to let the auction dictate the price, or if I've already tried BIN sale at 100% of GPA for some amount of time and haven't gotten a buyer.

 

Regarding our own pricing, if anybody's interested in a book you think we have overpriced, feel free to PM me and I may be able to bump it down. One of the things I'm currently working on is refocusing our pricing to track more closely to current market and GPA, often starting in the range of 5-10% above GPA average (not GPA high), and dropping from there if not sold after 2-3 months. There's some stuff with very little sales data to go on where we sometimes price higher based on what we think it will get, but if it doesn't sell we'll usually drop it after a month or two. There's also some titles where we consistently get on the high side of GPA, and we'll price accordingly based on what we know we can sell it at.

 

Good post.  

I'd like to point out some other aspects that also get overlooked, to add to your points with respect to BINs:

Many sellers aren't fully in command of what the market will bear for many books, so a BIN might not always be a good idea, as this can leave $$ on the table.

While BIN books sell every day, there are very many BIN books that sit on eBay for eons.  There is a time-value of money and opportunity lost by waiting for items to sell via BIN and not having those funds available for other purchases.    

When I see a "BIN" seller who has books priced well over GPA, experience has taught me to put that seller in the "avoid" category.  I would contact these "BIN" sellers and ask if they'd sell at even high GPA.  Invariably, responses were "GPA is too low."  In a sense, this is laughable, as GPA is a ticker-tape of actual sale prices, even if not 100% comprehensive.  So, the corollary is - if I decide to sell books, the last person I would ever trust them to is one of these "BIN" sellers.  I assume that, like me, others don't take them seriously and therefore my items might sit unsold indefinitely, or will not do as well due to a limited audience.  

Finally, even pros that know how to price can't anticipate bidding wars between people caught up in the frenetic pace of an auction setting.  A BIN might offer certainty, but I think it can also amount to opportunity lost.             

As such, the fees charged by auction houses are sort of incidental to the overall analysis for me - with the understanding that, as I indicated in my first post, the fees are generally equivalent, as has been my experience.    

 

Edited March 19, 2020 by LearnedHand