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

[Math Teacher]

On 3/18/2020 at 4:26 PM, mycomicshop said:

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.

I was always under the impression that negotiating was not allowed with your business. Obviously, I was wrong.

I guess what thing that frustrates me about your site is the large discrepancy in pricing for the same book. I found this example in less than two minutes. If I had more time (my wife told me dinner was in 15 minutes), I'm sure I could find other examples.

X-Men #9 - CGC 5.0 - $325; X-Men #9 - CGC 5.0 - $499; same page quality. The 2nd book, same grade, same page quality, costs 54% more than the first book.

Let's say I sent a book to you to be sold on consignment, and I asked that the price be set at $499. I would appreciate this kind of input: "Yes, we can put a price of $499 on your book. But, just so you know, another book that is basically the same as yours has an asking price of $325. Perhaps you might want to rethink your asking price." Yes, I understand that you can't force the seller to lower his/her price, but I think that this would decrease the number of the inevitable calls asking, "Why hasn't my book sold?" Honestly, some of the pricing discrepancy you have borders on the ridiculous pricing on Ebay. If I was coming to you to sell my book, I would like to have access to the wisdom you have gained from your years of experience. As a seller, I would appreciate the honesty of your opinion to indicate that the price I was asking was higher than 1 - 2 other books in the same grade. I have no doubt that some people who sell with you are experienced collectors, but I would imagine that there are also some who are just getting started. For these people, the likely thought process might be, "Hey, I saw this book offered on Ebay for $XXX. I should be able to get that price also." These are the people who could use your advice based on your years of experience.

[jimbo_7071]

15 hours ago, Joe Ankenbauer said:

I was always under the impression that negotiating was not allowed with your business. Obviously, I was wrong.

I guess what thing that frustrates me about your site is the large discrepancy in pricing for the same book. I found this example in less than two minutes. If I had more time (my wife told me dinner was in 15 minutes), I'm sure I could find other examples.

X-Men #9 - CGC 5.0 - $325; X-Men #9 - CGC 5.0 - $499; same page quality. The 2nd book, same grade, same page quality, costs 54% more than the first book.

Let's say I sent a book to you to be sold on consignment, and I asked that the price be set at $499. I would appreciate this kind of input: "Yes, we can put a price of $499 on your book. But, just so you know, another book that is basically the same as yours has an asking price of $325. Perhaps you might want to rethink your asking price." Yes, I understand that you can't force the seller to lower his/her price, but I think that this would decrease the number of the inevitable calls asking, "Why hasn't my book sold?" Honestly, some of the pricing discrepancy you have borders on the ridiculous pricing on Ebay. If I was coming to you to sell my book, I would like to have access to the wisdom you have gained from your years of experience. As a seller, I would appreciate the honesty of your opinion to indicate that the price I was asking was higher than 1 - 2 other books in the same grade. I have no doubt that some people who sell with you are experienced collectors, but I would imagine that there are also some who are just getting started. For these people, the likely thought process might be, "Hey, I saw this book offered on Ebay for $XXX. I should be able to get that price also." These are the people who could use your advice based on your years of experience.

I don't think most of the consignors care about honest feedback; I think most of them hope an uneducated buyer will pull the trigger on impulse without shopping around. Some of them list two copies of the same book; they'll deliberately price one sky high to make the other one look like a good deal. Maybe the book you mentioned is really only worth $150. The $325 copy looks like a great deal even though it's overpriced by 117%.

[mycomicshop]

On 3/19/2020 at 5:42 PM, Joe Ankenbauer said:

I was always under the impression that negotiating was not allowed with your business. Obviously, I was wrong.

I guess what thing that frustrates me about your site is the large discrepancy in pricing for the same book. I found this example in less than two minutes. If I had more time (my wife told me dinner was in 15 minutes), I'm sure I could find other examples.

X-Men #9 - CGC 5.0 - $325; X-Men #9 - CGC 5.0 - $499; same page quality. The 2nd book, same grade, same page quality, costs 54% more than the first book.

Let's say I sent a book to you to be sold on consignment, and I asked that the price be set at $499. I would appreciate this kind of input: "Yes, we can put a price of $499 on your book. But, just so you know, another book that is basically the same as yours has an asking price of $325. Perhaps you might want to rethink your asking price." Yes, I understand that you can't force the seller to lower his/her price, but I think that this would decrease the number of the inevitable calls asking, "Why hasn't my book sold?" Honestly, some of the pricing discrepancy you have borders on the ridiculous pricing on Ebay. If I was coming to you to sell my book, I would like to have access to the wisdom you have gained from your years of experience. As a seller, I would appreciate the honesty of your opinion to indicate that the price I was asking was higher than 1 - 2 other books in the same grade. I have no doubt that some people who sell with you are experienced collectors, but I would imagine that there are also some who are just getting started. For these people, the likely thought process might be, "Hey, I saw this book offered on Ebay for $XXX. I should be able to get that price also." These are the people who could use your advice based on your years of experience.

You can't negotiate by emailing our regular customer service, but if you want to PM me here on the boards, I'm happy to discuss with you.

When a consignor sets a price on their item, we show them all of this information:

• prices, details, and length of time in stock of all other inventory currently listed with us
• recent sales within the nearby grade range for the consigned item
• GPA average data for nearby grade range for the consigned item

Example screenshot is attached, this is what somebody would see who was pricing an X-Men #9 in 5.0.

The information you're asking about is already there, largely. There's more we can do as a company to improve this further, provide specific recommendations, and make it easier for consignors to review our recommendations and adopt them or make other changes/price reductions. All of that is part of a project I'm moving along.

[mycomicshop]

And a related issue is that the market isn't static--a price decision that might have made sense (or at least more sense) at the time it was first assigned, can become less attractive at a later date if new competing inventory gets listed for sale at a lower price, or if price trends move down. Mechanisms to make it easier to keep up to date with an ever-changing market, and quickly and easily review your unsold items and adjust as needed--something we're working on.

[Math Teacher]

2 minutes ago, mycomicshop said:

You can't negotiate by emailing our regular customer service, but if you want to PM me here on the boards, I'm happy to discuss with you.

When a consignor sets a price on their item, we show them all of this information:

• prices, details, and length of time in stock of all other inventory currently listed with us
• recent sales within the nearby grade range for the consigned item
• GPA average data for nearby grade range for the consigned item

Example screenshot is attached, this is what somebody would see who was pricing an X-Men #9 in 5.0.

The information you're asking about is already there, largely. There's more we can do as a company to improve this further, provide specific recommendations, and make it easier for consignors to review our recommendations and adopt them or make other changes/price reductions. All of that is part of a project I'm moving along.

This seems to very beneficial. This is the type of information I would want if I was putting a comic for sale. Still, there are books on your site that are over-priced. I am going to cite two examples.

Amazing Spider-Man #5 3.5 Unslabbed - $949.

GoCollect current value: $475, GPA most recent sale: $371, Ebay last sale: $679.

https://www.mycomicshop.com/search?ivitems=5169311#47973326

Amazing Spider-Man #28 - https://www.mycomicshop.com/search?ivitems=5169681#50800777

Unslabbed 3.5 - $99, Unslabbed 3.5 - $150, CGC 3.5 - $167.99

First, I have found your grading to be more than fair. If you have these two books graded at 3.5, they would probably get a 4.0 - 4.5 at CGC. And yes, I know a CGC graded comic should sell for more than an ungraded copy, but 70% higher?

I can see how you to present all pertinent information to your customers. As someone else has told me, just because I think the price is unreasonable doesn't mean a seller has to sell at my suggested price.

 

 

[mycomicshop]

43 minutes ago, Joe Ankenbauer said:

This seems to very beneficial. This is the type of information I would want if I was putting a comic for sale. Still, there are books on your site that are over-priced. I am going to cite two examples.

Amazing Spider-Man #5 3.5 Unslabbed - $949.

GoCollect current value: $475, GPA most recent sale: $371, Ebay last sale: $679.

https://www.mycomicshop.com/search?ivitems=5169311#47973326

Amazing Spider-Man #28 - https://www.mycomicshop.com/search?ivitems=5169681#50800777

Unslabbed 3.5 - $99, Unslabbed 3.5 - $150, CGC 3.5 - $167.99

First, I have found your grading to be more than fair. If you have these two books graded at 3.5, they would probably get a 4.0 - 4.5 at CGC. And yes, I know a CGC graded comic should sell for more than an ungraded copy, but 70% higher?

I can see how you to present all pertinent information to your customers. As someone else has told me, just because I think the price is unreasonable doesn't mean a seller has to sell at my suggested price.

 

 

All those our examples are consignments. I make no claims about whether or not consignments are appropriately priced, because that's up to the consignors. We provide information to the consignor but we don't currently constrain consignor pricing, so consignors are free to price too high if they choose to do so.

Prices can be high (or just look high but actually be reasonable and successful) for various reasons:

- seller knows what he's doing and you'd be surprised when the book actually sells at the assigned price

- it's a raw book where the consignor believes that we've graded the book tighter than CGC would, and knows he can get a higher price for it accordingly

- consignor just got it wrong, didn't look at available info, or there's not much info to go on, and they made a mistake and priced too high

- seller knows the price seems high but irrationally sticks to it because they're only willing to sell if they can get some arbitrary amount in their head for the book (eg they paid too high when they bought it and they're not treating it as a sunk cost)

- seller is being strategic, has multiple copies of an issue, and prices one high to try to make others look more attractive

- seller is speculating that a book will be worth more in the future and doesn't mind sitting on it until/if the price moves up

- seller is hoping for an uninformed buyer to come along who will pay way too much

Long term we don't want to support most of those reasons for pricing high. We want to preserve flexibility for sellers to still be able to achieve new GPA highs and get strong prices, and we want to be flexible for books where there's not enough sales data to establish a clear price range, but we want to cut off the ability to set unrealistically high prices indefinitely.

Edited March 27, 2020 by mycomicshop

[Math Teacher]

It is clear that you are doing everything in your power to put reasonable sale prices on your book.

I apologize if my responses seemed like an attack on you and your business. That was not my intent.

I just expressed my opinion about your pricing, and, as we all know, opinions can be dead wrong.

Again, please accept my sincere apology. At this time, I consider this matter to be closed.

 

Joe Ankenbauer

[mycomicshop]

8 hours ago, Joe Ankenbauer said:

It is clear that you are doing everything in your power to put reasonable sale prices on your book.

I apologize if my responses seemed like an attack on you and your business. That was not my intent.

I just expressed my opinion about your pricing, and, as we all know, opinions can be dead wrong.

Again, please accept my sincere apology. At this time, I consider this matter to be closed.

 

Joe Ankenbauer

No apology needed whatsoever. I didn’t perceive anything you said as critical or rude. Was just trying to shed some light on things from our side. I welcome discussions like these. 

[Ryan.]

MCS does now have a best offer option for consignment items. So even if the ask price is high, as long as best offer is enabled, that changes the equation.