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MCS - new consignment terms
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54 posts in this topic

3 minutes ago, mycomicshop said:

Just updated today, plan to email consignors soon to discuss the changes. A few notes:

New terms fully go into effect August 1. Until then, if you already have items consigned with us, you'll get whichever commission rate would be lower, either from the old rates or the new rates, until August 1, then all will be at the new rates. There's not a huge difference between the two, mainly that all auctions are a flat 8% now, and that the minimum commission for raw books (sold as auction or BIN) increases from $5 to $7.

Auction rates are 8% across the board. BIN rates are 10% for first $300, 8% on any amount past $300.

Commissions are capped at $1000 for both auction and BIN sales.

We're taking two big steps to start encouraging pricing that's more likely to result in sales:

One, books have a set amount of time they can be listed as BIN: 6 months for market value below $50, 12 months for market value $50-1000, and 24 months above $1000. After that time is up, you either have to auction the book, or you have to opt in to start paying monthly storage fees on the book if you want to continue it as a BIN. Storage fees are not intended to be an income source for us, they're intended to be a disincentive against keeping books stored with us long term at a price where they're not selling. Unsold books take up a lot of space, both on the shelf and in safes and vaults where space is at a premium.

And two, at our discretion we can set a maximum price that a book can be listed at, and we may periodically lower that over time. The goal with this is not to remove consignor flexibility, or force books down to a sale as fast as possible. The goal is to provide a mechanism where we can gradually start bringing downward pressure on books that are overpriced and not selling. If we set a price lower than the consignor's currently listed price, the item will be temporarily delisted until the consignor takes action. The consignor can either set a new price at or below the current allowed max, or they can put the book in auction (or have it returned if unwilling to do either of those).

I feel good about the changes and think there will be significant benefits from them for us and consignors.

Great business move !!

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Fantastic changes, and I strongly approve of anything that discourages people from just camping on collectibles, priced at large multiples of FMV. I've had one such seller (not via MCS) tell me that he even tries to get other holders of the same items to do the same because "if everyone prices everything at 10x the last sale, then anyone who wants it has to pay it". Besides failing economics forever, that's also just rude.

These changes help MCS as a business, and combat that. Win. Win.

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18 minutes ago, Qalyar said:

Fantastic changes, and I strongly approve of anything that discourages people from just camping on collectibles, priced at large multiples of FMV. I've had one such seller (not via MCS) tell me that he even tries to get other holders of the same items to do the same because "if everyone prices everything at 10x the last sale, then anyone who wants it has to pay it". Besides failing economics forever, that's also just rude.

These changes help MCS as a business, and combat that. Win. Win.

These types of post are so much better when you say the name of the seller that told you that.  I'm tired of the "They said" posts on various social media platforms.  Who are "they?"  

Edited by blazingbob
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39 minutes ago, mycomicshop said:

Just updated today, plan to email consignors soon to discuss the changes. A few notes:

New terms fully go into effect August 1. Until then, if you already have items consigned with us, you'll get whichever commission rate would be lower, either from the old rates or the new rates, until August 1, then all will be at the new rates. There's not a huge difference between the two, mainly that all auctions are a flat 8% now, and that the minimum commission for raw books (sold as auction or BIN) increases from $5 to $7.

Auction rates are 8% across the board. BIN rates are 10% for first $300, 8% on any amount past $300.

Commissions are capped at $1000 for both auction and BIN sales.

We're taking two big steps to start encouraging pricing that's more likely to result in sales:

One, books have a set amount of time they can be listed as BIN: 6 months for market value below $50, 12 months for market value $50-1000, and 24 months above $1000. After that time is up, you either have to auction the book, or you have to opt in to start paying monthly storage fees on the book if you want to continue it as a BIN. Storage fees are not intended to be an income source for us, they're intended to be a disincentive against keeping books stored with us long term at a price where they're not selling. Unsold books take up a lot of space, both on the shelf and in safes and vaults where space is at a premium.

And two, at our discretion we can set a maximum price that a book can be listed at, and we may periodically lower that over time. The goal with this is not to remove consignor flexibility, or force books down to a sale as fast as possible. The goal is to provide a mechanism where we can gradually start bringing downward pressure on books that are overpriced and not selling. If we set a price lower than the consignor's currently listed price, the item will be temporarily delisted until the consignor takes action. The consignor can either set a new price at or below the current allowed max, or they can put the book in auction (or have it returned if unwilling to do either of those).

I feel good about the changes and think there will be significant benefits from them for us and consignors.

Good moves, Conan, and some that were likely necessary. 

One question: how is FMV on books determined, particularly with regards to consignment pricing caps and listing time limits? Presumably GPA will be used for slabs. Will raw books also be aligned with equivalent slab grade prices? 

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43 minutes ago, mycomicshop said:

Just updated today, plan to email consignors soon to discuss the changes. A few notes:

New terms fully go into effect August 1. Until then, if you already have items consigned with us, you'll get whichever commission rate would be lower, either from the old rates or the new rates, until August 1, then all will be at the new rates. There's not a huge difference between the two, mainly that all auctions are a flat 8% now, and that the minimum commission for raw books (sold as auction or BIN) increases from $5 to $7.

Auction rates are 8% across the board. BIN rates are 10% for first $300, 8% on any amount past $300.

Commissions are capped at $1000 for both auction and BIN sales.

We're taking two big steps to start encouraging pricing that's more likely to result in sales:

One, books have a set amount of time they can be listed as BIN: 6 months for market value below $50, 12 months for market value $50-1000, and 24 months above $1000. After that time is up, you either have to auction the book, or you have to opt in to start paying monthly storage fees on the book if you want to continue it as a BIN. Storage fees are not intended to be an income source for us, they're intended to be a disincentive against keeping books stored with us long term at a price where they're not selling. Unsold books take up a lot of space, both on the shelf and in safes and vaults where space is at a premium.

And two, at our discretion we can set a maximum price that a book can be listed at, and we may periodically lower that over time. The goal with this is not to remove consignor flexibility, or force books down to a sale as fast as possible. The goal is to provide a mechanism where we can gradually start bringing downward pressure on books that are overpriced and not selling. If we set a price lower than the consignor's currently listed price, the item will be temporarily delisted until the consignor takes action. The consignor can either set a new price at or below the current allowed max, or they can put the book in auction (or have it returned if unwilling to do either of those).

I feel good about the changes and think there will be significant benefits from them for us and consignors.

I didn’t see any information on comic lots.  Once things get back to normal, will you resume allowing groups of books to be auctioned?
 

Will there be any change to those fees ( 25% with a $12 minimum ) ?

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5 minutes ago, Ryan. said:

Good moves, Conan, and some that were likely necessary. 

One question: how is FMV on books determined, particularly with regards to consignment pricing caps and listing time limits? Presumably GPA will be used for slabs. Will raw books also be aligned with equivalent slab grade prices? 

FMV will be something we determine as necessary, based on GPA plus our own sales plus sales we’ve tracked from other venues. 

Our estimate of FMV tracks with slabbed but isn’t necessarily exactly the same. Many of our raws can sell for more than a slab with the same grade because of our tight grading—our understanding of FMV for raws takes that into account. 

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5 minutes ago, Hamlet said:

I didn’t see any information on comic lots.  Once things get back to normal, will you resume allowing groups of books to be auctioned?
 

Will there be any change to those fees ( 25% with a $12 minimum ) ?

Yes, we’ll reopen accepting multi item lots probably at the same time that we lower the threshold for submitting raw books back to where it was before. We haven’t done so yet because we still don’t have all of our graders back at work and don’t want to take on more books than we can keep up with. 
 

When multi item lots do reopen, the rates will be the same as they were previously. 

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2 minutes ago, mycomicshop said:

Yes, we’ll reopen accepting multi item lots probably at the same time that we lower the threshold for submitting raw books back to where it was before. We haven’t done so yet because we still don’t have all of our graders back at work and don’t want to take on more books than we can keep up with. 
 

When multi item lots do reopen, the rates will be the same as they were previously. 

Sweet!  Thanks!

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7 hours ago, Black_Adam said:

Also noted they now have a time frame where, if a consigned item doesn't sell, it must be auctioned or storage fees will be charged. That should clear out some of the riff raff!

:applause:

 

6 hours ago, mycomicshop said:

One, books have a set amount of time they can be listed as BIN: 6 months for market value below $50, 12 months for market value $50-1000, and 24 months above $1000. After that time is up, you either have to auction the book, or you have to opt in to start paying monthly storage fees on the book if you want to continue it as a BIN.

doh!

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9 hours ago, bb8 said:

Auctions aren’t just a flat 8%. They have a $7 minimum. So your auctioned book has to sell for about at least $88 to get the 8% rate.

True for raws--for slabs it remains $5. We increased the minimum for raw books to help insure we're making enough on low-priced raw consignments to keep up with our need for well-trained graders. That $5 minimum was first set when we opened consignment in 2010 and hasn't increased til now, but our expenses have increased appreciably over that time.

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1 hour ago, mycomicshop said:

True for raws--for slabs it remains $5. We increased the minimum for raw books to help insure we're making enough on low-priced raw consignments to keep up with our need for well-trained graders. That $5 minimum was first set when we opened consignment in 2010 and hasn't increased til now, but our expenses have increased appreciably over that time.

Looks like you’re trying to discourage lower-priced books from being offered for consignment. Probably smart.

Edited by bb8
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9 hours ago, bb8 said:

Looks like you’re trying to discourage lower-priced books from being offered for consignment. Probably smart.

Not so much discourage, as help us strike a better balance between the quantity of items needing to be graded and the number of trained graders we can provide to handle those books. If somebody wanted to consign a raw book that's going to end up selling for $20 where we'll make the $7 minimum commission on it, I'm fine with that. Books that low on the price range definitely aren't our primary focus with consignment, but if a seller is comfortable with selling under those terms then it works for me.

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Ebay should charge 10% of the listed price for items that have sat there for over 5 years.  That should weed out all $1,000,000 "RARE! L@@K!" items that aint worth squat except in the seller's deluded jackpot-fevered mind.  

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Seems I am in a minority but as a seller using MCS for consignments I will for the time being stop consigning more items to MCS (and I have informed Este and Conan of the same). While I price my items to sell and do auctions quite a few I do not wish to end up in a situation where I need to do a firesale. would be great if @Mycomicshop could consider to exempt sellers who generates a minimum turnover at a level to be decided by MCS from the storage fees.

I also see the new policy to reduce MCS's range of slabs for consignment but will probably sell more

 

Edited by Poka
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