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Advice/thoughts on large collection
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48 posts in this topic

As an alternative to dealers, ideally you would locate a private collector willing to make an offer for the lot.  For example, within the past year Regie Simmons purchased a collection of 100,000 comics of comparable age breakdown to what you have.  It takes time & patience, but an individual who is primarily a collector will oftentimes make a much better offer than a dealer can.  I think "Very Gary Comics" resides in your area and I would definitely try to contact him -- he travels to view collections and for such high-grade stuff; likely he would make an offer.  (I believe I have his current email address -- send me a PM if you are interested.)

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2 hours ago, EC Star&Bar said:

As an alternative to dealers, ideally you would locate a private collector willing to make an offer for the lot.  For example, within the past year Regie Simmons purchased a collection of 100,000 comics of comparable age breakdown to what you have.  It takes time & patience, but an individual who is primarily a collector will oftentimes make a much better offer than a dealer can.  I think "Very Gary Comics" resides in your area and I would definitely try to contact him -- he travels to view collections and for such high-grade stuff; likely he would make an offer.  (I believe I have his current email address -- send me a PM if you are interested.)

There aren't many collectors looking to make this kind of purchase.  I'm a collector that became a dealer after buying multiple collections over the years, and it becomes to the point you either have everything or are only looking for pieces of a collection so your purchase price eventually becomes a dealer rate (maybe a bit better).

I bought a collection of 10,000 comics a year ago similar to this one above (titles/years).  I'm a savvy buyer, with experience and connections to sell comics.  And even at that it takes a very, very long time to sell everything.  For me it's a labor of love, and even if you treat it like a business you're ROE is absolutely atrocious.  

You've gotten some good advice here, you can piece the collection out into bulk boxes and sell stuff by runs, titles, etc to get more out of it but it will still cost a lot.  And you still need to be able to grade, describe the comics, etc. 

Edited by spreads
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He has to be careful if deciding to cherry-pick the collection, because that can effectively kill interest in larger lots for the remaining books devoid of early issues and later keys.  I had the opportunity to go through a large SA collection in 2000 and the dealer was letting me buy almost anything I picked out for $5 per book.  I took all sorts of very high grade DC war, 80-pg Giants, obscure DC titles, and stunning copies of Showcase and B & B.  He regretted doing it, but needed the cash badly.  Some of those issues now guide for more than $200 each in about VF+ to NM.

Anyway my post in reply ended up in the wrong thread, but notice I said "ideally" as far as a collector buying the lot.  I wouldn't sell to Dolgoff for pennies per book.

 

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41 minutes ago, EC Star&Bar said:

He has to be careful if deciding to cherry-pick the collection, because that can effectively kill interest in larger lots for the remaining books devoid of early issues and later keys.  I had the opportunity to go through a large SA collection in 2000 and the dealer was letting me buy almost anything I picked out for $5 per book.  I took all sorts of very high grade DC war, 80-pg Giants, obscure DC titles, and stunning copies of Showcase and B & B.  He regretted doing it, but needed the cash badly.  Some of those issues now guide for more than $200 each in about VF+ to NM.

Anyway my post in reply ended up in the wrong thread, but notice I said "ideally" as far as a collector buying the lot.  I wouldn't sell to Dolgoff for pennies per book.

 

2000 Silver age comics is not apples to apples here.  The OP talking about a collection heavy in Moderns and Coppers, which probably won't garner interest of a number of big silver/golden dealers.  There's lots of non Marvel/DC runs that will sell, but if you strip every minor key $5-30 you won't be selling them as a run at all, regardless of the price...

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11 hours ago, Turnando said:

You have put so much work into looking at every book that I don't think selling it all at once is your best move.  Knowing exactly what you have probably won't get you much more money than if you had spent a week or so digging for keys to figure out approximately what you have... not if you are going to sell it as one lot.

I'm going to guess that you like to focus on details or you wouldn't have catalogued it like you did.  It would probably be just as fun to take on the job of selling them in small lots: here, there, everywhere.  It's the same kind of meticulous detail work that you already did to catalogue it. You'd make a lot more money if that's any incentive.

139 longs is a crazy collection.  We're talking hundreds (to thousands of hours) when you factor in listing, communicating lots, moving boxes, scheduling meetups, etc. etc. etc.  I bought a collection of 50 longs last year and it was a serious endeavor.  Unless you're retired and have no dependents (or hobbies really), it becomes a matter of, are you even capable of processing and selling this collection.  There's a reason why large collections like this don't see for anywhere near their retail value - it is a crazy amount of work. 

I'm not trying to belittle you, but I often see on these boards messages like, 'take a week off work and you can process a big collection', or 'it will be fun to sell here or there'.  Unless you've actually bought or processed a five digit collection you have no idea the commitment you're getting into.  

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8 minutes ago, spreads said:

139 longs is a crazy collection.  We're talking hundreds (to thousands of hours) when you factor in listing, communicating lots, moving boxes, scheduling meetups, etc. etc. etc.  I bought a collection of 50 longs last year and it was a serious endeavor.  Unless you're retired and have no dependents (or hobbies really), it becomes a matter of, are you even capable of processing and selling this collection.  There's a reason why large collections like this don't see for anywhere near their retail value - it is a crazy amount of work. 

I'm not trying to belittle you, but I often see on these boards messages like, 'take a week off work and you can process a big collection', or 'it will be fun to sell here or there'.  Unless you've actually bought or processed a five digit collection you have no idea the commitment you're getting into.  

Late nights all alone...:busy:

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I couldn't imagine that many comics to go through... but I wouldn't turn it down! 

Since January, I've bought collections of 1,800, 300, 3,500 and another 300. I'm still breaking off pieces of the 1,800 but I think I'm at least halfway through it. I've roughly organized the 3,500 and pulled out the high $ books, but I still need to bag and board 2/3 of them. One 300 I haven't touched and the most recent 300 are already sorted, bagged and boarded, so I've listed about 1/3 of that one. 

With an active young family, full-time job and woodworking side job, most of this work is done after everyone is asleep. Lots of late hours, but so worth it! 

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Many thanks to everyone with their great thoughts and insights.  Very much appreciated.

I just so happen to retire earlier this year (48 yr career) so as far as time goes, I should have all the "free" time now (pending, of course, on all of the "honey do" projects yet to be started ;)....

Luckily I have a very understanding wife who actually helped with the cataloging while I took all the snapshots. As far as using ebay or selling through this or other sites, I am comfortable with this approach only because I was very active in the early/late 90's using something new called "eBay" selling vintage Star Wars action figures, ships, etc.

I had thought about potentially taking the 100 highest Key's and potentially sending them in but again, this will increase overall costs and given current issues with USPS, this could take months, etc. given their current and I suspect future woes with 4Q this year.

I will now need to mull over next steps, etc. given everyone's most welcomed advice.  I will keep every posted on path forward.

Thanks once again.

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17 hours ago, swtrilogy said:

Many thanks to everyone with their great thoughts and insights.  Very much appreciated.

I just so happen to retire earlier this year (48 yr career) so as far as time goes, I should have all the "free" time now (pending, of course, on all of the "honey do" projects yet to be started ;)....

Luckily I have a very understanding wife who actually helped with the cataloging while I took all the snapshots. As far as using ebay or selling through this or other sites, I am comfortable with this approach only because I was very active in the early/late 90's using something new called "eBay" selling vintage Star Wars action figures, ships, etc.

I had thought about potentially taking the 100 highest Key's and potentially sending them in but again, this will increase overall costs and given current issues with USPS, this could take months, etc. given their current and I suspect future woes with 4Q this year.

I will now need to mull over next steps, etc. given everyone's most welcomed advice.  I will keep every posted on path forward.

Thanks once again.

You're welcome.

But just to reiterate what others have said....you really need to know the exact costs of what a book will get in each grade and be very, very good at grading before you start sending books in to CGC.  I'm in Canada, so my costs to send to CGC are even higher, so I need to be picky.  A batch of 9.4s vs 9.6s can mean all the difference in the world. 

It sounds like you're willing to put the time in which is good, perhaps I would suggest you shift gears and not worry about stuff like taking photos and writing everything down since there isn't much value in doing that.  Instead, spend you time figuring out how to grade and how to sell on ebay or elsewhere (how to pack comics an effective and bulletproof way), etc. etc. 

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Also, do not for the life of you break up a full run of books to sell the key separately!  The first hellboy is a classic example, if you strip out next men 21 and try to sell a near complete run it will be a massive headache - not worth the tiny little bit extra you get from stripping out the big book of that run.  If you really want to move books, you need to understand which ones can sell on their own as single issues or a run/arc, and which ones definitely won't and you have to keep the key/semi key in there to move them.  Anyways, i'm sure you'll figure all this out - probably a few months into selling.  :Dlol

 

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when I go back to your initial assessment of what you have, you said " 95% were in near mint or up condition".

That statement requires a serious understanding of grading. I can't tell you how many people have been disappointed when they wind up with grading done by CGC compared to what the owner thought the book graded out at. It makes a big difference on value and if you are trying to sell books in that grade range, they would indeed need to be slabbed or there are bound to be some major problems with sales. 

my opinion of course. 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Glassman10 said:

when I go back to your initial assessment of what you have, you said " 95% were in near mint or up condition".

That statement requires a serious understanding of grading. I can't tell you how many people have been disappointed when they wind up with grading done by CGC compared to what the owner thought the book graded out at. It makes a big difference on value and if you are trying to sell books in that grade range, they would indeed need to be slabbed or there are bound to be some major problems with sales. 

my opinion of course. 

 

 

Thanks for your response. I based this observation based on literally handling/viewing each and every comic individually.  It helped that the backer board was pre-cut and inserted into the middle of the comic which allowed me to view the FC and BC for obvious signs of issues (i.e., creases, spine ticks, blunted corners, stains, etc.).  Although I didn't open each comic (only keys/minor keys, top sellers for re-bagging), the fact that the majority didn't have any creases, spine ticks, etc. led me to believe that the original owner was very careful packing each and every comic for the long term.

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Hi all.  Been a trip so far talking to collectors/dealers about the collection.  I have had great conversations and many have offered their thoughts about the collection.

I do have one question for everyone.  What are your thoughts about consigning to an auction house like Hakes?  Pros/Cons?  I had a preliminary discussion with them and they mentioned that there could be 800-1,200 books that they may want to slab (of course this cost would be born by me as far final auction costs) and 10% flat fee.  As far as the remaining bulk, it would be broken into lots and sold and others single issues.

Trying to determine what, if any, downside to this besides potentially waiting months or longer for any returns.

Thanks a million!

Nick

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1 hour ago, swtrilogy said:

Hi all.  Been a trip so far talking to collectors/dealers about the collection.  I have had great conversations and many have offered their thoughts about the collection.

I do have one question for everyone.  What are your thoughts about consigning to an auction house like Hakes?  Pros/Cons?  I had a preliminary discussion with them and they mentioned that there could be 800-1,200 books that they may want to slab (of course this cost would be born by me as far final auction costs) and 10% flat fee.  As far as the remaining bulk, it would be broken into lots and sold and others single issues.

Trying to determine what, if any, downside to this besides potentially waiting months or longer for any returns.

Thanks a million!

Nick

I'm not familiar with them....but I find auctions are only a good place to dump bulk boxes that might get you a buck a piece, if broken out by their smaller lots.  I'm very weary of anyone that sells there could be 800-1200 books to be slabbed.   

Honestly, I've bought about 4 collections a year in the last 5 years alone and can tell you very few books are worth sending off to be slabbed.  Out of my 10,000 comic purchase I sent in less than 1%, and there were some big keys in there - hulk 181, iron man 1, etc.......

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1 hour ago, spreads said:

I'm not familiar with them...

 very few books are worth sending off to be slabbed.  Out of my 10,000 comic purchase I sent in less than 1%, 

I agree. In the collection I sold to Storms, we had two copies of ASM 129 in the 9.+range, the ASM 121 at an 8.5, an ASM 16 as a 9.0 and the AF 15 as a 5.0. Those were the only comics deemed worthy of slabs. I think Bob handled the rest as raw on backer boards and almost all of them were bought off the newsstand by me. There were around 950.  The ASM 121 was what I thought to be pristine but 8.5 was the grade. The two 129's were .4 apart because of a tiny ink spot on the back cover that clearly occurred while printing. The demand differences between an 8.5 and a 9.4 are substantial and difficult to realize. At a certain point, the only ones making money are the slabbing company.  I had a lot of very nice books. Now I just have my JIM and Thor through 200 and I kept them because I like the notion of Thor fighting South American Revolutionaries trying to suppress democracy.  The early days were great with the real Jane Foster. twenty cents a comic became too rich for my blood. 

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1 hour ago, 42-39-56 said:

I'll never understand why the 78th appearance of Iron Man is a "key". :facepalm: :pullhair:

Iron Man 55 was what floored me. I saw it in Overstreet and went back to my collection in disbelief  and there it was- perfect except the pages had turned cinnamon brown which did not happen to any other book in the 950. 

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slabbing 800-1200 books is insane. If the cost of slabbing is the issue, sell some boxes or runs first and use that money to slab the keys, or at least some of them. Use the comics to generate the money to slab, but 800-1200 is insane and as someone else said above, that only benefits the slabbing company.

 

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5 minutes ago, 42-39-56 said:

Doesn't MCS and Clink have a program where they pay for slabbing and you pay them back when the book sells on their site?

Per discussion with Hakes, same thing.....once the book sells, they deduct the slabbing fee.

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