Harley Yee's New-In-Stock. GA, SA, BA!

[DKB]

He grades your books for you ya? Isn't that what you get out of it? Works for me!

 

Yeah, the one internet transaction I've had with him was like pulling teeth. He's all over the place and real hard to pin down.

[nearmint]

It's nice that you can search by publisher, but why isn't Nedor one of the options?

[HouseofComics.Com]

He grades your books for you ya? Isn't that what you get out of it? Works for me!

 

Yeah, the one internet transaction I've had with him was like pulling teeth. He's all over the place and real hard to pin down.

 

You've sort of got it right. He graded books for John Procter and when John retired, I ended up with a few thousand Harley graded HG bronze. If you see HG 20-cent to 35-cent books on our site it is almost certainly a Harley-graded unread book out of a huge LA collection. I wish he would drop by and grade the 4000 1965-1975 Marvels I still have unprocessed from the HiJinx buy.

 

I'm not surprised at your Harley internet story. I know they sometimes even ship books same day (!) when ordered through the site but quite often he is on the road with the best books. If you're ordering "catalog" books, the lower-priced books that don't go to shows, they ship very fast. Otherwise, it's luck of the draw. I know his policy is to sometimes ship books back to Livonia while he's on the road so they can then be shipped to people but obviously he's not operating on "internet time" like the rest of us.

 

I imagine that most people look at his site and then call him. Even before we redid his site and his site was way out of date and had no shopping cart, he was selling good amounts of comics that people would see on the site and call him about.

 

Marc

[sterlingcomics]

are his prices for NM to NM+ raw books based on what a slab would go for?

Yes.

 

sure, he's a reputable dealer, but he ain't providing a lable and a comic entombed in plastic or anything.

That's my concern. I've heard the word "spotty" in reference to his grading, but I haven't purchased from him yet. I know I would be very unhappy if I ordered a raw 9.6 book priced at 5x guide and got a 9.2

[HouseofComics.Com]

It's nice that you can search by publisher, but why isn't Nedor one of the options?

 

You are absolutely right! What I wanted to get is a list of publishers Harley thinks we should have but we haven't gotten to that yet. I have hand-coded over 20,000 of his comics with publisher info, so it is coming.

 

I'd be delighted to take suggestions from board members about which GA publishers should be listed. I don't want to have one of those giant lists of 200 publishers that is hard to use and causes the important ones to be lost amid the unimportant.

 

I'm not sure that Harley even has any Nedors at the moment. Here's what we have on house of comics:

 

Black Terror 12 GD/VG 79.00 Nedor

Exciting Comics 64 VG 110.00 Nedor

Exciting Comics 67 GD/VG 38.00 Nedor

Exciting Comics 68 VG/FN 58.00 Nedor

Exciting Comics 69 VG 46.00 Nedor

Happy Comics 30 VG Tennis cover, Frank Frazetta vignette illustration inside 20.00 Nedor/Standard

Startling 51 VG 140.00 Nedor

Thrilling Comics 40 VG/FN 120.00 Nedor

Thrilling Comics 66 GD/VG 65.00 Nedor

Wonder Comics 9 GD+ Wonderman begins 70.00 Nedor

Wonder Comics 18 GD+ 79.00 Nedor

 

These would all hit our free shipping minimum ($30) except the Happy Comics.

 

Come on guys, hit me with some publishers to add to both Harley's site and ours.

 

Cheers,

Marc

 

[Foolkiller]

One of the reasons that I've always been willing to pay through the nose with Harley is that his raw grading is generally very good. Most of the time the books I've paid 4x-5x guide for as raw 9.6s (end up being 3x guide after discount usually) are just what he says.

 

Harley does come up with some real stunners, hence why I still will shop with him and his set up always has to get a look.

[Sal]

It's nice that you can search by publisher, but why isn't Nedor one of the options?

 

You are absolutely right! What I wanted to get is a list of publishers Harley thinks we should have but we haven't gotten to that yet. I have hand-coded over 20,000 of his comics with publisher info, so it is coming.

 

I'd be delighted to take suggestions from board members about which GA publishers should be listed. I don't want to have one of those giant lists of 200 publishers that is hard to use and causes the important ones to be lost amid the unimportant.

 

I'm not sure that Harley even has any Nedors at the moment. Here's what we have on house of comics:

 

Black Terror 12 GD/VG 79.00 Nedor

Exciting Comics 64 VG 110.00 Nedor

Exciting Comics 67 GD/VG 38.00 Nedor

Exciting Comics 68 VG/FN 58.00 Nedor

Exciting Comics 69 VG 46.00 Nedor

Happy Comics 30 VG Tennis cover, Frank Frazetta vignette illustration inside 20.00 Nedor/Standard

Startling 51 VG 140.00 Nedor

Thrilling Comics 40 VG/FN 120.00 Nedor

Thrilling Comics 66 GD/VG 65.00 Nedor

Wonder Comics 9 GD+ Wonderman begins 70.00 Nedor

Wonder Comics 18 GD+ 79.00 Nedor

 

These would all hit our free shipping minimum ($30) except the Happy Comics.

 

Come on guys, hit me with some publishers to add to both Harley's site and ours.

 

Cheers,

Marc

 

you know what you need for both sites?

 

to get rid of the page numbering setup for looking up books and go with an alphabetical setup. i for one enjoy browsing for books, and have been known to make impulse buys in the past, but you have both his and your site set up to actively discourage browsers.

 

when i get the Golden Age section of Harley's site to load - which took a LOT of time on my Firefox 1.0.7 Windows 2k work system - i am faced with a stack of page numbers with no breaks between letters.

 

so even if i wanted to take a look in the N's, i would be forced to guess which number it starts with.

 

 

if you rely on people to show up with lists of books they are looking for - pushing them towards the Search function, which works quite nicely by the way - then you are going to miss out on the "Oh, hey, I remember that book, I think I should quite like to buy it" factor.

 

my .02.

 

Marc

[Mr. Zipper]

It looks like Harley is onto a new marketing angle -- super premium slab pricing without the inconvenience of those obtrusive slabs.

 

Harley's grading is not that tight... so for the price listed, there's a good chance you may be getting a book in less than advertised condition. Does anyone actually pay these prices for raw and possibly overgraded books?

[namisgr]

It looks like Harley is onto a new marketing angle -- super premium slab pricing without the inconvenience of those obtrusive slabs.

 

Harley's grading is not that tight... so for the price listed, there's a good chance you may be getting a book in less than advertised condition. Does anyone actually pay these prices for raw and possibly overgraded books?

 

Yes. For one thing, there is no "First Rule of Comic Collecting" which states that every collector must select books on the basis of the grading criteria being used by the CGC. We all know that the CGC grade emphasizes the cleanliness of the four corners and all the edges, but de-emphasizes sun shadows, slight edge tanning, miswraps, loss of cover whiteness, crooked cuts, transfer stain, and poor staple placements. I'd gladly purchase a book at a multiple of guide listed by a dealer as a NM+ copy that would only receive a 9.4 from CGC owing to some minor corner fuzzing or tiny indentation, but that has outstanding cover color preservation, wrap, staple placement, etc. - in other words, exceptional QP and eye appeal.

 

Second, there is no "First Rule of Comic Selling" which states that the CGC slab transforms the sale price of a high grade book. As I've stated before, the CGC slab does not contain magic pixie dust, and there is no reason why high grade raw unrestored books can't be offered for sale at prices that approach those of encapsulated books receiving the same ostensible grade.

 

Third, plenty of people are paying seemingly outrageous prices for possibly overgraded books that reside in CGC slabs, so why should raw books be any different?. We've all seen plenty of examples of, shall we say, "generous" CGC grades. We've also seen more than a fair share of books being graded by CGC excessively harsh and receiving undeservedly low grades. It's all part of the imperfect and very human nature of comic book grading.

 

Finally, I believe a comic dealer can charge whatever the hxll they please for their inventory. After all, only they, and not you, know how much they've got invested in a book, how much cash flow they need to generate, how easily a sold book may be replenished, how much demand there will be among regular clientele, etcetera. There are alot of seemingly crazy prices being asked in the marketplace, and no single dealer has a patent on the craziness.

[nearmint]

You sure about the pixie dust thing? I'm pretty sure I've paid extra for the pixie dust.

[whomerjay]

It looks like Harley is onto a new marketing angle -- super premium slab pricing without the inconvenience of those obtrusive slabs.

 

Harley's grading is not that tight... so for the price listed, there's a good chance you may be getting a book in less than advertised condition. Does anyone actually pay these prices for raw and possibly overgraded books?

 

Yes. For one thing, there is no "First Rule of Comic Collecting" which states that every collector must select books on the basis of the grading criteria being used by the CGC. We all know that the CGC grade emphasizes the cleanliness of the four corners and all the edges, but de-emphasizes sun shadows, slight edge tanning, miswraps, loss of cover whiteness, crooked cuts, transfer stain, and poor staple placements. I'd gladly purchase a book at a multiple of guide listed by a dealer as a NM+ copy that would only receive a 9.4 from CGC owing to some minor corner fuzzing or tiny indentation, but that has outstanding cover color preservation, wrap, staple placement, etc. - in other words, exceptional QP and eye appeal.

 

Second, there is no "First Rule of Comic Selling" which states that the CGC slab transforms the sale price of a high grade book. As I've stated before, the CGC slab does not contain magic pixie dust, and there is no reason why high grade raw unrestored books can't be offered for sale at prices that approach those of encapsulated books receiving the same ostensible grade.

 

Third, plenty of people are paying seemingly outrageous prices for possibly overgraded books that reside in CGC slabs, so why should raw books be any different?. We've all seen plenty of examples of, shall we say, "generous" CGC grades. We've also seen more than a fair share of books being graded by CGC excessively harsh and receiving undeservedly low grades. It's all part of the imperfect and very human nature of comic book grading.

 

Finally, I believe a comic dealer can charge whatever the hxll they please for their inventory. After all, only they, and not you, know how much they've got invested in a book, how much cash flow they need to generate, how easily a sold book may be replenished, how much demand there will be among regular clientele, etcetera. There are alot of seemingly crazy prices being asked in the marketplace, and no single dealer has a patent on the craziness.

 

Most of your points, except one are well taken and I tend to agree with them, on principle. But there is also the reality check. I personally tend to grade somewhat differently than does CGC, and I would bet that more buyers would prefer some of my raw NM (9.4's) to many of CGC's 9.4's. And in some of those instances I might be justified in charging more than the typical CGC 9.4 commands. But $175 for NM+ Champions #1 and $70 for NM+ #2 or #15? To quote a fellow board member (I wish I had the .jpg to insert here)- put down the pipe! Many here have roasted CHuck for a business strategy that assumes there is sufficient sell through on overgraded, overpriced books. Doesn't seem much different here. Curious pricing on HG GA pricing is one thing and might be justified, but the kind of prices Harley is charging for non-key SA and BA books is simply not right. If he's paying a big premium for the those books he's out of touch with reality. When someone buys one of those books at those prices, that (obvious novice) buyer will soon leave the hobby pissed off when he/she learns they've grossly overpaid. Also, one of the underlying assumptions is that Harley's a great grader. That is not the consensus opinion, which makes things all the worse.

[nochips]

When the "Champions" movie is announced, you'll all be sorry! It's coming out right after Dazzler, starring Paris Hilton. Blockbusters I tell Ya!

[HouseofComics.Com]

I don't know if there's a consensus opinion on anything but over the past year I've looked very, very carefully at all the threads comparing dealers and the majority opinion, if not consensus, is that Harley's grading is good. Lots of people on these boards swear by his grading. Some don't.

 

It seems to me the thing to do in terms of the Champions prices, etc. is to just make a note of them and then see if they are still in stock six months later and one year later. One could also take a catalog from a year ago and compare it to the most recent one and see what's sold.

 

Here are a couple sales that were deleted from the website recently, all raw. I don't know what the grades were, but I think they are of some interest.

 

Adventure Comics

401 175.00

402 175.00

 

Amazing Spider-Man

148 85.00

238 150.00

 

Avengers

130 100.00

 

Brave and the Bold

72 300.00

 

Shanna the She Devil

5 120.00

 

Star Spangled War

147 280.00

[HouseofComics.Com]

I've quoted your post below. Greggy and others have said the same thing. I agree the alphabetical version is needed and we are going to make that change. Our programmer was supposed to deliver a way to segment our database that would work with his templates or publishing or something and ... he just hasn't gotten to it. I appreciate your taking the time, because it's helpful.

 

I don't quite get the logic of it though and maybe someone can help me out. Our absolute first goal was to save clicks for the power users. To that end we try to prominently feature title search (especially on HOC) and it goes right to the first title by that name, as per Overstreet. Ie, if you type in Supergirl I'm going to assume you want the 1974 series and have that first. We may have the later series but you'll have to possibly jump ahead a few pages. The more modern series aren't our focus (and certainly aren't Harleys) so I'm biasing the site towards the collectors, more than the "readers" who buy $2 recent comics. This means I do not make you go to a page that then makes you pick Supergirl (1974) or Supergirl (1996) or Supergirl (2005). We save everyone at least one page vs sites like Mile High, Lone Star, etc.

 

So it does promote title search, for collectors. For the browsers who as you rightly pont out, may well find cool stuff that they aren't actively looking for, we try to have all possible search criteria coded in. That means genre, publisher, age, grade, etc. It's very helpful to look at all GA Archies or all VG Silver Age Marvel superheroes. So I fully agree with you about the browsing angle.

 

What I don't get is why it makes a lot of difference whether you are facing a search result with 25 pages or 100 pages vs 26 letters. If you are still looking for things randomly, how does it matter? If I want to browse golden age, do I think to myself, I want to browse golden age comics that being with the letter "N"? No, I think I want to just browse GA. Or I want to browse GA westerns. Or GA DCs.

 

It is true that facing a search result with hundreds of pages is daunting. I think Marvel search or DC search on HOC gets you 400 or 500 pages. But for other searches by page is much better. If HOC has 25 pages of GA I'd hate to have starting letters that might only have 4 comics on a page. Q anyone? GA by genre would be even smaller. Maybe we need to do some sort of mix--some big searches are by letter, smaller ones just by page number.

 

Anyway, sorry to ramble on like this. I hear you man! People want it, they will get it.

 

 

 

you know what you need for both sites?

 

to get rid of the page numbering setup for looking up books and go with an alphabetical setup. i for one enjoy browsing for books, and have been known to make impulse buys in the past, but you have both his and your site set up to actively discourage browsers.

 

when i get the Golden Age section of Harley's site to load - which took a LOT of time on my Firefox 1.0.7 Windows 2k work system - i am faced with a stack of page numbers with no breaks between letters.

 

so even if i wanted to take a look in the N's, i would be forced to guess which number it starts with.

 

 

if you rely on people to show up with lists of books they are looking for - pushing them towards the Search function, which works quite nicely by the way - then you are going to miss out on the "Oh, hey, I remember that book, I think I should quite like to buy it" factor.

 

my .02.

 

Marc

[Kakapo]

I don't know what the grades were, but I think they are of some interest.

 

Adventure Comics

401 175.00

402 175.00

 

Amazing Spider-Man

148 85.00

238 150.00

 

Avengers

130 100.00

 

Brave and the Bold

72 300.00

 

Shanna the She Devil

5 120.00

 

Star Spangled War

147 280.00

 

They'd better all be 9.8s...

[ComicSupply]

Probably were NOT

[october]

Shanna the She Devil

5 120.00

 

[the blob]

the shanna #5 was a very rare 32 cent variant only sold in the eastern suburbs of little rock

[Darthdiesel]

the shanna #5 was a very rare 32 cent variant ...

 

 

I'm on it - booking a plane to Lttle Rock as we type..

[Sal]

I've quoted your post below. Greggy and others have said the same thing. I agree the alphabetical version is needed and we are going to make that change. Our programmer was supposed to deliver a way to segment our database that would work with his templates or publishing or something and ... he just hasn't gotten to it. I appreciate your taking the time, because it's helpful.

 

I don't quite get the logic of it though and maybe someone can help me out. Our absolute first goal was to save clicks for the power users. To that end we try to prominently feature title search (especially on HOC) and it goes right to the first title by that name, as per Overstreet. Ie, if you type in Supergirl I'm going to assume you want the 1974 series and have that first. We may have the later series but you'll have to possibly jump ahead a few pages. The more modern series aren't our focus (and certainly aren't Harleys) so I'm biasing the site towards the collectors, more than the "readers" who buy $2 recent comics. This means I do not make you go to a page that then makes you pick Supergirl (1974) or Supergirl (1996) or Supergirl (2005). We save everyone at least one page vs sites like Mile High, Lone Star, etc.

 

So it does promote title search, for collectors. For the browsers who as you rightly pont out, may well find cool stuff that they aren't actively looking for, we try to have all possible search criteria coded in. That means genre, publisher, age, grade, etc. It's very helpful to look at all GA Archies or all VG Silver Age Marvel superheroes. So I fully agree with you about the browsing angle.

 

What I don't get is why it makes a lot of difference whether you are facing a search result with 25 pages or 100 pages vs 26 letters. If you are still looking for things randomly, how does it matter? If I want to browse golden age, do I think to myself, I want to browse golden age comics that being with the letter "N"? No, I think I want to just browse GA. Or I want to browse GA westerns. Or GA DCs.

 

It is true that facing a search result with hundreds of pages is daunting. I think Marvel search or DC search on HOC gets you 400 or 500 pages. But for other searches by page is much better. If HOC has 25 pages of GA I'd hate to have starting letters that might only have 4 comics on a page. Q anyone? GA by genre would be even smaller. Maybe we need to do some sort of mix--some big searches are by letter, smaller ones just by page number.

 

Anyway, sorry to ramble on like this. I hear you man! People want it, they will get it.

 

 

 

you know what you need for both sites?

 

to get rid of the page numbering setup for looking up books and go with an alphabetical setup. i for one enjoy browsing for books, and have been known to make impulse buys in the past, but you have both his and your site set up to actively discourage browsers.

 

when i get the Golden Age section of Harley's site to load - which took a LOT of time on my Firefox 1.0.7 Windows 2k work system - i am faced with a stack of page numbers with no breaks between letters.

 

so even if i wanted to take a look in the N's, i would be forced to guess which number it starts with.

 

 

if you rely on people to show up with lists of books they are looking for - pushing them towards the Search function, which works quite nicely by the way - then you are going to miss out on the "Oh, hey, I remember that book, I think I should quite like to buy it" factor.

 

my .02.

 

Marc

 

well, in truth, all i did was click on the link - Harley's page I'm talking about now - for "Golden Age" and then waited a couple of minutes (!) for it to load. when it did finally load, i discovered that it defaulted to a numerical listing of ALL the Golden Age books. below this list of about one hundred ordered numerical links the actual links for each book began in alphabetical order.

 

so.

 

here is the thing. focusing on one specific shopper mentality isn't necessarily a bad thing, but ignoring the others is. you have a clear idea on what is important to people who know what they are looking for, and that's great. i am sure the search function is robust and easy to use, and a boon for people who just want to get in, find what they need, and get out.

 

but allowing them to do this violates every rule of retail that's ever been codified. you want to drag the "looking" part of the shopping experience out as much as possible without causing confusion or frustration, and make the payment part as fast as possible. by focusing so laser-like on the people who use the search function exclusively, you make it very difficult for the rest of the buyers who like to look through a list of items and then possibly pick up something they didn't set out looking for.

 

NewKadia.com has an interesting interface. in addition to their search functionality, they have the alphabet up at the top of the page, each letter a link to a set of alphabetised listings for all the books that begin with that particular letter. the other interesting thing that NewKadia does is break out each title into managable segments ordered by Issue number, rather than the way HOC and HY are set up. looking at Avengers, one has to wade through a list of 1 to like 40 or so, and guess from there which number he needs to click on to get to the range he is looking for. if i need forty Avengers books in my want list, what do you think would be easier, looking at a page of Avengers books from 101-125, or searching for each title by issue #? just asking.

 

have you ever done a usability survey for your users? or for a test group of people who may not already be users? it seems as though you are leaving a lot of dollars on the table by not casting your net as wide as possible.

 

i hope this criticism comes off as somewhat constructive, as i really don't wish to make you defensive or angry at my comments. i do know that quite a few people who consider you an excellent dealer and yet have expressed frustration at the way your programmer has set up your site, and would like nothing more than for your site to reflect your reputation rather than detract from it