Why the move to 0%?

I’ve decided to make an unprecedented move long term in the world of consignments. Previously, if a seller wanted to move their comics, some middle man always had a hand in their pocket trying to take their fair share. I want to help change that and create a more open marketplace. If you want to sell a CGC graded comic and know how much you want for the book, you can list it on Quality Comix and when it sells, 100% of the proceeds will go directly to you. No commissions, no hidden fees and no gimmicks.  The only catch is that you must have a scanner and scan each book that goes online which most of you do anyways.

Also, if you need pricing help, grading help or scanning help, Quality Comix can help with those tasks for a small commission of 5% of the sale price of each book for each service selected. In other words, if you need pricing, grading and scanning for a book, the commission on that book would be 15%. If you just needed grading and pricing help, then the commission would be 10% when the book sells. This method immensely benefits the regular sellers - the guys who know how to price, grade and sell their books and are looking for a FREE venue to market their books.

So, the first question that I’ve gotten when proposing this idea is “When will this introductory 0% commission end?”. And my answer is that “It won’t.” At least it won’t in the forseeable future. If the workload becomes too great for me and my staff, then I’ll have to reassess. But our plans are to roll out FREE consignments in the next month or so and then continue it indefinitely.

The next question I usually get about free consignments on Quality Comix is “How does Quality Comix benefit from all of this?”. And there’s an easy answer to that - Quality Comix hopes to attract a large percentage of the sellers from other websites to sell on Quality Comix thereby bringing more buyers to Quality Comix to buy consignor books and Quality Comix books as well. This will also bring Quality Comix closer to it’s vision of being the premier website for buying and selling comics on the internet. It doesn’t hurt that I strongly believe that if you give, you receive ten fold. I want to give customers more than they expect and free consignments should show that I’m putting my money where my mouth is.

If you have any books, especially CGC books, that you’ve been considering selling, but don’t want to get hammered by commissions, give me a call or email me. My email is bmoeshlin@qualitycomix.com and my phone is 334-300-1106.

We’ve all been used to the plethora of awesome books coming from Heritage over the past 7 years.  In the comic world, there has been no bigger beast in terms of the biggest books selling on the biggest stage.  How times have changed.

I’m sure that Heritage will continue to find nice collections via their advertising and also thru their incredible buying power.  Right now, however, Steve Geppi and Nicholas Cage aren’t around to prop up their auctions.  They don’t have a Crippen collection to milk and they are charging 4 times the buyer’s and seller premiums (if you combine them) that their competitors are charging.

To illustrate this point, I looked at the massive permanent auction archive that Heritage has generously put together.  According to their records, I gleaned some very interesting data.  While I didn’t put together the yearly sales figures for the company in the comics division, because that would take far too long, what I did do, was tally up the total number of lots sold for every year starting in 2002 which was the first full year of their signature (now called) auctions.  Below is the raw data (to the best of my ability to pull it) from their website.

Lots sold by year:
2002 - 6,164
2003 - 8,760
2004 - 6,300
2005 - 8,487
2006 - 9,546
2007 - 3,838

As you can see, in terms of number of items sold, 2007 was their worst year by far.  Of course, if the quality ie value of each book was extremely high, that might offset the lack of breadth in 2007, but this is unlikely.

2008 has started out WORSE, with their January auction only drawing a little over 300 lots so far.  In my eyes, their quality and breadth have dried up because of the advent of competitor sites who have always competed with a much smaller commission and are just now are starting to come in their own as legitimate contenders to the auction house throne.

What does the future hold for Heritage in comics, you ask?  Well, I don’t have a crystal ball and so cannot make any definitive prognostication, but I see 1 of 3 scenarios occurring.  The first scenario would involve a little bit of luck, but I can envision Heritage, with their enormous advertising budget, snagging more high profile collections in the future that would extend their lifespan in the comic auction world.  The second scenario would involve dropping their commissions across the board to a more reasonable 10 - 15% figure COMBINED.  Right now, they will give better than stated commission rates if you ask, and I believe this trend will only continue as their staff finds it more and more difficult to contend with their competitors commissions.  The third scenario would mean the end of Heritage as a player in comic auctions going the way of JP The Mint, Greg Manning and other former auction houses who thought they could branch out into comics but ultimately failed.

Heritage has very smart management and may find another way out of this downward spiral, but I’m having a tough time finding out what that scenario would be.  It will be interesting to watch this company over the next few years to see what it ends up doing.  Stay tuned!

GA Collection update

Rick did end up picking up the golden age collection in Florida and was nice enough to split it with me. The best book in the collection was the Startling Comics #49 which is a solid VG, maybe better. There were about 15 Timelys in the collection of which the nicest was a F/VF Human Torch #24. There were also some nice Thrillings and Startlings. Lots of low grade War books as well.  Many of them are up on QC already with more to come in the upcoming weeks.

Network of Disclosure update

Richard (of Bedrock City) decided to withdraw his membership application. He was catching a lot of heat from certain NOD members who didn’t like the fact that he had bashed the NOD for over a year and now wanted to be a member. In addition, the NOD bashers were asking him if he had gone insane. The pressure from both sides proved to be too much. The application did bring to light some organizational weaknesses within the NOD. The biggest one that I saw was our lack of responsiveness due to the red tape that we had created. Part of the problem was Richard had applied as a collector instead of a dealer.

I think many positive things are occurring for the NOD now. We are considering expanding the focus of the organization to include educational outreach on grading, restoration etc. And we are also considering a name change to coincide with this. All of these questions will be put to the membership in the form of a ballot. Exciting times ahead, we think.

Potential new partner for Quality Comix

For at least 6 months and possibly longer, a good friend and I have been discussing the possibility of a partnership. He is a collector - not a dealer. At least not yet. If and when my friend formally partners with QC, I’ll make an announcement on the homepage welcoming him. If it does come to pass, he will bring us lots of energy and great ideas.

So, this is my first post on my first blog, so let me begin by saying “Hello World!”. I intend to keep the blog mostly related to my experiences as a dealer and collector in the comic world with the occasional deviations to reflect on life, my beliefs and describe what’s going on with me. Blogs are by their general nature a bit narcissitic, so this should be right up my alley - my tongue is firmly implanted in my cheek.

GA collection

This weekend I will be heading down to Florida to look over a golden age collection. Both Rick Whitelock and I were called about the collection so he’s going to take a look at it and if it’s nice enough ie average grade = GD or better, then we’ll probably pick it up. There’s about 9 or 10 nice books in the collection followed by about 260 run of the mill books. The highlights are some Human Torches, some Subbys and a Startling Comics #49. Most of the other titles and issues are fairly common even though they are from the late 1940s. It is uncommon to run across an original owner golden age collection, so it’ll be nice to look at the books even if they aren’t high grade.

I’m looking forward to stopping by Rick’s place even more than I’m interested in looking at the GA books. As you may or may not know, Rick has one of the most extensive golden age collections that you’ve ever heard of. Complete runs of a lot of the major titles. If he’s kind enough to show some of them off to me, I’ll be taking notes on which books I’d like to be shopping for in the marketplace. He also has some silver age DC books from his silver age collecting days and I might pick those up for my website if the price is reasonable.

Silver age DC

Speaking of Silver age DC, Rick and I briefly talked yesterday about the value of low - mid grade SA DC, and it’s interesting because unless I price the books at 30 - 50% of guide, they generally just sit on my site unless a) it’s a key issue or b) it’s late 50s thru early 60s’. The mid to late 60s stuff you almost have to give away. Is this because the artwork/storylines were inferior to the earlier stuff? or just more common? or a combination of both? Or maybe Marvel has been so emphasized in the theaters that DC has taken a hit in the back issue market? Whatever the reason, the result that I’ve seen is that there are very few completist DC collectors out there just trying to find a particular issue to fill in the gaps. Maybe it also has to do with the fact that DC had a much, much longer run. For instance Batman runs from what? 1941 - present?

Network Of Disclosure (NOD)

I belong to an organization which promotes disclosure of any alterations that have been done to a comic. In my view, the organization fills a vacuum that exists in the hobby to have a collector advocacy group. Our mission fills part of that void as a group that promotes disclosure. Maybe one day we can expand that mission drastically to include other collector advocacy issues.

We (the NOD) has had it’s share of detractors. They share our general viewpoint that disclosure is good for the hobby, but they don’t like some of the members in the group and don’t like the way that we’ve gone about promoting this issue in the public eye. In response, we are learning as we go as we are a fledgling organization and will continue to refine things as we go.

I said all of the above to bring everyone the most shocking news of the year - Richard Evans of Bedrock City comics has applied to join the NOD. What’s shocking about this is that he’s been one of the NOD’s most outspoken critics over the last year or so. The only caveat with his application is that he applying as a collector and not as a dealer. That puts the NOD in a tough spot, because Richard can claim any sales that he publicly makes, he wouldn’t have to follow NOD guidelines because he’s not selling in his capacity as a collector. If the NOD refuses his membership, then Richard can say “See, look I’ve applied and they turned me down. At least I tried!” and then any criticism he makes he can’t be held accountable for because he tried to join and was turned down. I don’t have a say in whether Richard gets approved or not, but I certainly wish that Richard had applied without conditions. I guess that would have been too easy!