Yea really, give a thou or two, it’s been a while. Been collecting since the late 1960’s mostly Marvel and I have NO IDEA how to sell them or even if they’re worth anything. Very few are bagged, they look in pretty good condition, but I mean they’re just so many of them and I’m sure they run the entire grade range.
They’re in Big Plastic Tubs, mostly airtight…
We’re looking to move and quite frankly none of us has the strength to lug them AGAIN and I’m too busy to sort thru them…but I have a ton of stuff.
Tried to sell a random box at the local flea market but the Kids just weren’t interested and the Dads just looked sad and started telling me tales of their mothers throwing away their collections…I felt for them, but geez buy a Teen Titans or X-men or E-Man or Ghost Rider or something.
What would be the best way and easiest way to sell a LOT of comics and make a few bucks? Is a list mandatory? I know it would be a big help, but I just can’t do it…unless I have to.
Your best bet is to make a list of everything. Sorry, but nobody is going to want to buy what you have if you don’t tell them what you have. Maybe you can set a weekend afternoon aside, have a few beers, and have a friend or family member go through it all with you, or even hire some trustworthy kid or teenager to catalog your collection. But that’s almost definitely the way to go if you want to make ANY money at all.
After that, you could sell them as a lot on eBay, which might be your best chance to reach a lot of potential buyers. I’d recommend investing in an Overstreet comic book price guide to help you gauge how much you MIGHT make. I don’t collect comics older than the '80s, but I know that Silver Age stuff can be quite valuable, even if the condition isn’t great. As a seller, it would behoove you to have some idea. eBay itself is a good price guide, if you look at how much completed auctions closed for.
You can also contact the people at http://www.milehighcomics.com and http://www.mycomicshop.com/webuytrade/ , who have been known to buy large collections. They might not even care if you list them all, but again, it would be to your benefit to know what you have and how much it’s worth before you try to sell it.
I keep my entire collection catalogued and listed on a website for people to browse through and hopefully buy stuff, but it doesn’t seem like you want to sell an issue here or there. But I guarantee that if you listed them, you’d get quite a bit of interest. Good luck!
Seriously, if you want to get what they’re worth to a collector, BBVL has the right idea - you gotta go through, list what you got, get a price guide, etc.
On the other hand, you can put it out there for sale for what it’s worth to you personally - you get enough cash to satisfy you, and some lucky collector gets a good break.
I know… I was hoping someone would LIE to me. Thanks for the response. Another question, would it make sense to break them up in catorgies? You know Horror (Son of Satan, Ghost Rider etc) Super Heros, Marvel/DC/Independants and sell them as individual lots or just sell the whole lot and whatever happens, happens?
It’s good to separate them by title - lots of folks are looking for specific titles.
Incidentally, as a mini-hijack, BBVL : Any suggestions on the best way to index a collection? I’m working on doing it in a spreadsheet program (OpenOffice) but it’s tedious, time-consuming, etc.
Wow, sitting down and spending a day catalouging 10,000 comics from the last 50 years? Label me a geek, but that sounds like FUN. Heck, if you let me read some, I’d probably volunteer my time to help…but then again, if you let me read “some” it’d probably take MUCH more than a day. It’s a shame that you’re not ‘up to date’ on the comics in general. I’ll bet someone who was could quickly separate your comics into three piles. Pile #1 being “don’t bother trying to sell these on Ebay”, Pile #2 being “Sell these titles as a collection”, and Pile #3 being “Bag and Board these and sell them individually on Ebay”…or something similar.
The advice you’ve recieved is good. If you do post them on Ebay, either as a lot, or separated into individual titles, let us know…I’d love to buy a collection, and it’d be cool if doing it helped out a fellow doper. Good luck.
With that many comics it might be quite time consuming to sort them by title. You could sort them by genre like was suggested - hero, horror, etc.
It would be a good idea to go through some of it at least and see if there is anything there that is really valuable - I am sure there must be a few gems there. You could “cherry pick” the collection and sell those issues off individually and then sell the rest as lots.
eBay is a good bet, but you will have to think about how you are going to ship the lots of however many comics (and deal with people buying stuff somewhat anonymously over the internet).
There are a couple other options. If there are any local comic shops nearby you could offer to sell to them, or I know some shops where I used to buy did consignment on some stuff that people brought in, usually stuff the shop couldn’t really afford to buy to re-sell on their own.
Another option would be to check for an Auction house in your area. A friend of mine inherited a collection and after he sold off a lot at swap meets and eBay, he took a bunch that was left over to an auctioneer and got a pretty decent amount for it.
If you are concerned about getting the current value out of them then you are going to have to sort and make a list. If you just want to get rid of them and make whatever you happen to make off it then it’s less of an issue.
I agree with petelin - that actually sounds like fun. Where are you located? If you’re close to some geeky Dopers, they may actually volunteer in exchange for a beer and a 20% discount!
Is there any way to get a good idea of the value of comics on the internet without just watching eBay auctions? What sort of comics aren’t worth selling on eBay? Stuff like New Universe or kid’s comics? Unlike Holmes I’m not under any time pressure to get rid of them so I can go through and catalog them all, but I’ve got boxes and boxes of late 80s/early 90s comics that have been sitting in closets for years. There are some titles I want to keep, but I’d like to get rid of 90% of them.
How volitile are comic prices nowadays? Are prices for comics pretty stable nowadays? And if a comic is listed for $X in the Overstreet guide, is it realistic to think you can get more than, say, 50% of that on eBay?
You have to figure your opportunity costs. Most of those programs are simple DB programs. If you have Access (or the Open Office equivalent, I can’t think of the name right now), you can easily make a database that will translate issue ranges into discrete entries.
Comic Prices seem pretty stable for most things. There are some titles that will start out “hot” and whose price will fluctuate later. Things of the age you describe should be pretty stable, unless a well-known creator associated with them does something new and exciting, or dies.
Incidentally, Holmes, I would be very interested in any DC titles you may have from that era. Particularly Justice League, Adventure, Action, or the like.
What I’m gonna do is sort through 'em hopefully this weekend and post a link (if that’s allowed) to my homepage and have a list.
I’m not going to worry about grade, if they’re damaged i.e torn, water, the pen scribblings of a 8 year old, I’ll list that; otherwise I think I’ll leave them…I think that mostly pretty good shape, but I won’t know till I’m in the thick of it.
Works for me. For what it’s worth, Overstreet, in addition to making price guides, makes Book Grading Guides - so you can tell if a comic is Fine, Very Fine, Near Mint, etc.
Things to look for as Potentially Very Valuable from that era are Amazing Spider-Man, X-Men - pretty much any book that’s been turned into a recent Blockbuster movie.
Plus, Marvel was doing interesting things in the period. The revamped X-Men’s debut in Giant-Sized X-Men #1 … Wolverine’s Battle with the Hulk (the issue number escapes me) … the Punisher’s First Appearance in Amazing Spider-Man…
Funny thing is I have that X-Men, but the production quality was so low, I think the cover was originally glued on, so I think I stapled it when I was kid! That was also with the Wendigo AND Wolverine i want to say 164-165?and I have those spideys too!
Who knows, I might actually prove my mother WRONG! HA!
I’ve gone through and bagged most of mine in groups of 5-7 per bag by series or story arc, and priced them at $3 a bag. The intent was to put them in yard sales, but living in an apartment, the opportunity just hasn’t arisen. I do know which ones are worth more than others so I wouldn’t go nuts with that price on every set.
Hey Cisco, if you’re looking to buy anything, drop me an email. I can hook you up with some good sets…if you like mostly Marvel, that is.
First Wolverine: Incredible Hulk #181.
First Punisher: Amazing Spider-Man #129.
First “new” X-Men: Giant-Size X-Men #1; Uncanny X-Men #94.
Unfortunately, a lot of stuff from the early '90s is not very valuable, due to overprinting, speculators, and just poor quality. A lot of independent publishers all sprang up during this time with their own superhero universes, and despite all the hype of the era (multiple covers, gimmick covers, “superstar” artists, write-ups in Wizard magazine), a lot of those comics were just BAD. Trust me, I know, I’m stuck with a lot of them myself.
For those who want to buy, my collections are listed at http://www.geocities.com/bigbadvoodoolou/collecting.html . I just went through my comic boxes one by one, wrote everything down with pen and paper, typed up a list in Excel, and had Excel alphabetize the list for me. Then I just made it into an HTML document for my website.
