I have had a comic book collection sitting in boxes in the basement of my mother’s house for over 25 years. I’ve finally dragged them out, and plan to sell them. The collection consists of mostly Marvel & DC Comics from the mid-70s to the mid-late 80s. Mostly in very good, but not ‘mint’ condition (in good shape, but showing signs of aging). Most of my heavy-duty collecting actually came before the mad speculator collector boom in the late 80s, early 90. The earliest comic book I have is (I think) “Uncanny X-Men” # 29 (“When Titans Clash” - featuring a slug-fest between the Super-Adaptoid with all the powers of the Avengers vs. the Mimic who has all the X-Men’s powers.)
So what’s the best route I should take for selling them? Ebay? (I’ve bought, but never sold anything on Ebay.) Or should I ask at speciality shops? How do I figure out how much these books are worth? Any advice you can give me would be appreciated.
My husband manages a comic shop and I used to work for them too, so I have a some experience with this.
Comic shops that carry a lot of back issues might be willing to buy if you have something they need. I don’t know exactly what you have, but certain books will be more in demand than others. If it’s a lot of filler books from the late '70s and '80s, there’s a ton of that stuff lying around so you might have more trouble selling it to a shop. If you have some key issues (first appearances, other significant events), you’re more likely to get them to buy. At my husband’s shop, if a collection has enough issues that they don’t already have, and especially if it has some key issues that they know they eventually can resell, they usually will go for it. You might not get a ton of money, but you’ll get more than if you continue storing them in the basement. It really depends, so it couldn’t hurt to ask some of your local shops whether they might be interested.
If they’re not interested, you might try eBay. I’ve bought a fair number of comics that way, sometimes entire series. Selling them in lots is probably much more effective than selling individual issues.
The Overstreet Guide is the industry standard for pricing, though it’s just a guesstimate. You can get a pretty good idea of pricing and get info on whether individual issues are notable for some reason from Overstreet.
I should add that X-Men back issues tend to sell reasonably well, so if you have a lot of that kind of book you may have some luck.
What she said, basically. if you have time to spend, on photographing/shipping/packing/grading, etc., you can probably squeeze more out of eBay for them. Other than that, a local store owner is your best bet.
First of all, lower your expectations. Comic books aren’t the fabulous investment they’ve been made out to be, particularly issues from the 80’s on. though the stuff from the 70’s should do better, depending on their condition.
I would go through and find popular runs and issues that are popular (Miller’s run on Daredevil, for example), and set them aside to sell individually.
Take the rest and sell them as a bundle to the local comic book store that gives you the best offer for the set. Again, keep your expectations low.
Conversely, I am also curious in a different respect … what sort of market can one expect on the comics from speculation-inflated era of the late 80’s and early 90’s? I’m aware that, as has already been mentioned, most comics from this era were printed in abundance and weren’t any sort of investment vehicle, but I can’t imagine they’ve gone down in value, have they? I’ll admit, I have several from that era, but I don’t think they’d have gotten any more valuable than the $2.50 or so that they were worth then. Some might have gone up to $3.00, maybe $5.00, while some might even be utterly worthless and unsellable.
The real question is: are comics from that production-saturated era even sellable? Would comic shops even be willing to pay for them?
In many cases, no. Many shops already have several copies of that kind of issue sitting in overstock or clearance bins. When I worked at the store in 2002 (and it still happens), we had at least one or two people a week come in wanting to sell the “Death of Superman” polybagged issue with the black armband inside, etc. They were uniformly shocked to discover that it’s worth about $5.00, tops, and that we wouldn’t buy it at all because we already had a dozen or more copies. If people could eat comics, we could feed the world on crappy old Youngblood issues and the like.
My husband recently looked into disposing of his largish comic collection from the 70s-90s. What he found was that, aside from a VERY few titles, there was no resale market for it. At all. They were almost all in beautiful condition, had been stored nicely, and were titles that were popular at the time, but no one wanted 90% of them.
He ended up keeping a few favorites, selling some of the most collectible (I understand the Star Wars titles do well with specialist collectors, as does the ‘Sandman’ series), and donating the rest to a local book fair.
Just as a point here there is a question of time and effort. The collection buyer (usually a store) will give you your money right then and its over. You will get more from auctioning it off piecemeal but it will take a long time to move a comic book collection.
So let’s talk store for a moment:
Catalog the collection and have that information handy for the buyer. It is very likely that they’ll only want to see a few specific books since they probably have dozens of copies of some things already in the shop that don’t move.
Don’t make guesses about condition. Everyone overstates the condition of their books so if you do that before the store looks at it you will be disappointed. There’s only a handful of books that tend to move when you get down to “Fair” condition so don’t be surprised if they don’t want a beat up book even if its from the sixties.
You will not get Overstreet value one way or the other. In an auction there’s the obvious possibilities but in a store if they’re charging Overstreet (and in my experience Overstreet is often about 10% high) then they have to buy from you significantly less than that to make money. They’re a business not a bank for comic investments.
Somethings will move better in auctions. Lots of complete runs, for example. Odd ball stuff may linger in a comic store for years but start a bidding war in an auction. Old humor books are a good example of this; a store might have one or two customers who would look for Jerry Lewis issues but the series has enough of a following and comes up rarely enough that an auction can get heated. You don’t have to go completely for one or the other.
Liquidating a collection is tough work; good luck!
If the collection had enough good stuff in it, a lot of times our store would take the whole thing regardless. This will depend a lot on the store though – ours had three locations, so anything the location that bought a collection didn’t need could be sent on to the others to check for needs, and the remainder went into overstock. Smaller operations are less likely to do this. You’re in NYC, so I’m guessing you have some variety in the kinds of shops you might deal with.
So very true, and I should have mentioned this when I talked about Overstreet. If you’re looking for cash, you’re almost certainly going to get less than 50% of the overall Overstreet value of the collection.
I agree. If you have something really distinctive, eBay might be a good route.
My husband’s store sells a lot of “bricks” – complete runs of series, miniseries, a certain writer’s run on a book, or a particular storyline. These do well on eBay too, and I’ve bought a few from eBay myself. For my husband’s birthday a few years ago, I gave him a complete run of the 1980s Booster Gold series (24 issues, I think) that I got on eBay.
eBay really can be a big pain, especially for a large collection, but if you cherry-pick the ones that you think might do the best there and then sell the rest to a shop, hopefully you’ll be happy with the result.
Give 'em to charity and take a tax deduction. You’ll save yourself a lot of heartache, and the tax deduction will likely be more than what a dealer will pay you for them.
True about the tax deduction. NYC? You got four-six options, and the two big ones are the Universe and Midtown. And Forbidden Planet if that’s still open. They’re not buying so much.
Catalog, catalog, catalog. That’s the first step.
You know, you might have some Elfquest or early Turtles. Those might be worth money.
This Web site will (for a subscription fee) allow you to catalog your collection and will give you a rough estimate of the current value of each issue and your collection as a whole. They also have an auction feature, as well as other options for buying and selling. The site’s whole audience is comic book collectors, so if you indicate that everything is for sale, you may have some luck piecing it out.
It says that my 2,734 comic books are currently worth $9,125.11
Unlike gold, there is no place that’s required to give you full market value for your comics, and selling the whole lot to one party might be problematic if there are more than, say, a hundred of them. Your best options are (a) sell them to a local comics dealer, and (bn) unload them on eBay.
To approach local dealers, make a list of the books–by title, issue number and date. Date is important, because Man-Thing #1 from 1974 has a very different value than Man-Thing #1 from 1985 or 1992 (I’m doing this from memory; I have no idea what yeqr some of these series actually came out). The original series had a popular writer and introduced a cult favorite character in its first issue; subsequent relaunches of the title didn’t. X-Men #1 from 1963 was scarce and demand for it is high; X-Men #1 from 1991 printed over a million copies and, despite a popular writer and artist combo, can be bought in mint condition for under its cover price. Anyway, compile a list and bring the list around to various comics shops. See if any of the shop owners seem interested, and negotiate from there. Chances are someone will be very interested in about a tenth of your collection, and the rest is unsellable at any price.
For eBay: Break the collection up according to theme: X-Men-related titles, back issues of MAD Magazine, Archie/children’s titles, etc. Offer each grouping as a separate lot on eBay, take what you can get and get on with your life.
There are “hot” creators who were active during the period you describe and their comics are worth more; here is a partial list:
Steve Englehart/Marshall Rogers Detective or Silver Surfer
Walt Simonson THOR
Any X-Men, esp. those drawn by Dave Cockrum, John Byrne and Paul Smith
Any Wolverine, esp. drawn by Frank Miller
Anything drawn by Frank Miller, George Perez, Mike Mignola or Jim Starlin
Any comic featuring the Punisher or Ghost Rider
Early issues of Love and Rockets by Los Bros. Hernandez
Almost anything drawn by R. Crumb, Richard Corben, Moebius or Milo Manara
We always told people not to bother doing this because we had to see the actual books and their condition before we could judge anything or know if it’s something we wanted.
Same topic, different era. My dad wants to sell his childhood comics. We’re talking Amazing Fantasy 15, X-Men 1, Fantastic Four 1, countless first appearances, etc. Would the same tactics be applied? Or is there a better way to sell comics which have typically had more of a demand/value.
I wouldn’t sell such books to a dealer, because you won’t get fair value. For high value books, put 'em on eBay one at a time, with a scan of the comic. Put the comic title and issue number in your item description. Use the highest resolution scans possible (use eBay’s option for larger images), so that potential buyers can fairly judge the condition. Describe any defects that are not obvious. Condition is very important to buyers, and they will bid more freely if they trust you are being fully forthcoming about condition.)
In my experience, starting the bidding low (say, at $1) tends to draw in more bidders and result in a higher final price. (Bidders tend to get drawn into the competitive aspect of bidding, so the more bidders you attract, the better.)
Time your auctions so that they end on, say, a Sunday evening, as a lot of people tend to be sitting at their computers at that time. If you can wait, sell them in the winter, because again, more people tend to be sitting at their computers when the weather is cold. In summer, they may be out doing other things.
A lot of obsessive collectors blow Christmas bonuses on comics, so that might also be a consideration in your timing.
If you have some legitimately rare books, I think you’re always better off bypassing the stores and going straight to potential customers. Stores want a cut, obviously, so unless you want to give them 50% or more of your potentially earnings, skip 'em.
Well, to start with, those are worth money, even if they aren’t in the best shape.
Still catalog, take pictures spread out on a bed, take the CD to a local comic store, talk to 'em.