I'd like to own Amazing Spider-Man #121 one day. It's the death of Gwen Stacy issue. A VF copy can be anywhere between $200 to $400 on any given day. I made a deal with myself a year ago that my comic collecting would be cost neutral. So this means I'm going to have to go through my collection and sell off anything that I can live without. Not that it is going to be painless because I have some sort of weird connection with every issue, but you know, that's what will keep me from becoming a classic hoarder.
Last Saturday, I picked out about 60 comics: a run of Animal Man, Robotech Masters and Dominion Police comics. They're not particularly sought after and after a couple of stoop sales, I knew they would probably sit unloved through another series of stoop sales. So they would be the perfect pawns to test this one place and see how it would go. I've never actually gone to a comic place to sell anything. You hear stories of places offering you only pennies per issues. My tactic was to see how they bargained in order to inoculate me to this whole sordid business. I won't give the name of the establishment because I'd like to be invited back in the future...
Anyway, I talked to one of the guys I know there. We agreed to a trade. He first suggested a one-to-one trade for whatever they have in their dollar bins. That wasn't a bad deal at all because I knew I most certainly find something I like. Then his boss came around and nixed that arrangement saying that trades were always 3:1. That is, in favor of the house. He went through the lot and basically said he would resell mine in those dollar bins...
So I went from 1:1 to 3:1. I agreed to the deal. My bottom line was that I would free up some space at home and I'd be able to find something I really wanted to read. That's not to say that I didn't find the whole experience somewhat humiliating and humbling. But why should it? They're only comics. And I could always find some issues that I could resell so that I can get closer to my goal of owning ASM #121.
Still...it sucks to know that the comics I read decades ago are pretty much worthless. But I think I made the right decision to test the market to see where I can get the best deals. If I had brought in boxes, I'd have had a harder decision to make: accept a low offer or lug them all back home. It does seem true that resellling them at comic places will not get you the best deals, but you do have the convenience of unloading them as quickly as possible.
No comments:
Post a Comment