Do you want to buy comic books for deep discounts on E-bay? Here are a few tips.

Misspell the Title
If a seller misspells the title there are usually very few watchers, nobody can find the comic! This is your chance to find a deal. I doesn’t happen often, but when it does you could be a winner.

Bid at the Last Minute
This is also know as sniping. If you bid early you give other bidders a chance to outbid you or force you to bid more. If at all possible use an auction sniping program and set it an forget it.

Look for Auctions Ending at Odd Times
Is an auction ending at 4:00 in the afternoon on a weekday? Most people are at work. Is it ending in the middle of the night? Most people are asleep. Either get up and bid or better yet use a sniping program as mentioned above and take advantage of the lower competition.

The Comic Book Crash Course offered below (it’s free) has many more comic book buying tips. Check it out!

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Want to save money on old comic books? Here’s and interesting strategy for collectors to consider.

Abandon the Local Comic Book Store

Many of us miss the days when you could go to the local comic book store and pick up nice looking books for a reasonable price. unfortunately, due to the Internet and E-bay, those days have pretty much come to an end. Unless you are lucky, many small town dealers are overgrading and therefore overpricing their comic books. What they are selling as a NM may in fact only be a Fine or Very Fine-. Here’s where the strategy comes in, plus a cool tool just for you readers.

A “Special” Search on E-bay

If you are creative you can overcome the problem mentioned above. Instead of buying a “raw” ungraded (and many time overgraded and overpriced) comic from a local dealer, make sure you check E-bay for a CGC graded copy. Once you get it, just crack it out and enjoy! You get the bonus of the CGC certified grade, plus their excellent restoration services. Collecting and investing habits have changes, especially with the poor economy, and many times you can find mid to low grade CGC comic books at or below Overstreet guide.

So how do you find them? Here’s One Strategy

You want to use a few tricks while searching E-bay. First, you want to search for CGC comics, so include that in your search terms. Next you want to use a little known and under-utilized search function, the negative search. If you were to search for all the lower grade copies it would be a pain, but with the addition of a simple “-” sign, you can exclude certain returns. I would exclude 9.8,9.6,9.4,.9.2, 9.0. Below you’ll see an example of the search for all lower grade comic books.

Enjoy the trick!

Here is the link to an RSS feed of the search if you want to save it in a reader.

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If you are buying comic book on E-bay you really need to have a bidding or sniping program. In the past I recommended a couple of sites on Comic Book Secrets but after talking with one of the folks over at bidnapper and trying the service I am going to recommend their program exclusively. To give full disclosure if you click on a link to their program from this site I am compensated, similarly to the other two programs (out of many similar services) I recommended in the past.

Why did I switch? First, I think the Bidnapper program is more complete and has an easier to use interface. Second, I want to make a streamlined a recommendation as possible and if I were to choose only one service to recommend, it would be Bidnapper. You can get a free trial here: ebay sniper

Why Bidnapper?

If you are serious about winning comics on E-bay for the best possible price a sniping/bidding program is a must, preferably one that bids for you from an outside server, not your computer. Bidnapper fits the bill. I really like the way the program interfaces with your e-bay watch list, making bulk additions to your bids a snap. The use interface is very intuitive and you can see all of your auctions in one place in a very easy to read format.

Some other benefits I like:
- It works with other auction sites other than E-bay. Many of these sites have good deals on key comic books from time to time.
- You have the option of paying for the unlimited bids for a set period or paying for a set number of winning bids only. This is really nice if you aren’t a heavy buyer on E-bay, but still want to increase your winning percentage when you bid without wasting money
- Free trial period
- Browser tool for easier addition of auctions

I’ll be updating the Comic for Pennies video in the Member Only Section over the next few days. This updated video will include the use of Bidnapper as it’s example program. In the meantime, if you want to try a free trial, click here: ebay sniper

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