Selling Comic Books Archives

I received a mailer today from Heritage Comic Book Auctions. Their November 2008 comic auction totaled $5.03 million, making it the second biggest comic auction ever.

They are currently accepting consignments for their February 26-27 comic auction and the deadline for submission is January 12, 2009.

Even if you don’t want to consign, make sure you take a look at their site to follow the action. If you’re a Comic Book Secrets Member, remember you can access all past auction results from Heritage via the live link in the Member Only section.

Are you buying or selling comic books? The key in both situations is negotiation. Let’s face it, whenever there is a transfer between two people, be it time, labor, products, or yes, comic books, negotiating is key.

In the last issue of the member newsletter we discussed several buying strategies and touched a little bit on negotiating. Today I want to give you a couple more ideas to think about.

Negotiating Tip 1 – The Balance of Power

Any negotiating position consists of strengths and weaknesses. In the world of comic books it they usually consist of two items – the product (comic books) and cash. Let’s look at a couple of examples.

In some cases the comic book itself may be the item of strength. Action Comics #1 in VF+ CGC 8.5 unrestored condition? A power book if there ever was one. It is the highest graded copy, first Superman, etc. High end collectors will be falling over themselves to buy this copy when it comes up for sale. Definitely a strength.

But let’s look at the other item – cash. Let’s say the seller has a burning need for cash. They are in trouble, need to raise some money immediately. The seller now has a point of weakness that the buyer may or may not know. A buyer with a lot of cash may be able to diminish the strength of the book with his or her cash position. Interesting predicament, isn’t it?

The same ideas apply to lower cost, or common comics. Let’s say the seller has a huge stash of 1990’s common books. Not a lot of strength in those books. If the seller needs money they are in a real bind. If they don’t need cash they can hold out and see what happens. If you don’t need cash and have time, you can leverage a weaker position and hold out for more.

Ultimate Seller and Buyer Positions

The ideal situation for the seller is power books and no immediate need for cash.

It’s not always realistic, especially if you deal in comics. There is an opportunity cost you must take into account if you decide to hold on to a specific comic. Could the cash raised by selling a comic book now be used more productively? This use may be inside the hobby by purchasing other books you want more, or outside the hobby in some other investment or pursuit.

Also, you can’t discount the downside price risk to your comics. Will the particular book stay even or increase in price, or will it decrease? Who knows what will happen.

In the end, you have to balance the upside with the downside along with your personal situation. Try not to get into a bind where you have to let your comics go for an immediate cash need. You’re giving too much away to the buyer.

The ideal buying situation is cash. Cold, hard cash. No rush to buy, time on your side, and a wad of big bills to flash in front of buyers. A lack of cash means you can’t even get in the door (unless you have some great trades).

Even if you have cash you’ll have to speculate on the future price of any comic book you want to purchase.

Will it go up in price?

Will it increase in price faster than you can get a return on another investment vehicle?

Will you be kicking yourself for not buying it today for $2000 when it will sell for $4000 in two months (see the Avengers 1 post for more on that)?

These are all important questions only you can answer.

In any situation, buying or selling, just remember to keep that poke face. Oh, and keep the power, either in books or cash.

Turn E-Bay into E-Pay – How to Make E-Bay Pay You

A New Way To Make Money With eBay

When you hear “eBay” and “money” in the same sentence you probably think of becoming an eBay seller. While many of you do sell comic books on E-bay, you can actually cut your fees significantly and make some extra money from your comic book collecting at the same time. The latest issue of the newsletter has a video course that discusses the strategies at length, but here is another tool to actually help turn the tables on E-bay. Read on…

You place product listings in the eBay marketplace, buyers bid, you pay your eBay seller fees and what you have left is your profit margin.

There is, however, another way to build a business which still revolves around
eBay but which doesn’t involve you selling a single thing in the eBay
marketplace.

This “other way” opportunity is based on the eBay affiliate program
and a great tool which makes entry into this opportunity not only
possible but also super easy. This tool is called “Build
A Niche Store
“.

Now if you don’t know – an affiliate program enables you to promote the products of a company in exchange
for a commission on all sales that you refer.

You are basically operating as an internet middleman and connecting internet
browsers to particular products and companies through you own network of websites
and marketing methods.

If we return to the eBay affiliate program, eBay actually invites you to
promote all of the product listings in the eBay marketplace and in exchange
for your efforts will pay you up to 75% of the revenue they make from each
sale you refer plus up to $35 for each new active eBay member you refer.

You can have a read about the eBay.com
affiliate program here

You can earn up to three quarters of eBay’s
revenue simply for connecting people to the products listed in the eBay marketplace.

Not only do you get to partner with the best branded marketplace in the world,
you also get access to and control over ALL of the products listed in this
marketplace. The eBay product inventory becomes YOUR product inventory and
yet you do NOT have to stock items, deal with customers, organize shipping
or process refunds.

You are no longer limited to selling only those products which you can buy
and sell for a profit margin. You can choose ANY niche market, not just comic books, and promote
those eBay products relevant to your chosen niche outside of the eBay marketplace,
funneling targeted traffic through to eBay and into your own affiliate commissions.

Golf clubs, sewing kits, laptops, dog collars, diamond rings, Florida real
estate…

If you know eBay you know how BIG it is – there are NO limits.

At this point you might be thinking – well this sounds interesting but in
reality is there any money in it? Well, here’s the shocker – eBay’s
top affiliates make over 1 million dollars a month. That’s right –
8 figures a year without stocking, selling or shipping a single thing!

Now eBay does provide some basic free tools to help you succeed as an eBay
affiliate and build an affiliate business BUT it has been the development
of a tool outside of eBay that has really opened this up as a legitimate business
opportunity.

The tool, as I mentioned earlier, is called “Build
A Niche Store
” and what it enables you to do is build eBay affiliate
websites targeted to any eBay niche you want. These act as the medium through
which you funnel targeted visitors to eBay.

Here are a couple of examples, one targeting Race Cars and the other Golf
Equipment:

Race Car eBay Affiliate Website
Golf eBay Affiliate Website

These are professional looking websites that contain all
of those eBay products related to their target niche inside a searchable store
format, each of which automatically contains your eBay affiliate id.

These stores then automatically update as new products are listed for sale
and old listing expire from the eBay marketplace and the software has built
in development features which enable you to create new store pages, add content
to these pages, create content pages, modify your template etc etc.

Basically, in the space of about 10 minutes (once you are familiar with how
the software works) you can create a fully functional eBay affiliate website
targeted to the niche market of your choice.

Your store content is all search engine friendly which will provide the foundation
for attracting targeted traffic from the search engines and you can then use
the development features to attract more targeted visitors which will in turn
mean more eBay affiliate commissions.

It really is a brilliant concept and I’ve been hearing great things
about the guys behind the project and the member forum which you get lifetime
access to when you purchase the product.

Build A Niche Store comes with a step by step user manual which will walk
even the most technically inexperienced through setting up their eBay affiliate
website, 9 professional template layouts which can be customized (from inside
your admin panel) to match your target niche, lifetime member forum access,
comprehensive product support and possibly most importantly – an UNLIMITED
domain license which means you can build as many of these niche websites as
you want for the small one time fee.

If you want to start having E-Bay pay you instead of just making “them” rich check it out today…

Click
Here To Read More About Build A Niche Store

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