The driving force for me is fair market value. I thought for a while on what to list my comics for and how I would go about doing so. Every business needs to do more than just break even to survive and why else sell something if not to make some profit? However, at the same time I did not want this to be just a cash seeking venture, like I was miserly demanding top dollar. I wanted to have fun sharing a hobby that I truly enjoyed. At the same time, selling cheap might not be truly worth my time and effort. I needed to strike a middle ground of pricing to sell but not too high and not too low. I set about researching on how to do that. I made a few good investments to that end such as a CGC membership. However, I am not going to send all my books for grading, nor would it make sense to do so. I needed to know how to grade all my raw books. Some hours on you tube helped but buying both the Overstreet Price Guide and the Overstreet Guide to Grading Comics was most helpful in the process. Once I understood the method by which comics are graded, how many defects make for a very fine vs near mint book, it helped me have confidence to move forward with grading them, then pricing.
In an endeavor like this my reputation is my brand, so I wanted to develop a process whereby I was not selling over or undegraded books. While I am not a professional grader, I could at least do a page by page look though of my books, count spine ticks and cover condition prior to listing; thereby ensuring the grades were roughly within standard. Meaning a very fine to near mint copy with somewhere between 4-6 defects (according to the guide) was listed as such and a standard part of my process. I know some people in this market like to haggle about number or defects and how that effects price, but I knew I was not going to have the time to do that with a side business, so I needed to list with confidence that I had done solid due diligence on the front end to get the closest grade I could while adhering to the community standard.
Then, once the grade is understood, then remains what to list it for. The Overstreet guide is a start of that calculus. Ebay and Gocollect websites also are great indicators of the shifting market. Books can skyrocket based upon the latest movie or TV show. Those factors had to be taken into consideration. Also, there are the overhead costs of domain, websites, shipping materials, etc.
I should specify this process is for raw books. Listing the CGC graded books is a more straightforward look at recent sales data, plus CGC costs and overhead to determine fair market value.
All that to explain how I go about listing books. I want the buyer/fellow collector/hobby enthusiast to have a good experience and confidence that I just did not grab a comic, slap a random price on it, list it for sale-then ship it in a similar adhoc fashion (like you might find with some on ebay). I want people who visit this site to know books are treated with care, stored in new bags and boards, inspected before listing, and then shipped with care in packaging. All that to publish a commitment to quality and a good comic memory experience!
Comments