My nephew passed away over the holidays and he had about 10K comic books that he collected over the last 30 years. About a third are in mint never read condition. What is the best way to sell ithem without getting raped. I'm not in a rush other than I want to get the 50 boxes out of my house.
Sorry to hear about your nephew. I honestly have no idea, other than to say to google local comic book stotes and see if they're interested. If you can find multiple stores, you can at least get a competitive bid and see where things are at.
Need a Flash #10...graded 7 or higher. If you have it post it on ebay and I will buy it. If it were me, I would take your time and get to know the industry first, learn. Then sell them off individually as parts. Grading helps the value. It wouldn't be hard to look up the values or hire a kid to look up the values for you either on e-bay or in a online value book. I think you could trust comic book stores too, but they may not want to look through them all, so you may need to do your homework first. Good news is I think it is less confusing than baseball cards.
I was in a similar situation. I ended up finding a comic dealer willing to give me 10 cents on the dollar. This was pre-Ebay. You might be able to package "runs" of series and sell to the highest bidder on Ebay.
It will take a little homework, but find the premium issues and sell them individually. Then sell the rest as a lot to dealers (whom will probably give you a few cents per issue max). Or you might leverage bundling some premium issues with the common issues to help get an amount you're happy with.
sorry to hear about your nephew. i would keep them for sentimental value, especially since it seems like he gave quite a bit of effort to attain them. read some, maybe you'd like them.
Sorry to hear that. That's definitely a tall task and it's going to require some research on your part to better understand what's all there. Like others have said, take your time. I'm sure you can find someone to sell them and have them earn a % commission. I have a bunch of old football cards that i need to sell off soon to save some space. If i find any leads i'll follow up here. Selfishly, i would be interested in any Spider-man comics you have though.
Do NOT sell them in bulk. Your nephew spent 30 years of his life collecting and cherishing these, so they were obviously important to him. Your family could be sitting on a gold mine, and not even know it. First, I'd have the collection appraised by a reputable dealer. You can look these up on major comic sites, or even start on Yelp for locally owned comic shops. With that said, always get a second opinion! Personally, I'd sell them in smaller lots on eBay - and selling books worth $50 or more by themselves. You'd be surprised how easy it is to list items with the mobile apps now by simply scanning the barcode and snapping a few photos. You can also ship these media mail, which can increase your profit margins significantly. If all of that sounds like too much, I'd find a reputable comic book dealer who will sell them on consignment. Selling them in a lot simply will never be a good deal for your family. With a little work, you could reap many rewards. I'd also take a few books that may have been his favorites (not always the most valuable ones), and having them framed as family keepsakes to remember him. People who like comic books are very close to the stories and characters they love, as they literally read them over a lifetime. In 30+ years of reading some of his favorite books, he has lived several lifetimes with his favorite characters. If you don't know what his favorite character is. Batman is clearly the answer =D
Sorry to hear about your nephew, my condolences to you and your family. The easiest and fastest way without all the headache would be going to your local comic shop. If you want to make money, ebay would be good or find a comic book buy/sell forum on the internet. Or you can post them here on Clutchfans, I'm sure some on here are interested, me included.
I'm sorry for your loss. Being a comic book collector, I've used and bought from comic auction sites like comiclink.com and comicconnect.com. Both are auction houses specifically for comic books and they, from what I've read, do help with auctioning off comic book lots. I'd check them out. Like a few have already said, it would be advantageous to look through the 50 boxes for key issues and sell them individually. If you need a list of issues, let me know.
Thanks for the advice. I enlisted the help of a much younger nephew to help catalog them. As payment he gets to keep the issues that aren't very valuable.
Another piece of advice: if the collection includes significant key issues from silver or bronze era I would probably look into getting them graded by CGC or CBCS. There's a cost per book to it but it definitely solidifies the price/value of those issues.
This is very true. Any issue worth over about a $100 or so is probably worth getting graded, as it dramatically increases the value (usually if a 7 or above). For the books where the increase of value would simply "break even," it makes it much easier to sell a graded book. They usually "fly off the shelf" if priced correctly. Grading usually costs $15 - $80 depending on the value of the book, and the turnaround time requested. The turnaround time is one reason people might pay a slight premium to purchase an already graded book - because they are impatient.
I have been collecting on and off since the mid 80's. Its really hard to give you any advice without knowing what you have. Do a google search " Comic Key Issues " Marvel and DC. That should get you started.
So sorry for your loss, looks like a lot of good advice here. search for the rare ones, list them individually with ratings if available. Then lot from there. Prayers for you and your family.
To break up the collection and sell individually is a LOT of work (going through thousands of comics to determine which ones are worth more, how much they're worth, building ebay pages for them, etc.).. .and there's the risk that you won't find buyers and, years later, you still have boxes of comics. I suggest contacting Heritage Auctions. They have experts who can find the valuable comics, establish a reasonable auction reserve for them, auction them individually, auction the rest in batches, and operate the auctions for you.
