Walkin' Willie's Discount Site - Nice Idea At The Time...

I've been buying comic books for 50 years and selling them for 24 or so - and you never stop learning. As can be seen in the previous blog post, I had a grand idea to hopefully increase traffic - and therefore increase sales - by reducing the price every day of any book that had been in inventory for a week. The amount of price reduction depending on the current price of the book and so on.

It was a nice idea - but it failed miserably. Didn't get the traffic and the sales plummeted - my guess is that people were playing a waiting game for books that didn't have some huge demand. Most of the books on the site were commons with very few to no keys - so if you are a potential customer why not wait, what does one have to lose? So that was lesson #1 - if you are going to have some price reduction strategy like that, you need to have books that will make folks squirm and get itchy trigger fingers. I've started eBaying some of the books and most of them are going for higher prices that what I had on the discount site - that was the clincher.

Lesson #2 is that if you are going to run some sort of discount comic book website, you need at TON of inventory - and I didn't have that. Oh, I sold some books over the years it was up but nothing on a consistent basis. If you are going to have a huge inventory like Mile High Comics, My Comic Shop, New Kadia, etc., then you need a staff to run it. At my (sort of close to retirement) age, I definitely didn't want to invest the capital needed to a) get a TON of comic books and b) hire the staff necessary to scan the books, put them into inventory, fulfill orders - all that crazy stuff.

Lesson #3 - you need to market like crazy and update inventory on a consistent basis - well... I didn't do that either. Starting to see a trend here?

So where does that leave good ol' Walkin' Willie's Comix?

First of all, the Walkin' Willie's Discount Site will come down in a day or two from the date of this post - after that you will be redirected to my regular website that I have had in different incarnations for years - since 1996. If you think I'm lyin' then check out the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, type in www.wwillie.com and prepare to cringe at the early days. The site from 1996 to end of 2000 was a static POS. The next one from 2001 to early 2009 was pretty darn good for a classic ASP site and it was by far my most heavily trafficked site to date. Next was a .NET site from March 2009 to the present with a makeover happening just a few months ago. But I digress...

Now back to what I'm gonna do. The Walkin' Willie's Comix website will carry CGC & CBCS graded comic books, raw comic books in FINE grade or better at great discounts and a few hardcovers and trades as I run into them in collections. The goal is to significantly reduce inventory I have in storage while increasing quality on the website. I don't want to have 30 racks of books - I want 30 boxes instead...of good stuff!

The discount inventory - along with 20 boxes or so of stuff that never made it to the web - will be blown out on eBay during the end of 2015 and beginning of 2016. The blowout has already started.

So the discount site will most likely close early Saturday morning - 10/3/2015 - still a lot of deals left if you are so inclined...and the prices are still decreasing every day.

So the bottom line is that a leaner Walkin' Willie's Comix will emerge out of this whole deal - one with reasonable goals, great merchandise, free U.S. shipping and whatever else can happen. BTW, the website is "responsive" which means it will work in a mobile phone as well as a desktop. Will constantly evaluate pricing as well - don't want to give stuff away but also don't want it to sit for years as well.

As usual, feedback and comments are welcome and solicited.

New Walkin' Willie's Comix Discount Comic Books Pricing Structure!

Starting on Saturday, June 6, 2015, you will see a big pricing structure change at Walkin' Willie's Comix Discount Comic Books. Depending on the current price of any book on the site, we will begin decreasing the price of the book every day until it is sold or bottoms out at $0.10 - that's right, a lousy stinkin' DIME! How does this work? After a book is added to inventory, the price will drop daily if the book remains unsold after a week. So after seven days from when the book was added to inventory, the price decreases will occur according to the table below:

IF THE PRICE IS GREATER THAN...	...BUT LESS THAN	PRICE DECREASE PER DAY
$0.10	$1.50	$0.01
$1.49	$3.00	$0.02
$2.99	$7.00	$0.03
$6.99	$13.00	$0.04
$12.99	$25.00	$0.05
$24.99	$50.00	$0.06
$49.99	$75.00	$0.07
$74.99	$100.00	$0.08
$99.99	$150.00	$0.09
$149.99	$200.00	$0.10
$199.99	$300.00	$0.15
$299.99	$400.00	$0.20
$399.99	$500.00	$0.25
$499.99	$1000.00	$0.50
$999.99		$1.00

There are a few reasons for this change. One is obviously to generate more business, another is to clear out inventory. Still another is if a book goes all the way down to a dime and doesn't sell within, say a month, then that book will be pulled from inventory and thrown in a box to blowout in a local auction - no sense in having books on the website that nobody wants. This new pricing structure also allows the market to drive the price.

Here is what a sample listing will look like starting tomorrow:

Note that you will see a starting price and then the current price - this will let you know how far the book has been discounted. All new inventoried books published prior to 1984 will be set at 90% of current Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide for the grade we assign to the book - and again, let the market drive the eventual selling price. Modern books are a crap shoot and we will just assign what we think would be a top dollar selling price - considering the relative demand for the book - and let things play out. If you have concerns about grading please take a look at our eBay feedback. Scroll through some of the pages and see what others think. Thanks for taking a look and hope you find something you like!

Don't Buy Anthing From My eCrater Store!

What? I am telling potential customers to NOT buy anything from my eCrater store? Grrr.... I am so angry at eCrater right now as their inventory management no longer works so my inventory is only about 80% accurate which is totally unacceptable! Not only that but I have been after them FOR YEARS to provide an alphanumeric default option seeing how comics are arranged... um... alphanumerically in the price guides, most comic book stores and most dealer booths at comic conventions. I've been at the database game for about 20 years and I can tell you that providing an alphanumeric sort option is EASY AS ALL GET OUT! It is database programming 101. I will be shutting down my eCrater store by the end of the year and moving anything salable to my discount website. If you just HAVE to buy something from Walkin' Willie (slick, huh?) then go to my two websites where the inventory is accurate 100% of the time. Walkin' Willie's Comix specializes in third party graded comics and a few special edition hardcovers and Walkin' Willie's Comix Discount Comics is the place to go for steep discounted comic books - almost everything in stock is priced WAY under guide value.

So You Want To Sell Your Comic Collection - Part 6

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

OK, we've been through the first four ways to sell your comic collection in Part 5 of "So You Want To Sell Your Comic Collection" - got four more to go and then we'll wrap it up.

5. Selling Your Comic Collection At A Comics Convention
Or This Can Be Easy Or Hard - Your Choice

Pros: Easy if you have a small collection that you can take around to dealers.
Cons: Hard if you have a large collection - to the point that you rent a booth at the con and take offers.

The great thing about schlepping your books around a con is that you have multiple dealers to look over your books and provide you with competitive offers. We are talking about 3 to 4 small comic boxes at most and also assume that you have a cart or dolly to bring them around the convention floor. After you receive 10 to 12 offers, you know what your comics are worth to the comic book dealer community. Go back to one or two of the dealers and let them know that it is between them and a couple of other dealers. They may ask you to get their best offer and come back - that's fine but it is better if you can get their best offer. By all means though, deal honestly. Don't say that Dealer "B" has offered you $1000 for your collection when they haven't.

For small collections, this might be the best bang-for-your-buck-and-time scenario as all you are out is the admission fee to the con and a few laps around the dealer's room.

Larger collections are tougher to hoist around the dealer's room and you might have to make appointments for dealers to view your collection at your hotel room - PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS UNLESS YOU KNOW THE DEALER VERY WELL - THIS IS EXTREMELY UNSAFE.

The other way to sell your large collection is to rent a booth at one of the larger 3 or 4 day shows. Better have your calculator handy because if this isn't a local show, you are going to have travel expenses - i.e. gas, hotel, meals, etc. Regardless, you are going to have to pay booth rental and maybe someone a few bucks to help you load in your collection and set up PLUS you have to be there all three days to sell your books (remember, your time is hopefully worth something to you). You are also going to have to price the books and that takes a TON of time. At the end of the show, you will need to blow out the rest of the books that didn't sell (and the majority of them will not sell) to another dealer.

Bottom line on comic conventions is that they are great for selling small collections, not so great for selling large collections.

6. Selling Your Comic Book Collection To Another Collector
Or Very Hit Or Miss - Feast Or Famine...

Pros: Easily the best money you can make for the time spent
Cons: Very difficult to find a collector that will buy your whole collection

Selling your comic book collection to a comic book collector will make you the most money by far. Why? Simply because a collector is not buying comics for resale - they want them for their collections and they will pay a higher percentage of graded guide for your comics. If you are trying to find a "comic book collector", you obviously go where the comics are - i.e. comic book shops and comic conventions. If you have a very high-end collection with lots of key comics then you might want to check the ads section of the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide as there are a number of high end collectors - not just dealers - that advertise there.

Trouble is, very few collectors want to buy a whole collection unless it is just a few books. You can forget selling a large collection to a comic book collector - almost never happens. Reason is that you might have a few books they want but you probably have a ton of books that they don't want. And the last thing you want is a collector cherry picking (i.e. picking out the good stuff) your collection and leaving you with next to unsellable merchandise.

Again, great for very small collections - impossible for large collections.

7. Selling Your Comic Book Collection At A Flea Market
Or The Most Exasperating Way To Sell Your Collection

Pros: Flea Market booth rental is usually very, very cheap.
Cons: Very few comic book buyers go to Flea Markets PLUS remember, your time has value.

*** Sigh *** I list this as a way to sell your comic book collection but it is probably the worst way to do it. Face it, most flea market attendees are looking for something other than comics. Fortunately, the booth rental fees are usually cheap so you are down to how much time you want to spend trying to sell a bunch o' stuff to a bunch of folks that don't want your stuff.

Now BUYING comics at a flea market can be great - you can usually talk the prices down to dirt cheap. Trouble is, there aren't many comics at flea markets.

8. Sell Your Comic Collection On Your Own Website
Or Now We Are Talking Major Time Expenditures

Pros: You have complete control on how your merchandise is presented and the prices you want to charge
Cons: So many that they can hardly be listed but the #1 "Con" is that you will invest huge, heaping vast amounts of your time to get it going AND maintaining the site.

Builidng a website just to sell comic books is great IF you are a comic dealer and can get an effective site done on the cheap. If you do not have website building skills you need to run in the other direction as fast as you can. This is not the place for you just selling one comic collection.

Alas, all is not lost. You might want to check out one of the online store builders like eCrater or eBay ProStores. eCrater is totally free and they host the photos so it is a great way to run your own e-commerce storefront. eBay ProStores does charge you something like 1% of the total amount of the transaction AND a monthly subscription fee depending on what store level you chose. These are just two options as there are several out there.

What you need to decide is a) how much time and money am I going to put into this thing and b) is my collection worth that time and money? At this point, who knows? You just might want to jump in with both feet and get all crazy with selling comic books as an avocation. If so, then welcome but PLEASE understand that selling comic books is an extremely detailed-oriented business. It takes years of experience to get where you can operate effectively - goodness knows I have made a ton of mistakes both in buying and selling comics. But you learn from your mistakes just like any other profession and you get better over time.

Summing It Up
You Have The Tools Now....

Hopefully, this series of blog articles will get better with time - the goal is to provide those who have comic book collections - and not a whole lot of comic book knowledge - with awareness on how to sell them. It can be a daunting task but hopefully these articles will make it a little easier.

If you read all six of the articles then you are aware of the following:

1. The tools and techniques used to assess a comic book collection's worth.
2. Different venues where you can sell your comic book collection.
3. Different types of people to whom you can sell your comic book collection.

It really comes down to this: After assessing your comic book collection's value, how much time are you willing to invest to get the most money possible from the collection OR are you more interested in getting the quick - but lesser - buck and saving a ton of time? This "time is money" concept has been belabored for sure but at the end of the day that is the bottom line.

We hope you have found some value in these articles - regardless, we would appreciate your feedback so we can make them better.

So You Want To Sell Your Comic Collection - Part 5

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 6

OK, you've gone through assessing the value of your collection and you've got it in good shape presentation-wise to sell OR you have at least spent an hour or so reading these posts - you are invested. Now it's time to figure out the best payback. Let's start with the first four options to sell your comic collection listed at the beginning of Part 4 of this series.

1. Sell Your Collection To A Pawn Shop
Or Get Your 15 Minutes Of Fame On Pawn Stars

Pros:You might get your "15 Minutes of fame"....most likely not
Cons: DON'T DO IT!!!!

Rick Harrison, the star of the mega-hit TV Series Pawn Stars said in a TIME magazine article a few years ago - and I paraphrase - that he could not understand why some people took collectibles to a pawn shop when there are so many resources on the internet to figure out the value of an object. A pawn shop does not deal in comic books on a regular basis and so they are going to take a crazy conservative route and give you next to nothing for your collection REGARDLESS of what your collection contains. Why? Because most pawn shop operators don't know diddley about comic books. Pawn shops know about precious metals and guitars - well, a few more things than that - but they don't usually deal in comic books because people don't regularly try to pawn them. Heck, they might not even make you an offer for your collection. This is a dead end....

2. Take Your Collection To An Auction House
Or Don't Scratch Your Ear Or You Might Win Your Own Stuff!

Pros: If the right folks are there, you can get some decent bucks in a short amount of time
Cons: Not so good if no comic dealers or collectors present on the day your collection is being sold.

I took a load of comics to an auction house one time and it turned out very well for me - pretty much sold 10 boxes of junk for over $600 - I was thrilled.... I was also lucky as all get out. Why? Because I sold it in a relatively small community - Asheville, NC - and didn't do one whit of marketing.

So here is how you stack the deck. Run Craig's List ads for about a month prior to the auction being held and do it in a category where comic books are being SOLD. Go to any comic shop within a 100 miles and tell them that you are selling a collection at an auction. Post on Facebook or any other social media website and tell the world about your auction. Find a comic book forum or TEN and make posts about your collection. In other words, let your imagination run a little wild and GET THE WORD OUT!

This can be a pretty good option if a) you have a decent sized collection of at least 100 books, b) the books have some value but no "key" books (you do remember Part 2 where we discussed "key" books... don't you?) and c) you don't want to put a lot of time into it. Remember, most auctioneers charge a 20% sellers premium so take that into account before you haul your books before the man with the gavel.

3. Selling Your Collection To A Comic Book Dealer
Or Quick, Easy But Not Always Painless

This the best way to go if you know next to NOTHING about comic books. Selling to a comic dealer can also be the best way to go if YOU DO KNOW A LOT about comics. Your pain as the seller is that you have the bunch of paper in boxes that is taking up room, items you have no interest in and the constant nagging by someone related to you or supposedly a friend of yours is taking its toll....you just want rid of the #$*@! things! Comic book dealers have established channels to move product - they may have a brick and mortar store, one or more online websites or selling venues and probably set up at comic conventions. Comic dealers who have been in the business for awhile have also built relationships with other dealers and collectors so they also are in position to buy comics with others in mind to whom they can sell them quickly. In other words, comic dealers have the infrastructure in place to BUY your comics and sell them - it is what they do.

Comic dealers - just like in every profession on the planet and like every human being on the planet - come in all types: Ones that deal in only the most expensive books, ones that deal anything they can get their hands on: Very old to brand new and everything in between. There are some that deal in only brand new books or books that come out only in special editions like variant covers. There are dealers that deal in only CGC graded books. You get the picture. There are comic dealers that are so honest that they report their poker winnings to the IRS and there are a very few that you want to avoid at all costs. But by in large the majority of comic dealers will treat you pretty straight up - the last thing they want is for you to go on Facebook or Twitter and start yelling to the world that so-and-so comic dealer is a jerk. Like any other profession, reputation is a big deal in this business. If you are taking some time with this and shopping your collection around, ask the dealers if they sell on eBay and if so, what is their seller ID. You can then check their feedback and see if they are what they say they are. One of the things I do on every collection I buy is ask the seller if they felt like they were treated with respect during the negotiations - yes, sounds corny but I do it anyway.

Comic book dealers want to obtain collections for the least amount of money possible - that's logical as why would they want to do otherwise? The main advice here is to do as much due diligence on your collection's value as you feel necessary before negotiating with a comic dealer. As a comic book dealer myself, I don't want to sound as if we are a bunch of shysters nor am I implying that we are the bastions of all that is true and virtuous. All I am saying is that we will always try to negotiate the lowest possible price to obtain a collection and to do otherwise is pretty much idiocy on our part.

Now, if you went to the trouble of purchasing a copy of Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide and meticulously cataloged your collection and came up with some figure of say $5000 and then think that you are giving the comic dealer a great deal with an offer price of $4000, you are going to be disappointed. As we have discussed in previous articles, comic dealers have a lot of overhead costs and if they routinely buy collections at 80% of graded guide prices, they will be out of business very quickly. Expect an offer from a comic dealer of around 20% to 40% of the collection's value depending on what you have - it very well could be less than 20% if the amount of really salable books is small. If you have a collection of high grade key books that are all CGC graded, you probably aren't reading this anyway - but if you do have such a collection, you may expect significantly MORE than 40% of graded guide prices.

REMEMBER: IN 99% OF ALL PRICE NEGOTIATIONS, THE FIRST ONE TO MENTION PRICE USUALLY WILL NOT WIN!.

4. Sell Your Collection On eBay
Or Makes The Most Money But Takes The Most Time

Pros: A zillion eyeballs see your wares.
Cons: Takes a ton of time to eBay stuff correctly - i.e. scan the books, grade them, write descriptions, collect payment and ship the merchandise.

eBay is a good way for people that KNOW comics well to sell their collections. But I have to get on my soapbox here. People that choose this route or setting up at a flea market forget one very, very important item: Their time HAS to be worth something. I once bought a collection from an individual that was not pleased with my offer and said he would just probably eBay 'em. As I was thumbing through the collection, I asked him "What do you do for a living?". He replied that he was a consultant. I went "Wow, bet you make over $50.00 an hour". He chuckled and said something on the order of "Try northwards of $100 an hour". After a couple more hours of looking through the collection, I said to him "You mean to tell me that your time is worth over $100 an hour and you want to spend your valuable time eBaying this stuff". His faced dropped and he got a sort of a sour look on his face - a little later we said our goodbyes. Long story short, he called me back within a few days and accepted my offer. But I digress....

Selling your collection piecemeal on eBay means the following: a) you know how to describe and grade comic books, b) the value of your collection makes it worth spending your time to set up eBay auctions and process them when they are complete, c) you know how to pack and ship comic books properly and d) you are in no hurry for your money. I have been consistently selling on eBay since 1997 and believe me, you learn something all the time (mainly about all the fee and rule changes) - this is a topic I could write ANOTHER six-part series about. Hmm... might do that one day...

Now if you know nothing about comics, you can still eBay them. Just be sure to say how many books there are, what time frames they are from (e.g. 70 books from the 1970's, 100 more from the 1960's, etc.), provide some data such as what titles and issue numbers are in the collection - i.e. things you can legitimately and honestly say about the collection without knowing much about comic books. Make sure that you have adequate disclaimers that pretty much say that you know nothing about comic books and just want to sell the lot as is - no returns. Put up as many photos as possible. Potential buyers may want to know a lot of specifics, especially the grades of books that they deem valuable. You might send them photos of the books they are interested in but again, tell them that you know nothing about comics and the books are being sold "AS IS". Some of the best Golden Age books price wise that I ever bought was from a person on eBay trying to get rid of estate items - didn't know beans about comics but the pictures were decent and it was worth the risk.

Cannot emphasize this enough: Selling your collection on eBay all depends on how big your collection is, how much it is worth AND how much of your time you are willing to spend.

OK, We have four more methods of comic collection selling to cover in Part 6 of "So You Want To Sell Your Comic Collection" and a summary to boot so hang in there!

So You Want To Sell Your Comic Book Collection - Part 4

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 5 | Part 6

The Nuts And Bolts Of Selling Your Comic Book Collection
Or "Time To Get Serious And Make Some Bucks!"

So now armed with the knowledge of the previous three parts of this series, you are now ready to learn the best way to sell your collection.

Here are the ways that you can sell your collection - they are listed from the easiest to the hardest:

1. Take it to a pawn shop
2. Take it to an auction house
3. Sell it to a comic dealer
4. Sell it on eBay or on some other online venue
5. Set up at a comic convention
6. Sell it to another comic collector
7. Set up at a flea market
8. Build your own website and sell your books there

We will go into each one of these options in detail including the pros and cons of each one in Parts 5 and 6 but first a little more info to help you in the process of selling your collection.

Be Honest With Yourself And Your Comic Book Collection
Or "Trying To Make A Silk Purse Out Of A Sow's Ear Will Definitely Annoy The Pig..."

Look, if you have a handful - say 30 or less - of comics that you dug up from your ex's closet and they are books published 1990 or later, aren't bagged and boarded and look very well read - do one of three things: 1) Take the books to the nearest comic shop WHILE you are doing other errands and see if they will take them off your hands for a couple of bucks, 2) take them to a children's charity as long as the books are child appropriate or 3) go back to the comic shop and just GIVE the books to them.

Now if you have a 100 books that were published prior to 1980, are nicely bagged and boarded and appear in nice condition, then by all means take them to a comic book dealer and see what they will offer you.

If you have 5 long boxes of comics, again take them to a comic book dealer and let them offer you a price. Most likely, the dealer will ask you what you want for them. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD YOU TELL THEM A PRICE!!! THIS IS NEGOTIATION DEATH!. Don't believe me on this? Then go watch a few episodes of Pawn Stars and watch how the negotiations go. If the pawn shop folks are interested in the item(s), they will ALWAYS ask what the seller wants for the item and the rare times they get a little flummoxed is when the seller says something like "I don't know, what do you want to give me for it?"

So that is what you should do - i.e. ask the dealer what they are willing to pay you for the collection. If they won't give you a price, thank them for their time and take your collection with you. If they ask what you are going to do with the books, tell them that you are shopping the collection around. If they ask you to call them if you ever decide to sell, don't call them. Instead, give them your contact information and let them know that you are in no hurry to sell the books but if a good offer comes around, then you would be willing to part with them.

Now watch the dealer's body language - it will tell you a lot. Very slight nervousness usually means that the dealer wants the collection and doesn't want it to slip away. Indifference means that they are not all that hot about your collection OR they are capital challenged and don't have the funds to make the deal OR they are a pretty good poker player. Usually, a dealer has enough cash in the bank to purchase a small collection so if it is something they can make a decent margin on, they won't want it to walk out the door. We are getting ahead of ourselves a little bit as we will discuss selling to a comic dealer in greater detail in Part 5.

If you don't have a comic book dealer in your area - go online and find one that might give you an appraisal. You will have to supply a ton of information but at least it will give you some feedback that you can use. Here is one link of an appraisal service that you might find helpful. You can always go to Walkin' Willie's Comix and drop them a line about your collection.

The bottom line is that you have to determine if you have a collection that has value - i.e. one that is worth selling or one you just need to get shed of and move on. Remember Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 provided you with that awareness and the tools you would need to figure out if your collection has tangible value. One last thing before shopping that collection around...

Comic Collection Prep
Or "Lookin' Good Always Helps The Bottom Line"

Just like a fresh coat of paint is the #1 thing to do when selling a house, having a collection that looks good can mean extra bucks. By now, you have established whether the collection can bring in some cash. You either used a copy of Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, gone online at ComicPriceGuide.com or have received opinions/appraisals from a comic book dealer. OR you may be a longtime comic book collector that knows the craft.

Now dress up that collection by making sure that each book is freshly bagged and boarded. It costs around $9.00 to $15.00 - and your time - to bag and board 100 books. Bagging and boarding is very important because it protects the books from any further damage. Books that are not bagged and boarded will damage quickly. Again, assess your collection to make sure that spending your time and $9.00 per hundred will still leave you with plenty of margin. The collection pictured above is a nice looking collection - very nicely bagged and boarded. Also, it is strongly recommended that you use the 3M Removable Tape to tape the bag flap - it comes in a blue box and has the same adhesive as the Post-It notes. You don't want a prospective buyer getting into a wrestling match to try to open a bag so as to inspect a book.

If possible, use brand new comic boxes - if you need help in obtaining supplies, you can find bags, boards and comic boxes at eBay or BAGS Unlimited can hook you up.

Finally, put the books in alphanumeric order - if the books are bagged and boarded and in order it helps a lot as a dealer likes to have a collection where all he has to do is take to a comic convention ready to go. That can definitely influence the price - and if the dealer wants the collection or not. If a dealer sees that they will have to put in very little sweat equity to get it ready to sell, it could very well be the tipping point to make a deal happen.

There is one dealer that does the southeastern convention circuit and he buys more closeouts than any other dealer that I have come across. He will have five tables at one-day shows and three booths at the big 3-day shows. He has a lot of collectors at his booths all convention long because he has so many books for pretty low prices. HOWEVER I won't go to his booth except to chat if he isn't busy because there is absolutely NO order to his merchandise. I'll be darn if I am going through 100 comic boxes to try find something that I can buy to sell when the books aren't in order. He's a great guy but I haven't bought anything from him for over 13+ years.

This last step isn't necessary if you have a small collection of 200 books or less but if you have a large collection of several thousand books you are trying to liquidate, then the dealer you are trying to sell to may or may not want to spend the time to try to figure out what all is in the collection - they might just do a random pull of every box just to see what is generally in there.

Again - and it cannot be emphasized enough: Your time is worth SOMETHING so figure out how much time you really want to spend preparing your collection for sale.

Part 5 of "So You Want To Sell Your Comic Collection" will tackle the first four options listed at the beginning of this post for selling your comic books. Stay tuned as the best is yet to come...