When the comics bubble popped in the mid 90s, the only customers I had left were readers.
About five or six years ago, that started to change. It's taken us a little bit of time to readjust to collectors. My theory is that the 20 year olds are now 45 year olds with nostalgia and money in their pockets.
So, recently, I've snagged two rather large collections of comics, going back to the Bronze Age. (Also bought a collection of pulps from the 50s, for which I haven't found any interest. But they are cool, cool, cool.)
Anyway, had an older fellow come in with some Golden Age comics. For perspective, in the first twenty years of buying collections I'm not sure I saw even one Golden Age Batman or Superman. This guy had about 20, (very late Golden Age, nearly the 60s) not in great shape, but one of them was a Green Lantern Showcase with the first appearance of Hal Jordan.
He also had a box of old Walt Disney, most in terrible shape, and a box of Dells, ditto.
I priced out the Golden Age, added the Disney on top, and made an offer for the whole batch.
He turned me down, no hard feelings. The sticking point was he wanted to save the Disney. (More on that later.)
Actually, I'm proud of myself. I offered what for me was a realistic amount of money. Yes, a lot these comics "Book" at high prices, but there was nary a one that would score a 3 on a scale of 10.
To be honest, the DC Golden Age comics would have been advertising: "Look at us. We have old stuff!"
But it would have been a long time, probably never, that I would have made the money back.
However, I could have taken the Disney comics, that aren't really worth that much, and put a moderate price on them and maybe had some luck.
This is typical of buying collections. They want you to make an offer, and then, almost invariably, they want to take back the part of the collections that would make it worthwhile.
Shrug. I don't really have an idea if he can get a lot more for his collection, or whether everyone else will turn him down.
I just know what I could have done with the collection.
1 comment:
Frankly, I'd probably up the offer slightly in retrospect. But coming back to him would make it seem like I'd tried to take advantage of him, which wasn't what I was trying to do. But bigger picture, I still would like the bragging rights to the Golden Age comics.
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