What up CHUllectors!?! Shawn B. the One Year Later Investigator, back with another One Year Later round up, where we take a look at some of the comics that Anthony, Mel, and Poyo specced on one year ago. Their specs turn out to be quick flips, slow burns, straight up misses, straight up winners and on and on. Sometimes they spec with their hearts out of their passion for comics. Sometimes they spec based on data. And sometimes they spec based off the word on the street. Either way, all their specs appeal to a few or many collectors whether it is due to them having similar taste in writing or art, or just an opportunity for a collector to flip a book and make money to “support their habit”. So, this is our weekly chance to look back at how some of our buys from a year ago are doing today.
Just to add another element to this review, I’ve been looking forward to this. This is the first week a year ago that Poyo started including his picks to avoid. I have to say some of them have been pretty obvious but I am looking forward to seeing the results of the others. So I will start including Poyo’s Drek picks going forward. He won’t mind. Love him, hate him, he’ll still sleep at night. Love ya buddy! Funny banter between Poyo and Anthony in the comments section.
Spy Seal #1 – Easy pick! Worth less than cover. And Poyo referred to himself in the third person during this avoid pick so Shawn B. knew he meant it!
Sheena #0 – Good call! I saw a regular $.25 cover sell for a big fat penny! Even the JSC 1:100
variant is selling for under $10. Poyo did say if you were a JSC fan to wait to buy.
Winners
Totally Awesome Hulk #22 – Anthony & Poyo Pick
Original Value: $4 Current Value: $55
Totally awesome is right! Not knowing what was coming, some of the advice a year ago was to quickly flip this one! Hopefully everyone held onto some copies.
Dark Nights Metal #1 – Anthony & Poyo Pick
Original Value: $5 Current Value: $9
No shocker here. But this one didn’t immediately jump in value. I didn’t have time to check on all the variants but I think some of them have risen as well.
Quick Flip Winners & Still Potential
Misses
Astonishing X-Men #2 Elizabeth Torque Character Variant Cover – Mel Pick
Original Value: $10 Current Value: $8
Still a cool looking cover for the PC.
Unspecced Winners
None! This one’s for you Mel!
I still live that astonishing xmen.. lol @ aquaman lol
You know what would be awesome? You dressed up as Aquaman at NYCC.
Sold my TAH #22 and didn’t keep one for the PC. Lesson learned.
They were so scarce in my hood, I was only able to nab a single copy. I kept mine.
I assume your prices are from eBay, and the raw NM pricing. Because TAH22 in NM+ and graded 9.4 go for much more. Recent 9.4 CGC copies sold $80+.
But if you subtract grading/slab fees those are around $55.
That Metal foil cover is near impossible to find in 9.8 condition. So many had creases or bindery tears. Once in a blue moon one shows up on eBay.
Ooh, I love a chance to do the math on what if’s.
Yeah, modern books in slabs aren’t really worthy until they’re selling over the $100 mark in my opinion. Unless you’re sending in a lot of books to cut costs of shipping to and from, grading just one or two books gets costly and just eats into the potential profits.
If I bought a TAH22 for cover price at $4. Paid $6.70 Priority shipping flat rate to CGC. Opted for the $30 fast track grading and then it’s around $15 for them to ship back priority medium flat rate or similar and it’s selling for $80 (depending on it’s grade of course, we’ll just assume it came back a 9.4 or 9.6), then we can subtract around $55 estimated costs just to get it graded. If I sell on eBay, they get their 10% and then paypal gets their 2.9%, we’re looking at what, another $10.32 deducted from my $80 sale?
$4 + $6 (I’m just going to round to make it easier) = $10 to pay for book and ship to CGC.
$30 + $15 = $45 to get graded and ship back to me.
There’s our $55 cost for the graded book.
Now we sell at $80 so we minus $55, that leaves us with $25 profit but that’s before we pay the $10 in eBay and Paypal fees. So all in all, we made around $15 profit when all said in done.
This is all assuming the prices as estimates.
So if you think you have a NM raw copy of TAH 22 you paid $4 for. Skipped the slabbing and sell it for $55 raw as a NM no actual grade guaranteed. How much would we make profit?
$55 – $4 = $51.
Sell on eBay using Paypal makes those fees around $7.
So we minus $7 from $51 which gives us $44 profit, a far better profit margin than the $15 if we sent in a book to get graded and it came back at an $80 book value.
Unless you know you got a 9.8 book and it’s going for more than $100, I think the better potential and profit margin is selling them raw and as floppies, but that’s all just depending on the circumstances. I hope everyone does their due diligence. Always check the market values if you plan to sell your book. Some might think graded books will net you larger profits but that’s not always the case since they can certainly cut deep into profit margins with fees, shipping costs, etc.
Excellent post for those who are either on the fence about slabbing a book or have some grand designs on making it rich by slabbing all their books and selling them. Great job Poyo!!
Thanks. Yeah, I hope my comment puts some perspective in for those who are thinking about slabbing a book thinking they’ll make more profit.
Now this is certainly not the case for all books but that’s why we should all do our homework before selling a book and certainly spending the time, money and resources in slabbing a book to sell.
Wow, that was a lot of math, but I follow you and agree. If you’re going to send in a book you intend to flip, it’s better be fetching about $100 in the grade you’re expecting.
I buy a lot of cgc/cbcs books graded 9.6 for less than $40 shipped and love it. Why spend $35 to have it pressed and graded and shipped back and forth and risk a lower grade when I can get one off eBay for about the same amount? I don’t send much in to be graded anymore…I just buy it already slabbed. Especially older books where you also run the risk of restoration.
I’m the same. I’ve only submitted a handful of books to get graded, all my others I nabbed getting them at bargains compared to the going prices now.
I bought the Astonishing X-Men Torque cover after reading Mel’s picks last year. Only paid 8 dollars for it so I’m still good! I love this cover.
TAH 22 is a great example. I bought 20 raw copies and I haven’t slabbed one yet. I have around 5 left. When I can sell a raw for $70 for NM+ its gotta be doing at least double in slab otherwise it isn’t worth it. There is also the time commitment. Raw I can flip tomorrow, slab I gotta wait several weeks. Things to consider.
Excellent follow-up post FBS—smart math and execution.
I got Metal #1 for the PC, and I found a copy of TAH #22 for $15 a couple of weeks later and getting that made me put together a complete set of that arc that I’m going to hold on to for now.
I grabbed a NM copy of TAH22 off eBay a week after it came out. I paid $25…maybe $30:shipped…at the time I thought that was ridiculous but had a gut feeling I’d better jump on it now. Glad I did. It’s likely a 9.4, so I’ll keepmit raw for a while longer. I like slabbing books when they have a great cover…this one is ok.