SALES TO ASTONISH #43 - MARCH 2026
Always Leave Some Meat On The Bone
You would think buying comics (and graphic novels, manga, roleplaying games and all the other stuff that’s on the website) should be a relatively straightforward process.
The seller has something to sell and knows what they want for it and the buyer agrees and pays the seller. Simple? Sadly not.
I think my current ratio of collections bought to those that are offered to me is around 1:12 which is pretty poor. The last one I bought was really straight forward. The person selling knew what they wanted price-wise, had approached a few other dealers (only one of whom had responded, and there seems to be a theme there) and he understood he was selling to me and that I would in turn need to make a profit. He was leaving some ‘meat on the bone’ for me. In turn, and I’ve talked about pricing before, I generally try to pitch my pricing so that I can be seen as affordable and competitive with other sellers. I’ve no interest in trying to squeeze every last penny out of a comic book. I’d like them to find new homes as quickly as possible and if there’s a little more uplift that someone can find by flipping on a key book then so be it. Ultimately I’m happy with the price I’ve sold the item at and that in turn it pays my bills etc
So in the ratio of 1:12 what happens with the other 11 collections? Well first and foremost I don’t want to buy everything that’s offered or sometimes the collection is too large I can’t afford to buy it. But for the ones that I can afford and do want, a theme has emerged over the last 1-2 years. Sellers do not want to leave any meat on the bone. Not even a sinew or bit of gristle! I’ll stop the food analogy now but you get the gist - they want retail price from a retailer without any acknowledgement of the retailer needing to make a profit. eBay is a great resource in terms of giving a guide on what items are priced at and have sold for, but a valuation of a collection cannot simply be based on eBay solds. The route that using eBay or maybe even a comic grading guide or App normally takes people down is an inflated valuation of their collection. eBay solds says the collection is worth £8k and therefore the seller wants £8k or as close to that as possible.
The maximum return with minimal effort.
This would only really work if the person selling their collection was selling it to another collector for whom price was not an issue. It certainly doesn’t work for a retailer who needs to invest the time and effort to sort, grade, price and list the saleable items. And then wait for said items to sell, which in some cases could be months or years. I remember watching an episode of Dickenson’s Real Deal where Dickie couldn’t help getting involved in the negotiations, trying to get the dealer to offer more and more money and you could see the frustration building on their face to the point where they politely had to tell the Bronzed-One that they needed to earn a living too!
I’ve had all manner of variations on being asked to offer top dollar for collections from someone wanting me to increase my initial offer by 300% and for them to be able to remove the ten most saleable issues so they can sell them privately, to engaging with someone who had offered their items to other dealers but hadn’t heard anything (I was the only person to respond to them), didn’t know what price they wanted although some were listed on eBay and when offered a price wanted nearly double the offer and then disappeared.
It really shouldn’t be this hard..!
I did manage to pick a few things up at an auction (randomly I bought a sack of coffee beans, ground coffee and pods for £55 but don’t worry I’m not going to start to sell coffee on the website!! ☕️) and am still working through a couple of collections I acquired last year but I’m always on the look out to buy new stock and keep my offering as fresh as possible
Although I kind of finished with the Comic Con circuit last year, I had the pleasure of trading at a Comic Con in a local library on March 7th and I’ve got to say I had a really good time. Yes I sold a few bits & pieces including around 60 issues of Cable for £20 but the day was really relaxed, I chatted to some great people including someone who was recommending extra work in acting (watch this space 🤣🤣???) and there might be some follow up events I could support the Library with. In all one of the best comic related days I have had in years!
As with most months over the last year or so the mid-month slump was pronounced. It still baffles me how I can go a complete 24 or in some cases 48 hours without making a single sale. At the time of writing this column there were over 11,500 items available on the website and yet there are those times where I cannot connect a single buyer to one item. I was in a local Waterstones recently and figured they much have a few thousand books on sale/display at any one time, so imagine a scenario where they have plenty of visitors through the door but the till doesn’t ring once during the day. At best zero sale days are an annoyance, at worst it’s something I’ve never quite come to cope with mentally. The overwhelming sense of imposter syndrome is never too far away on days without sales. I start to question myself, the website, the service, the stock, the appeal, the future and so on. I’m better at coping with it now but it’s still tough to manage. I’ve tried to add things up in the store on different days but putting a few social media posts out about new stuff doesn’t reach the same audience as the emailers on Thursday & Saturday.
Apparently Koreans do not view success as linear upward progress, rather they feel that success will be periodical and that will be interspersed with tougher times. There’s no doubt that I’ve been experiencing much tougher selling conditions for the last year and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to generate the revenue to pay the bills. But acknowledging the Korean view this is to be expected and it’s a matter of toughing it out until things get better. And they did!!
There was a really pleasing upturn in sales towards the end of March and the last week of March saw regular sales from both new and returning buyers and good website traffic. I know I don’t always go into the granular detail of titles that are selling on a month by month basis but certainly this year so far I’ve sold a lot of Punisher and Spider-man back issues, whereas X-Men and Batman have slowed up.
March was better than February and the aim for April is to make that better than March by attempting to get over 1000 new items in store over the month. Watch this space….
March Key Sales
AD&D - Book of Vile Darkness £100
Ms Marvel Vol.1 #16 FN+ £25
Ms Marvel Vol. #18 FN+ £50
Fantastic Four Vol.1 #112 VG £80
Uncanny X-Men Vol.1 #130 GD+ £12.50
Uncanny X-Men Vol.1 #108 FN £14
Uncanny X-Men Vol.1 #111 VFN- £20
