An Interlude...and a bit more about comics
Hi there and Happy Thanksgiving week! No weekly update this week, because I was focused on listing over the weekend, and I’m scrambling to get EVEN MORE treasures listed this week. I ship most of the treasures I sell via media mail, and that’s already starting to get risky if people want to get stuff before Christmas, so I’m trying to list as much as possible through this week.
These newsletters might be a bit unfocused, since I want to share info about my small business (I am starting to call it a business, although the hobby vs. business determination is still in process) AND I want to write about collections and collectors AND I want to write about comics AND probably a lot of other things. So, it might continue to be a bit of a hodgepodge, but I think I’ll gain more focus as 2022 kicks into gear.
For this newsletter, what with it being a holiday break and all, I’ll just write about what I want to write about, and that is…….
Oops! I had to pause for a second there because, honest to goodness, I just sold two books on Amazon literally while I was typing this. That’s an update I suppose: I’m now selling on Amazon! Let me tell you, it’s a whole different ball game. More about that later. For now, I’m just going to write about what I want to write about and right now that is comics! If that’s not your thing, I’ll see you next week!
Currently, I am testing my theory of “value investing in comics” by buying a few new comics every month and tracking prices. I’m only just starting to get some real price data since I started to really think about this in August, because if you’re ordering from the Previews catalog when it first comes out, there’s a roughly three-month lead time, and then it takes an additional month or two for sales data to come in on eBay. So far, of the two books in the August catalog that I thought had the potential to become “hot,” (i.e. desirable by collectors), one was delayed until December and one is currently selling for about cover price. The four books that I thought could be “value” picks, that might fly under the radar of most speculators, are not doing too great either. Yet!
My plan is to eventually share my picks when the catalog comes out, and potentially buy copies of new books to resell, with the eventual goal of buying enough comics picks and possibly manga to be able to sign up for an account with a distributor and become a legitimate part-time online comic/book-seller! But I first have to prove to myself that I can actually make some good picks. I’ll let you know how it goes! In the meantime, I was pleasantly surprised to see that one of my value picks, West by cartoonist John Grund was called out as a “Key of the Week” by Key Collector. I’d tell you to go to your comic shop and buy it later this week, but very few comic shops are likely to carry this one. Which is why I ordered one from the Previews catalog. We’ll see if it pays off.
That’s all for now. See you next week!