It’s that time. Your parent or spouse is complaining about a basement filled with long boxes, you need to move and the moving van isn’t big enough, you’ve finally realized that you simply don’t have the time to read all your old comics, or you just need the money. Whatever the reason, you have decided to sell your comic books on eBay. Here are some tips to maximizing your success.
Shipping – Shipping costs can be quite expensive, especially when selling paper products, which tend to be heavy. Also, potential buyers are often turned off by high shipping costs. You need to find a way to minimize your personal cost for shipping without losing two much profit or turning away buyers. For particularly rare comics, especially Silver Age or before, simply provide free shipping. The comic will earn enough in bids to pay for that easily. For less rare comics, there are two good options. Standard envelopes will hold up to about 5 comics easily and your total cost will be about $3 – $4, including shipping cost. Priority Flat Rate Medium boxes (the 8 ½ x 11 ones) cost $11.35 to ship, are free from the post office, and hold about 50 comics. Either way, discounting the shipping cost about 10% – 20% of your actual cost will help you get buyers.
Photos – Photos of the actual comics being sold are essential. For items sold in the comic book category, eBay provides Gallery Plus for free, which means you can include up to 12 enhanced photos in the listing for free. Take advantage of this by photographing every comic book and including close ups of any rarer comics. You can also use this to show off the condition of the books you are selling.
Bags and Boards – Unless you are selling in massive bulk, you will need to bag and board all of your comic books for sale. Buyers simply won’t even consider comic books that aren’t protected this way. Bagging and boarding 100 comics usually costs between $15 and $20 including the cost of tape. This cost can be prohibitive compared to the usual sale value of most comic books ($0.30 – $0.50 per comic). Depending on the size of your comic books, you may be able to include 2 comic books per bag, by putting one on each side of the board, but you should definitely make sure your buyer knows you are doing this.
Listing Titles – Do a search for comic books in eBay. On any given day you will probably get about 1 – 2 million listings. That is a lot of competition. In order to improve your chances of selling in such a saturated category, you will need a good title. Key words for comic books are the name of the comic, name of the publisher, and issue numbers being sold. Additionally, if there is anything rare about the comic books, including a first appearance or death of a character, include that in the title. It may be worth paying $0.50 for a subtitle on any particularly sought after comic.
