Hi, I'm Mike. I have been selling comics on auction sites for several years now, both on ebay and Yahoo auctions. Today, I'm going to drop some hints on how to get more value from your Comic Book Sales.

Value, by the way is not exclusively synonymous with money. Value, when it comes to an ebay business includes precious time, and publicity and more.

Comic Books. Manga. Graphic Novels. Sequential Stories.

I'm confused. There seems to be two models when it comes to selling comics on ebay.

Some of the biggest sellers, like milehighcomics, list every comic seperately. Even the ones that are only worth MAYBE a dollar. Of course, they have thousands upon thousands of books, so they probably sell multiple comics with each order. I can't imagine selling books for a buck, paying the 1.9% plus 30 cent paypal fee, the store listing fees, etc, and paying some store employee to scan the covers and pack the books up and ship them out, and making much of a profit.

Then, there are the people who sell lots or runs of books, like say for instance, Action Comics 800 to 810. A continuous series of issues of one title is a run. A lot would be, for instance, 20 random comics thrown in a box. Of course, the above mentioned Action Comics run is a lot, too, but when it's in that kind of lot, it benefits the seller to use the term run. I'm more likely to buy a lot of comics that has a complete run in it.

Of course, a lot can have one book in it, too, but we've covered those sellers.

The guys who sell lots and/or runs do it in different ways. Some people throw comics in a box, sometimes at random (ah, you thought I was kidding, didn't you?) and expect you to take a chance on it having something worthwhile, let alone good. The mystery auctions of the comics world.

I've tried that, and I find no one will bite at a mystery auction, unless you make certain guarantees, such as the books meeting condition criteria (e.g. all the books are in very good or better condition, per Overstreet Price Guide grading standards), or there is a key issue in the mix, (e.g. Dark Knight trade included with each lot), or you offer the buyer some control over the contents (e.g. choose from Marvel, DC, Image, or Dark Horse lots, or mix and match).

If you plan on selling lots of books, you should consider each customer a potential return customer, and not try to screw them over with a pile of trash from your collection. I'm not saying throw 500 dollars into a box that was sold for ten, but you should give the customers some bang for their buck.

If you use the Overstreet Price Guide as your official price guide, as you should, you can (once you figure out the grading system) figure out what the MAXIMUM amount a RETAILER would sell the books for. As an ebayer, you may or may not be able to get those prices for the books, but if use those numbers as a guide, you can offer 10, 20, 100 times or more the price the customer paid for a lot in books.

Say you sell a box of 20 books for 10 bucks.  Now say you have box of old comics like the New Universe Books from Marvel, published in 1986. Say they're in very good to fine. That's about maybe 75 cents to $1.25 each. Throw in five to ten of those. That's five bucks worth of books. Now say you have a box of some nineties books that go originally sold for 1.50 to 2.50 each, but aren't much in demand right now. Throw in a nice selection of these. If you can assemble whole story arcs, all the better. Okay, so now you have between fifteen to eighteen books, Overstreet Value 20 to 40 bucks.

And now it's time to pick the cherry. I have bought some collections in the past, and these collection included literally boxes of books that were hot, but were overprinted. Say you have a box of Spawn number 1s that really aren't flying out the door. Put one in. Or Superman 1 from the eighties.

I'll leave the other two books up to you to choose. But don't stick anything in that would really disappoint the customer. You really want them to come back and buy more.

So when you're done, you'll probably have about 25 to 50 dollars or more Overstreet Guide value worth of books. Yeah, you could probably get more for the books with more time and more money invested in unloading them. But think of money you didn't get as going toward publicity and customer goodwill. If nothing else, you'll get a good feedback, which always helps.

If you include some business cards, you may be able to convince your customer not only to make more purchases, but to tell his or her friends at the comic store about your business. If you put in five cards and one of them (20% for you math heads) gets you a new customer, you're growing your business. 1 in 10 is probably more realistic as odds go, but try getting a comic book collect to give out your card to 10 people is not likely. Three to five is more sensible. If more people want your address from them, they probably know how to use pens and paper.

Use the value of word of mouth to get more people in the store to check you out. Even if they don't buy right away, if you have some cool books, rare books, or hard-to-find books, they might remember that and transmit that knowledge to other people who are looking for those books (e.g. to their friends online, at the comic store, their work buddies who hang at the comic shop, etc.).

So, you can either hold onto your books until they rot or get full value, or use the value of the comics to build your business.

Thanks for reading this and come visit my store!