The Craigslist post

Holy.
Shit.

It's been almost a month since I last posted to Zombie Cat Bacon?! What's the problem, man? Am I OK? Did I fall down and hit my head? Where the hell have I been? Well, I'll tell you.

I've been right here, staring at this screen. For nearly a month, I've felt paralyzed by something I can't quite define. Instead of working on my myriad projects (one of which you will all find very interesting when I am ready to launch) (I hope), I've been watching TV - Mad Men, Game of Thrones, NHL playoffs, Formula One races, too many others to mention. A strange absence of motivation came over me once the Wisconsin snow started to melt, and I haven't accomplished shit.

Gonna start that new project right after this...

But today is a new day, so here we are.

A recap: Amazon isn't going to work. We all know about Ebay. Local comic conventions? Nope. How about I try the cyber-version of stapling an ad to a telephone pole, Craigslist? Let's try it, shall we?

Here's the listing (also can be found on the Appleton, Madison and Green Bay Craigslist pages plus Chicago):

Huge comic book collection

Catchy title, eh? While I did try it a couple months ago (dramatically different text and a price tag attached) and had zero response, I edited the posting a couple of weeks ago, and have had 18 responses so far, evenly distributed from all five city pages.

I've had some hilarious lowball offers ($1-$300), some decent offers ($400-$600), and one big time tease offer of $1500. After not responding to my enthusiastic emails for over a week, Mister $1500 finally wrote back and stated he had bought a large toy collection, and was short of cash.

It's OK, dude, I can wait.

I was informed (over and over) by helpful Craigslist folk that my collection was worthless and unless I had a massive bulk collection of Silver Age gems, I was wasting everyone's time (I wasn't going door-to-door; it's a Craigslist post, fer cryin' out loud). Yes, I know, the first step to really lowballing someone is to make them feel like their carefully curated and preserved collection of whatevers is really a giant pile of landfill.

I've been thinking about specific comics in my basement. I'd say I really enjoyed about 80% of them. Here are a few of the titles (most of these are complete runs and from the 80's):
Airboy
Animal Man
Books of Magic
Grendel
Grimjack
Dreadstar
Nexus
The Authority
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Liberty Meadows
Madman
Hitman
Rocketeer
Omaha the Cat Dancer
Zot

Most of the above could be considered very good to excellent reads, maybe not classics of the form but still, good stuff. So what's collectible anyway? And why? I don't think scarcity has as much to do with it as we think - it could be more of a "branding" issue. I really don't know. But that is something I'm going to try to figure out.

After I stare at this cover for a while...

Links:
Star Wars cast announced!

Godzilla vs. Rodan (I think) - new Asian trailer

What do you make? In defense of teachers

The Green Bay "comic convention"

So I went to a "comic convention" in Green Bay last weekend. That's what it was called. Actually what it was was a very depressing look at the state of local comic collectors and collecting.

Situated in a typical hotel conference room, there were about eight or nine dealers, each trying to unload about 20-40 long boxes of stuff. Each dealer also had a backrack of "collectible" comics (Silver age, Byrne X-Men, variant covers, etc). Each dealer was basically the same as the others, with old stained boxes, tons (literally?) of unwanted crap they haul from show to show, every weekend.

I can only assume this is standard transport procedure

I spoke to each dealer over the course of an hour, peeked in few boxes, and left. In tears. Well, not outwardly, but I was very sad on the inside, I can tell you. For the entire time I was there, there were about 20 non-dealer people (all guys, natch) clawing through boxes, looking for that missing copy of X-Factor (been there, man). The was an old guy they called the Professor, tall but hunched over by age (probably from hauling long boxes), in a long black coat, pulling out the most random collection of stuff: Richie Rich, Spawn, old tattered Gold Keys, JLA from the early 2000's - all from the same two or three boxes.

Comics!

There was another guy here with Wolverine hair, and I don't think he was cosplaying. I saw a denim jacket completely covered in comic book logos - dude was in his mid-30's. And the usual collection of stinky man-children. Of course, not one kid or anyone under the age of thirty. Or a female, except for the very bored wives of the dealers.

I am not overtly criticizing anyone's hygiene or fashion sense, but it was the same circle jerk I've seen for the past 30 years. The same insular, myopic clowns you see everywhere in comic shops and at (real) conventions. I like comic book people. I'm one of them. But I'm tired of the stereotype reasserting itself every chance it gets. Maybe I'm just grumpy.

More importantly (and more in line with the jist of this post), most of the cash exchanged was between the dealers. They were buying each others overstock in order to get ready for the next show.

So why the metaphysical tears? There is no market for comics like this (at least not in Green Bay on a Saturday in March). And the comics I own and love are unloved by 99.9% of the North American population. As I spoke to each dealer about my well curated, properly stored, super fancy comic book collection, I received grunts and near-ridicule about my aspirations to sell my stuff. "It's not really worth anything" was the standard reply. But that's what they are selling. So they're effectively telling me their stuff isn't worth anything either. Yet here we are. At a comic book convention in Green Bay in March.

Hello, Craigslist!

The back issue problem

Earlier today, Brian Hibbs, owner of two stores out west, posted an interesting overview of the challenge he is facing with his newly acquired back issues on Comic Book Resources. 300 long boxes/75,000 comics. I'd bet there are basements and storage lockers throughout North America that are full of collections like that. Maybe not that size, probably more like mine (4500-5000 comics).

When owners of collections like these retire/die or just decide to liquidate, the market will be flooded (moreso) with literally tons of unwanted unreadable and worthless comics. There appears to be no interest in the younger generations to "collect", and I'm not just talking about comics. Have you met many kids with baseball cards lately? What about stamps or coins? My son is nine and he has hundreds of Hot Wheels (including some of mine - love those Redlines), but is he a collector? No, he just acquired them, thanks to Santa, birthdays and trips to Target with Mom.

My basement

So if the younger folk don't wanna hoard, whatever will we do? I can't imagine we're going to return to the days of hockey cards in bike spokes and spinner racks in the five'n'dime. There are millions of comics floating around the existing (and shrinking) back issue dealer market that aren't ever going to find their way into the hands of new and younger readers.

No I can't imagine THAT either

I sold my Marvels a couple of years ago and bought a new car with the proceeds (just a Kia Soul, take it easy). There were a LOT of them in complete runs and most of them were pre-1990 ('72-'87 primarily). What I have left is the other stuff - Image, Dark Horse, DC, Eclipse, etc - and I don't see it finding a home anytime soon. I could probably dump them off on a wholesaler for a dime a piece.

I could, but I don't want to. They're worth more to me than that, and I'm not talking about their value on the back issue market (such as it is).

What are you doing with yours?

Not the solution I'm looking for

The Amazon effect part 2

Ok, so maybe Amazon isn't the way to go. Things have changed since the New Year and it is much more difficult to sell or list comics entertainment collectibles or collectible books. Check this link out:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.blah blah blah

Or don't...anyway, what they eventually say is that you must be an approved seller and you can only list one at a time (no runs or sets). Plus most of the info on Amazon Services seller central is not comic book specific, but geared more toward collectible books.

Here's the list of questions I posted a couple of weeks ago:

• Do I set pricing? In other words, do I have to send a spreadsheet with prices for over 5000 individual issues?
• Yes, I do, and yes I do
• Can I sell runs or sets?
• Nope
• If they set pricing, do they factor the condition into the price? (no I don't have any CGC thingies and won't ever. Ugh.)
• They would prefer I use CGC - they even offer direct access with a discount
• Is there a comic book issue template for uniformity of listing? (there doesn't appear to be when you search on the site)
• Nope
• How long will they hold stuff in inventory? (Will they keep Animal Man #42 in perpetuity?)
• They'll hold it as long as you want as long you pay their warehousing fees
• And of course, the cost of doing business with Amazon (which frankly is not a major concern, as long as I get mine)
• Big huge percentage for Amazon

Now, I am not knocking Amazon. They can run their business anyway they see fit. They just haven't really taken advantage of the fact that Ebay is vulnerable and people are looking for an option.

So now what? Craigslist? I don't know. Has anyone had any luck getting anything other than laughably low offers for your stuff? Yeah, yeah, free market, etc. I know how it all works. I just don't to be bothered dealing with guys who want to give me $10 a long box. There's a full run of Nexus in there dammit!

Maybe I'll get a table at the upcoming comic show...that should be interesting.

The Amazon effect

Just a quick one today, and I'm not even trying here. This is a post from a very interesting entrepreneur and blogger, Steve Chau. I had been writing about my idea of using Amazon to sell my comics, instead of taking the usual Ebay route. Steve has some thoughts on Fulfillment by Amazon that I think are worth reading for anyone interested in online selling, or e-commerce in general:

How Amazon Is Changing Ecommerce And What Your Online Store Must Do To Succeed

Commenter Aaron wrote a response to my question from my post last week (now since deleted for some reason), and while I have not listed anything on Amazon yet, I have been thinking about the best possible strategy. Aaron mentioned that the warehousing costs and the Amazon cut of my action will be too steep to make the whole idea worthwhile. Not sure about that yet, but I do think cherry picking a few choice issues will help me further test the system.

like this!

Feel free to comment on the above article and on your selling experiences in the online world. Thanks for reading and we'll talk soon.

The Mindworms Attack!

As I mentioned earlier, Thor #201 got me hooked instantly back in '72. The connectivity of the Marvel Universe drew me in and held me for decades (off and on but still...). I began to find myself inhabiting specific corners of this universe more than others - the Cosmic penthouse of Thor, the Surfer and Warlock, The Baxter Building and mostly, Avengers Mansion (Spidey's whining never did much for me). When Claremont and Byrne really went Uncanny, and Frank Miller reanimated Daredevil, I was a full fledged Marvel zombie. By 2009, when I moved to New York from Massachusetts, 18 longboxes of Marvel comics trailed closely behind. (Plus, another 16 long boxes of DC, Dark Horse, Image, 80's indys, oh god, so many comics...)

Sorta looked like this:

not actual collection

Why did I keep everything? Simple. It never felt disposable. Nothing I ever loved really did. Hockey cards, Canadian stamps, Hot Wheels - I still have most of the things from my childhood that gave me joy (well, not the stamps so much, but my grandmother worked for Canada Post and gave me every first day cover stamp from 1967 to 1983, so, ya know, couldn't just toss 'em).

And that joy of things was most fully manifest in those full-color 32-page mindworms. I didn't really decide I wanted all of them until I realized I could, theoretically, have them all. After all they're numbered and everything! I could keep track of what I had and what I was missing. The Completist was born.

At its root, the completist impulse is about feeling as though there's no point in collecting something unless you have every single item. Whether it's records, books, comics, toys, memorabilia or something else, the collection isn't worth having unless you have every item that belongs in the set. A set of N-1 is as worthless as an empty set. - Charlie Jane Anders io9 12/10/13

If I were to focus on one subsector of the medium, say Marvel from the 70's or George Perez art or Human Torch appearances, it wouldn't seem so insurmountable. But I wanted the entire Marvel Universe; all of it, from Marvel Comics #1 (1939) to next week's Daredevil. Is that really asking too much?

That's right, Alan, you tell 'em

(Un)fortunately for me, Ebay happened. At first, it felt like I'd found the vault from the end of Raiders. Holy crap! It's was all there: runs of the Avengers, Giant Size Man-Things, even Claremont/Byrne X-Men! After I gorged myself on the incredible deals I was finding (soon I was buying Marvel long boxes blind), I took inventory, literally and otherwise. I figured I had about 20% of the possible Universe now in my grasp.

But after a five seven eight year binge, the thrill of the chase was gone. Because of Ebay, it's just too easy (expense notwithstanding) to acquire the missing gaps.

And soon came the Ghidorah of marriage/kids/mortgage. I was in my mid-40's. Money is no object until it is, and time marches on. I realized I'd never get the other 80%, especially with Marvel pumping out content at a rate only the most seriously demented trust fund baby could keep up with.

Now it's time to say goodbye to the things themselves. It took a while for me to get used to the idea that, soon, I will not be a collector of anything other than memories and experiences. And that's OK by me.

Next up : OCD? Hoarding? How close do we get to those conditions when we strive to own a Universe?

The Ebay story

Welcome back. It appears quite a few new readers have found Zombie Cat Bacon from Norway, and much thanks to Mike at Progressive Ruin, the good folks at The Comic Journal, and of course, Tom Spurgeon at The Comics Reporter.

I received a few questions regarding my Ebay slam from yesterday. Ok, quick story. Signed up for Ebay in 1999? (hold on...double checking that...yup, December '99. Wow, I'm old in Internet years, I guess), and had a 100% seller rating until May of 2013. I sold comics, scifi paperbacks and other detritus found at yard sales and flea markets. Not a serious "business" by any measure but it was good for a few bucks, and I usually turned around and spent the cash on more comics on Ebay, filling in gaps and buying runs and sets.

Greed set in last spring (and this is where you will judge me to be a fool, and correctly so), and I stumbled upon an opportunity to sell Beats headphones via dropship on Ebay from a dude in Hong Kong. Shady? Possibly. Profitable? Well, there was no cost to me, so I made a few bucks off the margin. Fraught with danger? Not exactly high-stakes global financial meltdown danger, but I coulda been burned. And I was, but not in the way I might have expected.

The funny thing is the problem I encountered wasn't my Hong Kong connection. He never failed to ship on time, and all but one shipment made it to the correct address. It was my "customers". Most of the Beats boys were very new to Ebay (as gauged by low seller feedback numbers), and were rather new to whole "wait for the package to arrive from halfway around the world" thing. Note the Shipping Time rating in the link above. So feedback started coming in from these buyers, most positive, a couple neutral and two (2) negatives. Two.

In early July, I was informed my selling privileges were revoked permanently. I have the email responses from Ebay to my appeal (I won't bother posting them here except for this line: "We have no plans to reinstate the selling privileges at this time, nor any time in the near future. As noted previously, this is an indefinite selling restriction which we are confident in continuing to uphold".)

They were steadfast in their decision to cut me off. And not just me. Google this: ebay seller account restricted. I wasn't the only one in the summer of 2013 to be bounced out of Club Ebay. Thousands of sellers were summarily kicked to the curb due to feedback horror stories like mine.

I can still buy stuff on Ebay (thanks, guys), but not so much with the selling. I am no longer miffed as I was (and boy, was I miffed! You wouldn't like me when I'm miffed), especially since I decided to give a tryout to other guys, Amazon. (BTW, the other auction sites just don't have the critical mass of buyers to make it worthwhile). I sold a couple of comics over the holidays, and it worked out just fine, though no feedback was given by the buyers. You know, I don't think I've ever given anyone Amazon feedback either.

Somewhere over the past couple months I read about the Fulfillment service Amazon offers, and instead of listing individual issues myself, I thought it would be easier to just let them handle it.

However I still have questions:

• Do I set pricing? In other words, do I have to send a spreadsheet with prices for over 5000 individual issues?
• Can I sell runs or sets?
• If they set pricing, do they factor the condition into the price? (no I don't have any CGC thingies and won't ever. Ugh.)
• Is there a comic book issue template for uniformity of listing? (there doesn't appear to be when you search on the site)
• How long will they hold stuff in inventory? (Will they keep Animal Man #42 in perpetuity?)
• And of course, the cost of doing business with Amazon (which frankly is not a major concern, as long as I get mine)

There is still more research to conduct, and answers to seek. I'd be very interested to read comments regarding your experiences selling large lots of comics (non-retail division please).

More later, good readers. Thanks for your time.