In last week\u2019s column, I\u2019d walked into a local comics shop with some \u201cSilver Age\u201d Marvel and D.C. comic books from the early 1960s, comics with 10-cent cover prices theoretically cataloguing at hundreds of dollars each, but actually in typical \u201cfair to very good\u201d worn condition and thus not likely to retail at more than 10 percent of that.<\/p>\n
Asked what percentage of his shelf price he intended to pay me, the proprietor told me \u201cTwenty percent.\u201d<\/p>\n
A substantial parenthetical may be justified: Once upon a time, reputable booksellers might offer you one-third of the price at which they planned to place a book on the shelf. Since those days, taxes have gone up, regulatory extractions have gone up, electric bills have gone up, government-imposed employee costs have gone up, insurance costs are about to go way, way up, and the pace of book sales has slowed enormously, with young people apparently convinced they can learn all they need to know by manipulating the small electronic device they hold in their lap instead of making eye contact with anyone during dinner.<\/p>\n
That means the book in which the book-seller is offering to invest his hard cash — despite the fact he will often price it lower than a new paperback reprint of the same title — may sit on his shelf for two years before someone either steals it, drops it on the floor to break its spine, or buys it during his annual summer discount sale.<\/p>\n
This helps explain why — unless you can convince them you have a first printing of The Canterbury Tales — fewer and fewer booksellers will travel across town to look at some books you can\u2019t accurately describe, once you utter that Bubonic Plague of garage-seller phrases: \u201cI have no idea what they\u2019re worth; who don\u2019t you come make me an offer?\u201d<\/p>\n
I still cannot explain why, more times than not, a good-faith cash offer made under those circumstances draws an instant explosion of shrieking, as the possessor of the split-spined, water-stained, no-dust-jacket treasure shouts \u201cYou\u2019re a thief! I looked that book up Online and it\u2019s worth a hunnert dollars!\u201d<\/p>\n
Once the air has been poisoned with wails and cries about cheats and thieves, what is the honest bookseller\u2019s incentive to remain and patiently instruct you that the \u201cfine\u201d first printing in a \u201cfine\u201d dust jacket that you spotted online may or may not be worth $100 plus shipping from Stoke-on-Trent — the fact that it\u2019s still listed, after all, means no one has yet bought it at that price — but your bargain reprint with the number line ending in \u201c5,\u201d the rubbed corners and the tattered jacket is nonetheless a $20 book at best, meaning his offer of $4 or $6 is not only honest but actually handsome, given that without too much exertion he can probably find a matching copy for a buck in the neighborhood thrift shop — while your book club edition with no dust jacket is suitable only for leveling the short leg of that table on your back porch.<\/p>\n
Why do people say \u201cI have no idea what the book is worth …\u201d if their asking price is actually $100? Why didn\u2019t they say that on the phone yesterday, allowing the bookseller to respond \u201cGood luck with that,\u201d and stay in his warm bed this morning with his kitty-cats?<\/p>\n
Increasingly, experienced booksellers will respond: \u201cYou don\u2019t know what your belongings are worth? Would you take 10 dollars for your car? Since I sell at 80 percent of market value, call me back after you\u2019ve gotten a written professional appraisal and I\u2019ll see if there\u2019s anything I need badly enough to pay you 20 percent: I don\u2019t drive around doing free appraisals any more.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anyway, the comic store man informs he that comics I\u2019d valued at $50 to $60 might bring me only $10 to $12 apiece, at wholesale. OK: On with the experiment.<\/p>\n
Two books were rejected completely, including the somewhat dirty Spiderman No. 3 with pieces missing both from the cover and from an inside page. No offer. Not so much as a dollar. A comic that \u201ccatalogs\u201d in the thousands.<\/p>\n
\u201cCondition.\u201d<\/p>\n
The five books that sold — which I had \u201cvalued\u201d at $40 to $60 each — netted me 12 dollars total; two dollars and forty cents apiece. Maybe twice what I spent on gas, driving around.<\/p>\n
And you\u2019re planning to make a living haunting yard sales and \u201cselling the old stuff for a fortune online\u201d?<\/p>\n
A few of the comics I saved — which Malloy\u2019s \u201cComics Values\u201d and the Overstreet \u201cComic Book Price Guide\u201d again led me to believe might be worth $60 or so, and including an early 1960s \u201cBatman\u201d — went back into the brunette\u2019s store at the antique mall in plastic bags in the open racks, priced at $12 to $19. A few have sold, in only a few weeks.<\/p>\n
Unless it\u2019s the love of your life, making a major \u201cinvestment\u201d in fragile old comics whose value is so heavily dependent on condition, I suspect, would be not only unwise but not much fun, since even taking the books out and reading them could cut their value in half.<\/p>\n
Stick with utilitarian gold, silver, and guns. Don\u2019t pay a lot extra for \u201cperfect condition\u201d engraved pieces that\u2019ll lose half their value if you or your kid drop them on the garage floor.<\/p>\n
How come Marilyn Monroe is still hot, while those endless piles of books moaning about Jack Kennedy and the lost glories of Camelot are not?<\/p>\n
Mink stoles, once tokens of shameless wealth but now largely out of style, can go for $40 in the thrift shops — two or three bucks, corrected to the value of the 1960 dollar.<\/p>\n
Values are highly variable. Unless you\u2019re selling .44 Magnums or twenty-dollar gold pieces, don\u2019t expect to get \u201ccatalog\u201d price at your garage sale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In last week\u2019s column, I\u2019d walked into a local comics shop with some \u201cSilver Age\u201d Marvel and D.C. comic books from the early 1960s, comics with 10-cent cover prices theoretically cataloguing at hundreds of dollars each, but actually in typical \u201cfair to very good\u201d worn condition and thus not likely to retail at more than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[36,53,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-town","category-books","category-collectibles"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-81","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=497"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":498,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497\/revisions\/498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}