Hi, it’s Glenn again. As you may know, I posted a week or so ago about an auction going on now of 30,000+ comics over at Lot Auctions, and that I’d be answering questions about it over there.
Unfortunately, right after I said that, I got hit with deadline hëll and site problems (that were exacerbated by Hurricane Wilma hitting my credit card processor, of all things) that had me unable to respond immediately. So I started a new post– which of course also serves as an ad to go bid on stuff. Responses to everybody after the fold.
And yes, there’s still ten days left to bid. Go for it. There’s some really great stuff in there– including comic books that never came out in this country and comic books that many people swore never came out at all.
First: yes, we know about the sign-up problems. It was initially a problem with our credit card software for verification, and to make matters worse, our CC processor was right in the path of Wilma. So after a few days of no action, we said the heck with it and removed the section just so we could get it working.
From dave w.: Are all the books going for one price, or do we bid on individual titles?
As Fred Chamberlain and Josh Wilhoyte noted, they are part of a whole lot…. and you can bid on the entire thing, each individual set, and each individual comic itself.
Take, for example, the Wolverine 4-issue miniseries. You can bid on the series or on individual issues. You get a discount of 10% on bids on that miniseries, so if bids on each issue are $2.50 apiece, you only have to bid higher than $9 to get the set. For this auction, there’s also a 15% discount on the top level, so you end up saving close to 25% compared to the price of buying each issue individually. So if you’re a dealer, is suddenly becomes much more economical.
From Bob Heer: Can you make a plain text file of each issue in the collection and the starting/current price available?
Done– and we’ve also included the sweetener information on lots. You can get it at http://www.lotauctions.com/30000comicbooks.txt
Can you give a rough estimate of shipping costs per comic? I know it says actual amount, that’s fine, but given the widely divergent shipping prices I’ve seen on on-line (espcially for me, since it’s shipping to Canada) it’s best to have a rough idea before bidding.
It’ll depend on how many you’re having shipped and how you want them sent. I’d use the DHL website to get a price estimate. We’d be shipping from postal code 07086. You can estimate the weight would be about 4-5 comic books per pound.
Can you fix the listings so that the issues are in order when you look at a set? Right now it goes “#1, #10, #100… #2, #20” for long running books, which is always awkward. Easiest way to fix that is usually just to make all issue numbers three digits (“#001, #002”) so they sort correctly.
I’m not sure we can easily change it at this point in the auction, alas– but the text file is set up in that way.
Happy hunting, all.
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Some good stuff in there. Too bad I filled in a few thousand back issues over the last 2 years, or I’d probably bid on more. But, I see a lot of issues that can fill some holes I have, especially some 70’s stuff.
Gah! why’d you have to let people know about this! I was eargerly waiting to grab Flex Mentallo for 5 bucks!
Is Lot Auctions even in business any more? The only auction showing up on their site is this one. All the other categories are empty.
Yes, Lot Auctions is still in business, but it’s somewhat sporadic– the nature of the business is such that it works best when you’ve got multiple items and you don’t know which way you’re going to make more money.
Otherwise, people tend to use that other auction website– you know the one, four letters, rhymes with “dismay”.
LA hasn’t gotten enough traffic yet to hit self-sustaining critical mass, alas. But since many of the auctions it tends to attract are one time events that you’d have to advertise anyway– bankruptcy sales, store liquidations, land parcelling, estate settling, and so on– it’s not disasterous.
Speaking of comics that people swore never came out… How about the comic book adaptation of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” the motion picture? — Matt http://www.comicsunlimited.biz
You refer to Marvel Super Special #7, a magazine which was never released in this country. Ah, but… apparently, it was released in Belgium. Pictures can be found via Google.
And you thought you’d seen everything George Perez ever drew…
does anyone know where i can get the sgt peppers comic book. A few years ago there was one on the site that rymes with Dismay?ALSO did they release any other beatles movies in cbook form?
Glenn,
I registered for lot auctions, and have started browsing at what you have for sale, but still have several questions.
First of all, the condition of the books is not given when you look at the individual titles (eg Spider-Man 125).
Second, it is unclear if the scans you show are the scans of the actual comics being sold.
Third, if you bid on a set, and someone else bids on the whole collection, I assume it gets sold to the person who bid on the whole collection. Is that the case?
Athos: First of all, the condition of the books is not given when you look at the individual titles (eg Spider-Man 125).
Second, it is unclear if the scans you show are the scans of the actual comics being sold.
No, they aren’t the actual covers. If we had done that or graded each book, we’d still be waiting to get the auction online– 30,000 issues is more than a lot of stores have. If there are specific issues you’re curious about, we’re trying to answer them as best as we can.
Third, if you bid on a set, and someone else bids on the whole collection, I assume it gets sold to the person who bid on the whole collection. Is that the case?
Not quite. If the bid for the collection is bigger than the bid on the individual items (minus the sweetener) then that bid wins. But it’s entirely possible that individual bids will beat out bids on groups, as some people are looking to cherry pick– for example, someone might want All-Star Comics #58 so badly that they’ll bid high enough to just get that issue, if other people have enough bids to make up the difference to outbid the person bidding on the entire run. Or that bidder may switch strategies and start bidding on the series, and worry about unloading the extras later.
Hi. I’m having a bit of trouble with lot auctions and was hoping for some help. I was going to bid on a few items of that comics lot but when I go to bid I get an error message. When I try to check my account I can bring up the screen with balance, watch list, etc but no matter which one I click on it just goes right back to the sign-in page.
I don’t know what I’m doing wrong as when I registered there I got my name, password, user id, and all and it seemed normal at the time.
I sent an e-mail to support but I’m not sure how long it will take so I thought I would ask for help here too (as I would like to bid while the auction is still going on).
Thanks!!!
gtc
GTC: By now our tech guys should have gotten in touch with you to resolve the problems. Everything ok?
Hi. Thanks for responding. I got an e-mail and it turned out to be something simple. The setting on my computer for cookies was too high. When I bumped it down it then worked ok.
Thanks again!
gtc
It’s kind of annoying at points. The front page will declare a minimum bid, but when you submit it, it brings up a new page saying you didn’t meet the minimum bid. And when you look at the math, it’s altered the bid increment from 50 cents to a dollar, for direct example. There are alse lots where the description is for the wrong series of comics. The bidding discrepancy is especially disturbing.
Josh
Sadly, what Josh is describing appears to be a discrepancy in the proxy bidding.
What’s happened is that the previous bidder bid much higher than required to win, and the software automatically calculates and shows the bare minimum required to win– but we’ve had a few reports there are problems with the heavy bidding that’s going on, and we’re working on fixing it.
It’s not clear from his post, but he could also be describing bidding on a single issue in a title, but the bid isn’t high enough to beat the bids or the reserve price on the titles.
The bid increments do go up at certain set levels, when bidding has reached a certain level. We didn’t want the “and two bits” type of bidding going on.
Sorry for the error in the price display. Due to the nature of the lot matrix and how it integrates into the original auction software, there are places where it shows the last proxy bid rather than the current bid. I’m fixing it now.
Please note that it’s just a display issue. As you can see from the Captain Carrot lot, all bids are registered properly and all proxies are operating in their proper manner.
Yes, in the end it’s all my fault. 🙂