Options to Sell online now that TCG Player is out
[Music] hey everyone back to having some comic shop talk on some industry stuff to talk about um sadly nothing from the retailers conference because it kind of I thought it was going to be in Baltimore they hadn't announced that it was going to be in Dallas until very late and I didn't get to make it out and I haven't gotten back I got a couple of friends that went who are gonna when we get have a chance to get together they're going to tell me everything that went on and what was uh Diamond talking about at their retailer conference with you know all the massive changes image leaving Dark Horse leaving I don't have anything on that this week but hopefully soon I'll have a lot of a lot on that but I mean a lot of it's already out on the internet one of the things I want to talk to you about today is uh TCG player who I had touted I did an episode on how to put the comics online with them how they had a scanner how it worked great and it was going well I was building I had built up to about 100 a week at about 6 000 books on the kiosk that people could look up uh here at the store but then it was live on their website and I was billed up to about a hundred dollars a week in like dead stock right so stuff that I really didn't sell didn't move in the store this was a much larger platform where people who were looking to fill runs and stuff like that were purchasing books like four dollar books I don't do four four dollar books on eBay to make it uh for to make it worth my while to do four dollar books on eBay I would have to sell probably a hundred four dollar books on eBay a week a lot of work I don't have the Manpower for so I don't but if you're a big shop you have a big family that's working for you for free or you have some other method of being able to do it and you're able to put up a couple of thousand uh books because that's what you're gonna need to move about 400 you're gonna need way more than than a couple of thousand to do for 400 books a week in the four dollar range you can move expensive books on eBay pretty pretty easily especially if they hit the top ten you know if you just watch the top ten and then put those books on eBay you should be you know you probably can run them through pretty quickly what I tried to do was try to get rid of some books that weren't selling in the shop and move them online and I was really loving it and I was gonna put I had planned on putting my entire store on their system so then everybody people that don't like to dig and there are people out there that don't like to dig they come in my store is kind of a little bit real old school comic if you like to dig I'm the place to come because there's a lot of digging to be done if you don't like to dig I get a lot of frowns they look at my wall they look through uh you know I have a couple of specific boxes they'll look through those but they don't want to dig through the dollar bins and the 50 Cent bins and stuff so this way on the kiosk everything would be on there and show the prices great solution I was I was over the moon I titled it a lot I talked about it a lot well eBay bought TCG player and they closed down the comics so uh we never got independence because we were supposed to get image and boom we're supposed to be the next opened up it was just marvel in DC to begin with when eBay first bought it was supposedly weren't going to be any changes they were going to actually move into sports cards next and I was like I have a large amount of sports cards that I have no room to show and you know what I always say I say if you can't see it you can't sell it so I have a lot of sports cards that nobody can really see or go through uh because even though I have a 3 000 square foot store it is just filled to the brim and I have a basement that is pretty much full also so being able to move some stuff online where you can get some eyes on it was exciting to me and it was going to you know help the business but sadly that is gone now so I've been looking for another company to go with I did hip comics and I did a show on the hip Comics they have a camera that you take the picture of your book and it it automatically lists all your stuff it never really took off for me in sales wise I got very few sales from it their notification system wasn't great I didn't really know when I got a sale it didn't push notification to me any which way they didn't have a good phone app for it so you know that's gone I'm gonna start putting my stuff on Overstreet because they are talking about connecting buyers and sellers on there and they're looking to do it for free I just don't know how many people are going to be on there but I think that's my next place to go and I did a episode I actually had a small interview we uh we talked about the Overstreet and then I showed on the computer how to put your Comics into it I kind of left it alone because I already had the TCG player and with having the kiosk piece to me that was the king that kiosk piece was really key to to being the next level you know we already have it for magic and Pokemon and all of our TCG cards uh the kiosk which is great so that we don't have people flipping through and touching our expensive cards all the time people can just look up the card they're looking for if we have it we'll go pick it and it's it's not super quick but it is easy and it's very profitable because we're also selling online so it's a great way to work it I'm going to miss that kiosk piece with the comic books maybe if I can find somebody to build the kiosk piece I can take a CSV from Overstreet after I put my collection in there and then dump it over to a kiosk piece something simple it won't be pretty like the TCG player kiosk but uh if it just brings up that we have the book in stock that would be great finding where it is in the store might be a little different but yeah so there's a lot going on what not still out there it beat my prediction but um I don't know if you've seen a lot of people talking about it recently if you really listen to their conversations if they've had an auction that didn't go well that somehow what not is making it up to them certain people certain people on certain levels not everybody's getting that treatment when you treat your sellers differently it becomes I don't know everybody knows how I feel about whatnot and that they don't treat every seller as a just an entity you do the best you can here's the platform it's a great platform and you make your money and if you fail you fail that's business this propping up people because they're touting your name on YouTube is uh you know it's not a free market right all these people are like I'm making tons of money is this is this is capitalism this it's not a free market man if if you're getting um you know what not exclusives and you're getting 80 or 50 of them on a low print run um and then other sellers aren't even getting off of them or and they're not getting the first opportunity at them it's just not a fair market place and that's why I don't go to it I don't buy on it and there's a lot of buying opportunities because there's a lot of low-level sellers that are getting their their asses kicked to be honest with you selling you know key books for a dollar or two because they have three people in their in their show I say this all the time if they were so great eBay would have bought them right TCG player is this little company um selling magic and Pokemon online they come up with a scan tool which kind of elevates them a little bit then the ski kiosk tool another elevation they go out they bought Channel Fireball you know they made some Acquisitions and um you know then they started to grow they put into comics and they talked about doing sports cards eBay says hey we like this we like your format we like your business model we like everything there boom uh we're gonna buy it what not's been out there and because they haven't gone public and stayed private they're looking for the big sellout right and when I say private they have sold some shares they've done some funding some rounds of funding but it's still not on the stock market so their thing is is to at some point they want to sell this whole company to somebody probably their their idea was to sell it to eBay or Amazon doesn't seem to have any interest in live auctioning it's kind of something very difficult to control and Amazon really likes control but eBay built their own and eBay has a much bigger group of people to send out notifications for when people go live and you're going to see some of the biggest dealers on whatnot once eBay launches I know it's launched but it's kind of beta not everybody's allowed on it yet but once it opens up these big dealers are going to move over to eBay because they're going to have 3 000 people in their room vying to buy their items and the guys who were good at what not are going to be amazing at eBay they're gonna crush it so you know good on them they made a good decision to move over uh get on whatnot [Music] build an audience and also um figure out how you do it like you there are a small select few people that were able to go on there first time out and be able to run a really good show usually that's when you have enough people where you're you're going to get some sales and makes you more comfortable less nervous more confident and then of course the show gets better and better if you're on there and you're pulling teeth and you're losing money on every sale it's hard as a human being to hide that and to stay on for your full hour and get your teeth kicked in if there's a lot of preparation there's a lot of work involved that's one of the early on that was one of the reasons I didn't go to whatnot because it's it is a third job I have two jobs already that would be a third job you got to be a PT Barnum a little bit a heavy duty salesman car salesman a little bit I was a car salesman a long time ago I hated it so I wasn't about to go do it again I want people to go out there and open up comic shops I talk about it all the time but there are so many different kinds of comic shops I run an old school what I grew up loving comic shop Digger bins you can read books while in the shop nobody bothers you there's other stuff there's toys and video games and you know I might have a low lawnmower out front if I need to make a little extra money who knows uh if I get it cheap enough it'll be out there you can do all new comic books if you figure out a way to get the traffic in to buy new comic books fantastic because boy do we need to sell more new comic books we need to see sell more comic books to kids if you start a comic book shop that was just focused on kids and you were successful I'd be the first one to pump you up for a for an eisner's award we need readers if you want a long-term business not a flash in the pan because people will stop investing when stores stop buying if you go in with a book and the store says I don't want it it's a 300 book I don't want it at any price because I'm afraid the Market's going to crash and I just don't want anymore I already have four or five six and then people go well this really can't be worth 300 if nobody will even give me ten dollars for it it can't be a 300 book that was the last crash in the 90s guys had cases of number ones that were like thirty and forty dollars a piece then they went to nothing they went to like stores wouldn't even pay you a quarter a piece for them because they had a case of them we have to be as comic book owners we have to be stewards of the business it's not like every other retail right it is very different that's one of the reasons I have so many skus so when Comics start to slide a little bit and it's just readership I have video games and I have cat die casts and I have toys and I have collectible pops and I have play Space to play Magic and Pokemon I have signings I have art classes I'm doing a lot of different stuff it's to mitigate all that risk um of purchasing and just trying to be in that if I invest three thousand dollars or more on an exclusive copy an exclusive book I don't really have the reach on the internet um to sell those books at that price Mark at that margin where they're making that crazy profit margin so if they're buying the books at let's say three dollars a piece it's a nine thousand dollar investment but if they're selling them at twenty dollars a piece you know 1999 it is a huge return now they're shipping and there's all other kinds of stuff there's cost there's overhead I get it there's the artist they had to pay for you know it might cost them 12 grand um but to return 60 you know if you're making 40 in that and you can swing it and sell it in a short period of time you know that's a huge profit margin but is that a long-term thing if not they've made their money they can move on they can sell something different they don't they could sell they can sell widgets who knows you know but to sell Comics you really have to make readers you have to get kids involved from five six seven um you have to get them to fall in love with something uh really to fall in with love with the art form and then those kids will be buying Comics into their 50s and you can pass the store on to your family you can sell the store to somebody else good luck selling a store when the market crash you know you might be able to dump your items off at maybe eight percent of value when you liquidate but you're not going to be able to sell your business [Music] especially in a business that's so specific is like an exclusive business if you're running a store that's doing exclusives on a monthly basis you try to sell that to somebody else that is a like that is a skill that one of the reasons I'm not in it is because it it there is this particular skill to it you know you have to pick the right book you have to pick the right artist you have to pick the right composition that I mean I'm not down downgrading what those guys are doing at all I it impresses me I don't think it's good for the hobby but it is a skill and not everybody can do it that's why you've seen some stores go under trying it it will put you out of business quickly if you're not good at it um or if you stick to it too long so the guys who know when to Pivot and they they know how to do it good on them but it's very difficult if you're thinking about opening a store if you're going to start out as an online guy and you try it out online and then you don't have the overhead in the store and stuff like that and it works out you can build an audience and build uh interest and then moved into a brick and mortar I think that's what Comics Elite did great great but we need more comic shops we need them in every town and so get out there and open a comic shop you know you'll make 30 40 Grand a year you know income and you could probably even do it while working your regular job you open up at four o'clock to eight o'clock you work four hours a day you know how bad is that and you get to buy comics and read comics and have a lot of fun until next time keep reading comics don't put a comic shop
