Need a comic book broker

[dougo]

My dad has several thousand comic books, plus a bunch of trading cards (non-baseball, e.g. Star Wars) and other collectibles. He collected them from the mid-'60s through the '80s, but eventually lost interest and has been thinking about selling them for a while now. (He was hoping to get rid of them before moving from New Jersey to Portland, Oregon, but ended up having to pack them all up into the truck.) He knows that selling them piecemeal on eBay is probably the most profitable, certainly more so than just finding a local dealer who will take the whole collection. But he isn't comfortable enough with online commerce to get into doing that himself. Does anyone have any tips on how to find someone to sell his collection for him? Or at least someone who knows enough about the market value to give him a reasonable price for the lot?

Comments

[signsoflife.livejournal.com]

You should talk to my brother, woodwardiocom. He partially supported himself for a long time with ebay auctions of comic book memorabilia, esp. posters which he'd buy from comic shops and put up as auctions. I'm pretty sure he has some posts about how to do it well; he might *conceivably* be willing to broker for you.

[shannon_a]

If he goes down to a local comic score he can pick up a comic book price guide and start cataloguing his collection, determining condition, and determining estimated price. That's probably a good start if he's going to do anything more than just hand it to a dealer.

[shannon_a]

Local comic *store*. I didn't sleep enough last night.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

Looks like their online interface is decent, too.

Least effort

[bitjuggler.livejournal.com]

What about an ebay dealer? I know there's quite the cottage industry of people willing to do the legwork of putting your stuff up on ebay, accepting payment, etc etc for some percentage of the profits. Probably better than a dealer but not as good as doing it himself.

[stoneself.livejournal.com]

maybe call the guys at comic relief in berkeley. they are brokers, but they might also know brokers near your dad.

http://www.comicrelief.net/