Slabs Are Dead

Comics
#21

How did he do overall? Was he selling a lot of raw keys for decent prices? Or just moving cheap books? Did he have dollar bins?

#22

I was at a show today as a vendor, the one I had mentioned the other day in the eBay is dead thread. It is the same narrative that I have been seeing since last year at the shows, many customers telling me they would prefer to their books raw over graded. For this show, I only brought my slabs for the wall, I didnā€™t even bother bringing the slab boxes that sit on the table. I only sold 2 slabs total at this show, one to a teenage kid and another to an adult who did haggle with me a tad bit. Other than that, a lot of it was people buying raw books from my $1 bins, my price as marked bins, and some wall books sold. The feedback I keep hearing is that I would prefer to have my books raw to read and look at.

Any slabs that I have in the $500-$2500 range, are not even looked at or have any interest. It really does stink since it would be nice to move some of these books.

This upcoming weekend there is Indiana Comic Con where we will be setup, so it will be interesting to see what people buy.

3 Likes
#23

Thanks for sharing. Please let us know how the upcoming show goes with your slabs.

2 Likes
#24

If you ever check out Reddit, check out their comic speculation thread. It is 100% (nearly) people posting books asking if they should have then graded. It is sad, lots of junk people consider slabbing.

My answer is usually 1 of 2 things.

  1. No, donā€™t slab it.
  2. Only slab if it is going to preserve the book.

I am still buying slabs cheap but not sending them off to be graded.

2 Likes
#25

Funny how people forget that you can remove them from the slabā€¦

I did that with my TMNT #4 because I wanted to flip through it.

Iā€™m looking at some minor key silver age books in slabs, thinking Iā€™ll do the same thing. I just want to know it complete and not restored or trimmed.

2 Likes
#26

Iā€™d say you are ahead of the curve, sir. Cheers!

#27

Will do. Iā€™m also going to pull out some of my PC slabs just in case there is some interest, can always rebuy them down the road. Have way too many books that need to move so at these larger cons it helps get these into new hands.

2 Likes