Don't let them take advantage of your desperation!

Ideally, who should I be letting take advantage of my desperation, and should I restrict that advice solely to comic books?

Sell to collectors. That way you'll both be happy. You will get a decent price and the collector will save a bit of dough. I don't know about other aspects of life, but comic shops really do rip you off big time!

Well, not really when you consider their perspective-- while your comic may have a pricebook value of $100 (theoretically), keep in mind that the most he'll be able to sell it for is $100. There's really no point in them buying a comic for $100 just to sell it for $100 -- all that does is take a $100 out of their pocket for a while. When you factor in rents and all the other overhead, it's probably just not worth it for a owner to spend all this money on a book that they may or may not be able to sell.

I overheard a shop owner talking about a guy who came in wanting to sell longboxes for a bunch of money. The owner said he looked through and would offer the guy $20 or $30, tops. When looking through the books, he figured there would only be a handful that would sell right away and the rest would collect space in storage. Look at your shops backissue bins-- literally thousands of comics collecting dust, all of which the owner paid for and many of which will NEVER sell.

But the advice is sound-- you're better off selling on eBay or any other method that allows you to skip the middleman and sell directly to a customer.

Ebay has made too many unfavorable policy changes, and charges three ways for the same service so I think I am done with them When I next sell my comics I think I am going to try and find another way.

eBay really fell apart. Such a shame.

What - too many swindles?

Too much fixing what did not need to be fixed and messing with the pricing.

I left there in 2006 and boy did I get out when it was right.

How exactly do comic shops rip you off? Do they put a gun to your head and force you to sell them your comics?

I had a customer who wanted to take a swing at me because I wouldn't pay him top dollar for his books. "I've got all the early Ultimates issues, and I'll give them to you for way less than Guide value." When I told him that I had plenty of those issues and would only be interested in buying them for a few bucks a piece, he lost it. Then I explained that I bought large collections for a dime a book, and that most collections these days included the Ultimates titles.

It's like Man of Steel. Every large collection that I purchased for .10 or .15 per comic included a full run of Man of Steel. Why would I pay someone Guide price or even half of Guide price when I can get them for pennies? His reaction was, "Ten cents a comic? How do you sleep at night!"

Shops are there to make a profit. Don't expect them to buy or sell at eBay prices. Whenever someone told me, "Man, I can get this online for a lot less" my response was, "Then I'd buy it online. Buying online is awesome, but if you want to bring the comic home with you today, you can shop here. That's what we're here for, the people that like to shop in person."

I sold a longbox of Danish 60's and 70's DC + Thunder Agents (ouch!) to a comic book shop, and I got a measly $120 in trade. The shopkeeper was banking on my not bothering to carry the box back home again. He even told me, "I'll store it for you here, if you don't want to sell." That pisses me off, especially since I fell for it and sold him the goddamn comics. He won't be purchasing anymore comics off me!

I have to agree with this, in ANY market. Your stuff is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it, not what you THINK it is worth.

This is an all-time classic sig just waiting to be used.

Perhaps you and Walter can open a retail establishment together and show everybody how it is done.

Most customers in my experience have a pretty unrealistic view of the worth of their books. Generally speaking when I look at your collection, unless it's before say 1985 I see perhaps 85% unsaleable material. All I'm really thinking is "do I have the space to store that in my 10p boxes?" "is it worth my while?"

I'm only speaking for myself, but it's about the long haul. I need to keep you coming in, and ripping you off doesn't exactly aid that idea.
oh, here's a customer quote from a phone conversation a few years ago:
"I've got a Daredevil #16. It's mint! There's no back cover, but otherwise it's mint!"

It can be really sad when someone inherits a collection and has the hopes that they'll be able to cash it in for thousands of dollars. "At just a dollar a comic, they'll have to give me $10,000!"

Something similar happened on Pawn Stars. A guy brought in a pile of postage stamps and thought, "With this many stamps, ONE of them HAS to be worth a ton of money."

I don't see how people who sell ANYTHING retail can keep from going nuts! All that trying to figure things so you don't end up with unsold or unsaleable inventory--and yet still have just enough to satisfy customers. I'd be a nervous wreck.

Years back my LCS guy had a run-in with a character who thought he had an authentic Action Comics #1. What he had was a one of the umpteen thousand reprints.
The shop owner told him it was worthless, showed him the information in the indica that said it was printed a year or two earlier, etc etc, but they guy just wouldn't accept it, and he kept getting crazier and crazier. Turns out he'd been to a bunch of shops all along the coast, and they all told him the same thing, and he was convinced they were all working together. Somehow it was a big conspiracy to get him to let go of the book for nothing, and then all the shop owners would work together, sell the book for "millions", and split up the profits amongst themselves.

Yeesh!

And they're all still trying to rip me off!
It's a big, big conspiracy, I tellz ya!
But I'm gonna get em back!
I put the book in a Freezer Heavy Zip-lok
And put a purple 95 cent stamp on it.
Then I took my sharpie and put a little dot between the 9 and the 5.
Now it's a CGC Near Pristine Mint 9.5
and I'll get MILLION$$$$$ for it.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm not saying it's easy, but these comics were 40-45 years old, Superman and Superboy! Curt Swan!

My former LCS (I don't do the weekly grind anymore) bought 7 long boxes of comics from me a couple of years ago. I got over $600 for it! But it did contain a near-complete run of Ultimate Spider-Man, a lot of Y the Last Man, and some other highly desirable recent comics. The vast majority of the stuff was 90s crap he took off my hands out of pity.

I've had a couple of different occasions when someone showed me an "art" item they apparently thought might be worth money and wondered whether I could find information on them. They were mass-market print type items, probably cheap to buy in the first place and not even in good condition. I went to the trouble of finding someone knowledgeable to look at one. She confirmed my suspicions that it was essentially worthless. The other I didn't even waste time over. I just gently as possible told them it didn't look like anything of value.