So anyway…

filed under Categories retailing, sterling silver comics 7 Comments

…getting ready for a Big Sidewalk Sale at the shop this weekend, with the admittedly odd timing of doing it at the same time the Super Bowl is running. Ah, that’s okay, who watches the Super Bowl any more, anyway?

But as time goes on, and collections get dumped on me that I don’t really have any immediately use for, the stock in the backroom builds up to uncomfortable levels and suddenly I find myself stuck with excess boxes of comics. Thus, my need for space necessitates the clearing out of these boxes of books.

On top of that, selling excess books on Hipcomic.com wasn’t going quite as well as I was hoping. I’m not giving up on that platform yet, but I’m going to rethink my strategy there. In the meantime, the many comics I had listed there have been removed, and all those will go out into the sale. I suspect I’ll make more money there with these books than I ever did on Hipcomic.

Not that money is the issue. I mean, sure, I’ll take it, but the primary goal is to lighten the load of excess material so I can repurpose part of the backroom into back issue overflow from the shelving and tables in the front sales area. Sigh. I really should knock down a wall and just make more front of the store, but I’m not quite ready to do that yet.

Either that or move to a larger location, and I’m not really up to doing that either. Sigh.

Anyway, the last time I did a Sidewalk Sale I did indeed shed several boxes out of the backroom, so here’s hoping it happens again. And if you find yourself in the location of my store this weekend…drop on by! Get a ton of comics! Help your pal Mike out!

7 thoughts on “So anyway…”

  1. you mentioned hipcomic, which i haven’t any experience with, but i was wondering if you’d had any experience with atomic avenue? i use the ComicBase app for my personal collection and it includes the ability to sell on Atomic Avenue. My experience there is that although they supposedly aggregate prices from various shops around the country, those prices seems WILDLY exaggerated vs say ebay. as such i can’t get rid of most of these books.

    Is hipcomic disappointing because of the pricing, or the traffic? or the completed sales? or is it just too obscure a site to make it useful? these 6 longs and 4 shorts are taking up way too much space in the house and have for too long. I find ebay arduous to sell on for action figures and warhammer, and the few comics ive sold there were irritating to put up and mange. 1700 would kill me.

  2. I buy & sell comics on eBay constantly but never heard of Hipcomic. Maybe the obscurity of the platform is the issue?

  3. I say this first by mentioning that our store was a few doors down from a Polish bakery and butcher shop. We would make money on Thanksgiving. Mother or father had to last minute get kishka or soy sauce, the kids ran past the Singer sewing place and I’d be selling LOBO#1 to ten year olds. Everything would be marked down, the parents eventually showed up. I worked five hours and often made more money than we did on a Sunday.

    Hype it for the young’uns that don’t get into football. They’ll love their parents and not be running around the place. Just sayin.

  4. I’ve been on eBay since 1996 and do a pretty steady business there. Nothing fancy, it just gives me some screwing around money.

    I gave HipComics a try back in 2023 with about 1500 cheap filler back issues that I wanted to move. I sold about 12 comics over 10 months. These where $1.99-$3.99 type stuff. Then I kind of gave up and let them sit there. The whole reason I moved them was because eBay likes to punish you for long tail listings that don’t get views a lot and it was dragging my “good” comics down as well. So I closed my HipComics store at the end of 2023.

    Around Feb 2024 I got an actual in person phone call from one of their reps. Promising the world, and all that comes with it. They also offered a steep discount on the store listings, so I gave them another go. This time I listed about 5k cheap singles and watched it die on the vine as well. After just checking my spreadsheet, my total net from HipComics in 2024 was about $300. But I let it ride into 2025.

    2025 was even worse. I sold a whopping total of 43 comics the entire year and net about $135.

    I pulled it all down on Dec 27 the day before my fees renewed. I’m currently in the process of migrating all of that stock back over to eBay, and damn the consequences.

    HipComics main problem is that it has so little traffic, and I rarely see hits on a Google search for specific comics. I know a lot of people that collect comics and buy online, the amount of them that know about the site is less than 1%

  6. “I’ve been on eBay since 1996 and do a pretty steady business there. Nothing fancy, it just gives me some screwing around money.”

    Same thing for me, except it’s since 2000 or so.

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