I was hustling around trying to set up my week when I read an email from a friend who reminded me to step back and take a little time to enjoy the Cherry Blossoms blooming in this part of the world. These are fleeting moments, easily missed staring at a screen or worse yet, head low, staring at the ground.
News came out last week that CGC will be raising their rates as of this Wednesday, April 28th. You have to have your order submitted by the end of Tuesday I think and the stuff has to get down to Florida before May 27th I believe. This news comes on the heels of the card grading company PSA suspending all new submissions until July to give them time to dig out of the backlog and to of course raise their rates.
The CGC rate increases are not too crazy, see the new fees here. Moderns went up 10% to $22 and CGC has discontinued the Value tier which used to be $28, they have rolled it into the Economy tier, they have decreased the Economy tier from $38 to $33 so basically, they have morphed the two tiers into one and averaged out the prices. This move does clean things up a bit and simplifies pooling together same tier books for shipping and submission, I like this one.
I don’t like the price increase for pre-screen rejects, it’s now $8 and it should deter the flood of books coming in for this service. People often forget to factor in the rejection rate for costs of slabbing pre-screens. If you send 20 books down and only 10 get graded you’ve effectively paid $30 to grade each Modern, not the $22 that shows on the invoice.
Hopefully, these changes, namely the price jumps, tiers combining and rejects costing more will lead to efficiencies and much-improved turnaround times. I’m sure we’d all trade in a small price hike for getting our books back in 8 weeks versus 18 weeks.
So get your stuff into their system ASAP, I have a feeling a lot of us will be doing just that and there will be an extra wait for this week’s submissions.
Can we talk about the ICE auctions! We knocked it out of the park on our eBay handle internationalcollectiblesexchange. We set a few records last night including getting the new recorded high mark for this sweet copy of Witches Tales #25. We just pipped the price one received back in January. I thought the book had even more room, it’s one of the iconic Pre Code Horror covers out there and on every PCH fan’s grail list. Advantage Buyer.
Thanks for the CGC link. Added it to my favorites, I’ve never paid much attention since I don’t slab things myself, only when I send them to Heritage. What do single pages slab for, the minimum? And how is the comic’s value arrived at, is it Overstreet? That’s a break, since so much Gold is way low these days in Overstreet.
I just scored 100 3-ring binders of single pages and covers, plus two unsorted boxes, all bought used, of Golden Age comics. The story is that a wanna-be artist pulled apart to put them in an opaque projector (Magna-jector?) to broadcast them on a wall and practice his art, around 1938-48.
They were all mixed up decades ago when my buddy scored them, he slowly documented all them and got them back together as much as possible. Very few “complete” books, but lots of stories, every single page in individual 3-ring sleeves. Crazy. But I did get the Wonder Women origin story from All Star #8, for example.
Considering that the pages-only for the first Robin story from Detective #38 just brought $1000+ in a Heritage auction, I’m thinking the timing might be right to see what I can do with this. Timely, DC, Fox, even a couple Centaur things, no book was too good not to pull apart!
Have a cover of Daredevil Battles Hitler, for instance, and DD’s origin story from Silver Streak Comics…and a run of Leo O’Mealia stories from More Fun issues in the ‘teens, which I’m still trying to score myself in full copies. I didn’t see any pre-Superman Doctor Occult or Radio Squad by Siegel & Shuster yet, but I bet some are there somewhere.
Just got them home Saturday nite from Oregon, with 175 boxes in all…most vintage illustrated and art books, but some Silver Age comics, 200 BLBs and pulps too, from three different collections. I was a bit white-knuckled with a full U-Haul trailer (max allowable weight, 2800 pounds, I ain’t stupid) towed behind my mostly-full van. Took it VERY carefully.
A friend of some 45 years passed away, and another is downsizing now that he’s 87, and a friend of HIS passed away, with the BLBs and several years of Argosy pulps that came to me. If BLBs ever come back, I’m the man, it’’s the second collection of them this year. I just keep upgrading my own, and score a couple I’m missing every so often…
Everything is blooming around here too, the tree blossoms are beautiful. Thanks Walter!
Walt, you didn’t say what the Witches Tales sold for.
Bud, what an amazing discovery. I didn’t look at single page grading prices but I’m sure they are posted. I love the backstory, using them to project onto a surface for practice!
Klaus, the Withes Tales sold for $2,554 USD.
Walt, when someone sells through your store, on consignment, how much capital gains and income tax are they nailed for?
This is what bothers me about selling something, paying more out as capital gains and income tax than I made selling the item, as I don’t have receipts for anything.
They were a leisure purchase and not a business investment.
Klaus, we don’t really discuss this with sellers, this is a personal thing for them that we assume they are handling to their own satisfaction. I’m sure you can generate your own cash receipts for past purchases, you did spend money on the stuff. This is something you should discuss with an accountant.
Don’t you have to report your consignment sales clients to the CRA so that they can send them a tax bill? To leave it to the honour system would be risking your own business if they don’t willingly report it. EBay reports all Canadian sales over $1,000 CDN to the CRA, so they can track tax evaders.
Generating your own receipts can get you into trouble. A fellow where I used to work, did that for a side business to save on taxes – he legitimately bought the stuff and reported the correct amount but they tossed everything and sent him a huge bill. He didn’t have the official receipts.
Also, the place he dealt with, was contacted by the CRA and they said they didn’t sell anything to him, possibly because they didn’t report the sales in order to skimp out on paying income taxes on the stuff sold.
Sorry for all the questions but I just want to keep everything legal. I don’t want to pay fines or go to jail.
Best to keep it legal and transparent Klaus.