Have you ever heard that term before? If you are serious about making a lot of money off your comics or running the perpetual collection program, then you must read and heed the following, starting with the title – “Retail is for Suckers!”

Lets get down to basics:

Profit = Sales price – cost

Now there are a lot of “cost” items that can add up (E-bay fees, shipping, etc), but right now we are going to concentrate on the cost of the comic book itself.  If you read this blog and are a subscriber to the members only website, I hope you are using at least one of the methods I will describe below.  Today we’ll talk about new comics exclusively.  Stay tuned for some back issue techniques.

Every penny you save on your comic book purchases can have a big impact on your final profit.  This is especially true with new comic books.  If you are buying them for cover price off the newsstand (or from your comic book store) you are making a big mistake.

The bottom line is you must get a discount on your comic books.

At a minimum you should be getting a 10% discount from your local store.  This usually means setting up a “pull” list, where the store orders certain titles for you every month.  You can choose new title, order a couple copies, etc.  This is great for  “readers” and if you decide to speculate on one or two books.

If you are really going to speculate on a book and order a lot of copies, I recommend mailordercomics.com .  Here you can order a lot of copies and get a very substantial discount.  Let’s work through an example.

Let’s say you bought Mighty Super X Guy #234 for a 10% discount of the cover price of 2.99.  Your cost is $2.69.  Buy 10 copies and you’re out $26.90.  Let’s say the book rises in value to $5.00.  You sell your 10 copies and make $50.00 – $26.90 = $23.10.  Your break even point was 6 copies.

Now let’s say you bought your 10 copies for a 50% discount, or $1.50 each.  If you sell all ten copies a $5.00 each, you’ll make $35.00.  More importantly, you only have to sell 3 copies at $5.00 to break even.  If the book cools down you now have much more room to negotiate on price for the 7 remaining copies. 

Every copy you sell after copy number 3 is profit.

 If you are speculating on new comic books, please don’t pay retail.  Use mailordercomics.com or another discount comic book source and  give yourself a fighting chance.