Guides

What a box of comics actually costs you in time

By Winston, Comic Collector Enthusiast. 13 September 2026.

Everybody selling comics has a number in their head for how long a box takes, and almost nobody has measured it. We have measured parts of it, three times, on real boxes going to a real eBay account. Here is what we can show you and, first, what we cannot.

Whose numbers these are. One seller, his own long boxes, his own settings, his own phone. They are what happened to him, not a promise about your box: a different mat, a slower phone or a box of unbagged dollar books is a different number. We publish them because one seller's measurement beats everybody's confident guess, including ours.

The step nobody has timed. Reviewing the rows before you approve them is also when you price them, and nobody here has put a clock on it. So this page cannot tell you what a box costs end to end. It can tell you what the photographing costs and what the machine steps cost, and those two are measured.

The three boxes

Box 70 AA was not shot on the phone's camera page, so its photographing was never on a clock. Batch 56 AA was, which is why it is the one with the useful number.

The minutes are in the photographs, and nothing else is close

Batch 56 AA: 49 comics, ten shots each, 27 minutes of photographing, 2 minutes of identification. That is about thirty-three seconds a comic with the phone in his hand, and two and a half seconds a comic for the software.

Thirty-three seconds against two and a half is the shape worth taking away. Whatever a listing tool does for you, it is working on the small half of the job. If you want a box to go faster, the shooting rhythm is where the minutes are.

What the biggest box cost, including the parts that went wrong

Box 64 AA was 78 comics, 780 photographs. Identification got 74 of them right. Of the four it missed: one came out with the wrong issue number, two carried the cover's own series name rather than the name this seller files them under, and one was a different comic altogether. Two further rows, correctly identified, were refused at approval for a missing publication year rather than being given a guessed one. So six rows out of 78 wanted a human hand.

The approve was slow that morning, and part of the reason is worth telling because it is the shape of problem you cannot see from outside: before building the file, every single photograph is checked to be actually in storage, and that check ran one photograph at a time. At 780 photographs that is about a minute, and it ran again on every download of the file. It now checks sixteen at a time. The rest of that morning's delay was ours: a deploy and a large delete landed while his batch was in flight.

The two mistakes that cost an upload all 24 of its rows

Box 70 AA is the useful box, because it went wrong in two ways that cost real sellers real time, and neither is about photography.

1. Store category names are not store category IDs

If you have an eBay Store, the File Exchange column StoreCategoryID wants the numeric ID, not the name you see in Seller Hub. Uploading the name gets every row refused:

Input data for tag StoreCategoryID is invalid

All 24 rows, for one wrong field. The number is at the end of each category's URL under Seller Hub, Store, Categories. Type those numbers in, upload again, and the same file goes 24 for 24.

2. A lot priced at the box's price

Eight issues merged into one lot listing, and it kept the single price typed for the whole box. A $2.99 lot of eight. Nothing on the screen said so, because nothing was wrong with it: it is a valid price on a valid listing, and you find out when it sells.

Both are gates in Point and Sell now: a store category that is not numeric refuses the file, and a lot priced at the box's single price refuses it too. If you list by hand or with another tool, they are the two things worth checking before you upload a box with an eBay Store behind it.

Get eBay's report every time

A bulk upload is not finished when the file is accepted. eBay returns a report naming every row it listed and every row it refused, with the reason, and it is how you find out which rows failed and why. Box 70 AA's first upload looked fine until the report said all 24 rows were refused. Download it, read it, keep it.

So what does a box cost?

On these boxes, at ten shots a comic: about half a minute of photographing per comic, five minutes to get a 25-comic box onto the review screen, a couple of minutes of identification, and then however long your own reviewing and pricing takes, which we have not measured and will not invent. When we have timed that step honestly, this page gets the number.

The number we will not give you is yours. Time one box of your own, on a watch, before you believe anybody's figure including this page's.

Try it on a box · More guides for comic sellers

Sources

Box 70 AA, 8 September 2026: 25 comics, 247 photographs, about five minutes from upload to the review screen, all 25 identified correctly, 24 listings live after the second upload. Batch 56 AA, 13 September 2026: 49 comics shot on the phone's camera page, 27 minutes of photographs, 2 minutes of identification, every row correct on a hand check. Box 64 AA, 13 September 2026: 78 comics, 780 photographs, 74 of 78 identified correctly. All three are Winston Burbage's own boxes, listed to his own eBay store, and each is recorded in this product's decision log on the day it happened.