How to sell comic books on eBay: a first box, start to finish
For years my wife kept telling me, "You love comics so much, why don't you start selling them on eBay?" What finally did it was a neighbor who asked whether I wanted to buy any of her collection of collectibles. I bought all of it, and that is where my own eBay reselling started. This page is the walk through a first box I wish I had read then. Most steps have their own guide or free tool on this site; this one puts them in order.
What this page is. One working comic seller's way of doing it, not eBay's rules and not the only way.
1. Sort the box before you touch a camera
Go through the whole box once and make three piles:
- Singles. Comics that can sell on their own. On a first box, that is most of it.
- Lots. Runs of one series, a complete mini-series, and cheap books that will sell better together than one at a time. The lots guide covers when a lot beats singles and how to title one.
- Look again. Anything that might be a key: a first appearance, a number 1, a famous cover. These are the comics a flat box price gives away. The key issues guide is about spotting them, and the variant covers guide about the second printings and ratio covers that look like the regular one.
A graded comic in a slab is its own listing with its own price. The graded comics guide covers it.
2. Bag, board and label
Every comic you sell goes in a bag with a board. It protects the comic in the mail, it is what a buyer expects, and it gives you somewhere to put a label. Give every comic a custom label (eBay's SKU field) that says which box it lives in and where: when it sells, you walk to the box and pull it instead of hunting. The custom labels guide explains a pattern that works, and the free SKU label sheet prints a box's labels on Avery sheets.
3. Photograph every comic
Your own photos of your own copy sell better than a stock image, because the buyer is buying that copy: its corners, its spine, its gloss. Front and back at the least, plus anything a buyer would ask about. Shoot a whole box in one sitting, comic after comic, the same way each time. The photography guide covers light, background and the shots that answer questions before they are asked.
4. Write a title a buyer will search
eBay gives you 80 characters, and the title is the first thing its search and a buyer read. Lead with what a buyer types: the series, the issue number, then what makes this copy worth clicking (a first appearance, a variant, a grade), then the publisher and the year. A comic's title from this site's builder looks like this:
Amazing Spider-Man #300 1st Full Venom Comic Book Marvel Comics 1988
For a lot, name the issues, because a buyer filling a run searches for the number they are missing. The free lot title builder writes one from a series and a list of issues.
5. Fill in the item specifics
Item specifics are the boxes under the title: series, issue number, publisher, year, character, era and the rest. Buyers filter on them, so a blank one is a search your listing is not in. The item specifics guide goes through every comic field and what goes in it.
6. Price it from what sold
An asking price on another listing is a wish. What copies of the same issue in the same shape actually sold for is the number that counts: search for the comic on eBay and turn on the sold items filter. The pricing guide explains how to read those sales, and the free eBay fee calculator shows what you keep from a sale once eBay's fees come out. On a dollar comic, the fees and the postage decide whether a single is worth listing at all, which is one more reason cheap books often go in a lot.
7. Weigh it and pick the box
eBay works out calculated shipping from the weight and package size you give it, so a wrong weight is money you pay at the post office or a buyer who was overcharged. Weigh a real parcel packed the way you pack, and put the weight and size on the listing. The free comic shipping weight calculator shows the weight and package this site writes for a single, a lot, a slab, a magazine or a book, as a starting point.
8. List it: one at a time, or the whole box at once
eBay's own listing form is fine for your first few comics. For a box it is slow, because every comic is the same form filled in again. eBay also takes a spreadsheet of listings in one upload, the File Exchange CSV, and a whole box goes up in one file. The File Exchange guide explains the file. Before you upload, check that nothing in the box is already live: the duplicate listings guide covers what to do when it is. The store categories guide is for when you have an eBay store and want the box sorted on its shelves.
9. When it sells
Read the custom label, pull the comic from its box, pack it the way you weighed it, and ship it inside your handling time. If the same comic is also up somewhere else, take it down there before anyone else buys it. Comics that sit for months are your next lot.
How long a box takes
Longer than you think. Done by hand, writing the listings was what ate my days. We timed parts of three real boxes listed with this site: the timing guide has those numbers and the two mistakes that cost the most time.
How Point and Sell fits in
I built Point and Sell for steps 3 to 8. You shoot each comic on your phone and move to the next. Point and Sell sorts the photos into listings, crops the whole-comic shots in close, reads the cover, fills in the fields eBay searches on, writes the title, the weight and the package, and hands you the eBay file for the box. You check every row on one screen, with its cover, and approve.
What it does not do, as of today. It does not sort, bag, board or pack the comics: steps 1, 2 and 9 are yours, though it writes each listing's custom label from your box label. It does not price your comics: you type a starting price for the box, and the review screen flags comics that may be worth more. It does not grade a comic. And nothing goes up on eBay until you have checked the rows and approved them.
Try it on a box · Why I built it · More guides
Sources
The story at the top is mine, told on the about page. The 80 character title limit, custom labels, item specifics, the sold items filter and the File Exchange upload are eBay features as the linked guides describe them; calculated shipping is eBay's own feature. The example title is written by the product's own title builder on the day this page is served. What Point and Sell does is its code on the day this was published. The order of the steps and the advice in them are one working comic seller's practice, not a rule.