ComicsWorth › Guide › Where do you sell a comic album?

Where do you sell a comic album?

Auction sites, collector marketplaces or the classifieds — they differ mostly in who is looking. What that means for the price you get.

You know roughly what your album is worth. Then comes the question of where to place it. There are four places where Dutch and Belgian comic albums change hands, and they differ mostly in who is looking.

Know what you have first

Selling without knowing which printing you have is the most expensive mistake you can make — you let a 1947 first printing go for a tenner because it looks like a reprint. Go through the marks of your printing first, or let the questionnaire work it out. It costs ten minutes and sometimes saves hundreds of euros.

Auction sites: where the rare printings go

At an auction the public sets the price, and at an auction with an expert in between that public knows what it is looking at. That is exactly what you want with an early printing or a special binding: someone who sees what it is bids accordingly.

Catawiki runs themed auctions and assesses lots beforehand. The reach is wide and international. Bobbedoes is smaller and does comics only — which is precisely what makes it targeted: whoever looks there is looking for comics. Running and organised auctions sit side by side.

What you give up: commission comes off, and you have no say in the final result. For an ordinary reprint it is usually not worth the trouble. Check the current terms and rates on the site itself — they change.

Collector marketplaces: your own price, a knowing public

LastDodo is first of all a catalogue in which collectors keep track of what they own; alongside that you can sell there, at a price you set yourself. The public knows what it is looking at, so an accurate description of the printing is rewarded — and a sloppy one punished.

It goes more slowly than an auction: you wait until the right collector comes along. In exchange, you set the floor yourself.

General marketplaces: the largest public, the least knowledge

On Marktplaats and the Belgian 2dehands everybody is looking, but almost nobody knows the difference between a first and a fourth printing. That cuts both ways: you sell quickly, and you rarely sell at the top price. For a stack of reprints it is fine. For something rare you run the risk that the only person who understands what it is, is the buyer.

An asking price is not a selling price

What you see listed on a marketplace is what somebody hopes to get. What an auction yields is what somebody actually paid. Those are two different figures, and the first sits structurally higher than the second.

So compare your album with results, not with adverts. And be careful with the conclusion that one channel yields more than another: expensive albums go to auction more often and ordinary printings sit in shop listings more often, so that difference is already on the supply side before anything is sold.

What you had better do on any platform

Name the printing, not just the title. “Tintin in the Congo, hardcover, back cover listing up to The Calculus Affair” sells better than “Tintin in the Congo”.
Photograph the indicia and the back cover. Those are the photos a collector decides on. The front tells them nothing new.
Be honest about the condition. Spine, corners, edges and endpapers — say what is wrong before the buyer finds it. A returned album costs more than an honest discount.
Sell rare albums singly. A rare printing in a box of twenty fetches the price of a box.

Don’t know yet which printing you have? Answer a few questions and we will work it out.

Work out what your album is worth