Tallone
Hero Member
Late last week, I responded to a Craigslist ad. They guy was offering a large group of comic books. No price. No photos. He said he didn't know anything about comics but these apparently belonged to a collector. Thinking there was a chance these might be valuable vintage comics, I immediately called and arranged to go see them.
The guy owns a cleaning business and had been hired to clean out an apartment. The owner had left behind about 300 comic books. Unfortunately, they were all very recent releases. I have bought recent issue comics before and had a bad time unloading them. I told the guy I wasn't interested in the comics and started to head for the door. Then he mentioned he also had a couple of boxes full of comic book character figures. I asked to see them. They picture below shows a small portion of what he had.
He asked $50 for them. I had never seen these but I saw some famous characters in the boxes (Superman, Batman, Spiderman, etc.) so I thought they might be worth something. I also thought, like most such things, there are probably some rare characters that sell for a lot of money. I talked the guy down to $30 and bought all of them.
The first picture is 100 characters. I have over 700 of these things. They are small (about 1.5 inches tall) figurines used in a game called Heroclix. Apparently Heroclix is a very popular fantasy game for kids based on characters in comics produced by DC and Marvel.
The large majority of these figurines aren't worth much - often selling for a dollar or less on ebay. My wife and I checked out several of the more elaborate looking pieces and found maybe 20 that sold for about $5 - $8 each. People often sell these by the lot. I made a list of several such lots that sold on ebay and calculated a price per piece for each lot. The price per piece runs about $0.20 to $0.50. So, I figure the lot of 100 pieces shown above should sell for roughly what I bought all 700 for. If I get $30 out of each lot, that will be over $200 on a $30 investment. Then there is the group of about 20 more valuable pieces. I'm hoping I might get $100 or more for those.
By the way, my wife and I had a lot of fun sorting these out into lots so no lot had a duplicate characters in it. I think I would have loved this game had it been around when I was as a kid.
The guy owns a cleaning business and had been hired to clean out an apartment. The owner had left behind about 300 comic books. Unfortunately, they were all very recent releases. I have bought recent issue comics before and had a bad time unloading them. I told the guy I wasn't interested in the comics and started to head for the door. Then he mentioned he also had a couple of boxes full of comic book character figures. I asked to see them. They picture below shows a small portion of what he had.
He asked $50 for them. I had never seen these but I saw some famous characters in the boxes (Superman, Batman, Spiderman, etc.) so I thought they might be worth something. I also thought, like most such things, there are probably some rare characters that sell for a lot of money. I talked the guy down to $30 and bought all of them.
The first picture is 100 characters. I have over 700 of these things. They are small (about 1.5 inches tall) figurines used in a game called Heroclix. Apparently Heroclix is a very popular fantasy game for kids based on characters in comics produced by DC and Marvel.
The large majority of these figurines aren't worth much - often selling for a dollar or less on ebay. My wife and I checked out several of the more elaborate looking pieces and found maybe 20 that sold for about $5 - $8 each. People often sell these by the lot. I made a list of several such lots that sold on ebay and calculated a price per piece for each lot. The price per piece runs about $0.20 to $0.50. So, I figure the lot of 100 pieces shown above should sell for roughly what I bought all 700 for. If I get $30 out of each lot, that will be over $200 on a $30 investment. Then there is the group of about 20 more valuable pieces. I'm hoping I might get $100 or more for those.
By the way, my wife and I had a lot of fun sorting these out into lots so no lot had a duplicate characters in it. I think I would have loved this game had it been around when I was as a kid.
