A child of the 70's & 80's, I collected mostly Marvel as a kid with some DC, then later Image. Now, I'm on a journey to transform from a casual collector who loves the history and Pop Culture of Comics to becoming an Investor of Holy Grail Key Comic Books. Along the way, I'm going to document my lessons learned about the struggles of buying and selling comic books including trying to tap into the current craze of flipping hot new titles. My goal is to use these funds to invest in a few Key Issues that I can keep for the long term. I hope you will join me on my journey.
Or how I learned to embrace the madness of trying to pick a quick flip money maker during the heavily promoted Marvel Secret Wars event.
As I mentioned in my bio, my goal is to learn how to turn a profit flipping current issues and use that money to buy short term investments that I believe have potential payoff in the next 1 – 2 years, then take all of that profit and try to buy some of the true Key Issues that will continue to appreciate. I thought it might be fun to track my successes and failures.
For the Marvel Secret War event, I decided to work on fast flipping opportunities. I looked at pictures of the covers I could find online and decided which one's I thought looked really cool. Previously, I would pre-ordered at regular price and crossed my fingers my orders aren't reversed. I have had this happen several times when I ordered to close to release dates. This time I got in months before the release dates to allow the supplier enough time to order the proper number of copies and to hopefully be higher on their fulfillment list.
On a few of the issues I couldn't find covers, so I went with the cover names that sounded cool, especially if I thought there might be a lower print run for that series. All of this is gut speculation.
I've ordered 29 copies at $145. I actually managed to get them at Cover price minus 15%, but the shipping was a a killer because I chose to ship them immediately, rather than hold off until every issue was released.
I'm betting heavy on action figure covers with popular characters, Skottie Young covers that involve Thanos/Infinity Guantlet stuff and few lower print run Gwen alt's. I'm going with the idea that flipping fast is key. I'm not going for a target profit. Instead, I'm focusing on how well my system works, so I can make adjustments for the next opportunity.
In addition to these orders, I'll check out a few of my LCS's when these are released to see what they have in stock. If I see specific issues selling fast or I find some pristine issues that might get 9.8's when graded, I'll grab a few more.