I started selling comics full-time in 2010 and wanted to track my progress against the online back issue markets. Here’s a look at the current comics aftermarket and my progress in achieving my goal of becoming a prominent back issue dealer.
 |
one month change | one year change | five year change | |
| Listings in eBay’s Comic Books, Manga & Memorabilia section | 4,707,495 | +0.66% | -21.42% | +23.59% |
| Cyberspace Comics listings | 149,690 | +0.79% | +11.11% | +43.67% |
| Cyberspace Comics “market share” of comic listings on eBay | 3.18% | -0.01% | +41.33% | +12.76% |
| Number of eBay comic listings that are auctions | 286,457 | -3.77% | +18.02% | +101.73% |
| Percentage of eBay comic listings up for auction | 6.09% | -4.47% | +50.25% | +63.14% |
| Number of listings sold in eBay’s comics section (90 days) | 1,400,440 | +6.11% | -5.03% | +99.64% |
| Number of listings sold in eBay’s comics section divided by current listings | 29.75% | +5.42% | +20.83% | +61.50% |
 Total number of listings in eBay’s “comics” section My current eBay feedback (unique): 97,836 |
||||
 |
one month change | one year change | five year change | |
| Listings on Atomic Avenue | 2,893,739 | +5.10% | +69.34% | +93.55% |
| Listings in the Cyberspace Comics Store on Atomic Avenue | 130,301 | +0.72% | +8.92% | +27.80% |
| Cyberspace Comics “market share” of comic listings on AtomicAvenue | 4.50% | -4.19% | -35.67% | -33.98% |
| Number of unique issues on Atomic Avenue | 252,596 | -1.72% | +3.58% | +0.90% |
| Cyberspace Comics “market share” of unique issues on AtomicAvenue | 51.58% | +2.49% | +5.15% | +26.65% |
 Total number of comics listed on Atomic Avenue |
||||
 |
one month change | one year change | five year change | |
| Number of members on ComicCollectorLive | 240,321 | +0.21% | +1.92% | +60.06% |
| Number of items for sale on ComicCollectorLive | 1,284,867 | -1.39% | -6.49% | -16.46% |
| Number of items sold on ComicCollectorLive | 2,806,237 | +0.25% | +3.81% | +24.69% |
| Number of stores open on ComicCollectorLive | 49 | +2.08% | +2.08% | -30.99% |
 |
one month change | one year change | five year change | |
| Number of listings in HipComic’s Comic Books section | 1,241,879 | +0.89% | +34.44% | +433.74% |
| Number of those listings that are in the Cyberspace Comics HipComic store | 123,818 | -10.69% | -2.67% | +20.08% |
| Cyberspace Comics “market share” of comic listings on HipComic | 9.97% | -11.45% | -27.59% | -77.50% |
eBay‘s reported number of listings is now removing suppressed listings and I’m now unable to find a way to add those back in to their total so from now on we’re going to go with their reported number. I know they are suppressing listings from this number because a prominent comic dealer (NK) had their reported figure drop substantially. They are known for listing multiple copies of the same book in a lot of different grades. A search in their store for Action 687 returns four results but, there is a small notation in their eBay store that they actually have 48 results for that search. I do not see a way to display all 48 results, though. Naturally, with a different method of calculating their number of listings now being used, our numbers are going to show some major swings over previous dates. Eventually, this will normalize.
Atomic Avenue: The number of listings on this marketplace increased by 70% in the past month. That’s an incredible increase – almost impossibly so. To make things even more odd, the number of unique available issues only increased by 3.58% in the past year. It’ll be interesting, over the next few months, to see how these numbers continue.
Comic Collector Live: The number of stores has dropped by over 30% in the past five years while seeing an increase in their members by over 60% in the same time.
HipComic continues to struggle with their eBay sync. It’s currently causing a disparity between the number of listings in my eBay store and the number of listings in my HipComic store by over 20,000 listings! Sadly, there appears to be no solution in sight so I suspect this disparity will be prolonged. This used to be a marketplace that I would highly recommend but, until they work these problems out, I can no longer point fellow sellers in their directions because these sync problems could end up causing disruptions to your eBay store, as well.