Buying Damaged Comic Books

[NZ_InFerno]

Maybe you should take a page from NZ Inferno and get insurance for them?

I mentioned EQC above, that is actually a government run insurance specifically for earthquakes. If you have private house/contents insurance you pay a EQC levy that goes into the pot to be paid out in the event of an earthquake. They pay the first 100k on land/buildings(I think) and the first 20k of contents then the private insurance covers the rest. It mitigates the risk for insurance companies, and ensures premiums aren't outrageous.

This is very unfortunate. Chalk up one more in earthquake country who needs to come up with a plan to mitigate this in his collection. I am glad it was only some property damage and not injury.

On topic, it is really hard to just throw a value out there for damaged books because so much of the collector market value is based on condition. I have bought a few books with bumped corners or noticeable shelf wear on the bottom and corners of the jacket, but from what I can see the only one I might bid on in an eBay setting would be the Absolute, if that's the extent of the damage, and I would top out at probably 60% of NM+ price in a whale scenario. I am much more likely to pay a higher premium for NM OOP books than try and save a buck or two and have what I consider severe damage. If it were me I wouldn't settle for less than 70% of Fair Market Value on the heavily damaged items if you can't get full replacement. Unfortunately you won't know what you could get for them unless you try to sell them and that can vary wildly depending on who is looking at the time, but I don't think it's unreasonable to estimate 30% value even on a damaged whale, like was said there most likely is at least one person who is willing to live with rough condition for price point. I hope you can get it squared smoothly with your insurance. Best wishes.

Yeah it sucked big time, after having all my books on the floor for a couple of months(hello aftershocks) I'm sort of immune to the damage now. There are definitely worse things that can happen.

That is basically my thinking, condition is everything and any damage makes a book significantly less valuable. The Adjuster is trying to figure what value has been knocked off the books from the damage and what insurance actually covers is really the next step in the process.

There is no easy answer, as I'm sure you have discovered.

I can tell you that I've watched listings sell on ebay of books with damage to the extent of the photos you've shared, and they all sell for 50% or under of the going price of undamaged copies. This is in the US of A, though, where copies of these books are more easy to come by. General scarcity in NZ might bump that up some.

The degree of the damage matters. Blunted corners isn't so bad. Spine damage and splits or tears to cover material are really bad for resale-ability prospects. Damage to the binding is unsellable. Your Colossal Conan is probably completely fucked, for example, but I'd be surprised if your Absolute Planetary wouldn't fetch about the full market price since that's just some very minor slipcase damage.

Good luck, and don't let that adjustor cheat you. But remember, it's really just stuff, and most of those books would still read perfectly anyway. That means they still serve their function!

Shipping is being taken into account in the market value, especially since all my books with few exceptions were imported. I agree with the damage assessment, spine and binding is basically the book. There are a few of mine like that.

And yeah the Conan is pretty bad