Norristown, PA -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/21/2015 -- When thinking about selling old comic books as part of spring-cleaning, now could be the time to do it. "Avengers: Age of Ultron," opens May 1, and if history is any guide, the film should bring comic buyers out of the woodwork, especially those who are looking to buy comic books online.
"A blockbuster Marvel movie raises the level of interest in all comics," said Jim Drucker, CEO of NewKadia.com, the world's largest online-only comic-book store.
NewKadia.com has an inventory of over 750,000 comics at its fulfillment center, about 20 miles outside Philadelphia. The company sells about 200,000 comics annually and sold its 1.5 millionth comic in March.
To keep its inventory high, NewKadia.com takes comics from sellers on consignment and offers them more money for their comics than they can get from brick-and-mortar stores. "Comic-book stores are trying to buy comics as cheap as possible to get the highest possible profit on every book," Drucker said. "Our strategy is that our business grows as we grow our inventory, so we give sellers a higher percentage of what we sell the comics for. We pay more for each comic, but our overall profit is higher because we sell such a high volume of comics."
That was a plus for Laura Brady, a Cleveland resident who wanted to sell her husband's collection after he passed away in 2002.
"We were looking for a way to, in one place, get as much value as we could out of his collection," Brady said. "NewKadia offered the flexibility to take them all and give us a percentage of what he sold them for."
Brady said she wound up getting nearly $10,000 from NewKadia.com for the collection. "I was happy with it," she said. "We didn't have anything extraordinary."
Brady is one of nearly 1,000 people from 43 states who have consigned comic books with NewKadia.com. They include individuals selling their personal collections, to retail-store owners looking for a second way to sell their inventory. Consignments have ranged from three to over 100,000 comics.
One of the larger consigners is Joseph Koch, who ships comics all over the world from a warehouse in Brooklyn. Since December 2004, NewKadia.com has sold over 42,000 comics for Koch.
"NewKadia.com is kind of unique in a whole bunch of regards," Koch said.
Those include its software, which once a day adjusts the prices of all its comics based on supply and demand; its inventory system, which enables employees to easily shelve and retrieve comics; and the number of comics it offers for sale through its website.
In addition to boosting the sales of comics in general, "Avengers: Age of Ultron" should boost the sales of issues of "The Avengers" in particular.
NewKadia.com has been in business for 183 months. For 181 of them, its best-selling title has been Marvel's "Amazing Spider Man." "It's only been dethroned twice," Drucker said. "Once was the month that the first Avengers movie came out." NewKadia.com's top-selling title that month? "The Avengers," which is NewKadia.com's seventh-best selling title over the past year.
"So if you have some old Avengers comics for sale or any comics you want to sell, this would be the time to do it," said Drucker.
About NewKadia.com
Based outside of Philadelphia, in Norristown, PA, NewKadia began operations on January 1, 2000. Among stores with no brick and mortar outlet, NewKadia is the longest continuously operating online comic book store.
In 2013, over 1.6 million shoppers visited NewKadia.com. Inventory includes over 625,000 comic books and trade paperbacks, representing nearly every comic book title ever published.
The store's best-selling title is "Amazing Spider-Man comic books" and it has topped the store's monthly best seller list in 178 of the 180 months NewKadia has been open for business.
To schedule interviews with Jim Drucker or get more information about NewKadia.com, contact Peter Key, 484-463-8359, peterkey@comcast.net
For more information, please visit http://www.newkadia.com