A Case Study of the Foreign /American Market
by Liam Sturgess
exclusively as a dealer?
With interest in the foreign comic book niche
quickly picking up, sales of international editions of
key American issues are becoming more frequent
and are closing at higher prices. As somebody who
collects these books as a primary focus, I was very
interested in seeing specifically how the marketplace is changing and which areas to watch out for.
Mario: The short answer is - I started as a collector
and I currently am a collector.
To this end I reached out to Mario Peters, otherwise known by his eBay handle, Europeancomixforyou. As you may be able to surmise, Mario deals
in European editions of key American comic books
and has been active for several years – even before
the recent boom in interest.
Here are Mario’s thoughts on the subject:
Liam: Europeancomix4you, you were one of the first
comic book dealers on eBay to specialize in multicountry editions of key American comic books. In
your store, you commonly have books from Spain,
Mexico, Italy, Germany and several others, which is
unlike the business model of any other prominent
eBay seller (though that’s beginning to change). In
the ever-evolving foreign comic book market, we
at FCC consider you a forerunner and probably the
first of many to do what you do.
Tell us about how you got started in the foreign
comic book world! Did you start as a collector, or
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I started as a collector of European comic variants
in 1989 during my second holiday trip to France. I
went into a newspaper kiosk in Paris