HN Explorer

Ask HN: Creating a website to swap comic books

6 points by botolo86 ↗ HN
Hello Friends,

I had this idea today and I wanted to share it with you and get some feedback and suggestions.

Every week I buy a lot of comics, I read them and then I find that I am not really interested in collecting 30/40% of them. I enjoyed reading them but I don't want to keep them. Selling them on eBay is a pain in the a, as you have to take a picture, create the listing, etc. You can try to sell them to some comic shops but they will give you just pennies. And in the end you want to give them away to get money to buy more comics...therefore you want to give comics to get comics.

I am sure a lot of other collectors feel the same.

This is the idea: I am going to create a website where I'll post weekly releases, with cover pics and info. Users will be able to login, click on the comics of the week that they got and did not like and the comics that they did not get and would like to have.

I will then match the wants and gives and ask users to ship me the comics. I will check that their grade is ok and ship them to other users.

What do you think?

6 comments

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wewyor
Well the shipping to yourself seems kind of an unnecessary middle man if you can build some sort of reputation and review system.

Other things:

- Can users ship comics easily?

- Can users ship comics safely (minimal damage)?

- Can users ship comics cheaply?

botolo86
Thanks for the feedback!

I was thinking about being the "middle man" basically because shipping comic books has the problems you exposed.

For example:

- if I have 10 comics to swap, it may be that I will have to swap them with different users and having multiple shipments would not make sense

- comics can get damaged if not packed carefully. While this website would target comic book fans (who know how to properly take care of comics, shipment, etc.), the "middle man" would help in assuring that these comics are in good status.

I was looking at paperbackswap.com, it's a beautiful example of swapping system. Users post their books. When someone requests a book from them, they ship the book and receive 1 credit. With that credit, they can get a book from another user.

sid6376
Thanks for pointing me to the site paperbackswap.com. This is a really cool idea, specially how it manages book transfer and the concept of book credits. I think the middleman option is not very scalable and you should look at other options. The reputation concept suggested before does seem like a good idea. To make sure that a user is shipping high quality comics you may introduce the concept of deferred comic credits, until another user ratifies that this user indeed ships high quality comics. Good luck!!
botolo86
Great feedback! Yes, definitely a reputation system would work and help users.

For the shipment problem (the fact that shipping just one comic may not make sense), a solution could be to allow users to specify in their preferences the minimum amount of comics they want to ship. For example, I may choose 5 comics and then the system will match me with another user only when this other users would like to receive 5 of my comics...so that I can ship all these comics to just one user.

bozzie123
email nboswell90@gmail.com i would like to discuss your idea with you, i think i can provide a few tips :)