captainzombie

Will do once I get home this evening.

I think I will get the Joe books too as long as the quality is there. I got my 1:100 in yesterday, OMG what a beautiful cover. I have one more on the way and pray that it is in good shape as the place I ordered it from sometimes sucks with their packaging. I'm waiting for the second one to come in so I can send both in to be graded. One for my PC and the other to sell to pay for some of these books.

I have read VR #4. I think they are saving him for GI Joe or maybe a later issue of VR so they can connect this shared universe together.

You guys do make some very solid points here.

From the looks of Swags charts, I do think we are heading back to 2019 levels. Right now we are hovering around some of the Spring 2020 numbers, but we are not too far off from the 2019 price levels. Actually we do need to get to those 2018/2019 levels for things to correct and then hopefully the good books can rise back and up naturally.

It is possible he hits on all that you mentioned. I just finished reading TF#1 and really enjoyed it a lot. Some of the art work took me a bit of getting used to it, but the story was well done and this is Transformers for adults. Spoiler for TF #1

Congrats on your first submission. After 1.5 years of submitting, my previous order had 1 9.9 in it. When I was looking at the grades I didn't notice it at first as I saw all 9.8's, so it looked like a sea of 9.8's. I take another look and I'm like a 9.9, damn. Will probably never see one again after that. LOL!

I've ordered several covers myself. I did get 2 of the 1:100's as I have this feeling the book is going to blow up for sure. Reviews so far have been fantastic. I live 50 minutes from Challenger Comics, but can't make the drive there. Really cool that he is doing a signing.

I can't wait. I did also get caught on the latest issue of Void Rivals over the weekend. I just can not believe all of these covers. Do we really need this much? LOL!

It was nice meeting you guys this weekend at the con. I am glad that I was able to get into this one last minute as I did better this week than the one in Orland last week. It just seems like foot traffic is down quite a bit for these shows as I have noticed the last 3 weeks. The southside comic book show was good for us about 3 weeks ago, but after 12:00, we didn't have a single customer. I have always attended this con as a buyer and it was much busier in the past, but at least we did have some nice foot traffic that came around. I was able to sell a few lower priced slabs, and one guy made a pretty sweet trade with me on some slabs + cash. Other than that, I primarily was also able to sell a good amount of my $2 books. Some of my wall books also went which was nice. Like you guys, we did have a lot of the lower priced items moving much faster than the pricier books. Have you guys ever attended Mighty Con Madison and would it be worth it trying to sell at that show? I was even considering Romeo-Con II in November, but I know that is more focused on toys, but I guess they are trying to also add comic book vendors.

This will be my 3rd show this month. I was setup near the back right across from Randy Hogan's tables. I did pretty well at the Southside Comic Book Show the week before in Palos, but at this Orland show we didn't sell much. The crazy part was that the show in Palos had very low foot traffic. I am glad to hear that this show continues to be good. Hoping good luck for both of us. @jsilverjanet what is your vendor location, I will have to stop by and introduce myself?

I picked up VR# 4 today, planning on reading it here in a bit. Excited that this weeks book is great from what you have read. I ordered a second TF #1 1:100 today as I don't trust my order from TFAW since their books sometimes are a mess.

Thanks for the info. I setup at both Palos Heights and Orland Park these last two weeks and I will say that foot traffic was not that great at either show. I did pretty decent at Palos, while others did very bad. It was pretty dead most of the afternoon. Then at Orland Park, I didn't do so well which really sucked. With this being in Wheaton, it should probably attract also some new people too vs. those last two shows you saw a lot of the same people going around from the past two weeks. That would be nice to have a dealer like that going on a spending spree.

How has this show been in the past as a vendor?

It doesn't matter these days if you accept or do not accept returns, you still get nailed with those false SNAD's. We accept returns (have free returns due to the nature of the items we sell) and they are still there. Even well knowing that we have free returns, people still mark returns as if its our fault. It's wild.

It would be wild if a 9.6 or 9.8 would see the light of day. I went and double checked my raw copy last night, and its probably a 9.4 at best. If a 9.8 ever surfaces, it would be one Spawn book that could probably fetch in the 4 digit range since it is so rare in a high grade.

That is correct. It is even worse too now as it feels like such a race to the bottom with prices on anything that it just screws things up. You used to be able to bake in the cost of shipping into the price, that is even getting harder and harder as people want the cheapest lowest price. I just had someone return a door mirror that they only paid $48 for and our shipping both ways is roughly $15. Their reason is because they got it cheaper. Now how much cheaper can they get this door mirror for is odd to me, since I also checked eBay and there weren't any other lower sales. Other thing is they went locally to a junkyard and pulled the part, but the cost of these mirrors at yards are $25-35 depending on the yard and then his gas and time. It's just the weirdest thing with how people are. I had another guy want a slab today, so I checked GPA and GoCollect to get an idea of what the last few have sold at. He offers me about $30 less than what I was asking. After thinking it through, I'm like I am going to make a profit and then take his offer. He comes back and tells me he needs to think about it and will let me know. Why the hell haggle with someone and then when they meet your price you back out? People are getting weirder and weirder.

It has gotten out of hand with eBay. I also sell used auto parts on there and am one of the larger sellers. Their mission to copy Amazon in many ways and mismanagement has caused them their downfall. They are not organically growing their business and relying on Promoted Listings to show a profit to their shareholders. It is very sad. Figure between Promoted Listings, Promotions, Free Shipping, Free 30 Day returns, and then also add having to fend off false SNADs left and right it doesn't help at all.

I just saw this spoiler for this weeks book. Now that is awesome. Have to wonder how they plan to interwind all 3 properties moving forward. I have been enjoying Void Rivals quite a bit.

Thanks for sharing. That is quite a nice looking cover. I'm not familiar with Bertram's work at all.

While modern slabs have taken the hit, I'd probably feel more comfortable with SA and BA slabs or raws in my collection. At least with SA and BA, depending on the books they will bounce back. With moderns as we know, most will be priced high for a few weeks and then a tumble they will take. I don't think some people and shop owners had a real good strategy with what they were slabbing. I made some similar mistakes early on when I was starting to slab books, but you learn when you have books sitting around and not moving.

I think that you are right with regards to the market being oversaturated with slabbed books. People were encapsulating all kinds of garbage and pushing it out the door. Instead of people using their head knowing that these low tier books should not be bought, were buying them thinking that they now have gold that will take them to the moon. My personal opinion, if people have books and slabs that will have no true value I'd be working to dump those as soon as you can. At least try to break even, because I think that things will get very ugly in the coming year alone with just the economy that will also affect these books.

Either just ignore him or tell him to contact eBay so they can get him the rest of his money back. When you do a partial refund using the refund tool, eBay will give them the difference with no fault to you. I do this quite a bit with clown customers that abuse the returns marking things as false SNAD's. It has gotten very bad on there.

G Con is tomorrow in Orland Park, IL for those that are interested. https://gconnn.wixsite.com/home Orland Park Civic Center 14750 S Ravinia Ave, Orland Park, IL 60462 Hours: 9-9:30 am (early bird), 9:30 am - 2pm Admission: $5

Hi all, there is going to be another con in the area next weekend. Saturday Sept 30, 2023 (Wheaton, IL) Hours: 10 am - 3 pm (early bird is at 9:30 am) Admission is $8 https://mightyconshows.com/show/dupage I'll be a vendor there and hoping that we have a good turnout.