CKB

If that's the NP sealed in the mailer that sold recently on eBay, I had a snipe set for it but it went higher than I was willing to pay. Envelope looked a bit beat but it appears it was a great copy anyway, nice pick up.

Totally different subject... I have been selling on eBay a stash of Secret Wars 8's and they sell very well. This is not news for this thread. But, I get lots of questions asking if the book is a first print or not. Is there a reprint of this book that looks exactly like the original? I cannot find mention of one anywhere....

So how bout them BRONCOS?

Pats rule!

 

Once we The Gronk back, Mr. Brady will be flashing his 4th Superbowl ring.

 

 

Unless we face the Giants again.

 

Oh here come the Texans! I should read the second issue before kickoff.

Wow, did the Texans play tonight? I watched the game but didn't see them...

The status on my moderns subbed on 7/21 just changed to "Clown Shoes". Anyone know what that means?

 

 

haha are you gloating about how you single handedly cause the bottlenecking?

 

People like you....make people like me....sad for months....

 

In all seriousness don't blame me, I've been Fast Tracking all my books for almost two years, before the bottleneck started. If I were to go back to regular submission I'd pocket a lot of money every month.

 

I found it was easier to handle my subscription service by going to Fast Track. It gets stuff in and out quicker. At one point before I went Fast Track I had over 1000 books waiting to be graded. And when you don't charge customers for those subscription books until they get graded... Well you do the out of pocket math.

 

The current bottleneck has even caused problems for me. These boxes constitute three weeks of submissions that all came in over a week's time. Invoices ship out of order so I have to wait before I sort, and this sort of pile happens regularly now.

 

Like I said earlier, even Fast Track has been affected, not by such an exponential amount, but it is behind what I'm used to.

As someone who currently has 600+ books at CGC, non fast-track moderns, I shake my fist at you fast-trackers. And wish I was submitting stuff I could swallow the extra $10/book for. Alas, it is not to be, so I wait. And wait. And sub more. And wait more.

Larry's Special Edition is a #1 that is being released at the same time as the second print BUT it is not a second print per Larry.

 

Wouldn't it be a 3rd print? Similar to his Chew #1 Larry's Edition?

The Indica on the book reads "BEDLAM #1 Special Edition. November 2012."

I do not know what the 2nd print will look like, sorry!

So then this 2nd print cover will not be released?

 

P.S. It is a great cover!

Here is the "Special Edition" variant of #1.

>>To be clear - again I have had this convo with King Larry before<<

 

To be clear -I have NEVER spoken to Andy70 in my life.

Seriously..

 

Oh you fibber - you don't recall the PM when I asked you to stop flogging your stuff - and I quote...."some people are spending a weeks pay on your phantoms".

 

You replied with an order form for more.

 

Also - NYCC variants

 

GP variants

 

Never had a convo?

 

Snake oil slick,snake oil..

So, you seem to be confirming that you never have spoken to Larry, just like he said, while at the same time calling him a liar. Funny how that goes.

"Spoken to" != "traded PMs with"

Larry, the sad part is that what you do for your customers is becoming the exception, not the rule. I think it is a result of more and more speculation, more and more people who got out of comics in the 90's returning to the industry and a product of the poor economy (some stores need to do that to keep there lights on). In reality, I probably shouldn't be upset about it either. I don't know how comic shops compete with DCBS for subscribers. My LCS gives its subscribers no discount and charges them for their copy of Previews magazine. This is off topic, but it didn't make sense to start a new thread since its not about the Walking Dead.

 

"Originally Posted By: LarrysComics

At NYCC, I sold 100 Batman #13's for $5 ea & 100 Batgirls for $15 ea BY noontime Saturday."

 

 

I guess these customers were just ripe for picking then

 

Nice selective post.

Lets call it a lie of omission, shall we?

 

You may not agree with my logic, BUT You missed this:

 

I figure online & conventions are fair game to charge whatever the market will bear & I order for all classes of my business.

 

No, you miss my point.

Are they not customers?

Things don't work that way at cons. Think about it this way:

Say Larry has a stack of 100 Batgirl 13's on hist table for cover price and they are $20 everywhere else. Every dealer will try to buy them from him, hand him $400 for the stack immediately, etc, and then just add them to their $20 stack at their table.

Trying to limit the number books being purchased to one per customer has the same effect. Every dealer gets everyone they have working for them to go buy one. Every person who sees the great price gets everyone they know at the show to buy one, and maybe even enlist people they don't know. You get a whole mess of people who come to the booth, buy that book, and leave.

It's a whole different ballgame.

I "never" sell comics above cover at my shop. ( variants excluded ) & have built up a mid size retail volume over the years.

 

My shop variants sell for COVER PRICE in the store.

The entire program is designed to build foot traffic in store. The day of a new release we get fans from 4 states.

 

batman #13 & Batgirl is in stock right now at cover price. I order great & customers appreciate it. My new comic stock is a KEY reason fans take the time to visit my retail shop.

 

I figure online & conventions are fair game to charge whatever the market will bear & I order for all classes of my business.

FWIW, I was in Larry's store last week and they indeed were all cover price. The Batgirls were sold out I was offered a copy at cover price when they came back in. Friday I think.

We didn't have much of a winter either - had almost no snow up here which is the first time I remember that happening in 40 years.

 

Snowed here yesterday. It goes from Summer to Winter here in ol' Montana. No fall.

Yeah, they are looking at 6"+ in the upper midwest over the next day or two. Seems early for a storm like that, even there.

PP is an acquired taste....but then again i like silent films.

...

Thanks for asking.

 

like any competent retailer, I have direct contacts at every major publisher.

 

Regarding Valiant Black.

 

I have had a text conversation with Atom! Freeman

Sales Manager

Valiant Entertainment

 

"It went out one copy per to our top 500 retailers."

 

It's a promotional tool. NOT a variant.

 

On the industry professional message boards CBIA shops worldwide are reporting the poor condition these promo items arrived in.

 

( my shops copy looks like it got beat up with a bag of nickels )

 

 

 

Its best when replying to a direct comment to use the quote feature that way individuals know wtf you are talking about.

 

He was replying to my comment. He is correct Valiant Black is a promotional item. As I stated in my original post, now is the time to sell. As the market is flooded (there are 500) the price will drop.

 

Also the envelopes are the items being damaged not the issue itself.

I wish that were entirely trrue. That book is going to be completely impossible in 9.8, current CGC production defect blindness aside. And there are plenty of complaints around the web from retailers about the condition of that book, not that that is anything new.

I saw Larry's copy and straight off the press it would have been 8.0-8.5ish at CGC IMHO.

We should make it into a flier handout at shows.

You know.......for the kids!! (with due respect to The Hudsucker Proxy)

This is NOT the absolute hardest to find 90's book.

 

BUT... if you can find one, you should grab it when you see it.

 

Eternal Warrior #27 triple-signed with a COA from Valiant Validated Signature Series

(Last sale today 7/7/2012 for $353)

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=370627242538

 

 

 

Nice.

 

How many copies of the Turok #1 VVSS with the Second Life of Dr. Mirage #1 VVSS coupon have ever turned up? I know I sold one on your Valiant board about 10 years ago and one of the other boardies said he had one as well.

 

 

I do not think any more have turned up. Maybe a couple certs that were nearly cut in half but that is all that comes to mind.

One might say those books are "heating up".

Art and I had a very successful transaction on a Strange Tales 73. Thanks, Art!

Moral of this story: Stop offerring FREE SHIP/Insurance. Give them a choice: Envelope shipping, or boxed shipping. Charge them a buck or two more for the box if that is what they really want. For some strange reason, even those who SELL comics don't get this: the Envelope shipping is treated like 1st Class - they are put inthe white BINS, sideways, treated as flat mail. The BOXES are put in the LARGE cart-bins, and can and do get crushed. I ahve had more Insurance claims on the boxed shipping than I EVER have on the Envelope shipping. And now I am going to have to raise the ship fee to cover the extra expense.

I hate for this to get lost in the rest of the nonsense going on here. While I do not agree with the point on FREE shipping, I am on the road to agreeing with the point about boxed vs. envelope shipping.

As long as the flat parcels are sufficiently stiff, I think they are treated better overall than boxes. I used to think that envelope shipping was inferior, but my own experience jives with CAL's point - make the flat parcel well and it is safer than boxed shipping for up to about 10 books or so.

Thanks to Ken for clarifying our conversation.

 

Welcome to the boards!!

Agreed, nice to see you make a post, George!

It's unlikely that premium books from early Valiant are in any "unsold" quantities...

but the later Gold editions (1994) are definitely potentials for some type of "warehouse find".

Can you imagine finding an unopened case of Archer & Armstrong 0 Gold or Eternal Warrior 1 Gold Flat? It would be like winning the lottery if you released them slowly into the market.

Unfortunately the sellers of such things rarely have such foresight. See X/O 1/2 Gold.

On the Deathmate Red gold - it would be shocking to me if there were actually 10,000 in circulation. It just does not come up enough compared to the others. I think 8000 of them are sitting in a warehouse somewhere.

No one was selling ANYTHING Valiant for 25 cents in 1993.

 

compostable_fertilizer.

 

I was _there_, RMA. I have the Pre-Unities--bought at the prices I stated, and I have the additional ComicFest '93 swag (like 3 copies of Defiant Genesis in the original sleeves and a double-signed Platinum Batman 492) to prove it.

 

Depending on which dealer table you went to, and what time during the show (ie, whether it was Friday evening vs. Sunday afternoon), the deals were there to be had. _Everybody_ had Valiants in depth, and while certain books (like Harbinger 0) were still white hot and were selling at their peak, others were being dumped. And yeah--Turok # 1 was _already_ selling for between $.25-$1, just weeks after release. Rai 6-8. Magnus 9-11, 13-14 were available in bulk for $1 each.

 

Meanwhile, the three premiere Ultraverse # 1s (Prime, Strangers, and Hardcase) were selling for $5-8, with # 2s going for more. Those books were actually _selling_ at those prices, whereas the Valiants sat (unless _heavily_ discounted).

 

Anyone else who attended ComicFest '93 in Philly care to chime in?

 

I attended ComicFest in '93 in Philly and if there was a box of Valiant's for a quarter each I must of been so blind that I complete missed it because in 93 Valiant was super hot. I was completely into Valiant at that time and I scoured every comic table with no luck. Everyone there was selling pre-Unity books for $25 and up. Issue 1's were going well over $100. As a Sophomore in high school I couldn't afford anything at those prices.

 

I'm not saying those books weren't there for that price but they didn't last to long at all. Maybe you meant 94' or 95'?

I agree. I was not at Comicfest in '93 but I was set up at the Javitz in NYC in '93. While things were on the decline with new stuff, and pre-unity had cooled, finding Valiants at $0.50 wasn't happening.

The Predator vs. Magnus TPB is damn hard to find. Five copies in the census with a single 9.8 that sold for $405 in Sept '09.

 

The Preacher Preview only has thirteen copies on the census and GPA for a 9.8 is $441 (Nov '08) and $95 for a 9.6 May '10. I came across two copies this last year completely by accident. p

 

I traded for Booz's 9.8. In over a year, still no more 9.8s.

Dino (the new owner of the Valiant properties, VEI) got three copies of the TPB in the Acclaim warehouse. They all graded at 9.8. That's where mine came from. Coming soon to the census.

Predator Vs Magnus TPB

 

Not a gold/platinum/signed limited edition. Just apparently had few orders and very few were printed.

 

 

Story is that it was printed for the overseas market, which makes sense given that you could buy the two issue mini anywhere for under $1 when it was printed. Valiantman's estimate on this is 5,000 copies, but it's a guess.

Here's mine:

I am surprised nobody mentioned the Pre-Unity Valiants, my friend Teddy says they are rarer then thier low print runs because a lot of new Valiant collectors have started to hoard these the last 5 years, example a pre-unity Valiant that had a print run of say 30,000 would be half that because half of the print run have

been hoarded and taken off the market by the extreme serious Valiant collectors.

There are just too many for the hoarders to have a big effect. You can always find a copy. You may have to pay more than you would like, but they have always been available.

I don't beleive the combined posted inventories of the valiantcomics.com members have been able to account for more than 5% or so of any print run, and that's only with the limited variants.

Bloodshot 0 (platinum). Believe it's got 7-11 copies known. And it was an intentional variant, not a misprint.

Joe/Jduran1 (man, haven't said that board name in a long time) knew someone involved in the printing process, and she said there were around 80-100 copies that she knew of.

 

I need to check in with him anyway to see how he is doing. I'll ask for more details.

 

I just want to point out that this topic is not settled by any means. The platinum BS0 is still, in my opinion (and CGCs since they are certified as such), extremely likely to be a misprint of the gold edition.

 

If the book's author, the EIC, and the Marketing guy didn't know about it, it was unintentional. Even if it was done on purpose by guys with access to the printing process, it still is not a Valiant released variant. It's akin the the guys at the US Mint who were making misprinted money on purpose to sell to coin dealers to supplement their income.

 

So, until someone who was in Valiant upper management at the time says that he authorized, for promotional purposes, the printing of a number of gold books without gold foil, which is believed to be the only difference between the gold and the plat, I will not be convinced.

 

 

7-11 copies is definitely a book where RMA's comments about 'investability' apply. The 'float' is not large enough to make this a reasonable investment consideration.

Actually, Valiantman made a great defense in 2007 (on the Valiant boards) that it's much more likely there are up to 300 of these than less than 30.

But the number "found" is still under 20 at this point, as far as I know.