kimik

The problem for the buyer is trying to move the low demand stuff. He needs to make his money back on the best stuff, as low to mid grade Dell and Fawcett Western commons are $2-$5 bin fodder in order to move them at local shows. Otherwise, he will likely have them collecting dust in storage until he closes his store decades down the road........

I really hope he does a CGC box unveiling video to book end this. I wonder how he will react to seeing all of the "NM" books coming back as 7.0s............

There are plenty of Cow Puncher books locally due to a number of GGA collectors. The books are tucked away in collections, though.

The sad thing is even after they have been made aware of the issue they just keep doing it. I have stopped buying from the dealer as a result. When you get the books, you have to press them even if you were not intending to just to undo the damage. It is not worth it.

+1 I used to use Matt a decade or so ago, but switched to Joe after the quality of pressing I was getting was dropping. My last batch from pre-CGC CCS you could see the book was pressed due to rush jobs/wrong release paper being used. The quality of work with Joe was much higher, and he is a great person to deal with as well.

You should see what some sellers (and a large dealer) are doing to books by pressing their own books now. On some books I have gotten extra bits and pieces of things pressed into the covers as well since they are not bothering to clean the press bed or the book. Just a quick pancake to flatten it and then onto the customer.

PM sent.

I would say it is worth a shot. I am selling a bunch of stuff to collectors in Calgary and Edmonton right now on eBay in addition to regulars.

@Kevin Boyd Now that trade shows area allowed in Alberta, have you/Fan Expo thought about doing the Holiday show in Calgary this fall? And one in Edmonton the preceding/following weekend? I think there is plenty of pent up demand from collectors for them.

The McFarlane cover is nice. I bought one just for that.

The popularity has waned since the best episode aired, IMHO, and Glenn and Abraham met Lucille. That turned a bunch of people off the show, and as more of the original cast has left the interest has waned further. Basically, TWD has had its run for now. I expect the comics to follow the TMNT pattern - after the late 80s/early 90s spike due to the first round of movies and cartoons, TMNT was dead. Fast forward to the mid 00s when the next wave of movies came out and the late GenX and GenY kids that grew up with them were now gainfully employed, and there was an increase in demand and prices again that has continued to accelerate since then. I can remember doing shows in the early to mid 00s where no one even asked for TMNT.

I actually stopped going to some theatres since they did such a bad job of cleaning between show times. Is it too much to ask for them to sweep out/mop up each row to ensure I am not stepping in the previous person's drink and popcorn? When I used to work as an usher for the Edmonton Oilers at the old Rexall Arena, we had to inspect our sections before fans were let in just in case there were any issues. I only found one once - they did not fully mop up spilled pop under a chair.

The one benefit from COVID for the movie industry - the theatres are probably the cleanest they will ever be.

This is where the costume designer is apparently drawing their inspiration from for the Riddler. Rumor has it that they are a big Pulp Fiction fan. I can remember almost myself from laughter seeing this at the theatre in university when it came out.

So a 40% loss if the owner paid $20K for it on Comicconnect? Ouch.

Not quite. Some very early original CGC labels were tight. Others were not. After the complaints started pouring in from dealers, and collectors who felt they were hosed by the dealers after sending books to CGC and getting lower grades, CGC loosened things up. Then after it was too loose, they tightened up again. Every couple of years the pendulum swings the other way. That is why you buy the book and not the label. For a very short while PGX books were tighter than CGC and you could make good $$$ buying PGX books for a discount, straight resub them, and get a 0.5 - 2.0 grade bump without pressing or cleaning. CBCS started out looser than CGC and it has hurt them, and I have not seen a change in their grading over time. The last HG CBCS book I bought was a 9.6 GL 87 (picked up last summer), but it looked worse than my CGC 9.4 so I sold it. I was hoping to change it to a CGC 9.6 label, but once I got it in hand it had not chance at that (small faint crease top right corner that did not break color since it is white). Maybe Beckett taking over will tighten their grading up.

I've sold off and rebuilt 8 collections since 2000. The thrill for me is in the hunt and trying to build a better collection each time, not in holding books for the long term.

Did the book come out on time?

I am not sure what his fussing about. The title of the last film was "The Rise of Skywalker". Even a 5 year old could figure out that meant plenty of Rey and Kylo screen time. FWIW, I am not sure an actor like him should be complaining. Not a smart career move when you are just a B lister at best.

And that is the reason that CBCS books tend to sell at a discount to CGC books in the same grade............

I bought it without scans from a dealer I buy a lot of books from. He said it should benefit from a press. It did not, unfortunately. There was a small faint stain that was not noted in the grader's notes. IMHO, CGC's grading on stains and foxing has changed with changes in the grading team. They are are harsher now on certain defects than they were in the past, and easier on others. Grading is a subjective game, and results from CGC over time shows this. I have been submitting since 2001, and there are ebbs and flows in the tightness of grading.

Spawn 179, 1st War Spawn, is starting to pop now too. The print runs on those issues from #170 to 250 are too small to meet demand.

Sorry, I meant to say that there were around 70 in that stack. Only a couple of each of the AF 15, Action 1 and ASM 300 swipes so they obviously sold well at the store or had already been picked. There were 5 - 10 of each of the other covers. All sold well.

I lucked into a big stack of the homage covers at a Calgary Expo four years ago. One of the LCSs had them in their $1 bins not knowing what they were. There are close to 70, if I recall correctly, and I sold most of them the next two days for a nice profit at my tables.

Ouch, that looks like a DCBS handling issue.