kimik

If you need any other issues from the start in the #230s through early #250s LMK. The LCS I snagged my Punisher set from put a small run of them in the bins again.

Here is another pick up from a LCS visit tonight.

+1 This book is just as common as any other mid to late 60s Marvel in GD to VF condition. It starts to get tougher at the 8.0 range due to the square-bound red cover, but even then there are plenty of high grade copies out there. Most of the speculators (myself included) bought copies a couple of years ago when the initial Ms. Marvel rumors came out when it was ice cold and selling well below GPA or OSPG (for raw books). There may be a bit more room to grow price-wise, but the big gains will likely have been locked in on the low to mid grade copies already.

Wow. That is effing horrible quality control by Marvel. If this is how they treat the retailer exclusives, then I wonder how long before the retailers stop doing them?

No worries. To get this thread back on track, here is a pick up from a LCS ac couple of weeks ago (price is in CDN) - the tatooz are intact. The store had it priced at regular edition Overstreet levels in grade, but I decided to take it anyway....................................

If it is similar to the ASM #800 ratio variants, it is not a huge deal. Binder tears/tiny spine splits are par for the course with oversized books now, unfortunately.

The Murdochs and Fox shareholders are the winners in this, though. If Disney can pull this off in the end, I hope the cartoonist puts Mickey up on the wall as well with a Murdoch looking at it............

Have you dealt with them before? This is a common complaint I hear from other buyers the first time that they deal with them (in addition to the high prices that he then discounts to market rate a la Mile High). I like dealing with him as a seller since he will always buy bulk books you are trying to blow out that local stores will not. This past Calgary Expo he bought 7 longs of sets and $2 bin books from me that have been slow movers the past couple of years of shows (basically bulk orders and collection odds and ends that my cost was $0 on a that point). He also paid prices I was fine with on a number of other books I was selling. It took a couple of years to get to the point where dealing with him is smooth, but it is worth it for me now as a selller.

Nice books, Surfer!

Umm.........you are kidding here, right? The prices definitely were impacted by the TV show. Without the show it would never have popped, as is shown by GPA prices. The TV show debuted in 2010. Was it trending positively prior to that due to comic collector demand? Yes, but prior to the TV show it was a $300 - $500 book, just like Saga #1........ Walking Dead #1 CGC 9.8 Saga #1 CGC 9.8

That is my concern re: Amazon. HBO has a proven track record on bigger budget series. Amazon does not.

Binge watched the first 10 episodes the last couple of nights, and I really liked it. They did a great job with Braniac, and Doomsday vs General Zod along with Zod vs Zod should both be fun. Looking forward to the next season.

I know, but all we have heard for a while now is the sounds of crickets at night on that one. I am not holding my breath. I trust HBO to get a quality series into production more than Amazon.

Howling purchased a Showcase #30 CGC 6.5 from me. Fast payment and great to deal with. Thanks!

It was nowhere near as good at GotG 1 or even 2 from a comedy hero flick perspective. I am glad that we did not spend any $$$ on Ragnarok at the theatre as I felt the same way about it as some of my other collector friends did - they tried to hard to make it funny and that killed what could have been a much better movie.

More GoT = awesome! This is why I wish someone would get the LoTR franchise onto TV.

We finally watched Ragnarok with the kids on Netflix as well this weekend, and nobody really cared for it. The humor was too forced at times. Seeing Surtur destroy Asgard was cool, and Blanchett was great as Hela, but otherwise the movie felt like it was searching too hard for an identity - bromance comedy or a more traditional super hero film. It is a middle of the pack Marvel film.

Agreed. This is an awesome flick. As far as the number of times you are going, is there a prize for the ticket that takes the movie across the $2B mark?

Not quite correct. Valiant was toast due to a lack of interest and quality in their books after Shooter left. I was a fanboy that dropped them all once Acclaim took over. The stories became quite unreadable after that and the artwork really sucked. The later 90s relaunch suffered from the same issues. Marvel's financial problems had nothing to do with variants. The company was driven into bankruptcy protection by Perelman and his vulture crew taking it public, issuing a ton of junk bonds, and making questionable acquisition after questionable acquisition, all of which failed in the end. There is a book, Comic Wars, that tells the story. Chuck actually sums it up decently on his site (http://www.milehighcomics.com/tales/cbg38.html): "........Ronald O. Perelman continued trying to build Marvel into a mini entertainment conglomerate. In a flurry of acquisitions during the early 1990's, Marvel purchased Fleer Trading Cards, SkyBox Trading Cards, Panini Stickers, Welsh Magazines, and Malibu Publishing. The total cost of these acquisitions (plus an ill-advised repurchase of half of the stock held by the public) ultimately pushed Marvel's bank debt to over $700 million dollars. That's more than eight times what Perelman paid for the company in 1989! At the same time as Marvel was going deeply into debt internally, Perelman convinced an army of gullible investors to purchase $900 million in zero coupon bonds, with the only collateral backing the bonds being his ownership of 60% of Marvel's stock. Because the paper trails are hard to follow, there is some debate as to how much all this financial magic ultimately netted Perelman, but Raviv speculates that he (through his holding companies) benefited to the tune of somewhere between $200-$400 million dollars."

You are not looking over any ledge. Buy the variants you like at the release price and enjoy them. If you buy them for a higher price on the secondary market, do not expect to sell the for a profit but enjoy them nonetheless. FWIW, I am fine with the artists and stores cashing in on their own exclusives. Stores can use the additional revenues streams, and outside of superstar artists, the creative talent is not raking it from regular book sales.

Common issues have been cool for 2 - 3 years now, just like we have seen over the past decade (or longer) with any other long running title. Thanks to TPBs and compendiums, there is no need to build runs now unless the cost is cheaper than the collected edition.

Wow. Looks like I was way off. It is funny. I have been selling ASM 798s locally for $10 apiece and having people tell me that they should be/will be worth more when they buy them. I don't know if the stores here caught on in time to up their orders.

ASM Annuall #21 was an okay read and still holds decent value today.

Where is this one from?

When does the Sanders variant go on sale? That one looks great.