kimik

On all levels, from the writing, to the art, to the covers, and even the letters page... New 52 Batman is the best book out there IMHO, but Saga is a not toot distant second or third..... Your opinion would carry more weight if you didn't think 'Sins Of The Past' was a great Spider-Man story. Sine you asked for it, The Best Spidey page ever.......I just wish they had drawn in beads of sweat on Norman's face in the bottom left panel.

On all levels, from the writing, to the art, to the covers, and even the letters page... New 52 Batman is the best book out there IMHO, but Saga is a not toot distant second or third..... It looks like Vaughan may have started to have pacing issues with the book like he die with YTLM. That series started out great, got bogged down, and never really recovered. I am getting the same sense with Saga.

That is a risk, but if the max you set your bid at is a significant discount to guide (I usually use 40% of guide on multi-book lots) then it does not matter if they bid you up - you will make money all day long with max bid wins. (thumbs u But you are paying more than you have to. And if you find one of those dbag sellers that shills they can bump your bid up to the max. By not placing your bid until the end via a sniper they can't know you have a secret max bid and push the envelop. Sniping only way to go with ebay. Potentially, but I am not going to irrationally chase auctions either at the end. Do I win most of the auctions with this approach, definitely not. However, for the ones that I do I end up making a nice profit that I just roll into new books and repeat the process. (thumbs u You're probably not getting shilled up too often, either. Anyone trying to shill you is probably going to outbid your 40% guide bid. Well, on some auctions I will bid as high as 50% if it looks to be worth it.....

It might be insane, but G.A.tor said he saw it with his own eyeballs: http://boards.collectors-society.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2486186&fpart=654 Which is proof enough for me. +1 What we have to remember is that there are people that have been collecting avidly since the 60s and 70s that had the chance to accumulate nice collections over time at low prices.

That is a risk, but if the max you set your bid at is a significant discount to guide (I usually use 40% of guide on multi-book lots) then it does not matter if they bid you up - you will make money all day long with max bid wins. (thumbs u But you are paying more than you have to. And if you find one of those dbag sellers that shills they can bump your bid up to the max. By not placing your bid until the end via a sniper they can't know you have a secret max bid and push the envelop. Sniping only way to go with ebay. Potentially, but I am not going to irrationally chase auctions either at the end. Do I win most of the auctions with this approach, definitely not. However, for the ones that I do I end up making a nice profit that I just roll into new books and repeat the process. (thumbs u

You are right. But, this dovetails with the reality that over 90% of series are not huge successes. They sink to and settle at a sales plateau that reflects true readership. The rare successes see a rising readership, which leads to supply/demand imbalances in previous issues, which leads to secondary market success. If you are hoping for a series to be a success, you are usually hoping for increasing sales. I agree but thats not the norm as prices tend to rise on several series but sales almost always fall. Batman and almost all of DCs stuff goes up in spite of lower sales after issue 1. Same can be seen with Superior Spider-man, Todd, Clone, and many more. What you describe is always the case for issues one to about three or four. LCSs and various speculators always front load orders at the start of a series. Go ahead and look at numbers from issues three to seven, and see what the sales trend is. You beat me to the punch. Batman is the most successful title of any of the big 2 offerings because readership stayed so high after the #1 speculation. Most of the other DC New 52 #1s and all of the Marvel Now #1s have dropped even more (Superior Spidey is what, 40% or so of #1 orders now) since the big speculative rush is done. You also have to take in the multiple cover effect on all of the recent Marvel (how many variants do most of the Marvel Now #1s have?) and post New 52 DC #1s (Justice League of America 52 covers anyone?). Or, most recently, look at WD #115 and the 15 or 16 different covers.

that was the most vile piece of trash to ever grace a Marvel comic - i pretty much gave up on the entire line after that travesty (thumbs u And to kimik I’d say it has nothing to do with "fanboys" – I am not a "fanboy", let alone of Spidey, but such things just don’t make sense. And Ennis' disputable taste satire (not only in Preacher) can be appreciated just if you know american recent history and "culture", and has nothing substantially enjoyable, let alone uplifting. Even one appreciating satire just laughs here and there. Not "artistic" by any means. To each their own. I liked both, you did not, fair enough.

Nice Wolvie LS set. (thumbs u The biggest rip off had to have been the first few issues of Transformers - they were $1.00 up here, then dropped to only $0.95.

The early 90s were a magical time for speculation. I can remember when Superman #75 came out the store I had my file at and the guys at the till were originally going to screw me out of my copy for one simple reason - they were selling them for $150 apiece. I asked to speak with the owner and he fixed it right away, thankfully. Too bad they went under later in the 90s. One other LCS in town that survived the 90s (both locations still in business today) was notorious for jacking up books the same day of release. The shelves they put their books on would flip up, so they would only have a small stack out at any time with the rest stashed behind the facade. Knowing this, I would just flip up the front and grab my copies at cover.

Best Spidey page ever. The only way to improve it would be to have beads of sweat on Norman's face.

This was the only part of the storyline I did not mind.

You're getting a kidney punch at the next show we do. That bit of the story reminded me of something Ennis would have done in his Preacher run - unexpected and shocking to the fanboys. (thumbs u

No offense taken. Not being a hardcore Spidey fan, I thought it was a great revisionist take on why Norman killed Gwen. That and it has my all-time favorite panel in a Spidey comic (I will post it later from home).

I suspect that there could be quite a few more high grade copies out there somewhere than most members on this board suspect. Quite simply I don't believe that the members of this board as a group are a statistically representative sample of the universe of comic collectors. Those collectors least inclined to consider slabbing their collections are also much less likely to be interested in joining this forum where so much of the discussions concerns various facets of slabbing and the comics that have been slabbed. Therefore being more heavily exposed to the subset of collectors more inclined to slab their comics would tend to cause the members of this board to think that a greater proportion of the universe of existing comics has been slabbed. After all, it's a common trait for people to generalize from their own personal experience. Didn't Rick/GAtor post someplace that he has a friend with some insane amount (was it 50 or so) of raw high grade copies that he accumulated over the years and was now starting to trickle out? I would not be surprised if there are more people out there with smaller high grade stashes as well. Your memory is on the path. It was in the AF #15 Club thread about a year ago. This anonymous Boardie is mainly a Golden Age collector (collecting for 4 decades), but has hoarded all the Silver Age keys--including some keys where he has dozens of copies. His short box of AF #15s numbers 65 copies, ranging from FR to NM (likely most are in mid-grade range--though one has been slabbed and scored above a 9.0). The mind boggles. Although I've summed up most of it, the page #s in the AF #15 Club thread to check out G.A.tor's exact words are: 654; 657-658; and 660. Sorry, no links. As for the AF #15 population, G.A.tor thinks that 10,000 is a conservative estimate. He's going by the 250K print run he's heard of and thinks 5-10% remaining would be reasonable (so, 12K to 25K total). For those not in the know, G.A.tor has the street cred, I hear. The 10,000 estimate is probably just the number of copies he has had go through his hands over the years of wheeling and dealing. (thumbs u

The best Spidey storyline since the 80s was hands down Sins of the Past. That is the only Spidey arc I have read and enjoyed since the McSpidey run as a kid. I loved the fact that it tarnished the myth of Gwen Stacy - it was great.

I was referring to the local shows that we would gouge people like Brian at. For whatever reason, NM #98 was always an easier sell for us than #87. I had a copy of NM #87 in my show stock from a collection I bought in 2004 or so that finally sold last year. The copy of #98 from that run sold as soon as my former partner and I put it out way back then. We see similar idiosyncracies in the local market with the US and eBay right now on other books. ASM #361 has been a $40 book here for 2 - 3 years now in 8.0+, which is why I like buying them on the boards or eBay for $15 - $20 apiece (or less). We can get above NM- guide for raw 8.0 - 9.0 copies of a lot of other Copper keys as well. This is why I like seeing the LCSs put new stock out at guide, especially for their 50% Boxing Day and FCBD sales.

You were probably one of the people Mel and I were gouging with NM 98 at $20 long before it became a mainstay at that price. I avoided your booth. Too much DC drek. How did Mel put up with it? The DCs were the books that sold the best - we were the only dealers that would have HG runs from the collections I was pulling in from sellers in the USA. Every other dealer had Marvels in all conditions, but we were the only ones with the good stuff.

I suspect that there could be quite a few more high grade copies out there somewhere than most members on this board suspect. Quite simply I don't believe that the members of this board as a group are a statistically representative sample of the universe of comic collectors. Those collectors least inclined to consider slabbing their collections are also much less likely to be interested in joining this forum where so much of the discussions concerns various facets of slabbing and the comics that have been slabbed. Therefore being more heavily exposed to the subset of collectors more inclined to slab their comics would tend to cause the members of this board to think that a greater proportion of the universe of existing comics has been slabbed. After all, it's a common trait for people to generalize from their own personal experience. Didn't Rick/GAtor post someplace that he has a friend with some insane amount (was it 50 or so) of raw high grade copies that he accumulated over the years and was now starting to trickle out? I would not be surprised if there are more people out there with smaller high grade stashes as well.

You were probably one of the people Mel and I were gouging with NM 98 at $20 long before it became a mainstay at that price. We could always move NM 98s, but NM 87 was the cold dud for a long time. I did not understand it as I always considered Cable to be more important, but the market made the decision and I was happy to profit from it. (thumbs u

No worries. Our recollections are different, which can be explained by the different markets we were in. I was happy to be buying and flipping them for multiples of my acquisition costs from when I first started selling. (thumbs u

One more time: I didn't say that. *I* speculated on it (as well as all the other New Mutants from #93-100.) I said it wasn't anywhere near the speculated issue that people think they remember it was. It was printed in, and sold, about the same number of copies as #96 and #99. We KNOW that it sold fewer copies than #95, while having about the same print run, because #95 sold out at the distribution level within a week (being the first X-Tinction Agenda book in the title), and was immediately reprinted. Sorry, I meant to say speculated in volume as with my original post. As I have stated several times, LCSs at the time were buying extra cases of the book to speculate on it due to the 1st appearances, NM 98 being an X-title, and it being cheap to do so back then. If you do not consider buying a couple of hundred of extra copies to be speculating in volume, then that is fine with me. Please, PLEASE read EVERYTHING before replying, folks. This information is already mentioned by me in the first few posts of this thread. Please, PLEASE read EVERYTHING YOU POST that people are replying to. I was saying that the book was not worthless for 18 years as you asserted (see your quote above) - it was a $5-$10 book locally when the first Deadpool mini came out and a $10-20 book when the Deadpool regular series came out. This is why I was actively buying them as often as they came up at $5 or less in the early to mid-90s - for as long as I have been selling at local shows (1997) and online (1999), it has been a $10+ book. Not quite worthless.......

Well, in my opinion most of the characters introduced in the very late 1980s, early 1990s are mediocre or worse. If Deadpool wasn’t recycled as a sort of satire and weird commentary on comics et al it seems to me it would even be less popular than Gambit or Cable. What about Venom?

Yes Please It is a nice racket. Buy the latest 3 months worth of books on the shelves, mark them up, and watch them sell. Earlier in the year at a show in Calgary I was getting $25 for my copies of #108 (or whatever 1st Ezekiel is) even though they were still on the shelves at the LCSs.

I was buying books in 2003 or so from a local collector that started speculating with 20-30 copies per book in the mid 70s through mid 80s. He was selling them for premium prices at the time raw on eBay. Beautiful unread copies - I foolishly passed on his best X-Men #94s, Hulk 181s, and GS X-Men #1s. He sent them to CGC and ended up with multiple 9.4s and 9.6s.

Anecdotes are great, but very much anectodatal. One of my shops still had many many copies of Saga 1 on the shelves about 5-6 issues into the series...about 2-3 weeks before it temporarily became a $75-$100 book raw. I, of course, sold those copies right away at $30 a pop, proving that I am very adept at selling too early. They also had Walking Deads on the rack (in quantity) into the early 80s when the series was almost at 100. I WD. Buy any back issue you can find at cover off the rack the week before a local show, jack them up to $5 - $8 apiece, and sell them all to fanboys.