F For Fake

Your average CGC Boardie - Artist Interpretation

Awesome, glad he wasn't a total jerk about it.

Har har. Ok, you elitists enjoy yourselves.

Same as several others, I bring about $1k-$1500 cash, depending on my plans. When negotiating a price, I can't count how many dealers have asked "you paying cash?", the implication always being that they'll do the deal for cash, but maybe not for a card. But I am a very, very, very small fish. I've often wondered how the high rollers close deals at shows, if it's card, wire transfer, handcuffed briefcase full of cash, or what?

Killer piece, enjoy it!

I'm a fan of my local Waffle House.

So someone is putting together a 9.8 set of the anniversary borders, and the STAR/Funny animal books are the toughest in grade, I assume? I like the STAR books ,I pick them up when I find them in nice shape, which isn't often. It's not the sort of thing I'd spend this sort of money on, but I get it.

You all are going to the wrong Waffle Houses. Harumph!

It's certainly a well composed argument, but I just don't see any reason why comics should be treated any differently by an e-retailer than any other item would be. It's either sold or not. I don't see any advantage for the seller in letting his customers hold items, even if just for 24 hours. That's still an entire day for the book to be passed over by potential buyers, in favor of a "buyer" who may or may not choose to complete the transaction.

Agreed, maybe 1Cool just stumbled upon a bad Waffle House, but in general they are terrific. They cook real food, live in front of you on the griddle. Fresh made, greasy and delicious. Their waffles are a delicacy!

I think we MAY have seen the pic once, but I don't mind a bit seeing it again! So cool!

I think you summed it up much more succinctly. I can be a bit of a windbag.

This may be true when it comes to collectors, but if we're talking about KIDS and KIDS TOYS, how do they stack up? Do kids still even play with action figures? I think the 80's was the ultimate confluence of licenses and cultural saturation. And while some toy lines today boast features like extra articulation (Marvel Legends, for instance) with many lines, the quality isn't as good now as it was then, when it comes to materials. For instance, the die-cast metal of the early Transformers, the harder plastic used in the small Joes, etc. (I'd also take the rubber o-rings of the past, fragile though they may have been, over the articulation of Joes over the last 10 years or so.) And in some instances, advancements were made, only to be followed by regression (thinking here of the mass market Star Wars and superhero figures which boasted the articulation of Marvel Legends style figures for a time, but which have now mostly regressed to the original 5 points of articulation of their ancient forbears.) Transformers, GI Joe and He-Man WERE toy culture at that time. Nowadays I'd suspect video games and interactive toys are much more popular than their action figure cousins, though I'm too lazy to look up actual sales numbers. Also, there's the matter of price. Joes were about $3 when I was a kid. Nowadays, a 3.75 figure is $10-$15. Marvel Legends are $20. I'll let the resident poindexters work out the inflation, but I still think that we had it much better back then, value wise. Of course, as you point out, nostalgia is a huge part of it as well. But when I look at the toy aisles these days, I am not overly impressed. Sure, there are some amazing toy makers our there for the collectors market, but when talking about what is available at the local Target or Walmart, I'll still take what I had as a kid. Also I'm grumpy and old.

It must depend on your particular online set-up, but with most e-retailers, putting an item in the shopping cart doesn't remove it from sale availability. For instance, with Amazon and eBay, I have HUNDREDS of items in my shopping cart. Same with several movie websites. It doesn't give me any claim to the item, it just keeps it in one spot where I'll remember that I was interested in purchasing it. If someone buys it before I pay for it, it is removed from my cart, or when I check out I'm told that the item is "no longer available". Wording can be different depending on the service. (It's especially handy with Amazon, as I am notified every time I log in if the prices have gone up or down on any items. Since Amazon's pricing algorithm is so bizarre, you never know when you'll log in and find a big price drop!) But yeah, no question, and item doesn't belong to a buyer until it's paid for. Carts are good for organizing your purchases and planning stuff out, or just holding things off to the side so you don't forget that you wanted to buy them at some point. But the items aren't sold until they're sold.

@gradejunky I had this happen once, a new user started copying my pics. I sent him a message saying "Hey, please don't do that." He apologized and took them down, didn't realize it was a breach in etiquette. It might be easier/faster to contact them directly rather than appeal to ebay, which is, in my experience, usually a waste of time. Of course, they may just be a jerk, but you never know if you don't try. Some people have bad intentions. Some people just make dumb decisions because they don't know any better, and will stop once politely corrected. I'd always prefer to give them the benefit of the doubt. Good luck!

No question, the 80's were the very best time for toys, and it's not even close. I have a great affinity for stuff that came before, like Megos and the like, but with He-Man, Transformers, GI Joe, Barbie, Lego and SOOOOO much more firing on all cylinders, it was a great time to be a kid! I can't really have too many regrets about how I treated my stuff. Sure, I'd love to have it all now, but I sure did have a great time when I was a kid, and I wouldn't trade those memories for all of the MOSC vintage figs in the world. Probably.

Oh, and PS, Devilfish is one of my favorite vehicles as well. Very fond memories of playing with that one in the pool. The WHALE as well. Of course, as an adult I could kick myself in the butt for doing that (the WHALE used to sink due to Cobra sabotage...a lot) but, hey, I was a kid, they were toys, I had a blast playing with them.

Love the acrylic stands! Picked up a similar one for the X-Wing I restored. Sometimes they are a pain to assemble without breaking, but they look nice when they're all put together!

Oh thanks so much! My shop had these for a time and I missed out on them, and then couldn't find them ANYWHERE. Must have done a new production run. I will be picking these up, really appreciate the heads up!

I will confess that I really enjoy the Crossed books for their goofy grand guignol vibe (especially when they were written by Ennis and then Lapham.) But the covers to a lot of the Boundless books just look like traced prono to me. Not to single them out, as my complaint applies to a lot of contemporary comic artists: when drawing boobs, why not draw natural looking boobs, instead of what appear to be implants? I mean, they're drawings, you can make them look real, so why would you make them look fake? I guess the most likely answer is that a lot of the artists have never seen an actual naked woman, and are relying on prono for reference, but still, it makes me sad.

Thank you! Was just gonna say, around these parts, we call those POOL NOODLES, thank you very much!

Were these your Heroes pickups? Always enjoy these posts. That yellow scanner background always guarantees some cool stuff.

I haven't gotten any mailers or coupons from SST recently, but I also haven't bought anything from them for a few months. Sometimes I don't get coupons that others get, and sometimes I get coupons that no one else seems to get. It's odd. I guess they have some sort of algorithm for determining who gets one?

Following up on my post from the Garage Sale thread, I went to a two-day estate auction this weekend, and Sunday was all collectibles. Mountains of Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, Star Wars, Lost in Space, Hot Wheels and NASCAR stuff. I didn't pick up much in the way of vintage toys. They had one small plastic tub filled with small Joes. I was interested, but it sold for about $120, which seemed like a lot considering most of them didn't have their weapons, or the right weapons, or they had discoloration, etc. Just couldn't pull the trigger at that price. Same situation with a box of vintage Star Wars figures. These were much nicer, but at $200+ for the box, there just wasn't any meat on the bone. It could be that the buyer was a true collector and just wanted to get all of that stuff in one go, but a lot of the people that hang out at these auctions are flea market dealers who don't know much about the toys other than "old star wars = $$$" or "old comics = $$$" without doing the research on what actual figures they're buying. Oh well, more power to 'em! So I hung in and let them take the old stuff, and I made my move on the more modern stuff that they wrote off as junk. Managed to get all of the Marvel, JLU and Horror stuff in a couple of box lots for about $22 a pop. I'll do well with those. Complete Watchmen set plus several dupes for $50, and lots of stuff along those lines. Nothing as exciting as the vintage stuff, but for the price I'll do much better on what I picked up than the other folks will do with their vintage stuff. The only old school piece I picked up was this G1 Scorponok! I was bummed but not surprised that he was missing his Headmaster Lord Zarak (which is a $75+ piece on his own these days) but for $7.50, I figured I couldn't go wrong. Enjoy these bad pics of junk. PS: Waaaay OT, but I also picked up this 20th anniversary Halloween VHS and snowglobe set. Picked it up for $20, as it sells for dumb money on eBay. But I like it so much, I may keep it for myself!

While I can't compete with KryptoMayor's find, I had a fun time at a 2-day estate sale this weekend...aside from the 100 degree temps, standing out in a tent for 5 hours, feeling my brain melt. Saturday was all tools and electronics, so I stopped by as I have an interest in outdated AV equipment, laserdisc players, some VHS players, junk like that, if I can get it cheap enough. Ended up buying an Oscilloscope for $25, which I'd planned to ask $50-$60 for. But as soon as I had it in hand, GAH, that sucker was heavy, and I was starting to regret it as I pictured trying to ship the sucker safely. So, a few mins later, a guy comes up and asks if I bought it. He said that was the one thing he came to buy, and he'd walked away to his car for 5 mins and had missed. Asked if I'd take $40 for it. Since I had no idea if the thing even WORKED, and I was already worried about shipping it, I figured I'd take the fast $15 profit, and sold it to the guy before I'd even paid for it myself. Is that the in-person equivalent of drop-shipping? Otherwise, all I picked up on Saturday was a bunch of 45's for $20. I made a rookie mistake of not bothering to look through the lot before I bought it, and after purchasing started to have a fear that I'd probably just picked up a bunch of gospel or country or other stuff I can't sell. I was VERY pleasantly surprised when I got it back to the truck and found that the guy had been a collector, and almost all of the 45's were gorgeous and looked untouched, and included several picture discs, colored vinyl, and stuff I'd keep for myself (lots of Queen, Clash, etc.) There was also a nice chunk of vintage Beatles 45's, Elvis, and a Pretenders promo 45 signed by Chrissie Hynde! Ok, I hear what you're saying, where's the comic stuff? Sunday was the day for "collectibles", which included a MASSIVE collection of Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, Lost in Space, Star Wars, etc. Unfortunately there was only a small group of comics to be had, nothing of value or interest, but that didn't stop people from overpaying for it. A lot of these people are flea market dealers who don't really know much about comics other than, in their minds, "old comics" = $$$. So I let them have those. But I DID manage to land the first sale of the day, this nice little comic rack for $30! Appears to be circa 1993 according to the trademark info. Must have been a hanging rack, as there is no stand or a place to attach a stand. Archie and Marvel inserts on the side are thick cardboard, but still look very nice. I was happy to bring this guy home. I was also happy to pick up this Elvira Coors standee, as I had one long ago and stupidly sold it. You can't find this particular design often for cheap, so I was happy to bring her home. Also, yes, I realize I need to vacuum my carpets. Thanks guys. I also picked up a bunch of toys, but I'll post them over in the plastic crack thread. Thanks for reading!