F For Fake

Well, they're high grade, nice copies, but they're not worth anything, so they're the perfect keepers, to be gently read in the glow of warm nostalgia, and then put away for the permanent collection. I don't need 9.8's for my personal collection.

Picked up 5 long boxes of drek off of CL this weekend. Nothing exciting, but at $25 a box (less than 10 cents a book by my quick count) the price was right. One entire longbox was made up of runs of Superman books, all bagged and boarded and in order, looks like former store stock. Those books should pay off my "investment" pretty quickly. Another box worth of miniseries and sets that I can sell for $5-$10 a pop. Two boxes of junk that I'll probably ditch at HPB (you know the stuff, bunches of FCBD books, along with the usual suspects: Sun Devils, Sonic Disruptors, Strange Days, etc). And another long just for me, terrific high grade reading material, near complete runs of Nexus, American Flagg, Astro City, & Zot, large chunk of Cerebus, and lots of nice copper indie books that I dig, including at least three nice Dave Stevens books. So, I'll make my money back pretty easily and have a lot of good reading for a while. Not the kind of collection that a lot of flippers would be interested in, but it's just right for me.

We don't have kids, but we have a 9 year old niece that we keep about one weekend every month, and I've been working on getting her into comics for years. She really likes Archies, and will ask for me to get her some Archies if she knows I'm going to a show or the comic shop. Also, whenever I buy a collection, I give her all of the "kiddie" books. We took her to see Wonder Woman, and she LOVED it, and since then has shown some interest in the DC Kids type books if WW is involved. So I'm hopeful that it may be taking a hold. We'll see!

Sure! This is what I did with the X-Wing, but I've used a similar process with other pieces in the past as well. 1. Remove the stickers. Mine came up with no problem at all, they were so dried out and brittle. I used Goo Gone on a couple of tiny spots where there was still some stickiness. If yours are stuck on, then goo gone, or sometimes using a hair dryer, should help get the stickers off. I ordered repro stickers for the X-Wing. I am not a purist with stickers, so I don't worry about keeping them perfect when I remove them. To me, since it's staying in my personal collection anyway, if the sticker looks like the real thing, that's good enough. 2. Disassembled the whole thing and set aside the piece with the electronics attached, as I didn't want to get those parts wet or damaged. 3. Gave the rest of the pieces a bath in warm water and Dawn dish soap, and then scrubbed it clean with a soft tooth brush, to get the dust out of the nooks and crannies. Let it drain dry and then wiped it all down with a soft cloth. That's my standard procedure for cleaning up old toys. This particular piece was all white plastic, many spots had yellowed, and there were even some brown spots as well. So, since it was white plastic, and I wanted to return it to white, I went with the peroxide and sunshine method: A. Place the toy in a clear plastic bin, and fill it with 6% peroxide. Most pharmacies only have 3% so you will probably have to go to a beauty supply shop to get it. I went to Sally's Beauty Supply store. In these shops, it is usually called 20 Vol Liquid Developer. You can get a gallon for about $8. You want the clear liquid stuff, not the creamy stuff. (Some people use the cream, but I've never had good results with it.) You'll want to be careful with the peroxide, wearing gloves is a good idea. B. Seal it up with a clear lid or clear plastic wrap, and set it in direct sunlight. I let it sit for most of a day, and that seemed to take care of it. Some folks will leave it out for a few days, but I worry about that damaging the plastic. In fact, leave it too long, and your toy will probably melt or dissolve. I always figure if one day in strong sunlight won't fix it, it's probably just not going to come clean. Once the sun has done its magic, be sure to clean all of the pieces in another warm, soapy bath, to get all of the peroxide off. And that's pretty much it! I'm not expert, this is a process I put together from years of reading toy forums. There may be other ways to do it, but this has always worked for me.

It's interesting, I'd never taken one apart before, but they're not very complex. The whole thing is held together by about 6 screws. In fact, there are spots for two more screws, but Kenner apparently cheaped out and went with "Eh, 2 screws will hold this piece on as well as 4."

Ok man, but if you need your spice fix, you know where to find me!

They originally all had bags, I believe, in order to keep the "hair" decent looking. But if you'd prefer to believe that it's because of weird sex stuff, I won't correct you. Whatever gets them sold!

What, you're more of a Sporty Spice guy?

I'm just sayin', this could all be yours. What you do with them...that's your business.

And she's not alone! I'm available to make you a very good deal on a set of 10, count them 10 (TEN!) Posh Spice bean bags! Act now!

That's awesome, would love to see the pics! My current plastic crack obsession is restoring my vintage X-Wing! Recently I've been helping my folks clear out a storage room in their basement, and it has yielded up some forgotten treasures, like the X-Wing fighter from my childhood. Yellowed and missing most of its parts, it didn't look like much, but I decided to restore it for my personal collection. First two pics are from disassembly and cleaning. Third pic is after I gave the plastic parts a nice peroxide and sunshine bath, and now she's as white as the day she rolled off the assembly line! Got some new stickers and cannons on the way. Just need to find a clean canopy for less than an arm and a leg, and I'll be set. I'll no doubt put more money into this than it's technically worth, but the restoration is fun, and the pleasure in seeing a beloved childhood friend brought back to life is immeasurable.

Great stuff! I refuse to pay eBay prices for the Comics Journal, keep holding out hope I'm going to find one in the wild.

"What is best in life?" Conan: "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women." Tarzan: "Uh...bananas?" It's not even close.

+1000

I don't think any of these particular books are pricey, I just grab any Hughes book out of the bargain bins when I see them, as I have for years.

Exactly the same here.

Continuing the adventure of Image newsstands that aren't terribly hard to find in the wild, I finally found a Wildstar newsie this weekend.

Another weekend, another dollar box dive. Funny, I've picked up several of those Jedi books before, but never realized that it was originally polybagged.

Spent Saturday digging, didn't turn up much. Started at an auction that advertised 5-8000 comics from a private collector. Turned out to be about 30 boxes of 90's and early 00's common books, nothing of much interest, but figured I'd buy a few boxes if I could get them at about $25 each. They did them as choice, per box. First winner paid $100 for a single box, so I must have missed something in there. Second winner picked two at around $60 each. Third winner paid $40+ and picked up 20 boxes, didn't even look to see what was in them. They're now up on Craigslist for 60 cents per book if you buy 100 books. Good luck with that! I was also interested in some Star Wars figs that also sold for more than I felt they were worth. So, I ended up leaving the auction with only a handful of cherry Queen LP's for the personal collection. Hopped in the car and drove 90 mins to a comic swap meet. It was put on by the folks that run Lexington Comic and Toy Con, but was advertised as comics and toys only, for the con-goers who don't care about retired wrestlers and former power rangers. it was a fun little show, but not sure how successful it was for them. There were about 40-50 vendors, but not a ton of comics. Average attendance for LCTC is over 25,000, but I overheard someone say they'd only had about 300 attendees for this show. I hope it catches on, as I'd go back. I stuck to the dollar boxes and picked up a few books. Nothing jaw dropping, but enough stuff to make the trip worthwhile.

Agreed. Probably my best PERCENTAGE "flip" was on two coverless Golden Age books I picked up at an antique store a couple of years ago for $1 each. Auction them on eBay, sold for $100 each. I'm not good with math, but I think that's a percentage of, what, 1,000,000 or so? Seems right.

Wow, that really is something. I originally thought that it MUST be a hoax, a book that had been monkeyed with. Crazy stuff. Congrats!

I vividly remember seeing this book on the stands at a convenience store in my neighborhood when I was a kid. Had to have it, that cover blew my mind. I didn't make the Alex Ross connection until years after "Marvels" had been released. NOW did some pretty cool stuff. Rust, Ralph Snart, Ghostbusters. It was an interesting line.

Agreed. Having a company policy is one thing, but leaving it to the individual grader seems wrongheaded, if it's true. Personal morality should have no bearing in doing your job in this instance. Maybe I'll start up my own Penetration Only grading service? Hmm...

Schultz is a master AND an A+ dude. Last time I saw him, he said he was taking a little break from shows, so hopefully he's getting back out there now!

Precisely. I think the price exploded around the announcement of the theatrical film, and the increased prominence of the characters in the books. Since then, the theatrical film turned into a TV show (which is apparently terrible) and Marvel seems to be backing off the INhumans comics a bit, because, like, no one cares. I feel like Inhumans were supposed to be the next big thing, and that's when the prices went nuts. Since then, it's like everyone remembered, "Oh, The Inhumans...no one actually cares about the Inhumans", and the bubble burst. (PS: For the record, I like the Inhumans quite a bit, at least the Kirby stuff, but I haven't kept up with modern Marvel books for several years.)