F For Fake

Great thread, bud! I need one of those Scream Factory button sets! Are you planning to go to the Mondo booth for The Thing patch?

Must agree with the other folks, I'd hang onto them for now. In your current situation I know it probably seems impossible to find the light at the end of the tunnel, but trust me, this too shall pass. it always does. And when it does, you'll be happy to have your stuff. If it was worth enough money that it could possibly impact your life, I'd say go ahead and sell. But if there's no real value other than sentimental, hold onto them until you're ready to enjoy them again. You will be, one day, for sure.

Great, thanks guys! I hadn't seen that specific one around here before, so I had a hard time pinning it down. Input is much appreciated!

Without Bowen, we wouldn't have the statue industry today, period. He pioneered so many of the ideas that are still used today. Meanwhile, as today's statues seem to just be getting larger and larger, there is so much charm to the simplicity of the Bowen pieces. I think they're due for a resurgence in popularity.

Kinda figured he'd live forever, and 77 isn't very old, all things considered. Only met him once, he was super nice. One of the greats. RIP George

Bump for the Monday morning crowd, look at my rack! (BTW, read this entire thread, plus the older thread linked therein, and haven't seen this model so far. But tons of great reading here!)

Awesome, thanks bud!

Thanks to Jimmers for pointing me to this thread! Picked this one up this morning at a garage sale. Has some condition issues but is overall pretty nice, and it's just for my personal collection anyway. Any thoughts on the era? The graphics make me think 80's?

Always been more of a hammerlock/eye gouge man myself!

Sorry, pic loader was acting funky, pics should now be in the next post! I'll check for the thread, thanks!

The rack

Had some fun at a garage sale this morning that I found on CL. Turned out to be a dealer that I knew, so there weren't any steals, but I still managed to scare up a nice little stack of $1 books. He had tons of really nice moderns, lots of hot books and variants, priced fairly, but since I would only be buying that stuff to flip, there wasn't much room at FMV. Still, some nice stuff. I've been needing that Dave Stevens Verotik book for a while, so was pleased to find it for $1. But the real score was the comic rack! Apparently this was the last of three that he'd had. It has some issues, but for the price I'm happy with it. Anyone have any idea about era? Based on the graphics I'm thinking 80's, but I could be wrong.

Odds of this thread still being here Monday? (I love it, btw, though I'm more of a, uh, smoked turkey, kinda guy.)

That's a great story, and I'm happy to hear that they're pretty legit. I'm probably too cynical for my own good. I still love watching them unearth that rusty gold.

I'll give them this: I definitely spend more time at auctions and estate sales rummaging through rusty oil cans and cigarette signs than I ever would have dreamed of, directly because of them.

Yeah, Alpha Flight + attic + porch doesn't give me a lot of hope. Fingers crossed there's a couple of gems in there for ya!

This show is staged as hell, and these dudes are total goofballs, but for some reason this is my go-to guilty pleasure watching when I'm goofing off in the basement. I guess I just like seeing the old junk they dig up, even though I'm sure 99% of it is planted.

totally agree. There are as many different styles of manga as there are western comic art styles. I haven't kept up much in recent years, but there are some really terrific books out there.

Well said. Ditko's Spidey has this otherworldly creepiness that makes it so unique.

For what it's worth, I've seen some minor uptick in interest in the old 80's Robotech books, by which I mean issues I formerly couldn't give away I can now occasionally get 50 cents to a dollar.

I've read several explanations of Bitcoin over the years, and am still no closer to understanding it. It's entirely possible that I'm a big dummy.

The way folks talk about Ramos around here these days is very similar to how I felt when McFarlane showed up on ASM. "What is this ?" I now have more of an appreciation for it, but at the time it was just jarringly bad.

Could be an omen! Invest in Lord Pumpkin futures now!

It's been nearly 20 years since I've been to SDCC. Had a pretty good time, but it's not feasible for me to make it every year, and seeing how things have progressed, I don't really mind. Everyone should do it at least once, though!

I have a real job that pays the bills, but dollar bin diving has been a great boost to my bank account for 20 years now. $10 for a $1 book sounds great! * I get flash mailers for about 60-75 cents each, cost of bag and board barely adds 10 cents to that. If you want to get pre-cut pads to secure the books, you're looking at another 10 cents or so. So, buy in bulk, shipping supply cost is only around $1. * Shipping label printing cost is about $20 for a new cartridge every few months, and labels are about $8 for a pack of 200 from Amazon. * eBay and PP fees do indeed come out to about 13%, if you're getting free listings. This does, in fact, blow, but all in all it's not too steep a price to pay to get your books in front of the eyes of millions of buyers, and have the money come directly to your bank account. As for time: * If it takes you 5 minutes to load and tape up a comic in a flash mailer, you're doing something wrong. * Once you have a template set on eBay, the listing time is negligible, as in 30 seconds or less. * There is no fuel cost or appreciable delivery time spent as USPS picks them up from my doorstep, for free. And it just so happens I have to walk upstairs anyway, you know, to go to bed and stuff. So that just leaves the time spent looking for the books, which is the fun part! I'd be doing it anyway for my own collection, so picking up books to resell along the way adds no burden, and in fact just increases the pleasure of the hunt. So no, I wouldn't want to depend on $1 books sold for $10 as my only source of income, but as a hobby it is incredibly lucrative and not at all expensive or time consuming.