F For Fake

I know the feeling. I can never remember, so if I find them in dollar bins, I just buy them. So I'm sure I have a very disproportionate collection of one cover over the others.

That's such a confusing book. There are like 6 different covers. There's the A & B covers, plus an American Entertainment variant, AND a SDCC variant (which is the same as the B cover with a little banner blurb on the corner about SDCC), and also 3-D versions of A & B. And adding to the confusion, there's also a Generation X Gen 13 book which was a completely different one-shot, with two covers of its own. Basically, with CGC labelling being what it is, this book never had a chance of being labeled correctly ha

I sincerely don't know if this is supposed to be a burn or not, so I'm going to use this opportunity to go ahead and celebrate my greatness.

Suuuure it is. I'm thinking here primarily about how CGC ramped up the in-house signings, and continue to pour them on, while TAT's continue to be an issue. It's like they were digging a hole for themselves, and them dumped another truckload of dirt into it. Witnessing sigs for SS is one thing, and I've learned to live with it. Creating your own in-house signings with special labels, is another thing altogether. Also, if my post qualified as a "rant", you must travel in some extremely reserved circles!

Well, you guys talked me into it, I subbed some slabs for consignment. Just a handful, to see how it goes. I do love MCS as a buyer, and I have sold bulk books to them in the past, but this is the first time I've tried consigning slabs. Looking forward to doing more business in the future, assuming this all goes as planned.

Same. I keep "the good stuff" in a set of acid-free fliptop boxes, stored a little more securely, whereas everything else goes in traditional short boxes in alpha order. I try to take care of everything, but the good books are separated out in case I ever had to "grab and go". I can carry four fliptop boxes a lot easier than I could a couple dozen shorties.

I know I said previously that CGC was becoming QVC, but now I think they're heading in more of a Franklin Mint direction. From signature series, to acetate covers, to stuff like this, they're clearly more interested in marketing "collectible" junk than they are maintaining any sort of standard as a third party grading company. It's a sad decline.

Ok, we have a start! Just PM'd you and sent the link with editing rights, so we should be off to the races. And I agree, once it's polished up, we can make a "Marvel Masterworks Price Guide Project" thread, maybe over in Comics General. If anyone else would like to contribute, shoot me a message and I'll add you. otherwise, anyone with that link above should be able to view the sheet. It's a work in progress, but I think it'll be pretty cool once it's done!

Ok cool! I used the Marvel Masterworks wiki page to fill in the blanks here. Took me a minute to get it all sorted, and there are some formatting things that need to be cleaned up, but I'm heading out for the day. It's a start! It's not pretty, but it'll work for now. I'll start looking up print run info asap. This will be fun!

Give me just a few minute, i've nearly got the info for the rest of the volumes compiled...

@WernerVonDoomthanks for all of the work so far, much appreciated! I took the liberty of setting up a Google Sheet which we can all share and collaborate on, and reformatted your information in a way that made sense to me. Anyone can view it with this link https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eZ4-YEyisd3P6aR947V6DN66BH6SpfxoqXyTeyRNOdg/edit?usp=sharing If you, or anyone else interested in the project, would like editing rights, shoot me a PM with your email address, and I'll add you. This is just a starting point, but at least it's something. I suppose first job would be finishing up the title/content info for all 326 (or whatever) volumes, then establishing how we want to collect the value information. An average of sold eBay listings? Seems like a starting point.

I'm also a Gen Xer, and while I've worked with my share of entitled Millenials (and younger), I've worked with even more shiftless Boomers. My sweeping generalizations about the generations would be that the younger folks tend to think that their feelings should matter and be taken into consideration (they shouldn't. Do your job.), whereas with the older employees feel like they should be deferred to simply because they're older (most of them don't know what they're doing either. Do your job.) I've heard younger employees complain about the fact that their input isn't being considered, whereas I've heard older employees complain about having to pretty much anything at all. (Of course, as a Gen Xer, I'm keeping the whole thing running single-handedly. ) And course, I know plenty from both groups of which NONE of that is true. That's the thing about generalizations: they're BS.

That's great! Back in the early eBay days, there was a former Kenner employee who had tons of great stuff he was selling from his personal collection. Unused cardbacks, protos, etc. I bought a super sharp set of Robocop figures from him, they looked like they'd come fresh off of the line. Long since sold, unfortunately, but I've always loved this line.

I truly don't intend to come across as snarky, but...couldn't you just turn the slab around? I mean...they're transparent on both sides. Why would it matter which side the little grade sticker is on?

This is what I say all of the time. I can understand that there are some fortunate people who are in the "love what you do and you'll never work a minute in your life" club, and hey, good for them. If your passion coincided with an ability to earn a living, that's great. For the overwhelming majority of us, we're marking time until we get to leave. I've been with this organization for 20 years. I backed into the job without any intention of making it a career, and inertia (or rather, a decent pension and benefits package) has kept me here. And it's fine. There are times when I was underpaid, and currently I'm probably overpaid, relative to the work I do. That being said, it's just a job, it's not my life. Our employer does not care about us, and the world will keep on moving when we're gone. About a month ago, one of the ladies in the office next to mine passed away. She was probably my age, maybe even a little younger. After she died, there was an email circulated with the details of her funeral, and that was that. No one here discussed her, there was no meeting or attempt to bring the group together to talk about her, or our feelings. She was just here, and then she was gone, and the next week, her name plate was no longer on her door. Her job is up, and in a few weeks someone else will be in that desk. And that's how it is. So that's why I'm not living for my job. When I'm here, I'll do my best for you, for those 8 hours. But I'm not taking it home with me, and I'm thinking about this place when I'm not here, because trust me, no one will be thinking about me when I'm gone. As for how this relates to grading, it doesn't. Sorry! Oops!

Blasted through the recent Lobster Johnson Omnibus this week. Anything Mignola-verse goes down really easy with me, as it's one of my favorite things about comics, period. Lobster Johnson is the least complicated of all of the Mignola/Outerverse titles, as it's just a pulp hero blasting away at spooky bad guys. It's a similar gangsters and ghouls mash-up to the Nocturnals books I read last week. I had read all of these over the years, but have never read them all in one sitting. I'm not sure why Iron Prometheus isn't included in this book, but otherwise, I think it covers the 2nd through 4th tpbs. Anyway, I love this stuff. Brings my total to 321-ish

New Warren mag in the collection this week. I'm primarily an Alien/Aliens collector, but for whatever reason, this mag has eluded me. I didn't have to have the top grade, but I wanted a decent copy at a price that seemed reasonable. Finally found a solid copy at the right price.

Belated congrats on that beauty, wow!

Still haven't had a chance to get out an dig lately, but the postman brought me some early Allred goodness this weekend, plus this Warren Alien mag I've been looking for.

So, Omar announced UXM Omni Vol 5 this weekend. That was a long time coming. Hits June of 2023, I believe. As expected, it's basically the contents of those MMW's. He mentioned that mapping is in place through Vol 7. I'm wondering what that would entail, since Volume 5 should bring us up to Mutant Massacre, and nearly everything else is collected. I guess a volume to go between MM and Fall of the Mutants? Otherwise, I think FotM, Inferno Prologue, Inferno, and the two Claremont/Lee books take care of most of the stuff. The stuff I'm interested in, anyway.

Nice! I think everyone has to decide for themselves what their brain can withstand. As for my plan, I’ve gone with a single alpha numerical order, with bouts of grimacing.

Thanks for sharing all of this, it's been fun to watch it as you go! As a longtime Alien obsessive, I've been wanting to get into this, but I haven't found a good way to get it here in the US. Hatchette won't offer it outside of the UK on their website, and I haven't seen another reliable source. Can't wait to see it once it's all done!

My philosophy is that if you do everything that a Chick Tract tells you NOT to do, you'll probably have a pretty good time!

Yes, I did the exact same thing! I wasn't in any hurry, because I have the omnibuses of all of that stuff, as well as most of the floppies. Then, wham, that book sold out, and now it's selling well above MSRP. So, I didn't wait around on this one! All of the reviews have been great, apparently the supplements are really nice, as is the reproduction, so at the end of the day, I'm happy I went ahead and got it. Now I need to scrounge up the change to get the last one, before it gets even crazier.

Yeah. Yeeeeeah. :cough: Yeah. I suppose I should go ahead and squish those hopes now.