F For Fake

Posted this in CG last week, but forgot to join the club! I was not expecting to own this book. I was not looking to find this book. I didn't think I'd be able to afford a decent complete copy anytime soon. I'd gone to my LCS to pick up my holds and a couple of other books they'd put aside for me. I was checking out and happened to glance up at the wall, and saw this guy sitting there, at a price I couldn't ignore. It had been put up on the wall the day before, and I'm amazed it had lasted that long. It's beat, but it's complete with MVS, and has really nice colors for the grade. Really tickled to have one of these fall into my hands out of the blue like that.

Oh...wow. That is a new on to me. How odd. They literally cut out the thing that made the book valuable.

Oh, and @StrikeOutXXXre: the "kiddie titles", look for DC Universe Logo variants. There are several kids titles that had them, like Animaniacs, Carmen San Diego, Looney Tunes, etc and they will sell for a premium in grade. That goes for the DC Logo variants on the superhero books as well, but the kid titles seem to be trickier.

If anyone is collecting Masterverse, Target has a couple of new figures on sale for $27, great price considering I can barely find these even at full retail. Both Trapjaw and King Grayskull on sale, plus you can get free shipping and 5% off with Red Card. I picked up two Trapjaws, so I can display him in both his regular and techno cult outfits. https://www.target.com/p/masters-of-the-universe-masterverse-revelation-trap-jaw-action-figure/-/A-83351627#lnk=sametab https://www.target.com/p/masters-of-the-universe-masterverse-revelation-king-grayskull-action-figure/-/A-83351632#lnk=sametab

Ha, yeah, gotta wear your steeltoe boots around the toy room, just to be safe! But seriously, these sets remind me a lot of the die-cast Star Wars miniature playsets from my youth, and I LOVED those things. So far Jada has made some vehicles to go with the Joes, I hope they make more.

Oh cool, I didn't realize those were out. The little GI Joe sets were really nice, I will definitely pick this up. For the price, I think they're a neat little collectible.

For sure! No doubt lots of goodies in there.

Yes, the Aliens stuff will sell. In particular, Salvation has seen an uptick in value, should sell $20-$40 depending on condition. There are plenty of them out there, so supply has mostly met the demand since the price ballooned a month or two ago, but still well worth picking out. If you were local, I'd buy all of the Aliens stuff straight up. I'm an Alien hoarder.

And still does in grade. Not easy to find.

SotS was never released on home media in the US. There IS a Japanese laserdisc, and a lot of the VHS boots you'd see around shows were taken from that LD.

There is a time when I think this would have been very helpful. But if it's the current graders giving the seminar, I feel like many boardies are going to have to say...

You're speaking my language!

Oh cool, I'll be there, already have my weekend trip planned. Looking forward to meeting up with some boardies! I'll be a giant bald fat guy with a big beard...oh wait, that's most comic fans. Uh, I'll wear my Abominable Dr. Phibes shirt, how about that? Boardies say hey! Looking forward to meeting FBS and Azkaban! After the stuff I've bought the last couple of weeks, I am JUST about broke, so hopefully somebody's got some cheap stuff!

So, through no fault of my own, I've now seen this twice. I agreed to go see it with a dear old friend that I don't get to see often enough, and we made plans to see it on Monday. But the wife wanted to see it with me FIRST, so that meant I saw it Saturday as well. So, two viewings in three days. This is also only the third movie I've seen in a theater since the pandemic began. A new Sam Raimi movie is enough to get me out of the house. Twice! For starters, I'm not big on superhero movies. I think the Marvel movies are mostly fine. I enjoy some more than others, but they're all very similar in my mind. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Marvel is a brand, they're selling the idea of a homogenized experience with updated window-dressing for each installment, and it seems to have worked out for them. However, I am a HUGE Sam Raimi fan, ever since my blood-soaked teenage days of watching the Evil Dead trilogy on infinite loop. I adore most of his output, particularly A Simple Plan, Drag Me to Hell, The Gift, Darkman, The Quick and the Dead...hell, really all of them except for the Oz movie and the baseball flick, which didn't really feel like Sam to me. Anyway, I feel like this Dr Strange movie is probably the best possible mishmash of the MCU and Sam's style, especially considering the shooting and scheduling constraints. Pretty much any faults I have with the movie are laid at Marvel's feet. What began with Endgame and was continued with No Way Home is furthered here, in that Marvel seems to only be interested in disappearing up their own . The days of individual, complete stories in a single film are completely over. Nothing can stand on its own, every piece has to reference every other piece. These aren't movies. They're content...things. We get lots of clumsy expository dialogue that is as hard to listen to as it was difficult for the actors to say, apparently. There's lots of hand holding, fan service, and not much else, story wise. However, I was able to get past that, as I could see Sam still in there, underneath all of the cross-promotional minutiae. The dolly zoom, the sound drop leading to slow-mo, the iris in and out, the distinct warping of body language (from Scarlet Witch's rictus twitching to Final Strange's clenched teeth), it was all Sam, and it was beautiful. This PG-13 superhero romp is not really a horror movie, but it borrows heavily from the visual language of horror films, particularly Sam's catalog. He is speaking my language. I dig it. So, at the end of the day, it's another dumb superhero movie, which I expected, but it's chock full of Sam Raimi visual delights, so I was perfectly pleased, and will likely watch it again, which is more than I can say for most modern movies. The is one of the coolest images in the entirety of the MCU, and was enough on its own to win me over. That's big screen vision. Beautiful stuff.

1. As far as media, I used to collect horror and sci-fi VHS tapes, but I sold them years ago, long before the market bump. As for recent sales, I will sometimes prune my collection and sell off out of print blu-rays. If you're wanting to get into it, searching sold eBay listings for "OOP Blu Ray" will give you some idea. Slipcovers are a HUGE part of the market, so many people pay ridiculous money for a cardboard cover around the movie. "OOP slipcover" is a good sold search to track current prices. Since physical media is dying off in the mainstream, companies aren't pressing as many copies, so it's not unusual for movies to sell out quickly, or for first printings to include slipcovers that are shortly discontinued. In addition to slipcovers, steelbooks are another huge market for packaging collectors. It's always worth checking out Best Buy's weekly listings to see if anything is coming out that might be worth scooping up. Some steels will sit unsold for months. Others will sell out in days and then have big markups on the secondary market, doubling or tripling in price. So, for instance, you can't give away Snake Eyes steelbook, but the Spider-Man No Way Home is a $70+ steel. However, a warning with movies: similar to comic hardcovers and omnibus which will go out of print and command high prices, it's not unusual for some movies to be reissued, thus killing prices. Best Buy have a habit of suddenly releasing stock of movies that are long out of print, and the prices take a nosedive. So, like anything, I'd always recommend that you collect what you love, because value is not always guaranteed. Similar to VHS, horror is a huge market, so out of print movies, slipcovers and steels from Scream Factory, Arrow, Severin, Vinegar Syndrome, etc are always worth keeping an eye on. And of course, Criterion. Criterion Collection nuts are their own breed, so prices can go bananas on those things when they go OOP. 2. I was also an HD-DVD fan early on. the HD-DVD standalone players were much cheaper than the Blu-Ray players at the time. Blu-Ray didn't really gain market dominance until the PS3 broke through, as it was then the cheapest BD player on the market. HD-DVD stumbled when it went with X-BOX 360, and then ONLY as a peripheral device you had to pay extra for, instead of being built in. HD-DVD had the better specs, but PS3 won the war for BD. 3. I think it's possible for sure. The thing is, ANY media, anything that people can associate nostalgia and good memories, is ripe to become a collectible market. And if it's difficult to find examples in sealed or otherwise mint complete condition, that just adds to the potential. I sure don't see longbox cd's often, if at all.

yeah, but if I held on, I could have gotten SO MUCH MORE MONEY. It's best to not think about it too much, I may faint. ha VHS are great, I love 'em, but yeah, they are chunky and eat up major real estate on the shelf. I could fit three BD's on the shelf in the space one VHS tape would take up.

Per usual, I was too far ahead of the curve on this one. I was collecting piles of VHS and laser for years, but sold most of the VHS off a few years ago. I've been a home media collector since I was a teenager, jumping from VHS to Laserdisc to DVD to BD (with a brief stopover for HD-DVD) to 4K UHD. The VHS was purely a nostalgia exercise, as I was also a big horror collector at the time. Eventually I just couldn't justify the space taken up by a media product I was literally never going to watch again. When it comes to nostalgia exercises, I only have room for so many, so comics and toys had to win out over movies I would never watch. I still have about 500-600 BD's and UHDs, but I'll likely watch those again, as they are likely to be the last stop on the physical media train, and never look better than they do right now. I still have a few lasers, as I love the oversize packaging and artwork, and there are a few titles, that never made it to DVD/etc. There is still a thriving LD collector community, but the overwhelming majority of laserdisc collectors STILL WATCH THEIR LD'S, and are therefore not interested in sealed copies. In fact, most LD collectors will tell you that you should open up your lasers, as there's a solid chance they've begun to succumb to laser rot, and are therefore unwatchable. Many LD collectors are interested in the format for technical reasons, everything from truly uncompressed DTS soundtracks, to the color timing of the films, many of which have been endlessly tinkered with since the DVD age. If you want to see the original color timing on a lot of movies (particularly Disney flicks) LD was the best or only bet. A lot of LD collectors have put a lot of money into upgrading their equipment, buying filters and delacers and etc in order to clean up LD image. These guys want to WATCH their movies, not just collect plastic widgets (thanks per usual to @Robot Manfor the accurate terminology!) VHS collectors tend to be a bit different, in that while some are still watching them, the fragility of tape makes them a dicey proposition for repeat viewings. Therefore, a lot of VHS collectors really are just there for the nostalgia, the artwork, etc, so collecting sealed makes sense. It's a similar hobby to video game collecting, in that if evokes memories of going down to the video/game store, browsing the aisles, renting a game to bring home, etc. Laser was always a niche product geared towards the home media nerd, as opposed to being a widely popular hobby.

And finally, this was a random and unexpected find. I will occasionally check Target’s NECA stock, as they seem to get random replenishments. A couple of weeks ago, they suddenly had 5 Alien Resurrection Warriors in stock. These have been gone for a couple of years. I managed to snag one, the rest sold quickly. How odd. Happy to pay MSRP for this guy!

Also, some old stuff. So odd to think that these are now old enough to be “vintage”. I thought these were great when they came out, with an amazing character lineup catered directly to my tastes, with cool sculpts and accessories! I think the weird scale kinda doomed this line, as we only got two waves. I picked up Hellboy and Christine at a garage sale a couple of weeks ago, which spurred me on to pick up the rest of the line in a lot on eBay. Still need The Spirit, but he’s easy and cheap to find. Packaging materials were a bit flimsy with this line, the figures too heavy for the thin bubbles, the card stock too thin and given to warping. They’re not easy to find MOC in great shape, but aside from Hellboy, none are particularly valuable or expensive. I’m debating opening them all up, but I do dig the card art. I still have my loose Hunter Rose from when I bought this line 25 years ago, they’re very fun toys to play around with!

With stores doing their spring resets, there have been a lot of great prices out there, leading to a plastic avalanche at the FFF household. First deep discount, then Target had 25% off MoTU with Amazon randomly price matching; then more Target and Best Buy clearance. It adds up to a lot of good deals. And there’s more on the way. I was able to complete MoTU Origins Wave 7 and Masterverse Wave 3 in one fell swoop at a great price, plus lots of other cool stuff. I like to say I only collect vintage, but that’s pretty clearly a big fat lie!

True, just ask Bob Kane's ghost!

Oh duh, you’re right. Would you believe I’m waiting on my new bifocals to arrive? It’s not a good excuse, but it’s true!

Yes sir, planning on being there and looking forward to it! Let me know where you’ll be set up so I’ll know it’s you. Hopefully some other boarded can make it out!

What I typically do, when I buy bulk, is try go get the books in the range of 10-20 cents each, depending on what it is. If I know for a fact there are good books in there, or it's a desirable run, or silver or bronze, I'd pay more. But for pure bulk drek, 10-20 cents a book, or $25-$50 per box, depending on if it's short or long boxes, and how many books they contain (bagged/boarded vs raw, etc). First I make a sweep and pull out any keys or books that I know I can sell quickly as individual books. The biggest chunk of money I'm going to see is from these books, so you have to hope that each box has a couple of books that make it worth your while. At these prices, it doesn't have to be many. After that, I'll do another sweep, a very detailed pick of every box, to see if I missed anything. Keys I may not be aware of, artists I'm not familiar with, low prints, newsstands, logo variants, really, anything at all that would make an book worth selling on its own. After I'm sure that I've picked all of the best individual books, I'll go back and pull sets and runs, as full/complete runs of titles will always sell at some price, and sometimes they sell surprisingly well. Now, if I was a dealer that set up at shows, I'd save the rest of the junk for 25 and 50 cent boxes, but I don't really set up at shows anymore, and I never did much. I'm primarily an online seller, and I don't have the space or the desire to sit on boxes of junk, to wait for the next show. So, once I am sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that what I have left isn't worth picking over anymore, I will take the remainder, and sometimes list them as bulk on Facebook/Craiglist/etc (because someone will always buy them if they're cheap enough), or I will sometimes take them and trade into the LCS for store credit or cash, and THEY can put them in their cheap bins. This is my model, because I am trying to turn the stuff over quickly, make the most I can, and get the junk out of the house. But since you are already setting up at shows, and don't seem overly concerned about making a killing right away, you can take your time selling them off in 50 cent and dollar boxes at your show, and get a little extra income here and there. The last collection I bought was about a month ago, 18 short boxes. It took me about three weeks, but I did the steps above, and made good money off of the collection. Once I was sure I'd drained it of every penny, I had 5 boxes left. I listed them on Facebook marketplace, clearly explained that these were essentially "leftovers", and there wasn't much of anything in there worth more than $1-$5. I had many offers, and sold them in a couple of hours. Whether it's dealers who are banking on me missing something (I didn't, but hey), pure collectors, readers, flea market sellers that want cheap books for their dollar boxes, there's pretty much always someone else who will buy your comics, if they're cheap enough.

True, he's still a tall guy, but I'm not sure he moves so quickly anymore. Next time I see him, I'll test my theory by yelling insults about Defiant and Broadway...from a considerable distance.