Hamlet

The financials are ugly. I think this is pretty likely to go to zero.

I think one thing to keep in mind is that X-men 94 is only "languishing" relative to GSXM 1 exploding upwards in value. It's still a book that goes for more than $1000 for CGC 9.x copies. That's pretty good money for a comic book. Collectors are still collecting it. There is just a ton of new money chasing the first appearances like GSXM #1. It's still a book I want in my collection, but it is still really expensive compared to other books that I think offer a better bang for my buck. The idea that comic prices should be trending ever upward in value is part of the problem. There is more money treating comics as investments these days rather than money treating them as cool items to possess in their own right. That lends itself to money piling into fewer and fewer "hot" comics like first appearances. That has created what appears to me to be a pretty standard speculative bubble in those first appearances. I've watched a few of those play out in my life, and I suspect that this one will end the way they always do-- with the people that got pulled in at the end losing a massive amount of money. Are we near the end? Who knows, but I'm going to be selling more than I'm buying of the hot books at these prices. On the plus side, if you can keep your head about you, there are lots of cool comics to collect that aren't crazy expensive. You just have to be willing to skip the key books and be willing to accept mid-grade books ( for SA/BA books primarily ). Just don't expect them to generate an investment return. You have to buy them because you want to own them, not because you hope that they will go up in price. I just spent like $4 each at MCS to buy a whole bunch of mid-grade SA Sgt Fury's and SA/BA Superboy's with Neal Adams covers. These aren't investments. I'm buying them because they are kinda cool for the price. Will these books ever have anything that drives their price up? Probably not ( although never say never. I never thought anyone would be willing to pay money for the Rocket Raccoon miniseries either ). I'll read them, file them into my long boxes, and once every 5 years I will flip through those long boxes and revel in my hundreds of mostly worthless SA/BA books. Of course, in that order I also bought a Spidey that someone consigned at a price low enough for me to flip (hopefully), and a few cheap books that I think speculators may suddenly make hot sometime down the road. So I'm not opposed to speculating per se, I'm just opposed to piling into what everyone else is currently speculating on at vastly inflated prices.

I'm with you. I just don't have the ability to drop everything to go look at a collection at this point in time, so I'm limited to hunting at my local conventions for the most part. Most of my purchases come out of the cheap boxes at conventions, since the wall books are typically above market, and I consider the market way too high on most of them anyway. On the plus side, the almost exclusive focus on keys has left a lot of cool books in the cheap boxes for me. I've started hoarding a few of them to feed my need to speculate. It's a cheap way to feed that monster. I have a couple of books that I will buy every decent copy I find of it until I fill a long box. The person who goes through my collection after I pass will think I had a mental disorder.

Yup. I gave away a group of aquariums on Craigslist for free on the condition that they take everything. Someone taking the time to list them individually would have had an easy $300 or so, but they would have had to do some work, deal with a bunch of people, etc. I needed the stuff out of my house quickly, so I listed it for free and got it dealt with quickly. In retrospect, I should have listed it for like $50 so that I got a fish guy to take it instead of a random crazy that wanted to talk to me about the Illuminati, but it worked out okay. 🙂

I can’t believe no one wants this. You’re going to turn me into a hoarder. 🙂

Yeah, I really liked it. It reminded me a lot of what drew me to comics in the first place. Her growing pains seemed very reminiscent of Peter Parker’s from those early Ditko Spideys.

Everyone has their own price/condition sweet spot. And different types of books have very different price escalation curves. Sometimes the high grade copy is only twice as much as the mid grade copy. I tend to buy the high grade copy then. Sometimes the high grade copy is 20 times the mid grade copy. I tend to buy the mid grade copy in that situation.

Yeah, the "All of the books in this lot appear to be in very good condition but I could not check everything so i offer a money back refund if not satisfied..each one comes in its own bag so what looks like wrinkles or white spots is just a reflection." doesn't really inspire confidence. As long as you don't mind dealing with a decent chance that you'll be returning the book for a refund because its missing a coupon or something, its probably worth rolling the dice on a seller like this. I just don't like buying a chore these days. People who don't mind the work can get some good deals though.

Even then I cared enough about condition to avoid ordering from them based solely on that line.

Hey, the next 40 years starts today. Cheap box diving is still my favorite part of conventions. I think it’s silly to chase the latest hot stuff as a speculator. Buy the cool stuff that could get hot out of the cheap boxes. Or the cool stuff that used to be hot that cooled off and got cheap again. Or the cool stuff that will never be hot but you don’t care because it is cool and really cheap. Or the stuff you have no idea about but figure you’re only out a dollar if it sucks. Or the currently hot books that the dealer missed and put in his cheap boxes. The only reason to buy a currently hot book at FMV is because you want it personally for your collection for reasons that aren’t simply “I want it because other people want it.”

Honestly, if I wanted to get okay money out of them with the minimum amount of work, I'd sell the $50+ keys thru mycomicshop.com's consignment ( probably mostly through their auctions since it avoids having to figure out pricing ), and then dump the rest locally at a low price. Note that the grading at mycomicshop.com is super-duper strict, so be careful with your expectations. Your books will get listed with a lower grade than you expect, but the money you get will likely reflect something close to FMV, IMO. I've had pretty good luck with them. If you want to do a little more work, you can take those run books that have decent value like the McFarlane ASMs and Miller D.D's and put them into lots of 10 to sell there as well. That is a little more work though, and the commission they take is larger ( 25% instead of 10% ), and the shipping costs are more significant, but it is still less unpleasant than dealing with Ebay/Facebook/Craiglist, IMO.

An even more disturbing question - what percentage of books submitted are being pressed for the 2nd/3rd/4th time? Things are getting a little ridiculous, IMO

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Scorsese has made some great movies, but he's also made a lot of self-indulgent garbage too. The Wolf of Wall Street is really just three hours of watching Scorsese masturbate, IMO.

They still sell new comics?

Full book.

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Yup. Randall Dowling sucked me into the Vampirellas.

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