Hamlet

Well, Guardians was directed by the writers of the two Scooby Doo movies, and that was pretty good.

My expectations are low enough that if this movie doesn't actually make me physically sick I'll consider it better than expected.

Is it money you can afford to lose 100% of? Because it wouldn't be shocking to see them go under. Their financials are not good, and their business sense seems to be lacking. They may pull back and focus on their profitable cons and stop trying to expand foolishly, in which case you could do well from here. However, I recommending investing in much more stable and proven businesses though.

It is not clear to me why a company doing this badly financially would be messing around in China in the first place.

I think this is it. 1st quarter 2014 they turned a profit of almost $700,000 1st quarter 2015 they had a loss of almost $1 million They added four more shows - but revenue per event was 1/2 of what it was the year before. They are facing a huge amount of competition. There are a lot more shows springing up all over the place. IDK what their long term prospects are. But in the near term it doesn't look like a stock or company that will enjoy success doing what they have done in the past. They've lost like $10 million over the last 4-5 years. Those 4-5 years were pretty good for most comic-related businesses. There is a reason they are a penny stock.

Has anyone read their financials? Yuck. They are not a good business.

One sold on E-bay for $849 on 6/11. It is a little strange how different the market seems to be for this book on E-bay vs Comiclink.

don't worry I'm not giving up by a longshot just in my situation it will makes sense to have less but more valuable comics I think this depends on how much time vs money you have. It is relatively straightforward to dig through $1 boxes wherever you find them and find books that you can sell for $3-5. It's a fairly safe way to grind out a small profit in comics. However, it is an enormous amount of work for the money involved. Are you in school or have a job currently? If you don't, the small ball strategy makes the most sense, since your time is not earning you anything currently. It also allows you to build up a little capital without much risk. The problem with moving to bigger keys is that there are thousands of people driving the margins of selling them down to almost nothing. You're less experienced than most of them and have much less capital. I'm not sure what advantage you are going to have in that game.

Hype aside, Mordo is a huge doctor strange character. It is the second appearence of doctor strange as well. Maybe some of the people trying to get ST 110 and can't afford the new highs will grab this issue. Agreed on some of these bubbles. I don't think we have seen the real Mandarin yet...If we have that still makes me soooo mad that they choose that path. A company like Disney is not going offend a couple billion potential movie-goers by using a character that they are very likely to find racist and offensive. I think you can rule out his use in future movies in any way that impacts the comic market

I'm stocking up on ASM #172 hoping that it is the Rocket Racer

The Comiclink sale from last night was $650 again-- http://www.comiclink.com/Auctions/item.asp?back=%2FComicTrack%2FAuctions%2Fbids%2Easp&id=1061418 I'm starting to think I need to be buying Forever People #1 on Comiclink and selling them on E-bay. I almost put in a $650 dollar bid myself so that I my bet would be hedged

Many "keys" are trivial and uninteresting. What people are doing now is fabricating keys, and hoping people swallow the hook. Dealers with stockpiles of junk are happy to oblige, and all the "experts" keep spouting "quality over quantity". What that means, in practical terms, is that a new kid who starts collecting should spend $10 on a Wolverine 80, instead of buying the 10 issues before or after and reading them, even if the only reason he should want it is a test tube marked X-23. Except that I don't think many of those Wolverine 80s are being sold to new kids starting to collect. They are being sold by smart speculators to foolish speculators.

Yes Yes No What do you have against Spider-kid? Sure, he's no Big Wheel , but a first appearance is a first appearance.

I really don't think you can truly separate popularity being an important component of being a key. Otherwise, you need to say that every first appearance, no matter how trivial is by definition a key. Take ASM. Is the first Rocket Racer a key book? The first Big Wheel? The first Spider-kid? There are dozens of mostly throwaway first appearances in that run. Are they all keys? Nope. The ones that collectors deem important are, and that is mostly about popularity. If one of them becomes more popular for whatever reason, and people start to care about that character and seek out its first appearance, it may become a key (see Rocket Raccoon), but the first appearance of every single throwaway character can't really be considered a key, or there would be more keys than non-keys.

I think long-term dealers are probably bringing it up because they don't want their customers to feel cheated by them when the music stops. Trust me, if a bubble is going to pop, nothing said on these boards is going to cause it or prevent it. Remember, the long-term dealers all went through the 90s madness, and had to deal with the aftermath. That kind of thing happening to your business probably gives them a strong desire to discourage bubbles.

Jay, do you mind me asking how old you are? I've watched three market bubbles inflate and pop up close in my lifetime. The 90s comic market, the dot com bubble, and the housing bubble. Those aren't the only bubbles that have occurred in that time, they are just the ones that I was paying close attention to. The whole world is actually totally wrong fairly frequently. Do you really think these kind of prices are sustainable?

Hey it wasn't long ago that you were bemoaning the fact that no one cares about ASM 135 anymore compared to 129. ? That is another second appearance that people thought of as a minor key while the Punisher was hot.

What you are saying is that you don't consider them keys, but Bob Overstreet did. Only by your ridiculous "value makes keys" definition. Show me where Overstreet, either Bob or the Guide, ever called them keys. He called them out in the Guide and broke them out with higher prices than the issues surrounding them. The 2nd Legion appearance is listed as a $300 book in the 1989 price guide. That's more than any Spiderman book except AF15, and ASM 1+2. See, in 1989, people wanted all of the early appearances of their favorite characters, not just the first appearance. There were people paying through the nose for Adventure 267 because it was the 2nd Legion of Superheros. It was considered a key book. By your logic, the first Rocket Racer can be a key, but not Action 7, because its not the first anything. That doesn't make sense to me.

That's just it. There isn't a generally accepted criteria for what constitutes a key beyond market demand. Even a first appearance needs demand to really be a key. First Spiderman-- key First Rocket Racer -- nope How about the first Rocket Racoon?-- before GotG, nope, afterwards, yup. Keys are simply the books that collectors feel are the most important, for any of a dozen+ reasons that change over time. It's really goofy to me that there are people insisting that Batman 227 isn't a key, even though most people would trade a dozen of the issues around it to get one. That's still not a "key". -J. Of course it is. For a first appearance to not be a key basically requires the character to either be a one-shot or a dead property. There are different levels, of course. The first appearance of Rocket Raccoon isn't equal to Action Comics 1 (first Zatara ). You two are proving my point

What you are saying is that you don't consider them keys, but Bob Overstreet did.

Nothing is automatically a key. Popularity is a huge part of what is considered a key. Not all first appearances are keys, are they? What drives which are keys and which are not? Popularity. Just about any Legion appearances used to be considered a key. Now, not so much. Why? They've lost popularity. You're trying to set rules to what constitutes a key for some reason, but the collecting community does that over time, and there aren't hard and fast criteria for how they do that, because they don't constitute a single mindset.

That's just it. There isn't a generally accepted criteria for what constitutes a key beyond market demand. Even a first appearance needs demand to really be a key. First Spiderman-- key First Rocket Racer -- nope How about the first Rocket Racoon?-- before GotG, nope, afterwards, yup. Keys are simply the books that collectors feel are the most important, for any of a dozen+ reasons that change over time. It's really goofy to me that there are people insisting that Batman 227 isn't a key, even though most people would trade a dozen of the issues around it to get one.

Except that a lot of them aren't. I didn't realize that someone had declared you decider of what is "key". When a book costs 2-3 times what the books around it in a run cost, the market has said it is a "key" book regardless of whatever rules you've concocted in your head about what a "key" has to be. To my mind, the books that people are paying a premium for are "keys", regardless of the reason. I didn't realize that someone gave you the power to change the meaning of words. See definition 34, the adjective From the OPG (which, despite its many problems, cannot be completely dismissed in the hobby): KEY, KEY BOOK or KEY ISSUE An issue that contains a first appearance, origin, or other historically or artistically important feature considered especially desirable by collectors. Crossover appeal (from classic covers, popular guest/villain appearances, etc.) results in increased demand/value for many books compared to surrounding issues of the title, but that doesn't make them keys. Did you even read what you quoted? Would you not consider a classic cover an artistically important feature considered especially desirable by collectors.?

I just think it's a little silly that people are designating themselves protectors of the term "key". What then are the allowable reasons to call a book "key"? If classic covers are not keys, what about first issues? title changes? Origin issues? Crossover issues? Start of an in-demand artist? Death issues? The non-code Spidey issues? The Superman/Flash races? "low distribution" issues? It seems like some people want comic collecting to be about 10-20 books that they have deemed important enough to collect, with almost their entire criteria being the "first appearance" (sometimes a cameo, sometimes not ). However, that is not the way it has been historically. Collectors have had many reasons for seeking out specific issues over others over the decades. I'm not sure what motivation people have for wanting it to just be first appearances. There is more to collecting than just the top ten SA keys folks.

Except that a lot of them aren't. I didn't realize that someone had declared you decider of what is "key". When a book costs 2-3 times what the books around it in a run cost, the market has said it is a "key" book regardless of whatever rules you've concocted in your head about what a "key" has to be. To my mind, the books that people are paying a premium for are "keys", regardless of the reason.