Hamlet

I bought them off the stands, but I can't actually remember anything about them. I'm not sure if that is because I didn't read them, or because they weren't very good. I'll have to read my 5 and 6 before I sell them.

I remember the first issue being a grand deal, but soon afterward... nothing. I'm surprised it faded that quickly.

It's certainly doable, but it is more work for both the seller and a buyer.

For low dollar books, a sales thread needs a certain number of books in it to be worth dealing with the shipping.

For example, I have a bunch of SA and BA books that are numerous enough or high enough value that it would be worth having a sales thread. I also have a half-dozen $5 Copper Age books. Someone might throw them on top of an order, but they probably aren't going to pay shipping to order just them.

It makes sense to just tack them onto the SA thread, rather than create a separate thread for them that no one will be interested in on its own. Buyers are less likely to go look at my other thread than they are to look at additional books in the thread that they are already looking at. When some books sell, I can post a complete update in one thread, rather than go back and forth.

In Dale's case, I'd prefer to be able to just look at his thread to see what he has for sale, rather than go hunting for an additional thread in a sales forum I never remember to check.

For the love of Festivus, can someone please explain why everyone is so worried that some Copper books might end up in the GA/SA/BA forum incorrectly?

Guys and gals,

 

I'm perplexed. This doesn't seem like a difficult problem to me. I myself just went through this with some large sales threads of my own. It doesn't cost money to start sales threads in the different areas. So, here's the scenario...say I have a stack of comics I want to sell. I determine a reasonable starting point for the Copper Age...let's call it January 1984. I scan all of my comics. I recognize that I have some comics that were printed prior to January, 1984 (and therefore belong in G/S/B), and some comics that were printed after January, 1984 (and therefore belong in C/M).

 

OK...say for some reason I don't want to put my comics in Mixed (because it's a low traffic area or something like that...that's another issue I don't understand, but I don't want to digress). Fine. So, I open up a sales thread in G/S/B. Also, I put a little note at the bottom of my first G/S/B post (or in my signature) that I'm going to start up a C/M thread as well, and if anyone is interested, go check it out. Then, I go over to C/M and start up that sales thread, similarly alerting people to the existence of my concurrent G/S/B thread. In both cases I announce "you can combine shipping for books across my two threads!"

 

Then, I get ready to start listing my books. If the book (or scan) I'm holding in my hand was printed prior to January 1984, I post that entry in my G/S/B thread. If the book (or scan) I'm holding in my hand was printed after January 1984, I post it up in my C/M thread. Problem solved. Clean sales threads in the correct areas. Comics being viewed by audiences most interested in those eras....

 

For the love of Festivus, can someone please explain to me why this is so difficult to accomplish?

 

Ed

Frankly, I would prefer that we just got rid of the Mixed sales section. I think most people (definately including me) don't think to check it.

It seems a little silly that if I have a sales thread of GA/SA/BA stuff, but want to include some McFarlane Spideys that it needs to move to a different section with a tiny fraction of the traffic.

Again, as I mention in one of my other posts above, if the norm is now that everything gets mixed in anyway and people are OK with that, why don't we just do away with the separate sub-fora and have one general sales area? You are correct that I don't have a long history here, but I'm assuming that the separate sub-fora were established for a reason. If that reason still exists, then we each need to try to do our best to preserve that structure.

Yeah, I can't help thinking that cashing out is a pretty good call at this time.

There are so many people that have many multiple copies of these kinds of books. I think that their are plenty of copies to go around for the actual collectors that want one copy.

These books all depend on hoarding to maintain any real price support, IMO. On a downturn, those hoards will turn to selling pretty quick.

Strike while the iron is hot.

Honest question, but who is buying these issues and driving their prices up? Speculators? Collectors? X-Factor is one of those titles that is in probably 80% of the collections of collectors who were around when it launched in the mid 1980s. I'm guessing those collectors make up a large number of the current collectors. I just looked and I have 2 copies of all the X-Factor issues from 1-70. Between this comic, NM98, and a few others, I'm starting to feel there is hope that I'll be able to cash out someday instead of breaking even or taking a loss as I had originally thought.

Hey, at least he's actually getting the signatures. I'm suprised that he doesn't just save the money and sign them himself.

Desertwind was at the show doing the witnessing for CGC. I have no idea if they do it/did it for the PGX books or not. Only they would know. If they didn't, then it appears PGX needs no witness.

 

They don't (eg. PGX) - I've witnessed Ryan Elliott get books signed all by his lonesome at numerous shows and then seen them show up on eBay in PGX "signature" slabs.

 

At ECCC I noticed him buying 3 raw copies of Peter Panzerfaust #1 all of which I'd looked at too - none of the copies were better than a 9.4, with one being a solid VF/NM. I then saw him getting them signed by Kurtis Wiebe. All three books were posted on eBay as PGX 9.8s a couple of days later.

I think that the point of the question is that almost everyone over-estimates the rate of inflation. Since the financial crisis, we've had lower inflation than we've had in my lifetime, but if you ask the average person they would say it has been higher.

People remember prices going up but generally forget prices that have gone down.

Look at gas--

http://www.gasbuddy.com/gb_retail_price_chart.aspx?time=96

That huge dip in the middle of the graph is the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Note that the price of gas today is less than it was when Lehman collapsed over five years ago. That isn't indicative of runaway inflation, but people always cherry pick the rising prices in their head and convince themselves that there is some big conspiracy to understate inflation.

The truth is, if people would actually sit down and look at how inflation is calculated, they would see that it has actually been extraordinarily low over the last five years.

Not low enough. Just not a fan of the guy since he took office.

 

However, I mainly blame the greedy corporations for trying to trick the consumer by keeping the price increase low, but filling the bags/boxes with more air. Eating organic IMO costs less than eating bad. Guess that is a good thing.

Those are great comics.

I willl put ASM 230-231 vs Juggernaut as another person favorite maybe I rank that 3rd. Back in the days when super heroes had to work to beat the villain Spidey just plain lays it all on the line to beat this guy. I mean the ending actually worked didn't it? It was plausible.

 

Does anyone want some of those Wolverine 50s?

I'll give you a great price

My LCS did. Something like 1200 copies of Thor 412. Ditto the die cut Wolverine cover (50?), Darkhawk 7 (punisher) and Punisher War Journal wolverine issues. When he went out of business in 2000 he bulked them out for like 5 cents each.

That is very different that my experience here in Minnesota. Here even the completely trashed X-men 266s end up on the wall for $15.

Anyway, alls I'm saying is that if there is a beat up X-men 266 in a dealer's stock, he will likely toss it in a $2 box. if it's presentable, he'll shoot for more. my local shop would make it $2-$3 as he does with beat up byrne X-men.

Yeah, that is probably a better comparison.

It will be interesting to see how it plays out this time, given the differences you mentioned.

It is a different vibe, because there are not huge buyups at the wholesale level. That is what busted up the 90's market, Cases and cases of books being hoarded and retailers having to eat books that were pre-ordered with the idea that sales were going to remain high. When the speculators had to eat their cases of Superman 500 and the retailers who couldn't pay their Capital or Diamond bill folded, poof!!

 

The specing on back issues that is going on now is very reminiscent of the specing that was done in the late 80's early 90's - you just switch out "new movie" for "new ongoing series." 1990 - Deathlok gets new series, Astonishing Tales back issues go bananas. 2013 - Antman is getting a movie, Marvel Premiere 47-48 go apespit.

 

It seems more drastic because the stratification of grades and the slabbed comic market makes everything seem so out of control, from a pure price standpoint. But it really is very similar. And it is my belief that specing on back issues will not have as horrible an effect as the speculator bust of the 90's because there are fewer potential losers.

Is anyone else getting that early 90s bubble vibe in the comic market? It seems like there is more and more speculation going on.

The race for GOTG stuff, Hulk 271, the Marvel Premiere Antman issue, etc have really highlighted how desperate people are to chase the latest "hot" thing.

The craziness of the CPR crowd has also reached a peak that I doubt is sustainable.

I think we're going to see some ugly carnage among the speculators soon.

Nevermind.

Your sarcasm meter is broken.

I don't think Daredevil 181 is undervalued, as it is extremely common, even in high grade. It came near the end of the extremely popular Miller run. There are just too many copies of that book out there for it to be worth much more than it is, even though content-wise it is about as awesome as it gets.

How many people on this board have more than ten copies of that book? I bet it's quite a few.

Daredevil 181 and Avengers Annual 10 are wayyyyyyyy undervalued in guide too! They should be on par with ASM 238 or ASM 300 at a minimum!

I'd have a hard time calling McDonald's food a high quality product. They are actually a perfect example of the concept being described.

They are fast, and cheap, but Filet Mignon they are not.

For starters, McDonalds hits all three.

I saw the first part on Netflix. It wasn't very good.

It would be pretty hard to follow if you haven't read the book. Remember the Dune movie? Same problem. I don't think anyone who hasn't read the book will like it.

I've not seen the second part, but initial reviews have not been kind. It has an entirely new cast. I'll probably watch it if Netflix has it, but I may just end up fast forwarding to Francisco's money speech if it doesn't start well.

There had been attempts to film Atlas Shrugged before, and for one reason or another the attempts had failed:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Shrugged:_Part_I

 

The owners of the rights had to either film when they did or else lose their rights, and Atlas Shrugged, Part I and now Part II were the result. They're both low budget pictures with no big name stars. Scripting, something Rand was apparently quite adamant about having closely follow the book is poor and really doesn't get Rand's philosophy across as well as she probably would have liked. It's certainly worth a look, but I was glad I saw it on Netflix and not in a theatre.

CGC is a BIASED 3rd party. I'm sure as a seller he is completely objective

CGC isn't perfect, but anyone who bought expensive books before they existed knows that they are a whole lot better than the average old school dealer was in those days.

Buying books mail order was a complete shoot.

"I have NEVER "SLABBED" a book. I find it unnecessary to burden the buyer with the added cost of paying for an INCONSISTENT, UNDEFINED, and more importantly ---- an UNACCOUNTABLE "slabbing" service of DUBIOUS value ---- by a BIASED 3rd party."[/b]

 

That's only a small part of the rant BTW. Slabbing would spot the restoration too so that's probably the main reason he doesn't like it.

I bought a book from Sam and it was well packaged and quickly shipped.

An excellent seller.

There is something dark in my core.

I was just daydreaming about finding a stack of 9.8's of this book, and submitting just one, putting it in one of the auctions, and then submitting all of the rest and blowing them out a couple months later.

It gave me a dark, warm feeling to imagine the misery of the first buyer.

Picked this up here on the boards recently--

Yeah, it is getting a little ridiculous. I don't think I can bring myself to spend the money required to get a decent copy of that book.

Yep, AF15 are getting cheaper and cheaper lately!

 

I missed out on a nice 4.0 like 9 months ago because i put in a wimp bid for a book i really wanted. Now, just 9 months later, id be lucky to find a 3.5 for the same price

My first Heritage auction win--

http://comics.ha.com/c/item.zx?saleNo=121130&lotNo=10026

I'm down to missing just 1, 2, 3, 5, and AF15.

I'm sure I'll find reasonable priced copies of those soon.

Agreed.

I see low grade AS8's even in the relatively small conventions here in Minneapolis. The book is currently not extremely hard to come by as long as grade is not a concern.

I do think that an increase in demand has the potential to soak up those copies pretty quick.

Whether that increase in demand will ever happen is debatable though.

exactly my point... most action 1's are slabbed before they sell...but many many AS8 are not...so, for one of the posters to try to state comparable "rarity" of the 2, is just not applicable (thumbs u

How often do you see raw Action 1's change hands?

That is a book I would almost always expect would get certified before it got sold. It's just too expensive to risk purchasing raw for most people. Well, people I know

I bet for every slabbed copy I have seen, I run across 4 raw. That is the data that is not incorporated in trying to analyze the books. Sure there are only 10 more blue label as8 on the census compared to action 1 (which metro is proving really is not all that rare either ) but I bet there are 20 to 1 raw copies available so that really skews perception when you have a broader market scope

That could change pretty quick with a decent uptick in demand.

I've felt for awhile that WW is a little under appreciated.

She's only female superhero that is really recognized by the general public.

If I were a MANNUP collector, I would try to pick up a nicely presenting 6.0+ unrestored copy.

Of course I'm not, so I continue digging stuff out of dollars boxes.

I find AS 8, WW 1 and Sens 1 are easy to buy and sell at the right price...

 

however, there is ample supply across all grades, to meet current demand... by that definition it not only cannot be "rare", but would be considered to be "plentiful" (in a relative term)

 

now sure, if you are putting criteria on a purchase (no "warts" etc), then you do drastically reduce the available supply, and the book becomes "rarer" by comparison, but there is NOTHING rare about AS 8 or Sens 1 or WW 1 (thumbs u

Tight grading and fast shipping. Excellent seller.