Hamlet

On 1/5/2022 at 8:34 AM, sledgehammer said:

Sure. It's so much about the Black Cat that her second appearance, of which there have been less than 200 9.8 gradings, could have been had for $200 a couple of years ago.

Doesn't feel genuine to me, and never will.

Nobody cares about 2nd appearances. 

ASM 194 has been a key book for over a decade.  The recent jump in price is silly, but that doesn't mean that the book isn't important to a lot of Spiderman collectors.

I have a rough VG copy, and I've been too cheap to upgrade it for at least 10 years, but I have been mildly interested in doing so that whole time.  I'm pretty sure it isn't going to happen anytime soon. 

On 1/1/2022 at 5:57 AM, sledgehammer said:

How could it be "manipulated"?

What I said is that it doesn't feel genuine to me.

I would say the exact same thing about Madame Web's first appearance in ASM 210.

I would have said a similar thing about Hydro Man's first appearance.

I said the same thing about Mantis in Avengers 112.

 

I would say that ASM 194 is a much more important book than any of those examples.  Any Spidey collector who read the Spectacular Spiderman in the 1980s is going to want a copy of this book.  It’s an actual key book, rather than a pure speculation driven book like those.

That said, I think the prices people are paying for it are pretty crazy right now ( I would say that about most key books, TBH ).  

It is also a very common book that is always readily available.  There will be better times to buy it, IMO.

On 1/4/2022 at 2:04 PM, Randall Dowling said:

After watching it twice, I found the film to be rather anemic.  Just not any real moments for you to connect with characters and without that, tough to care what happens to them.

Unfortunately, I don't think the Matrix world was really designed well for more than one movie.  It's been a pretty tough downhill slide since that first film.  

The 2nd and 3rd Matrix movies are really best suited for watching the highlight scenes on YouTube.  

It's funny how the first movie is so amazing and groundbreaking, while the rest are just kind of blah. 

I think it shares something in common with the Terminator movies.  The first movie was very original, and T2 was one of the best SciFi/action movies ever made, but after that the premise just can't hold anything up.  It gets too convoluted and the suspension of disbelief breaks down.  

These kind of movies need to keep things moving fast enough so that the plot holes and silly SciFi stuff can't be analyzed while you are watching it.

On 1/3/2022 at 11:43 PM, AGGIEZ said:

Screw it…every key I sell comes with a long box of my 1985-1995 baseball cards….that’s a legitimate loss right there! Greg Jeffries and Jerome Walton rookies for er’body!!

 

Seriously though, one of my concerns is the uncertainty around “proof”. Hardly anyone in this hobby, or any hobby for that matter, prints off eBay/CLINK/Heritage wins (“receipts”) or makes a note of off-line transactions that occurred years/decades ago. People keep saying it’s net, not gross, but you may have to prove your cost basis otherwise it’ll be gross 🤮…

If you make a good faith effort to come up with a cost basis, I doubt very much that you'll have any issues.  Honestly, the odds of an audit is pretty tiny if you report numbers that are plausible.  The IRS is pretty understaffed.  If their computers don't flag your return as in error, it is really unlikely that you are going to have a problem. 

On 12/28/2021 at 8:01 AM, 1Cool said:

Telling a message boards about my belief that New Mutants 9 is undervalued really isn't going to effect my ability to buy copies.  If you are pumping up a rare book where there is only a few copies in existence while you hunt for a copy would not be very prudent but most books are so common you just are not going effect the hunt much if you say a book could get hot in the future. 

It depends on how many copies you are trying to buy. 😀

I have a few books that I buy every time I find them for $1-2.  My goal with one of them is to fill a long box ( I’ve still got a long way to go ). 

I’m keeping that one to myself.  I doubt that it will ever pop, but if it does.. 😀

On 12/28/2021 at 8:02 PM, Off Panel said:

Yeah — me, too.

I don’t want to come across as someone who doesn’t like the movies. I have really, really enjoyed them. Beyond the big stories, it has been absolutely exhilarating to watch Marvel just nail the little things like the way Cap throws his shield or Thor swings his hammer.

My issue is that valuing every comic book primarily on the criteria of

• Has it been a movie?
• Will it be a movie? And
• Could it be a movie?

feels like the tail wagging the dog.

If everyone else is focusing on the movie criteria, it seems like that should make books that are coveted mainly for the other criteria you mentioned more available.  Take advantage of that when you can for your collecting enjoyment.

On 12/27/2021 at 7:34 AM, Laszlo the Mudjar said:

That is true.  However, there are HUGE caveats.  Had one bought at the peak in 1999, one did not start making money until 2013.  Similarly had one bought at the 1965 peak, one did not make money until 1982.  The same can be said of 1929 to 1955.  When you buy into a trend can make a world of difference. Prices could ease for a LONG time. And, then again, maybe not.  Who knows.  Buy what you like and can afford, and there won't be a problem.  Buy for an investment with money you can't afford to lose, and maybe not so much.

Yup.  People forget in bull markets how long and bad a bear market can get.  It is even worse than you state, because these numbers don’t take inflation into account.  The 1965 to 1982 trough was even worse than it looks because that was also a period of very high inflation. So it took seventeen years to get back to even and on top of that an investor would have lost 2/3 of their purchasing power to inflation.  Dividends would have helped some, but not enough to match that inflation.

It seems like we have to relearn this lesson every 20-30 years.

On 12/23/2021 at 9:37 PM, divad said:

I thought she was the definition of "a one-and-done throwaway," but what do I know . . . 

 

All I know is that I’m eventually going to feel stupid buying a copy to fill that hole in my MTU run. It’s always been a run that I’ve mostly pulled out of dollar boxes.  I’m not a 9.8 guy, so it looks like I will feel $30 stupid, not $500 stupid, but still.

Buy more of the few books that I am speculating on/hoarding.  Buy good deals that I find on books that I think are cool.

Sell enough books to cover those purchases.

On 12/22/2021 at 10:50 AM, Robot Man said:

This still amazes me. With print runs like this and people hoarding away tons of these, who in their right mind would pay today’s prices for them? It just doesn’t make any logical sense…

Well, to be fair, collecting in general doesn’t make much logical sense.  And none of this is huge money.  If someone decides to spend $100 to buy the Magneto cover of X-men 1 in 9.8 because it looks cool, that isn’t really that big of a deal for most people financially.  I suppose in some sense it is a fairly important issue historically.  I’ve certainly spent $100 in dumber ways than that, many, many times.

Heck, I have a long box of books that I had passed on for $1/each that I bought a week later for 4/$1.  This was in the past month.  That $70 purchase does not make much logical sense.  The whole collecting world is trying to shed themselves of drek, and here I am hoovering it up. There aren’t any X-men 1s in that box, but there were a whole bunch of 90s Batmans and Detectives, along with the 87 series of Silver Surfer, Micronauts, The Nam, New Mutants, X-factor, 80s Conans, etc.  They all share the characteristic that no one was willing to pay a dollar for them.

As you can see, I really don’t like to go home empty-handed. 😀

On 12/22/2021 at 10:06 AM, piper said:

I continue to be amazed at how much university costs on the other side of the border for your basic 4 year degree.

Costs have started to climb in Canada, but it looks like tuition is minimum 3 to 4 times what we pay here. Law School in Edmonton costs ~ 12k CAD per year. An undergrad in Engineering is significantly less and I can’t believe how little I paid back I. The 90’s.

It has gone up a lot, although the numbers people are talking about are here for private schools.  In-state tuition at state schools are quite a bit better ( although still painfully expensive).

For example, in-state tuition at the U of Minn is about 15k per year.  

On 12/21/2021 at 11:06 PM, onlyweaknesskryptonite said:

While I have seen these numbers or at least variations of them.  They seem skewed.  I do realize they did multiple prints of Superman #75 still with that there was so much more coverage.  Shops had customers lining streets to get it. I do not remember the same fan fair for xmen 1  .

Only thing I can think of was that a lot of places ran out of Sup 75 and there were a lot of instant resellers marking up $25+ for each copy. 

Still seems like it would be over that $3m estimate.  

I think the big difference between X-men 1 and Superman 75 is that Superman 75 had way more interest for it outside of the hardcore collecting community.  I’m pretty sure Superman 75 sold to more individuals, but I bet more collectors bought multiples of X-men 1.  Plus stores had lots of leftover issues of X-men 1, since the long box of overstocked X-men 1s was a staple of the dollar boxes for years ( decades? ) afterwards.

I don’t remember seeing a similar glut of Superman 75s anywhere.

I buy a lot of dollar books.  I still find stuff that I think is kind of cool in dollar boxes these days.  Not as cool as a few years back, but still more books than I am ever actually going to get around to reading.  

But yeah, there is a lot of stuff these days that is priced to the point where I’m more likely to sell what I have than collect what I’m missing.  

It has me thinking a lot more about what my collecting focus really should be.

On 12/21/2021 at 9:08 PM, onlyweaknesskryptonite said:

Xmen 1 or Superman #75.. 

X-force 1 should be in the conversation too. 

I actually dug mine out when people were paying money for the ones with the Deadpool card ( I didn’t have any 😀).  I opened one and read it for the first time.  What a complete garbage book.

On 12/21/2021 at 5:13 PM, shadroch said:

What is the point of attempting to dispell one myth by advancing another? Unless one had a crystal ball, the only way someone had hundreds of copies of these books is if they were buying hundreds of copies of every book.  If that was the case, you now have warehousing for thirty years, evidently in ideal conditions as each book survived in pristine condition.  

X-men 1 was probably one of the most speculated on books in the history of comics. It would probably be my guess for the number one spot personally. The fact that anyone can sell it for anything above a dollar shocks me, TBH.  Doesn’t it hold the record for its total print run?

Lots and lots of people had hundreds of copies of those books.  I’m pretty sure lots and lots of people still have hundreds of copies of those books.  I’ve found whole long boxes of them in dollar bins at least as recently as 5-10 years ago.

I don’t think it makes sense to think someone needed a crystal ball to be speculating on a book that almost everyone was speculating on at the time.

I remember waiting to buy my FF 49 in CGC 7.5 OW-W specifically so that it would match my 48 and 50.  I probably would have passed up one with W pages in that instance. 😀

On 12/21/2021 at 3:29 PM, Axelrod said:

Yeah, the issue here is that what you are saying depends almost entirely on the books you bought 30+ years ago , before CGC was even a thing, ALL being perfect copies and perfectly maintained, such that, now that CGC exists, they are ALL grading out at 9.8 for you.  It’s the magic 9.8 bump that matters here.  Because if it ain’t 9.8 everything you are saying goes out the window.

Which, more power to you if that’s the case.  I collected in the 80s when I was a kid, before CGC was a thing, and I took reasonable care of my books, yet I doubt very many, if any, would grade out at a 9.8 today.

He’s not saying they all need to be 9.8s.  In his X-men 1 example, he needed two 9.8s to pay for the 50 copies he bought. The other copies aren’t worthless anymore either.  The 9.6s of the Magneto cover appear to be getting north of $60, which probably makes a little money for someone as long as they do enough volume to minimize shipping costs.  Even the raw books can be sold these days.  They aren’t pure sub-dollar box books anymore.

Obviously, most of the people who speculated with books like this off the stands did not do well.  However, it is starting to look like the people who bought the stores’ overstock out for pennies on the dollar are now sitting pretty good.

I think some of you are getting a little pedantic about this.  I think the main point of the post was that people are paying quite a bit of money for books that we all thought were completely worthless 5-10 years ago.  It's not just CGC copies either.  Look at the sales for Spawn 1.  That book is selling for $25+ for a decent copy on Ebay.  It doesn't have to be 9.6-9.8 .  I never would have guessed that the market would support prices like that for a book so over-printed.

I saw a set of the five Jim Lee X-men 1 covers sell raw in a mycomicshop auction for enough to justify shipping them and paying the selling fees for the lot.  I'm amazed that those books are being sold at anything more than a dollar given how many of them there are.

On 12/18/2021 at 11:47 AM, mycomicshop said:

Some items have notes, some don't. We're not like CGC where we have notes written down that we're not showing you. Any grade related notes we recorded are shown.

We're more likely to record notes when:

- item is higher value
- defect is not something that can be easily seen in the cover scans, eg spine splits
- defect is something that people tend to feel strongly about even when it's allowed within the grade, like water damage, mold, or in the case of a PR book detailing why it's poor (if page missing does it affect story, etc)

We generally do not attempt to notate relatively bland defects that are normal for the grade.

The reason we don't provide more notes for all items is that grading + recording notes takes more time than grading alone, and as a business we have to make a decision about how much labor to put into recording each book we handle.

From my buying, I don’t think I’ve ever had a surprise defect that wasn’t called out in the notes.  They are really good about pointing out all of the hidden gotchas- loose centerfold, centerfold loose at one staple, popped staple, water damage, etc.

I got a book with a coupon cut out once, but I’m pretty sure that it was missed in grading rather than not noted.  The return for that was as smooth as a return can go.

On 12/13/2021 at 8:14 PM, alexgross.com said:

picked this up today at my LCS, cloud 9 comics in portland, and was stoked to find it signed by stan the man! i dislike cover sigs but love em inside. 

That is a pretty copy of that book.

On 12/9/2021 at 9:14 PM, onlyweaknesskryptonite said:

Is anyone else wondering how a module could be for levels 4-20 ?  Seems to wide to me 😀

Something interesting that occurred to me today as I was loading up on drek-

When I started collecting in 1985, Amazing Fantasy 15 seemed like an ancient book.  It was 23 years old.  The books I bought today ranged from the late 70s to mid-90s.  They are all older than AF15 was when I started collecting.  When I started collecting, cheap books were sold in a quarter box ( sometimes bagged, never boarded ).  I just bought these for a quarter — inflation adjusted, that is the equivalent of paying 10/$1 in 1985.  For bagged and boarded books that are more than 25 years old.  Someone lost a lot of money and wasted a lot of effort somewhere along the line before these books came to me. 

 I’m under no illusions that these are a good buy from a financial standpoint-  these are all books that no one at the sale ( including me ) was willing to pay a dollar for.  But they are still kind of cool.  The early ones, with their 50 and 60 cent Marvel logos, remind me of why I started collecting.  The later ones, with their $1.00, 1.25, and up prices, reminded why I stopped buying comics in the early 90s 😀