Hamlet

On 12/9/2021 at 11:22 AM, musicmeta said:

I really liked the movie "Captain Marvel".  I thought Brie did ok in it.  Not great but good enough.   I can't wait for Captain Marvel II to come out. 

The guys from Honest Trailers described my feelings on Captain Marvel almost exactly.  I definitely want to get my daughter to watch i with me now that she is old enough-

On 12/9/2021 at 8:38 AM, LowGradeBronze said:

I confess I can't quite take to TPBs and collected HC works. It has to be newsprint for me. Is it the smell, yes and mainly the way the printing appears. But for the poster, I'd have to ask the question: if I didn't want it at $1 why do I suddenly want three for $1? Weeding out my non essential comics was one of the best things I ever did, (so long as you don't go too far.)  I can focus on what I have and, more importantly, find what I'm looking for! Resist!! 

They’ll become my dollar boxes when I do conventions in retirement. 

On 12/9/2021 at 7:21 AM, oldmilwaukee6er said:

The main difference between hoarders and collectors is curating the collection. Hoarders never get past the accumulation phase of collecting, it just builds and builds, gets neglected, and will decline in condition due to improper storage. 

So bag n board da hoard! 

These are all bagged and boarded already, and the bags aren’t even completely disgusting. I will rebag anything that I want to keep in my more permanent collection, and put the rest in my overflow boxes.

Well, they actually have unbagged books that are even cheaper, but those are all newer books than I am interested in. I gravitate towards drek from the 70s, 80s, and early 90s.  I’m sure than I’m missing some flippable books buy not paying much attention to the newer areas of the market, but I just can’t get that interested.

On 12/8/2021 at 2:19 PM, Hamlet said:

A local comic store has dollar box sales from time to time so that they don't get buried alive in their inventory.  They rent a space, and put a few hundred dollar boxes out for people to go through.  They had one last week, and I bought 66 dollar books.  That's pretty normal for me.

I just got a notice that they are doing the same thing this weekend, but they are getting serious about moving books, so they are going let people fill a long box for $70.

Am I going to go and fill a long box with books that I didn't want for a dollar but am willing to buy for ~ 3/$1 ?

I suspect that I will.  I need some help.

Here is a real mark of my sickness- when I’m digging thru ultra-cheap boxes ( 50 cents or 3/$1 typically ), I often grab annuals and other double-sized issues since they are so cheap for that much reading ( even though I rarely end up actually reading them these days ).

I was just counting books in one of my long boxes to get a feel for roughly how many boarded books a long box holds ( ~250 maybe more if I pack them tight ), and it occurred to me that when you are filling a box instead of paying per book, the double-sized books cost you more.  

On 12/8/2021 at 7:23 PM, ADAMANTIUM said:

I hardly even see aquarium in doctors offices anymore, yet my dentist is holding on firm.

I think mostly gold fish, but as I've never had goldfish as a pet, I didnt know they got that big.

Is it more about the aquarium or the fish? Or just both?

 

Both of the Pediatrician offices that we go to have aquariums.  One has a saltwater setup and one has an African cichlid tank.

Goldfish can get huge.  They are closely related to carp.

For me, I’m mostly interested in breeding the fish.  I’ve bred about 15 different species of tropical fish so far.  The club has a Breeder’s program where we donate fry for points that the club then auctions off to pay club expenses.  There is a similar program for live plants.

On 12/8/2021 at 9:09 AM, alexgross.com said:

no disrespect intended, but in my experience, many major dealers have a hard time lowering their expectations on pricing for keys from recent all-time GPA highs, as has happened in 2021 on many books. this past spring saw new records set on so many books, but the market is different now. that's hard to come to terms with for many sellers. often they may just wait and hold the books, hoping prices move back up this coming spring. 

of course this does not pertain to all of them, and there are other places to buy, like auctions and stores. though many store owners are similar in this respect, in my experience. 

Frankly, given recent history, I can't really blame them.  Keys are hard for them to replace, and they seem to eventually get the prices they want.

I end up buying a lot of dollar books from dealers with wall books I barely look at because the prices are so crazy to me.

On 12/5/2021 at 7:21 PM, jimjum12 said:

When I first felt myself pulled to "the dark side", I stopped at my LCS and they still had 4 stacks in the glass cases and maybe 6 more boxes beneath the comics.... all had prices from probably 5 years ago or more.... and the owner was glad to see the interest. There were a lot of sharp Skywalds and one stack had 4 copies of Creepy 15 in grade... I love that one as it has a Frazetta cover and an early Neal Adams story. I sold 3 and kept one for free. GOD BLESS... 

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

Yeah, Creepy 15 never seems to get the same love as other Frazetta covers, and I’m not sure why.  It’s good book, and very available in most non-nosebleed grades.

On 12/4/2021 at 5:13 AM, ▫️ said:

Willis’s agent: Good morning Bruce

Willis: Yes.

He’s got the same agent as Nicholas Cage-

On 11/12/2021 at 1:27 PM, GeeksAreMyPeeps said:

A good deal of my long-term speculation box is Valiant. There are enough comic stories there now, and there are enough companies looking for content for streaming services, and the investors sunk enough money in, that I figure *something* will be done to bring the rest of their properties to the screen at some point. 

I went to a local dollar box sale today, and they had a few pre-Unity Valiants.  I missed the Valiant boat originally, but I figured for $1, why not?  The Solar 10s are one of each print, although the condition on the 1st print is marginal-

On 12/1/2021 at 6:45 PM, oakman29 said:

I'm just gonna trash it now.

 

I’m saving this photo.

On 12/1/2021 at 3:47 PM, Bosco685 said:

All indications is that movie is going to do massive box office numbers. It has even been approved for China release.

That one is going to get me to the theater.  I just watched the trailer and I’m pretty excited to see Alfred Molina again.

The box office for that will be very interesting to watch.  

On 12/1/2021 at 3:16 PM, NewWorldOrder said:

Thats why I said Gross Profit.  

Eternals will prob close out at the theaters over $400 million, thats realistic to me even before covid for D level characters so once again yes this movie did fine at the theaters. 

Post EndGame we have not really had A level movies characters from the MCU.  All of this is filler.  They have done much better than what I thought they were going to do.  I cant complain.

As other people have mentioned, the split with the theaters and the cost of advertising make these numbers bad from a profit/loss standpoint.  This current environment is not good for movies in general, so we’ll have to see what things look like down the road ( and with more established characters), but I don’t think anyone at Disney was celebrating these numbers.

On 11/30/2021 at 7:51 PM, @therealsilvermane said:

Do you get tired of Star Wars? No. Since the Original Trilogy, all Lucasfilm has done is make bad movies about the same thing and the same characters over and over and over again, but fans still clamor for that creatively dead franchise. Can we get a show about baby Obi Wan next? At least Marvel Studios gives us new heroes and new villains. If Disney has anything to do with it and they do, Marvel is going nowhere. I just don't understand why this is a problem for so many of you here. Did y'all invest in the wrong comic book company keys or something?

Funny you should mention Star Wars.  My understanding is that Disney was originally planning to have a Star Wars movie every year.  A main movie every two years and a stand-alone on the off years.  Solo tanked and they scaled back their plans.  They had found the limit of how many Star Wars movies people would watch in numbers large enough to support their budgets.

Every movie genre and franchise has limits to what the market will support.  It ebbs and flows with the quality of the movies and the moods of the viewing public.  

The box office numbers for Black Widow, Chang-Shi, and Eternals have been lackluster.  Some of that is the pandemic, some of it is probably specific to these movies, and some of it is releasing them on Disney+ to support their platform.  It’s harder these days to quantify the profitability of movies that are on streaming platforms, since the amount of the streaming revenue you should attribute to any particular movie is somewhat subjective.  However, they don’t look like they’ve been all that profitable by traditional metrics.

That may be a temporary setback due to the current environment.  Certainly I would expect the new Spiderman movie to do well.  I’m starting to think that the public’s appetite for the lesser properties might be waning, though.

wow

Holy rare books Batman!
 

Congrats to both of you.

On 11/29/2021 at 6:42 PM, Randall Dowling said:

This was a shocker.  A couple weeks ago, I played the scene from Black Widow when they've just rescued Crimson Dynamo and are flying in the helicopter for my business partner.  She's incredibly pragmatic and rarely watches movies of any kind.  She really hates sci-fi and fantasy stuff.  But I just spoke with her and she watched Black Widow over the weekend with one of her daughters and really enjoyed it.  She's now going back and just watched Iron Man and liked that also.

It reminds me that there's more to these movies than what we comic book fans find interesting.

I think the main issue for me is that I don’t want to see all of them anymore.  It’s not that Black Widow was a bad movie, it’s just that I didn’t really need to see it after I’ve seen all of the others.  If I hadn’t seen 20 other similar movies, I would have enjoyed it more.

I’ve reached the point where I’m probably only going to bother with a couple of comic movies a year.  Which means I won’t see most of them.