Hamlet

I definitely liked IM 1 the most, just because it was such an amazing step forward for comic book movies at the time. IM 2 was fine. IM 3 was pretty bad. It was one of those movies that moved fast enough to be okay in the theater, but once you walked out and thought about it you realized how stupid it was.

They are currently making more comic movies and shows than I am interested in seeing. I watched Shang-Chi and Black Widow on Disney+ over the holiday weekend and I frankly got a little bored. I think the movies themselves were fine, but I’m just tired of the Marvel superhero movie formula at this point. If I’m reaching the point where I’m tired of these movies and shows, I gotta think that the average movie viewer can’t be far behind. Is anyone else thinking along these lines?

The first books I remember thinking this about were the 1st five issues of the 1990 Spiderman. I though that that should have been two issues instead of five.

And SA Marvels are less dense than ECs were.

How can you pass up a classic cover like this-

Do I count as a flipper if I buy books to flip but never actually get around to selling them?

This tends to represent my collecting habits more-

I’ll take it

I’ll take it

1. Their nearly 20% Buyer's Premium? 2. Agreed. I don't think I would ever be willing to use Ebay to sell an expensive book. They make it too easy for scammers.

My problem is that I'm not really looking to sell, but it seems financially irresponsible not to sell at these prices. What was hobby money is now money that could actually impact my lifestyle. Some of the keys I bought at X are now 10-20X. Unfortunately, they are also key books in the runs that I consider core to my collecting. If I sell FF48-50, and other keys out of the run, is there really much point to keeping the rest of the run? When goofy speculation pops a book in my Strange Tales run, I'm starting to feel like I should take the cash, but then I'll end up with a swiss cheese collection, so why not just sell the whole run? So far inertia has kept my collection intact, but I feel like I'm making a pretty big financial mistake by not selling now.

I’m waiting for someone to buy it and then re-list it on Comiclink so that people bidding don’t see the back cover 😉

Yeah, I remember trying to play Star Frontiers once or twice, as well as the Marvel one. I remember that the game mechanics for both just didn’t really work very well.

I love that you can still snag Adams covers on 60s/70s DC's for almost nothing, if you aren't super picky about condition. Those Superboys aren't great on the inside, but those Adams covers are wonderful.

Wow. That hurts a little. It is almost like Adams is trying to channel Liefield. I suppose that at the time that is what the market was looking for.

The thing is, you won’t really be sure regardless of what CGC says, since they can very well be wrong on something this subtle. The only reason to send it to CGC if you don’t want it in a slab is to sell it. I would keep it, as it is a beautiful book, and then slab it if you ever want to sell it.

I’ve often thought that pursuing a high grade non-Gaines File copy collection would be a fun collecting focus.

Buy something else instead? Here’s the thing- these are just comics in plastic cases with a number on them. Nobody really needs to own them. The value of these things have gone from hobby money to potentially mortgage money in a pretty short time. Everyone should really be looking at books like this and thinking “does it still make sense for me to continue owning this book at this price?”

For regular IRAs, yes. A Roth IRA is funded with after tax money. It compounds tax free and is tax free at withdrawal. It is a pretty good way to shelter a lot of investment gains from taxation.

I live in flyover country. I’m a network engineer and my wife works at a University in their accounting department. We get under the Roth IRA income limit by maxing out my 401k and her 457. That income can buy an awful lot of tater tot hot dish around here 😀

I understand that. I was making a joke.

You make too much for a Roth IRA 😀

It really feels akin to going to a random guy selling stuff on the side of the street, handing him a bunch of money and asking him to mail me what they are selling. Sure, they may very well be honest enough to follow through, but it seems like a bet with mostly downside. If I want to gamble, I'd much prefer to do it at a poker table. Or even a slot machine, for that matter.

Timing that is pretty darn hard. By the time prices actually move down, there is usually a flood of people trying to sell and you can't find any buyers. In practice, it is usually better to sell on the way up and accept that you are going miss the top, sometimes by a lot.

Yes, this is a pretty important distinction. The $1 boxes at the LCS that I go to are not back issue boxes, they are "dreck" boxes. They typically don't include any books of any titles I collect. The back issues are much more expensive. Back in the day, that "dreck" would have been in quarter boxes. Note that the quality of "dreck" varies a huge amount by venue. In my LCS, it is mostly books I would be uninterested in taking for free. At small conventions, I will often walk out with 100+ books because they dump lots of cold mainline Marvels back to the 80s in them. Stuff like Byrne FF, Spectacular Spiderman, the non-key X-men in the 170-250 range, Simonson Thor, banged up 70s books, etc. I suspect that these types of books are going to get harder to come by, and may end up as $2 books soon ( if they haven't already - I haven't been out much lately ).