Hamlet

On 8/30/2021 at 1:29 PM, Mystafo said:

It's a very unpopular opinion, but I liked IM 2 better than 1 or 3   I don't go around blurting that one out in real life.

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?

On 11/26/2021 at 2:58 PM, Randall Dowling said:

You know, that's a good point.  The stories are so thin (also the comics themselves) that they have gotten really, really boring.  A good friend of mine recently described his experience reading a modern comic as such- "When I got finished reading page after page of minimal story and bad panel layout, I felt something that comics never made me feel before- old."

So, yes, it's going to be hard to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear when you've got very little story to work with.  

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.

On 11/26/2021 at 1:30 PM, Randall Dowling said:

One of the great losses for me in comics is that over the last 30 years, covers slowly became increasingly about some character pose or other.  As a kid growing up in the 70s and 80s, most of the covers had to do with the story inside.  But that's when comics had stories that were worth reading.  

I'm not saying that there weren't pose covers back then.  There were.  But they were iconic and well done (think Amazing Spider-man 100).  Today, every artist- from average to talented, just phones in a pose cover.  And I think comics are worse for it.  Feel free to post any that you feel are great non-pose covers from the last 30 years.  I'd love to see them.

How can you pass up a classic cover like this-

On 11/6/2021 at 5:41 PM, Randall Dowling said:

This tends to represent my collecting habits more-

On 11/6/2021 at 5:29 PM, namisgr said:

• Spirit (Warren)
• Lot of 4 magazines, #s 2-5
• #2  F+
• #3  F/VF
• #4  F/VF
• #5  VF-
• $20

Will Eisner art in all.

  

  

I’ll take it

On 11/6/2021 at 5:20 PM, namisgr said:

• Vampirella #5
• VF
• $65

 

I’ll take it

On 10/4/2021 at 6:21 AM, Badlands said:

A couple of questions and or statements to this:

1. 30%? Their fee table shows 10% or less; what am I missing?

2. I have definitely considered the ebay route and I have excellent feedback, but for that kind of money I'm afraid of a buyer scam (never received it, gets refunded)

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.

13 minutes ago, Randall Dowling said:

+1.  Many RPGs from that time period didn't quite make it off the runway.  I owned many of them (Star Frontiers, Top Secret, Boot Hill, etc.) but they tended to lack the development and/or having been played out to eliminate obvious loopholes that traditional AD&D had.

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.

24 minutes ago, dover said:

At one time I had a pretty good Adams collection. Sold all but a few books and now I am building a more strategic position of his work. I still have all the scans and I cry over them from time to time but I am told I need to get over it and don't look back.

 

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.

1 hour ago, dover said:

@Randall Dowling Just some odd shaped people / beings / other......

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.

1 hour ago, pickycollector said:

Of course, I could send it to CGC to be sure but it will take months, will cost money and my book will be in an ugly third generation slab with Newton rings which will just motivate me to crack it out to get it back to its actual raw state if it's a blue label as I want to keep it. Not counting also the risk of loss or damage during all that process. I would rather skip all those steps just to have a micro-trimming check-up but is that service offered?

 

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.

14 hours ago, The Lions Den said:

It's very rare to see such a high grade EC book that isn't a Gaines File copy...  

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

27 minutes ago, Hollywood1892 said:

Maybe....what happens if this book is 12-15k next year?

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?”

1 hour ago, Aman619 said:

aren't taxes due when on the gains in IRAs when you withdraw the funds?  Governments gets a share of ALL profits.  By and large though I agree that the markets can of quite often pay off a lot better than even the amazing gains on Big Ticket comics that took decades to increase in value as much as stocks more often do in less time.

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.  

2 hours ago, the blob said:

I am a 50 yearish old lawyer and my wife is a 50ish professor both working in the largest city in the country. It is hard to not pass the limit and not be homeless here.

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 😀

3 hours ago, VikramK said:

 

Nope - Reverse ROTH IRA.  Anyone can do it - even if you’re above the cut off.  It’s a known loophole - that the IRS decided to leave in place.

 

I understand that.  I was making a joke.

3 hours ago, the blob said:

Is this wrong?

"If you file taxes as a single person, your Modified Adjusted Gross Income (MAGI) must be under $139,000 for the tax year 2020 and under $140,000 for the tax year 2021 to contribute to a Roth IRA, and if you're married and file jointly, your MAGI must be under $206,000 for the tax year 2020 and 208,000 for the tax year ..."

You can do a traditional IRA if you exceed those numbers, but can't make it tax deductable. So, you have to invest with after tax $, it does grow ta deferred, true, which is good for dividend reinvestment and if you move stuff around a lot, but then you pay taxes again when you withdraw. So a 401K (if you have access) is better as you can at least deduct your contributions, but your investment options are more limited (although you ought to be able to get a low fee S&P 500 index fund in any 401k)

 

 

 

 

You make too much for a Roth IRA 😀

4 hours ago, F For Fake said:

As for me, I can't imagine spending money on a raffle/mystery box. They seem like scams, even if maybe they aren't. Would rather spend the money on something I KNOW is a good deal.

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.

10 hours ago, Darkowl said:

My plan is to sell my collection as soon as I start to see prices trending downward. It may be a couple of years, but it will happen.

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.  

9 minutes ago, shadroch said:

You are mixing back issue sections with dreck boxes.  My first store did very well with back issues, they were well more than 50% of my sales. 

A three month old Marvel title would get bagged and a small premium put on it. Most books with 50 or 60 cent books were 75 cents as a back issue. I still had a 3/$1 section that was mostly beat up back issues in VG or less, or a sprinkling of recent books I had over-bought.

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 ).