Hamlet

7 minutes ago, Buzzetta said:

I once asked him about it at NYCC prior to the first Deadpool movie.  I gave him a fist bump because at the time he was still doing meet and greets with fans, posing for pictures and was very good natured about it.  The guy was taking a lot of from people.  I mean there are people that will stand in line to ask for a sketch of a foot.  

And yes, some of you will remember that I dropped off pressing paper to CAK at Big Apple / NYCBM as a goof but that was specifically CAK, there was no line, and I did it for the love of the CGC boards.  But while that was a goof, I have seen people be venomous in shouting things at Liefeld at shows.  Like I said, he is pretty good natured about it all and for putting up with a lot of it over the past twenty years, he gets respect for me in that area. 

Most other people would have caused an incident worthy of national headlines over some of the nonsense I have seen him subjected to. 

 

 

Yeah, I can’t see springing a request like that on him at a show.  I’d essentially be asking him to parody his own work, which many people would not take very well.  
 

I just think it would be funny.

I wonder what it would cost to have him do a recreation of Vampirella #1 for me?  
 

Imagine the Frazetta image but with lots of pouches and guns ( but no feet of course ).

I think it would be worth a fair amount to me just to torment the guys in the Magazine sub forum. 😀

My question is why anyone would be interested in either version of this book?  😈

58 minutes ago, Randall Dowling said:

Man, I really hope they get this right.  If they screw it up, we won't have another shot at a Vampirella movie for decades.

I don't want to see Jared Leto anywhere near this project!  

I hear they are casting him as Vampirella 😀

8 minutes ago, batmiesta said:

But, would you pay $4000 for it ? 

Nope.  I'm generally pretty content with a book in the VF range, so I'm never going to pay huge money for a CGC 9.x copy.  I honestly don't buy many graded books.  The ones that I do buy are mostly older mid-grade books that are expensive enough that I want to have the restoration check.

If I didn't already own a copy, I'd probably buy the nicest raw copy I could get for $200-$300 and call it good.

I would say that if I was to get my collection down to just a single box, I would still keep a copy of this book.  Honestly, I'd get rid of ASM 300 before this one.  This one pushes all of my nostalgia buttons.  

On 3/1/2021 at 9:11 AM, batmiesta said:

If they were that savvy, should they not have been buying it when it was $200-$300 ? 

I bought my very nice raw copy for $2.

It was sometime in the 80s.  I couldn't find a copy locally, so I had to mail order my copy.  Unlike many of the books I mail ordered back in the day, I got a really nice copy.

Collecting has gotten a lot easier, albeit a lot more expensive.

On 2/9/2021 at 11:07 PM, OtherEric said:

As with so many of these clubs, I've got one of the worst seats in the house... but I'm in!

It’s obstructed view, but you’re in the house!  😀

5 hours ago, Savoyard23 said:

Those of us who grew up in the 80s may have an outsized sense of the Hobgoblin's importance, because his storyline consumed the Spider-Man titles for those few years.

"Who IS the Hobgoblin?"

The market doesn't seem to be taking out Marvel botching the ending on ASM #238 itself.  The book has some nostalgic appeal to collectors our age, I believe.

I myself have just joined the club, though nowhere near that 9.8 level.  

Yup.  I started collecting by buying ASM 260 off of the stands.  During the next 2-3 years, it was really tough sledding as a Spiderman fan.  The books were pretty darn bad until Kraven’s last hunt and the McFarlane era.  The Hobgoblin appearances were about all there was to like in that period.  The Hobgoblin triggers my nostalgia in a way that few other characters do.
 

I will always own a copy of ASM 238.  I think the book is awesome, although I probably wouldn’t recommend it as a book to buy for investment potential, as I think it depends on our specific nostalgia.

I don’t get spending thousands for a plastic 9.8 though.  

I recommend 3000 $1 books.

I have six copies and no Deadpool card.  No found money for me 😀

I have an extremely nice raw copy of this book, as well as nice copies of other Spidey books that have exploded like 300.   I feel like I should get them graded to see if any make 9.8, so that I can sell them and get VF+ raw copies for a tiny fraction of the money.  
 

This is just goofy money IMO.

100,000 dollar box books

Is it tough or expensive book?  I’m guessing that it would probably make more sense to buy a CGC 9.8 and then sell your book, rather than take the risk and expense of regrading.

That may not be feasible if the book is hard to find in 9.8 though.

On 11/17/2020 at 8:21 PM, Randall Dowling said:

I'll take a couple of those.  The best 2, if you please.  

I’m good with the worst two. 😀

4 minutes ago, shadroch said:

Make it up with volume. At a typical show, I 'd wager you could find enough books to make ten lots and come close to doubling your investments.

I've been very  surprised what some stuff  sells for.  Churn and Burn. That's what the Donut Empire was built on.

Honestly, that would be a really fun challenge for a show.  Buy 100 dollar books to make 10 lots at MCS, ship them to them and see what you can net after shipping and fees.  

At a big show you could go with a few people and make it a competition. It wouldn’t have to be exclusively dollar boxes.  You could also do a variation where you all have $500 to spend.  

3 minutes ago, shadroch said:

Put together groups of ten and auction them on MCS. 

Between shipping costs and the $12 minimum fee, it gets marginal pretty quickly. 

They really need to be $5 books for it to be worth doing. 😀

My problem is that I do most of my “investing” out of the dollar boxes.  Some of my latest acquisitions are below.  I think that they are great buys for a dollar.  Many of them are probably solid $3 books.  Sadly, there is no easy way to sell them for that without a lot of work.  So I’ve really just bought myself a low-wage job in the future.  
 

On the plus side, I do envision myself setting up at some small local conventions in 10 years or so, after I retire and the kids go off to college.  The downside to this plan is that my family history suggests that there are decent odds that I’ll keel over by that time, and my wife will be stuck dealing with 1000s of $3 books.  She knows to lean on @Randall Dowlingfor help, who will also probably not be thrilled to deal with them.  Sorry buddy, hoarders gotta hoard.

7 hours ago, shadroch said:

 Also you need to know your audience.

When selling a $100,000 book, you have a pretty small pool of buyers.

If you have 100 $1,000 books, the buying pool is much bigger.

Have 1000 $100 books and your buying pool  is the size of the ocean.

Imagine how big the buying pool is with 100,000 $1 books 😀

Actually, I do think books in the $100-$200 range would be a pretty good sweet spot for liquidity, diversification, and ease of selling.  

15 hours ago, GeeksAreMyPeeps said:

Well, most of the run of Marvel Fanfare have probably seen the dollar bin at some point, so I'm not surprised if there are very few high-grade copies of these available. These are also 4 of the last 5 issues, so I imagine that the print run was pretty low (for the era) on these. Low enough for the title to be cancelled.

MyComicShop notes this for issue 56-

Statement of ownership: average print run 52,038; average paid circulation 51,338
 

Those are cool covers I’ve never noticed before.  I think I’m going to keep an eye out for them now.  

I would take the opposite path.  Sell all your big keys and buy as many cool books out of the cheap boxes that you can find.

I mean really, what would you rather have -- an ASM 300 CGC 9.8 or 8-10 long boxes of cool non-key books?

Then you have a great collection, and you can earn $3/hr selling books on Ebay when they get hot.  

To me the choice is clear

On 1/9/2021 at 9:46 AM, thehumantorch said:

How do they pay their fees and expenses, and how do they make money?

When I read the fine print last time, it appeared to me like they could borrow against the value of the comic to pay their expenses.  When they sell a comic, they would pay back the debts incurred before paying out the shareholders of the comic.

That is why I have absolutely no confidence in this arrangement.  They have every incentive to run up expenses in self-dealing and leave the shareholders with a lot less down the road.

40 minutes ago, spreads said:

I learned a long time ago from working in hotels, that you cannot judge a person's socioeconomic status from what they wear or the car they drive.....

Yup.  I drive a 2008 Kia Rondo, but I’m nowhere near as high class as that implies.

1 hour ago, spidrvacc said:

Funny i just saw this thread. I was just looking at a pile of them.  About 8 years ago my neighbor a real estate agent , new i liked comics. Called me from a house she was selling. Seller moved to florida and was selling. There was s comic book collection, like 8 short boxes, mostly 90s. Only thing i saw of real value was a ASM 361 . Owner said was her son's, $50 wants it gone. I paid it. When i got home looked through it, 20 copies of xforce 1. Sold the 361 for $100 just last month. Sold rest at gsrage sale for $50.except the xforce 1 issues. Still sitting in my basement.i was just putting some Christmas stuff away in basement and saw them.

How bad was the rest that what you kept was the X-force 1’s ?

2 hours ago, valiantman said:

RallyRd only does part of that... and there are plenty of people who don't even like the whole idea I described, much less a partial version of it on RallyRd.

I get the appeal of the whole idea.  I just think people are going to get robbed blind over the years by the startups that try to do a piece of it.

In the first thread, I read some of RallyRd’s fine print.  I’m not saying they are definitely going to rob people blind, but there’s not much in the fine print stopping them.