stormflora

On 12/30/2023 at 2:11 PM, The Sledder said:

I will have a list of who picked what by the end.  Here's what we have so far.

 

 

This is perfect

It might be easier to just make a perpetually updating spreadsheet with one column listing the available lots and the second column listing the usernames of the people who have claimed them, and then posting an update showing the new changes in bold once a new draw and lot choice is made.

On 12/30/2023 at 1:11 PM, jlouque said:

I don't know if this helps any, but I am keeping track of the selections made and what is left.

Below are the picks chosen up to fastballspecial at pick 18.

Thanks, I was just about to ask for something like this.

Since I have last pick anyway, I guess I don't need to monitor this too heavily. Got work to do and was just checking during my lunch break. I'll inform of my pick (from whatever is left, if there even is a choice) once I'm free again.

If anyone wants to provide me with consolation prizes, I'd happily accept them

On 12/30/2023 at 1:06 PM, Axelrod said:

Once upon a time, I think someone donated a special prize just for the person who got last pick.  

On 12/30/2023 at 1:07 PM, aszumilo said:

I was last one year and still got something from my top ten list.  So, there is hope for you.

I didn't bother filling out my list beyond #20 or so, so I'll have to manually choose once it's my turn. I'll wait for the alert while I'm at work.

On 12/30/2023 at 1:03 PM, The Sledder said:

But two picks!

On 12/30/2023 at 1:03 PM, DougC said:

You get two selections!

Makes up for slim pickings I guess

On 12/30/2023 at 1:04 PM, aszumilo said:

Under the video, in the spoiler, is the printed list.

Oh damn, I didn't even notice that spoiler. Now I feel stupid lol.

On 12/30/2023 at 1:04 PM, wombat said:

Thank you for your sacrifice. 

I may not be first, second, third, or runner-up, but at least I get the special position of being last

On 12/30/2023 at 1:03 PM, aszumilo said:

You'll get a second pick, I do believe.

Yeah, I quickly skimmed through the video, and I was like, where am I? And then realized I was last place

Okay, I found the video on the front page of the thread. Lol, I'm last place.

F**k yeah

I accept this honourable position.

Okay, I just got here. What did I miss? Where is the live draw?

On 12/29/2023 at 9:15 AM, 1Cool said:

Wait - you spent $4,000 on Tom and Jerry comics?  I didn't know there was that many T & J books out there.

I was shocked too after my wife roughly tallied the debits in my PayPal account. The irony is, I actually tried to save as much money as possible by staying under FMV, haggling bundle discounts, and grabbing combined shipping deals wherever possible.

Shipping is an absolute beatch to Canada. Arguably 30% of the total cost more or less.

Sadly, without physical inspection, no amount of anti-tampering technology built into the holders will allow a buyer to determine its legitimacy. That's the risk you run with buying slabs online. These kinds of criminal acts are an inevitability, and they were bound to happen.

Paintings get duplicated all the time on the black market, to degrees of accuracy that are sometimes even imperceptible. I wouldn't be surprised if some Action Comics #1 issues out there are professional forgeries done with artificial aging and specialized ink and equipment from the Golden Age era. I've read an article about how a counterfeit painter was flawless in his art, but he got screwed over after years of forgeries when his specialized ink supplier one day cheaped out due to low supply and provided him instead a particular pigment that was made of a material that couldn't have existed back then to fulfill his order.

At the end of the day, speculators will speculate, and high value items will always be prime targets for criminal activity. This is why I don't believe in paying thousands to tens of thousands of dollars for comics that used to cost mere dimes. They're just luxuries to make yourself feel good, unless you're explicitly in the business to flip them. But to each's own. For all we know, some of the high value comics you see out in circulation right now might even be fake. But nobody can tell. Or the ones that own them don't want to reveal the truth, as it may make $1M suddenly worth $1.

Funny story: A relative of mine once owned a Rolex that was worth around $5,000. He decided to get it appraised once, and the appraiser was shocked with what they found. Apparently, every bit of the Rolex was genuine, diamonds and all, but the verification code that accompanied it was fake. So it wasn't a genuine Rolex, even if all of the materials and gold and whatever were worth thousands. A professional counterfeit.

For a more recent story, someone was caught trying to refund a bunch of counterfeit iPhones, which was successfully done at Apple Stores in the USA over a very long period of time. Walked out with hundreds of thousands, as well as genuine swapped iPhones to resell overseas. I forgot exactly how he got caught, but I think it was due to some employee finding his behaviour fishy and then looking deeper into the devices themselves, which eventually led to a criminal investigation.

Two massive boxes of Tom & Jerry comics arrived from my forwarder in the USA today, which will take me a while to sort through.

Wife scolded me a few days ago for spending some $4K+ USD on these comics lol. Yikes.

But at least it's better than spending $4K on one or two individual key comics :P

On 12/27/2023 at 8:42 AM, 1Cool said:

Isn't it the law in Canada that you claim the cost of each item that comes into the country so they can tax you?  Saying certain packages under a certain size probably won't be opened isn't exactly screaming that people should follow the law or most of what you posted would be moot.  I'm not Canadian but I always post the actual price of books on Canadian packages for my own piece of mind.

Yes, but I did not inform anyone to understate the value of any of the contents. Just to list the contents and package them in a certain way.

On 12/27/2023 at 12:19 PM, William-James88 said:

I get wanting to write the full price for insurance purposes but I hope you also state it's a "used" book though as the taxes on used items is much less since the items were originally taxed when purchased new . 

Good point brought up, which I've forgotten to note. Indeed, used items are far more lenient with customs than new ones (and you wouldn't want to be claiming that some pre-Modern Age comics are new either). Canadian customs expects you to post the fair market value/selling price, not the actual MSRP of each item. If you truly did buy/sell an item at $0 (it was a gift/freebie/whatever), you must clearly state that.

Customs would actually prefer you designated a PS5 as being given away at $0 rather than sold as $20, as they interpret it as a gift. However, marking any item as $0 or less than MSRP also means that for parcel insurance purposes (if it really ever comes down to it), you cannot actually claim more than the declared total value of the parcel. (This is the main reason why it is bad to understate unless you are willing to eat the difference in the middle from doing so, if you ever do need to make a claim.) Even if you buy $1,000 in insurance, if you only declare a parcel as being worth $200, the logistics company will only give you $200 (after a likely long processing time).

Understating the value of a parcel has its pros and cons, and the customs are usually too busy to care enough to physically open up a box to verify most parcels unless they trigger red flags. The pro is that (obviously) you save on duties/taxes, but the con is that if the parcel is stolen/lost and you need to make a claim, you take both a financial and a psychological hit. Whether or not it is a viable tactic boils down to several factors, including but not limited to how consistent/reliable a logistics service and source/destination country handling is. (Personally, I usually don't mind understating own parcels unless the contents are simply too valuable to lose. But I factor that into the cost equation.)

In my experience, customs are usually generous enough to charge you less duties/taxes than expected to begin with, often a 30-50% discount in actuality compared to what is officially stated on the government website. Declaring a proper value also pressures the logistics company and customs to properly deliver your parcel, as they want to avoid taking losses as well from any claims made.

Thefts or "supposed losses" tend to happen with high value items that are tempting for crooks to target, like jewellery/currency, consoles/computer hardware, etc. In those cases, it can actually be better to make the declaration of the contents ambiguous: Instead of writing "Used GPU", you might want to write "Used Computer Part". Or instead of "Action Comics #1", you'd write "Used Comic Book".

On 12/26/2023 at 3:57 PM, 1Cool said:

 

Technically, just loopholes one can exploit. Nothing illegal has been suggested  

FWIW, since I've been involved in business a while back that necessitated a lot of shipping in/out of Canada and have closely worked together with my local post office, I can provide my two cents with regards to customs and their fees.

From what I've experienced, Canada tends to simply write-off any customs fees for parcels declared with a value of less than $100 CAD. Not always, but probably more than 80% of the time. I suspect that this is due to Canada Post trying to balance the costs of labour involved with inspecting each and every single low-value parcel that comes into Canada.

Certain types of items are exempt from duties and thus only cost the recipient their local taxes. Often times, since the customs declaration sheets have limited space and require additional documentation to be attached, if you deliberately draft your list of contents by starting with the items that do not have any duties charged written at the very top, you can often encounter the same situation as the above where customs will not spend the time to look through the entire list and simply do a quick review of those initial items listed on the main label. They tend to not bother opening up the attached packet to check the full list of contents.

The size of the box matters significantly, as Canadian customs is inclined to believe that bigger = more valuable. They are more likely to open up a box to check its contents for this reason alone. However, after COVID and all, they're likely to avoid opening up a box unless it's a random check or they have reason to suspect something being hidden within that can't be caught with a quick x-ray inspection or there are blatant red flags with the declared value of the contents (e.g. saying that a PS5 was only $20) or some suspicious smell that triggers their drug dogs. Either way, customs almost never designates a new value onto an item without explicitly opening up the box and then taping it back up with very obvious tape.

Lastly, gift wrapping boxes is highly recommended as it significantly reduces the likelihood of customs opening it up to check. I don't know why, but it just does. I suppose customs does not want to ruin gifts for recipients. So if you can spend the time to do that, then do so.

Not sure if it's to be expected already, but I think it would be a good idea to send every participant a reminder on the night before the live draw, since people can get busy and forget. @The Sledder

On a side note, for the one who wins my Tom & Jerry lot, you might have to wait a little into January. My comic shipments from the U.S.A. are lagging behind a little due to the Christmas holiday rush and all. But rest assured, I will ship out my gift as promised

Honestly, any comic that costs more than the original printed price + inflation is likely already overpriced. The publishers back in the day priced their comics with value to consumer in mind, and the quality of story and of the printing reflects that.

You guys are lucky to have nearby antique/vintage stores that don't nickel and dime you while only providing scraps. Sucks to live in a major city like mine. I'm forced to resort to online shopping, which isn't necessarily bad per-se due to the increased availability of comics and convenience, but the shipping costs add up.

On 12/15/2023 at 6:01 AM, Brock said:

Go west, young man… I find that places like antique malls are better than LCSes for these kind of books. Think of Waterloo, Stratford, Woodstock, London…

Yeah... I'm not nearly as hardcore as most collectors here, so it doesn't make sense for me to take a road trip just for some antique comics

On 12/15/2023 at 3:51 AM, bellrules said:

Actually found these in two separate shops today. Black hole in one and the other two in another (which makes sense given Scrooge and Huey came in the same pack in Canada. 

Ah, LCSes. I should really try visiting more near me. But the one that I did go to was rather uneventful—it was pretty much on the brink of dying. The suburbs of Toronto’s are just not very comic-centric at all. 

On 12/14/2023 at 6:10 PM, bellrules said:

Hometown haul for the win. 

Where do you even find these? Do you stalk Facebook Marketplace or something :)?

I'm guessing that UFO was a fake then

On 12/14/2023 at 4:09 PM, DR.X said:

So your guess is $1042.00?

Yep. For both containers together.

I am guessing $521 for each container. X2 for them both together. I just have a good feeling about that value.

Also, I just noticed that nobody did a  for this particular post you made, lol:

Unless that was just an example and not actually one of the contest UFOs.

On 12/14/2023 at 12:38 AM, BA773 said:

The fact is that i absolutely dont buy randomly i have a really specific goal but it doesnt change that the quantity of books is crazy

You only have yourself to blame for buying too many comics and/or focusing on series that run for dozens or hundreds of issues. The companies that produce those comics are not holding you at gunpoint to buy them.

On 12/13/2023 at 1:38 PM, Azkaban said:

 @stormflora

Thanks for the mention, but MrBedrock actually brought this issue to my attention in a private message before. Unfortunately, the $50 price tag is too far above my budget for a single issue. I'm a low value collector, so I try to stay below $10 for common to uncommon issues, and $20 for rare ones, after all fees and shipping. I'm patient enough to wait for a lower grade copy