MatterEaterLad

Thanks for the feedback. Much appreciated. I never quite know how to grade these. I've heard that 5.5 is the max with a subscription crease, but then someone last year got back a 7.0 (the subscription crease was very faint).

How many letters?

8.0-8.5

5.0

Picked up a bunch of SA Green Lanterns. All in great shape like this...but...that faint subscription crease.

4.5

Nice cover. 3.5

Has the seller asked for a deposit? That's how this scam goes sometimes. I seriously hope this is real because it would be the find of a lifetime. But...

I gotta bad feeling about this one.

7. THOR #126 White Pages 7.0 $250

I bought my wife a NN 9.6 years ago for $275 (I thought I overpaid). She's a Professor of Nursing and it made for a fun gift. She has it hanging up in her office. I can't believe how much that thing is worth now.

Unless the addressee is someone of renown, it's not something I'd be into. There's an X-Men #1 out there somewhere personalized from Stan Lee to Harlan Ellison. That's the book I want!

FF1 From a personal standpoint, I like the comic better. From a practical standpoint, there's twice as many graded X-Men 1s. I'll go with the book that's harder to find.

What's the buyer's premium these days? 20% on top?

The FF was my first love -- the first series I collected and the first comics I bought with my own money as a kid. I also love Harlan Ellison, so to have Harlan's FF is

No Adventure Comics #303 in 9.8? (Inside joke only Legion collectors will understand).

As far as comics dying, I do worry that what happened to boxing has already happened to comics. Heavyweight title fights used to be on TV for free, which created a huge audience for the sport. Once it went to PPV, it made TONS of money, but it was essentially selling fights to fight fans and not creating new ones. So the audience for boxing shrank (and continues to shrink). In the town were I grew up you could probably buy comics at 60 locations. Grocery stores, 7-11s, book stores, drug stores, newsstands, etc. The average print run of ASM was what? 500,000 per issue? Something like that. Now in that same town there is 1 location to buy comics. It's a great LCS, but it's not exactly creating new fans. And average print runs are a fraction of what they used to be.

Comics are art first, commerce second. Buy the things you like, that appeal to you, or have sentimental value and don't ever apologize for that. But setting aside some $$$ for spec comics or great deals on comics that you can easily flip for a profit isn't a bad idea either. That way you'll have more $$$ for the comics that matter to you. I guess it's about balance. If someone is solely into comics for the money, they're really missing out.

This is a good article on the nuts and bolts of the Penguin Random House move. The part that jumped out to me was that this will make it easier for indie bookstores (not LCSs) to carry comics. Some do, but most do not (though they'll carry graphic novels and TPBs). The end result will be more places to buy comics, which for me is a good thing. Though at first glance this might seem like a negative to a LCS, to have a bookstore down the street selling comics, but the audiences are fairly different. LCS will always have the primary collecting audience. Indie bookstores with comics will cater more to the casual reader, or better yet, the parent who goes into a store with their kid and says, "I'm going over here to look at books, go pick out a comic." A return to those days is great for building the next generation of comic readers/fans/collectors.

Penguin Random is opening a new distribution facility that will only handle comics. Hopefully they will handle comics properly, if not I'm sure they will hear it from retailers and the collecting world.

#24 (GD-VG) - $60

750,000 different books were published in the US last year (printed books, not ebooks). I don't know the number of comic titles published but it's significantly less than 750,000. RH distributes to 2,500+ indie bookstores. Most are small mom and pop shops akin to your LCS. This is actually the opposite of getting closer to digital. RH does not want the book world to go digital (no major publisher does) because they will lose to Amazon. This is going to be fine.

Random House is Thor. Diamond is Ambush Bug. RH has a 1.1 million square foot distribution center and it's only part of their operations. I've been to their old facility outside of Baltimore, which was half that size and it was incredible. Plus, if RH falters one of the other major publishers (RH is one of The Big 5) could make a play for that business, so there's actual competition.

Weird thoughts at 5:00 am: 1) There are more venues hyping books. In sports betting you'd call them touts. More podcasts, youtube channels, and Instragram feeds (though I like the IG claim sales and think they're great, especially in a year without cons). Lots of these venues are all about spec, from pushing quasi big books like Hulk 180 to stuff like ROM 1 (there were rumors of a movie). All of this hyping up the market to serious collectors and comic fans with budgets large and small. 2) Then there are those who aren't into comics but get sucked in by the hype. Comics are like bitcoin to them. There was a non-collector in a FB group this week who said he was selling two rental properties to buy comics and wanted to know what he should buy beyond an AF15. I told him the ultra-rare Squirrel Girl #1 Adamantium Edition in 12.0 -- keep looking, it's out there!