Bookery

Even that's a complicated question. If the person can't tell me anything about the book, its provenance, what their expectations are even in the roughest ballpark... and it's just a single book floating all by its lonesome in the wild... I am really going to assume it is stolen. I will offer nothing for the book, but will, however, offer my video record and the seller's license plate number to the police when they inevitably come and ask if I've seen said book.

All true. However, sometimes your options for appraisers are limited, depending upon where you live. Most of the time, the experts in your area ARE dealers. I don't appraise collections anymore (as an official paid appraiser, obviously... as a dealer, I'm always appraising collections) precisely because I don't want to be out of the loop for buying the collection. A seller should always educate themselves about how best to sell a collection, so I don't disagree with the numerous posts above. It's just that it doesn't have to mean knowing details about the collection itself... it can also mean knowing how to ascertain from others whether it's really valuable or not... and that includes proper appraisers and/or trustworthy dealers. If my car breaks down, I don't want to have to research everything about my model to learn what it is, how to fix it, and what it should cost. What I do, instead, is research through word-of-mouth or reviews who is a trusted repair mechanic, and go to them. Sometimes, even with research it might not work out... but most times it will.

I agree with pretty much all of the above. As I said, I'm in a certain circumstance. If someone comes to me in my shop (or at a show) they are expecting a certain level of expertise from me... especially since I have a very smart upscale looking operation, and have rooms of collectibles, some very high end, that also gives the impression that I'm a dealer of some experience. I would operate the same way at a show because my name means something there too... however, in that circumstance there is little excuse not to find out if your collection is of value, as there are lots of immediate opinions at the ready. As soon as someone walks in the door, they are my customer, and I will treat them and their collection with respect, regardless of whether they know what they are doing or not. That's not virtue signalling... it's good self-interested business. Short-term windfalls at the expense of long-term reputation is never a good trade-off. But as I said... I owe them that as my customer. If, however, I'm the customer... I'm shopping at a convention, or a flea market, or an antique store, or even a garage sale... they are the seller and I am the client -- I owe them nothing of my expertise, and that includes even if they have a hot $500 comic for $5. My customers do not need to inform me if I have missed a $500 variant and have it in my $5 box either. I don't think we are in any disagreement. I just wanted to clarify that there are differences in circumstance, expectations, and what makes good business.

Here's another reason why the "educate yourself" rule can't always work. Sure... comics are actually easier to look up than most collectibles. But what if you... yes, even those of you on this board... and other heirs inherited a large rare book collection from your long forgotten grand-uncle. You're named executor. Would you know the difference between a bookclub and a publisher's edition? Each book and each publisher has a different way of designating (or not even designating) first editions... would you know the differences in all of the thousands and thousands of possibilities? Look it up, they say! Where? How? Most eBay sellers wouldn't have a clue as to what they have... and the vast majority of what they state is wrong. This is also true of ABE (American Book Exchange)... one assumes these dealers know their stuff. A few do. Most don't. Do you have any way of knowing which is which? You're executor of an estate... you don't have years to do this. Do you know movie posters? What's an original, what's a re-release, what's a reproduction, and what's just a plain forgery? Some pulps don't come up for sale for years. You can't just check them out on eBay. And it goes on and on with coins, stamps, etc., etc. Comics may seem easy to look up for us, but for many it's an impossible quagmire if you haven't spent years immersed in it. What do you do? You take them to a dealer and trust they won't screw you over. You don't need to educate yourself about the value of your collection. You do need to educate yourself as to which dealers are trustworthy and which exist only under the "buyer beware" dictum.

But it's often much more complicated than that. First off... in many of the collections I buy, there is no way the seller could educated themselves about their items in an hour. In the above, you seem to be assuming they are selling a single collectible book. If I buy an estate, there may be hundreds or thousands of items. There may be lots of drek with some truly incredible gems mixed in. It's different for me than someone just buying off of Craig's List. When you have a storefront, and you advertise you buy collectibles, people trust that I am the expert. Most people will just say "I've heard you make fair offers and so I've brought my deceased brother's collection to you". If I offer $50 for $5000 worth of stuff, yes... they will accept the offer, because they believe I will be fair with them. Which is why I would never do that, regardless of whether they've taken the time to do the research or not. Now, that said... maybe 10% or 20% is a fair offer, because of the amount of drek or time involved. But I let them know that. There are plenty of times someone's expecting $200 and I pay them $1,000. Because what happens if they become "educated" after the fact. Then there goes that reputation of trust I mentioned above. I get referrals from people who have sold me collections, sometimes a decade later. You have to be in it for the long haul. On the other hand, I agree with you above if the scenario is a flea market or convention where the seller, dealer or private, has taken the time to actually price their stuff. If they have a $5 sticker on a $500 book, the presumption is they have taken whatever time or lack thereof they wanted to put into it, and so yes, I do not owe them an education. As I said... it's complicated.

I agree! I just got my first warning from a mod on any board ever! (yeah... I deserved it...)

A good point, though I think Larryw7 had a decent response to this as well. It goes back to my point about defining popularity. Batman's popularity in 1966 was a lot different than his popularity in 1989. The TV show made Batman the same level of household word that Superman was. But is some ways, that wasn't necessarily a good thing. Batman was seen as pure camp (even though he no longer was that way in the comics at that point), and by extension, the media portrayed ALL comic books as Bam!Pow! juvenalia. And I think when the Chris Reeve Superman movie came out, the public awareness and popularity of the characters switched back again. So in reality, you are right... Batman surpassed Superman in popularity with the 1989 movie... but for the 2nd time! And this time his popularity was rooted in the modern-era Dark Knight version of Batman, and this time it stuck (though again... I'm referring to his status in English-speaking countries... not sure how it plays out globally). As a film historian (with credentials, believe it or not) the Batman TV show's popularity actually seems to me a bit odd. It shows the vast differences going on between TV and motion pictures at the time. TV had just instituted its new regulations against too much violence (it's why TV westerns like The Rifleman were no longer permitted, The Wild Wild West chose to cancel itself while still popular, and Gunsmoke turned from its rather dark noirish roots into a rural soap opera). Batman, campy or not, was an unabashed good-guy who punched his villains, but didn't blow them away. And they all would get their day in court. Meanwhile movies were moving into anti-heroes by the dozens (it did so post-WW2 as well, but now the violence was far more graphic, and the heroes more self-serving). Comic books were still following the TV patterns of storytelling, well into the '70s. The Dark Knight Returns actually took up the motion picture style of the late '60s... only 20 years later! (Had a Dark Knight type movie been made in the late '60s or early '70s, one can imagine it might have starred Lee Marvin in the title role).

I'm a big fan of old Hollywood westerns, but the constant shoulder-shots followed by a slight grimace can be annoying. Those were often large-caliber bullets made of lead... most likely a shoulder shot did considerable if not permanent damage, assuming you didn't die of infection afterward.

Still he falls behind James Bond... 1.2 million rounds of ammunition fired at him, often when he's out in the open as on a ski slope, and he's alive not because he did something incredible, but only because his opponents apparently keep firing into the sky. (Though even here you would think sooner or later one would drop back out of the sky and plunk him on the head... a whole different sort of Skyfall).

Ask him...

A fun thread, partly because there can be no "right" answer... it's all hypothesis and opinion. Vintage Comics is no more right or wrong in his choice than Shadroch or I am in ours. A lot of it also has to do with when you grew up and how you perceived things. It's also important to understand that the term "most popular" is not defined. It can be interpreted quite broadly. If one is thinking "only comics", then I suspect (without looking it up) that Superman might still have out-sold Batman well into the '70s, if for no other reason that DC still considered him their flagship character, and put him into as many different titles as they could... Superman, Action, Adventure (as Superboy), World's Finest, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, specials and 80-pagers, etc. But the broader media certainly covered Batman more intensively... at least for awhile... during and following the TV series, as did product merchandising. Another factor is the age of the reader, or fan, we are discussing. Younger kids (say 6-8) almost always identified with Superman. Older ones (13, 14 or older) generally preferred Batman (at least in my region of the country). And what about world-wide? Is Superman still better recognized in the far corners of the planet than Batman? I suspect he translates better in some cultures (he's more universal, whereas Batman is connected to a noirish urban environment, and has more ties to western criminal justice systems). In America, in the present, I don't think there is any doubt Batman is more popular than Superman (and Spider-Man may be more popular than either, but that's a separate debate). But worldwide? I don't have an answer.

I've never understood why folks think that money is the "bigger man" in a transaction. Money is just a way of facilitating trade. My comic might be "worth" 3 live chickens... but if I don't need 3 live chickens, we're not going to make a trade. Money is just a universal-trade certificate. And in fact... no matter how abundant a comic book is... it's still technically a lot rarer than money. Money is everywhere. My 9.4 silver-age key is not everywhere. If anybody should be smug about a transaction (not that one should be) it should be the person holding the collectible. Money is only valuable to someone if it's more useful than what they possess. Ideally, all transactions should make both parties happy. Money does have its place, however. I did once accept magic beans for a Showcase #22. Don't know what I was thinking. Frustrated, I tossed them in the back yard, and I've been paying through the nose for TruGreen treatments ever since.

7 hours ago, Golden Memories said: "Rule 5 : Don't wave your money in my face, I've seen Money before, and I'm Not Impressed, Its a childish tactic." You're lucky. I own a brick and mortar operation. I've seen pictures of money on TV of course... but not sure what it looks like up close and in person...

Shadroch is right. I was around for both Batman booms. In the '50s & early '60s, TV was looked down upon by movie stars. If you were considered a major film star, your agent would NOT let you do TV (except for talk shows, and that was to promote your latest movie). Batman changed that. Not only did film stars play villains in the series, but truly mega-stars would appear in cameos, because it was considered good for your career and "cool" to be seen on the show. And of course, as Shadroch said... there were the products... hundreds of them. The odd thing is, by the time the campy TV show arrived, the Batman comic had turned more serious (as has been pointed out in previous posts). But kids are more sophisticated than are given credit. We knew the TV show was silly and meant to be spoofy. But it got kids to look at the comics... and reading them, we preferred the more serious stories in the comics (to the reprints of those '50s stories with caveman Batman, zebra Batman, obese Batman, etc.) while still being able to be amused by the TV camp. I think that in the '70s it's probably true that the TV-effect began to wear off, and so that by 1989 it seemed to be a unique phenomenon to those who didn't grow up in the '60s. But (to their lazy discredit) journalists still use Bam! Pow! to initiate stories about comic books... but they aren't quoting lines from the 1989 movie. 1966 moved Batman into the forefront of public super-hero consciousness. 1989 ensured that Batman would maintain that title from then onward. The interesting things is... I was over 30 at the time and was dreading the 1989 release. When it was announced Keaton would be playing the role, everyone I knew groaned as we thought for certain the movie would simply be doing the campy TV show version on the big screen. I agree with VintageComics... when the opening score started playing, we knew something was going to be different right off the bat (pun intended). And though there is some camp to the movie... it was by far the darkest and most serious treatment of a super-hero in cinema up until then... and was clearly influenced by Miller's version. So like most things in the world... it was a progression of events. But the question was, when did Batman first take over from Superman... and I give the nod to 1966.

I agree. As a kid in the '60s I never much cared for Superman. He was so powerful that in order to have any conflict, they had to keep dragging out nuggets of kryptonite in every issue. I preferred heroes with no powers, or with offbeat limited powers. I was in the minority in the '60s, but my favorite heroes were The Challengers, Sea Devils, Doom Patrol, and Metamorpho! And in the '60s, I'm pretty sure every kid I knew preferred Batman to Superman.

This is indeed a significant service and doesn't get the credit it should. Remember... every book you are looking at was bought and paid for in pure speculation so that you would have a selection to peruse. If the book was an absolute guaranteed sale, you wouldn't get to see it at all because it would already have gone to a customer's pull-list.

I have this happen most often with books (hardbacks, paperbacks). It will be some obscure paperback that they go on about at some length... how it was their favorite book as a youth, been looking for it for a decade, etc. They usually begin their saga with "I know you don't have this, but...", or "I know you've never heard of this, but...". Of course, I have a massive stock of vintage paperbacks (because they seldom sell, so they accumulate), and can usually come up with a copy for them. Price? $2. Answer... "Great! I'll come back and get that sometime when I have the money!". Never do of course. This is not a bizarre one-shot. This happens probably a half-dozen times every year.

Here's what I say to a dealer I think is over-priced.... I don't. I just move on. Comic collectors forget that there are millions of books out there. The selection available is mind-boggling. In fact, it's probably a good thing for dealers that most folks really aren't aware of just how many copies of many books exist, or else much of the market might be worth half of what it currently is. Unless you're collecting Centaurs, or other uncontested rarities, or are looking for a grade in which there are only 5 existing copies... sooner or later you should be able to find the book you need at a fair price. And if you ARE seeking those kind of rarities... there is little reason to expect a seller to negotiate on them.

I don't do shows anymore, and I realize that is a whole different animal. But here in the shop I no longer negotiate. My prices at their highest are in line with market, and most books are priced significantly below that. I post a volume discount chart, 10%, 15%, 20% off depending upon how much you spend. Sometimes I don't make much on a given book at the higher discount level, but the hope is that you make it up on other items that the customer might be encouraged to buy to get the best discount. Collectors and dealers get the exact same deal. If you spend like a dealer, I see no reason you shouldn't get that level of discount. Once buyers get used to the idea, it's been working pretty well. It also keep consistency, for if I'm not around the staff isn't put in the position of haggling. Of course, you have to be reasonably priced to begin with. If you jack up prices 50% over FMV then offer discounts, few are going to be fooled.

Yep. They usually end up saying "Thanks... I'll keep that in mind."

Well, not always. Because if you point out that you have 40 years of experience, you are called "melodramatic". True. Well, at least you admit that in your vernacular the word "always" means "going all the way back in time to ... 2 or 3 posts ago". Got it. A joke, of course, since I'm sure I have never mentioned Uncle Ben in any previous post. That said... you have uncannily gleaned my views on this. Stan Lee perpetually misrepresented events in each re-telling of the origin. Uncle Ben got what he deserved. If you read the original police reports, it appears Ben hired the so-called "burglar" to bump off Aunt May so Uncle Ben could keep his massive rice fortune after May threatened divorce. But the burglar had been to the optometrist that day, and his eyes were still blurry and dilated. Since Ditko drew all old people pretty much the same, it's easy to see how the burglar got confused and shot Ben instead. It was ironic justice, and a reporter named O'Henry laid this out, but his article was rejected due to pressure from the "Bullpen".

Almost everything you do is a couched put-down... nearly 55,000 posts filled with them. Get real, RMA. I'm not thrilled when somebody is insulting, but let's face it... there's a lot of that on these boards, and I give it back to those I think deserve it as well, so no biggie. But to continually pretend you can't read your own posts gets ridiculous. You called into question my experience, I answered. You called my response "melodramatic" (you do this to the extreme... constantly "correct" people on how they should post, what is the appropriate tone, how they should say things instead, etc.). Your opinion of the style of my response, were it melodramatic or not, is not relevant to the discussion. You are not my editor nor my theater critic. You also didn't just repeat my "insult" at the end... you added in "let's hope you can work on that" and then added further "remember to keep the personal comments out of the discussion". That's a series of put-downs (couched or otherwise) in just one post (not to mention once again condescendingly instructing others how they should post and what they can say). Then above you accuse me of being "snide" (again, no problem slinging insults... but to continually insist you don't make personal comments is laughable). If you want to debate reasonably, then fine. If you want to joust, I'll joust until I get bored of it (which is usually pretty quickly). But the incessant holier-than-thou approach that is your whole shtick is tiresome and simply not worth the time.

Well, not always. Because if you point out that you have 40 years of experience, you are called "melodramatic".

I wan't going to respond to you further since your previous post was a primer on what makes so many discussions online intolerable... pedantry capped off by couched put-downs and in the same breath, a lecture about not getting personal! But... here, you present a decent argument sans condescension, so I'll play. I don't really find this argument convincing. If buyers know that a dealer over-grades, then simply don't buy from that dealer! It is a simple concept that served me well long before CGC. With few exceptions, the majority of comics that most people seek are hardly in scarce supply. And I'm not necessarily faulting people for not feeling confident in grading... it takes years to become a consistent grader (good and bad is subjective... but consistency is demonstrable). Some don't have the time to learn it, but still want to collect. And some just don't have the eye and facility for detail, and simply never will. I suspect our differences of opinion, and experience, are because we operate in different circles. Your circle of acquaintances, probably some on these boards, are probably high-end, long-time collectors who are educated about grade nuance. They will indeed look at the book and not the number. But I maintain this is still a minority... and a fairly small minority... of collectors out there. If I put two copies of the same issue out in my store... a 9.6 and a 9.8... and yet I'm certain the 9.6 is the better-looking book... I can argue until I'm blue in the face... but 9 out of 10 (maybe even 99 out of 100) will still buy the 9.8, and will still pay far more for it than the 9.6, because of the NUMBER, regardless of the book inside. And that's because they know when it comes time to sell, they in turn will get more for the possibly over-graded 9.8 than the possibly under-graded 9.6. It's the same story with a book that has a single dot of color-touch vs. an ugly, but unrestored copy. Most will buy the latter because, regardless of the book inside, they know that CGC has created perceived value with its NUMBER (or in this case, LABEL COLOR). At any rate... when I state "buy the book and not the number" is essentially meaningless, I say so not because it's bad advice (which is how I think you are taking it) but because it does't matter how many times it is stated, the majority of buyers aren't going to do that, and don't feel confident in doing that. You can tell a smoker 1,000 times it's bad for his health, but if he doesn't care, or can't help himself, then the constant repetition of it similarly becomes "essentially meaningless". That is what I mean. As for your comment in your previous post, I suspect I do not handle as many CGC books as you do. But I am one of CGC's original dealers (with a 2-digit member number), and I always have CGC books in the shop (the quantity varies considerably as with anything based on what I'm able to pick up). I currently have two high-end books submitted to CGC as we type. I have handled their books to some degree or another since their initiation.

You're right. I've only dealt with collectors every day for 40 years... what could I possibly know about why they buy what they buy? But aside from that... my comment is not only accurate, but self-evident. Logic is logic, and an endless desire to constantly challenge everybody about everything doesn't change that.