Bookery

They make a gross profit (i.e. we sell more than the Diamond cost), but not enough to make a net profit when you factor in the staff time, and the overhead cost of the space they occupy.

New comics for us are now simply a loss leader. Sales keep dropping year after year after year. But you worry if you get rid of them, will it reduce traffic and hurt other departments? At some point, however, there will come a tipping point for us.

And to be fair... at least with major authors their works can be found in numerous reprints, so I'm not criticizing the shift... just observing. As you say, people's taste in literature changes every couple of generations. And though that is true of art to some extent... pop art in particular seems to hold up better over time (and when it comes to exploitation, even current comic covers are tame by 1930s pulp standards). A lot of golden-age comic stories are hard to abide today other than for nostalgia and a sense of history... but the art can still be memorable and fascinating.

I track the market for pulps, and even without a grading service for them, the same thing is happening there. There has been a major decline in interest in pulps because of the authors within (Raymond Chandler? Dashiell Hammett? Robert Bloch? Philip K. ? Never heard of 'em) and a substantial increase in the last few years in the prices for "significant" covers.

Moreover, James Bond is NOT in the public domain. I'm assuming the Ian Fleming estate still has a certain say in how his character is portrayed... it's not just up to Hollywood (or whatever international conglomerate the Bond franchise has now become).

"Miss Me Yet?" -- LCS

At present, yes. But how many $10 comics became $100 comics in short order once CGC came along and gave them "official" high grade status? Would a common comic like Hulk 181 (one of a thousand examples) be worth only a fraction of its current value had CGC not come along. Almost certainly.

Reasons 3 , 4 and 5 are particular problems with the concept of slabbing pulps. But I am a bit surprised no company has considered slabbing paperbacks. There are more paperbacks on the planet than comic books. Unlike pulps, which had a finite lifespan which ended in the 1950s, paperbacks are still in existence, and just as there are folks slabbing last week's comics, there would be collectors who would want their favorite authors, even contemporary ones, slabbed. The collector market is fairly small for vintage paperbacks, but once graded, I suspect that alone would increase demand many-fold. The slab would have to be completely different, of course... likely something that could be shelved like a book spine-outward. But if they can grade carded toys, they can certainly come up with something for books. You would need experts on hand, however... knowing which books/publishers used lamination and which didn't, which books came off the presses with certain defects, which books have pages that yellowed over time, and which books just looked that way from day one, etc. There are a multitude of thicknesses to deal with, and two or three different height-dimensions.

Speaking of Bookery's guide... for what it's worth, after a 14-year hiatus, I've finally completed the 3rd edition (well, still have to add forward and cross-indexes), but the main body is done. Much improved over previous editions, IMHO. However... not sure how to get it published in today's market... or if I'll bother. I can't self-publish like I did the last one... I was able to get a good deal from the printer (my brother) but he's no longer in the business, so getting printing from non-family will be much more expensive. Besides, I no longer have the time to box-up and ship 1,000 separate books all over the world. I also don't have a private pulp collection anymore from which to obtain scans (can't just go using folks' scans off the internet). Most pulp people want a physical book... they aren't looking to download them onto a reader. May contact Overstreet (a long time ago they showed interest in doing one), but market may be too small for them to bother with, and I'm not sure if they end up owning all rights or not. Most of the old reference book publishers have bit the dust in the past decade. Anyway... bit of a dilemma, but will figure something out. If not... I at least have my copy for buying and pricing.

Pulp grading isn't really much different than comic grading... it's just that one has to adjust to the fact that you aren't going to find much that will grade above an equivalent 6.0.

It's a common, but dated term. A cowpuncher was just another name for a cowboy in the 1800s... though perhaps used as more of an insult. "No, daughter... I won't let you marry that no-account stone-broke cow-puncher!" "Punching" cows was another term for "herding" them.

Not necessarily. You can't make that assumption without more facts. I own my buildings... no rent involved. But over the years my property taxes have risen over 100%. Repairs and maintenance costs are always rising. Maybe the landlord is greedy... or maybe he's forced to pass along his own skyrocketing expenses.

Here's a similar theme in the pulps. This is a copy I had a couple of months back. Can be had for around $600... if you can find one.

Most collectors are chasing the same books/genres, which of course forever escalates the prices for those items. The vast majority of golden-age comics have actually dropped in price over the years, and there are thousands of issues that can be had cheaply. Some have been mentioned here already. Most people avoid funny animal or other humor... but there's a lot of interesting and weird stuff out there ("Babe- Darling of the Hills" has to be one of the most surreal comics ever published). The early Looney Tunes with full-background art have some spectacular covers... especially if found in higher grade. Photo-cover comics often don't look like much in low grade... but it's amazing how they glow in higher grades. But if you're into the more popular cover themes... good-girl, horror, over-the-top crime covers... there are still the pulps which blow away anything found in comics (it's not even close) and yet can be had for a fraction of the price (though values on these are starting to climb quickly). As has been mentioned before... whole publishers are comparatively inexpensive... Fawcett, Lev Gleason, Quality (great covers and art on Blackhawk, for instance, and still pretty cheap), ACG (I actually in some ways prefer ACG to some of the "harder" horror titles... they often had a whimsical fantasy feel to them, and the Whitney covers among others are pretty neat). There's a lot of great art in '50s war comics as well, and even the Atlas issues are generally not too cost-prohibitive.

I don't think it's likely someone will mistake this for "an original, complete, 1963 issued AS #1". The "NG" grade should take care of that. I think it's possible one might think they were getting a coverless ASM #1 with a photo-copy copy. The difference between a coverless #1, and a valueless coverless MT is enormous. Yes... it says what issue it is on the label... but since this appears to be the only entity of this kind we are aware of, it's not something someone would expect... especially if they hit the Buy It Now quickly.

If fake comics ever hit the market in numbers like has happened with coins, this is the way it will be done. You don't have to counterfeit the comic.... just the cover inside a counterfeit slab. And you don't do Action #1... too much scrutiny. You stick to readily available mass-market collectibles like Hulk #181, NM #98, FF #48, etc. Don't get greedy... make 7.0s, 8.0s, 9.0s at best... not 9.8s. Disseminate them at half price at shows around the country. Hard to trace back.

Exactly. It's not about kids reading comics... it's about anybody reading anything that's not on an illuminated screen. We have thousands of books in our shop... science-fiction, mystery, horror, literature, plus vintage and collectible editions. Years ago we would sell $500 to $1,000 per week just in used books (with a smaller selection than we have now). Last week we sold $32. Books are dead. And it is ludicrous to think that comic books alone will be immune to this trend. Books were king for 500 years... it was a great run while it lasted. But it's over.

People don't like to hear this, but there are only 3 Playboy issues that are in demand any more. #1 of course... which despite being fairly common, still brings big money in grade. #2 is actually scarcer than #1, and there is some demand for it among completists. And the Jan. 1955 issue with Bettie Page is still sought after. You might get okay money for the rest of the 1954 issues. But that's about it. Late '50s issues can still be had for $10 - $15 each. Mid-'60s issues are all but worthless in today's market. The problem is, all those nifty photos and articles are now available on the internet... legal or otherwise. We priced all Playboys after about 1963 at $2.50 each in our store. They just sat there. Eventually we stacked them in the back room... over 2,000 of them... and offered them to dealers and collectors at 50-cents apiece if they would at least buy them by the box. No takers. After 3 years, and the weight of them literally causing the floor to sag, we threw them all in the dumpster... all 2,000 issues. It took several weeks to get rid of them because they were too heavy to put in the dumpster all at once. Sell #1 at auction. Get what you can for the 1954 and Jan. '55 issues. The rest... don't bother with.

I wouldn't price a raw comic quite as high as a CGC book (in most cases) because the plastic case itself is expensive and has value which must be taken into consideration. But I do take issue with the insinuation above that any grader that doesn't work for CGC is not an "actual professional". While the majority (vast) of sellers on eBay probably don't know what they are doing when it comes to grading, there are plenty of us that do. Where do you think CGC graders come from? They are either former dealers / collectors that have a certain number of years of experience, or they are novices who are then trained by the former. The very fact that CGC (or any grading company) has an ever-changing roster of graders with wide variances in experience means that, through no fault of their own, they simply won't have the consistency of someone like me, who is the sole grader of all of my collectibles for 35 years. There are dealers on eBay and at shows whose grading customers trust, or who grade even tighter than CGC, meaning many people buy their books and have them upgraded when they send them in to be slabbed.I can usually sell one of my raws more quickly than a CGC book in the same grade. Plus... many raws have not been pressed to maximum potential, while the assumption for many graded books is that they have been. In this case, a buyer spotting a potential pressing candidate might readily pay "CGC value" for a raw book, figuring it can be upgraded beyond its present state.

Yes... I'm sure this is what is meant. There is nothing nefarious about this at all. It's no different than a hardback publisher putting out a limited signed edition of X number of copies. It doesn't affect the mainstream run of the book. The only difference is, that with the comic community demands for all 9.8s all the time, they are over-printing the run to ensure they have 180 viable 9.8 copies. Then they are destroying the rest. It may be just another silly self-made "rarity", but it is no more "evil" than any other limited edition ever done for a product. I imagine all of the limited edition collector plate manufacturers did the same thing, expecting a certain number of plates to be broken during the manufacturing process so you over-print initially to ensure you have the ultimate number you need.

I'll second this. Phil Stephenson-Payne's site (Galactic Central) is the single greatest pulp reference ever assembled. Contents lists and images of thousands of pulps, digests, and early girly magazines. In regards to my own far humbler reference guide, after 14 years I am finally nearing completion of the 3rd (and likely final) edition of the Bookery pulp guide. The question is this time... are there any reference publishers left to produce it? Many of the old companies that specialized in this sort of thing are long out of business. I'm not keen to self-publish again, even though there's more money to be had in doing so... but profits, if any, on reference books are minimal at best, and I don't look forward to packing up and mailing out 1,000 volumes as I did in the past. So we'll see... if all else fails, I may simply upload it to the internet in some manner, though I'm old-fashioned and prefer a book format personally.

Without having any chance to read the details, I'm sure eBay will be collecting and distributing the sales tax. It's easy for a large corp. like eBay or Amazon to simply design a program that incorporates the various tax codes and automatically applies them to the auction result or sale (the govt isn't going to want to track and audit 100,000 different eBay sellers individually, either). It won't directly affect the seller, but buyers will have to get used to paying sales tax on everything online in the future. As Amazon expands the numbers of its warehouses, this is already happening in a number of states. If buyers switch to Facebook selling in sufficient numbers, the govt. will simply force Facebook to do the same thing in some form or another. Want to get an even bigger headache? Technically, there are not 50 different tax rates for the various states. There are thousands! Every county in America adds to the state its own additional rate of sales tax.

Welcome, everybody, to my world. As a small brick and mortar business I have to file over 100 tax forms per year (20 separate forms are due this month of January alone). I hate the idea of all of this excessive taxation (and frankly the hours involved TO PAY the taxes is of more concern to me than the actual amount, at this point). But our business has also been getting killed by all of the unequal applications of taxation. I have to compete with about 2-dozen serious eBay dealers just in my local area alone. They don't collect sales taxes. Neither do the show dealers who set up several times a year just a few miles from my shop. I deal in a lot of high-end items. But it's difficult to sell, say, a $3000 copy of Hulk 181 when I have to charge $200 in sales tax, and the guy up the road at the comic convention, or the guy on eBay, doesn't. If something isn't done soon to equalize the tax collection burden between shops and virtual shops, there won't be any physical retailers of anything much longer. I suspect you show dealers are going to come under a lot more scrutiny in coming years as well... not only are sales taxes not being collected, but a lot of income there goes unreported as well.

I think the whole "the industry needs comics to generate IP" is probably a myth. If a title is only being read by 35,000 people or so (the population of one small municipality), why would creating a character there make any difference to the 99% of the populace that will never have heard of said character come movie time? Besides, new characters can be introduced in video games, on YouTube, even in TV commercials. But with likely over 10,000 trademarked characters out there already, do you even need to ever invent a new one? There's enough heroes and villains out there already to populate the movies for the next 100 years, and fans will tire of the genre long before that. Besides, it makes more sense to intro a character in a movie itself, where it can be seen by millions and judged solo-sequel worthy in and of itself. I suspect print comics exist as much through corporate inertia at this point as anything. But I predict, in the next 2-5 years, one of the Big Two (probably Disney) will announce, with little warning, that they are ceasing print publication save for select trades and expensive limited editions.

Since this thread has some interesting potential, I'll keep it alive by posting a real one this time. However... this isn't so much a strange event as simply an annoying one... and one probably similar to many of us. Now, I rarely go to look at collections anymore, unless it's simply too large a collection for the customer to bring to me. I buy collections nearly every day, so if I'm out on a wild goose chase with a non-serious seller, I'm likely missing a collection that came into the shop while I was out. But in my younger naive days I went galloping after collections quite often. This call was a typical one... we've got Action #1... really really really... the real one! Now even then I wasn't dumb enough to get duped into this on the surface. This was in the mid-'90s, and the Treasury-size reprint was only about 20 years old, and you'd get a call like this about every month. Nobody just has an Action #1 by itself tucked away. I explained that this was likely the oversize reprint. "No! It's literally impossible", they proclaim. You see, according to them, this book has been locked away in a safe since at least the 1950s, and they just opened the safe recently for the estate. I don't know what they have, but I'm still certain it's not the 1938 book. However, they go on to say the have around 200 other old comics, all with 10-cent cover prices. Okay... so now I'm intrigued... forget about the Action #1, they may have an interesting group of other golden-age books. So I travel way out into the country... about a 60-minute drive. It's a modest ranch home tucked back in the trees. I go inside and a whole family is sitting around waiting for my arrival. First things first... they want me to see their fabulous Action #1. They bring it from out of whatever sanctuary they store it and hand it to me. Surprise! It's the big ol' Treasury reprint. I'm annoyed not because it's not real... but because they clearly fabricated a story about it's history. I'm assuming they are going to be enraged when I tell them what it is. But I tell them. Now to add insult to injury, they don't get mad, but rather matter-of-factly reply-- "Yeah... that's kinda what we thought." So by now you're probably remembering that news item from the '90s about the rural Ohio family found slaughtered in their home... no clue as to their killer save one member clutching a crumpled up '70s reprint comic? No, no, no. That didn't happen. I kept my calm. And I remembered to inquire about the other comics. "Of course", they said. So we went down into the basement where they did indeed have what they said (this time)... about 200 10-cent comics divided into a dozen stacks or so. Again... a bit of a disappointment... no hero or sf books... nearly all Dells comprised of various westerns, Disney, and other humor books. Not terrible condition, but nothing special... about "vg". Still... it's okay box-fodder and if I can make a deal, the whole trip won't be wasted. So I ask what they want for them. "Oh... these are not for sale. We just thought you'd find them neat to look at!" ...... Did a mention that I rarely drive out to look at collections anymore?