Bookery

On 7/17/2023 at 9:36 AM, tth2 said:

The truth is that the only people realistically interested in buying the collection in one go would be those who could buy it cheaply enough to break it up themselves to sell at a substantial profit.

Exactly.  Just my own business as an example, worth a small fraction of the Levine collection... if I needed to liquidate it is extremely unlikely I could sell the stock as a whole.  There would be different buyers for the comics, for the pulps, for the movie items, for the books.  Even at 10-cents on the dollar, would someone who only deals in comics want the hassle of hauling out all of the other material and finding buyers for it?  Probably not.  Also... if one agreed to the caveat that the collection not be broken up, would that mean issues couldn't even be traded in for upgrades?  If I had the money to buy every DC comic ever published, the only fun left for me, as a collector, would be to search out upgrades over the years for the issues that need it.

Well... the thread did ask for unpopular golden-age opinions... so here goes.  I wonder how much longer Hitler covers will be a thing.  I was updating my buy guide and to be sure... these covers are either stable or still increasing in value.  But you have a whole generation (or two) coming up who really have no idea who that is.  They hear the name a lot... but it's usually just bandied about by every political side who calls someone they disagree with Hitler.  Before Hitler came along, who was the previous dictator / conqueror that would have been universally known?  Would there be lots of collectors out there for Napoleon covers?  The generation that fought that war is all but gone.  Much of the generation whose fathers fought that war are also gone.  Will there come a point where younger collectors will no longer care to spend $10k or $20k or $50k for a cover featuring just another murky historical figure that for them comes from a vague and distant past?  I guess I'm not offering an opinion per se, as much as a rumination... 

On 6/12/2023 at 11:39 AM, tth2 said:

What grade, though?  Mulch-quality GA books, I can believe are still out there.  High grade, not so much.

Hold on, that's proprietary!  "Mulch" is one of the official Bookery grades here in the shop (especially for the last collection I picked up... ).

On 6/22/2023 at 8:57 PM, Book Guy said:

That being said, your larger point is true. What has collapsed is the middle of the market, both middling demand and middling prices. Also maybe middling condition as well. Demographic and generational cohort changes are playing themselves out but the final resolution to that is probably past the end of my career so I don't worry about it. If I buy something that sold in the past, but now there are simply too many copies online or most especially too many CHEAP copies, I don't bother to list them, just donate them to a Thrift. Part of that has to do with my short time horizon. Ten years ago I might have listed them and waited. Not anymore.

People who have walk-in shops seem to be doing less well than me and your analysis is probably spot on for those people. Having a bricks and mortar Bookstore seems hard nowadays.

For people who are mostly comic collectors and not that interested in Books, I'll point out that Books and Comics sell differently from each other. There is a very strong emotional/psychological will to buy for comic collectors, a deep and ready market for 'keys' and history of fevered speculation and (mostly) rising prices None of those really apply to Books in the same way. Most Books (except say 'necessary' or 'useful' Books like Textbooks, repair Manuals etc) seem to be bought almost on a whim! There has always been some speculation and flipping in the Book World, but really a tiny fraction of what is common w/ comics.

In short: pick the right books and price them reasonably and they will still sell. The percentage of the available Books that are 'right' is a diminishing percentage of what's available though. I would agree with you that it is a fading business, more like an Antique business than the Book business of yore. However it's still viable and will continue to be.

You make some good points and offer a bit of hope (at least for a few years).  It's also possible there's a bit of a bounce-back... I haven't done that much with books since just before the pandemic.  Heritage gets strong prices for stuff that seems pretty mediocre to me... but they also have a million-dollar hype machine behind them, so I'm not sure their prices are reflective of the overall market.  I do sell mainly through my store, so there's that.  In the '80s and '90s Dayton had a very strong book market, with one of the nation's largest independent bookstores (now long since sold out to a chain), and over a dozen used/rare book stores (now there's only one that's mainly mail-order and another that's $1 books only).  For years Stephen King was one of the most requested authors (I'm talking collectibles, not reading copies they could get anywhere)... someone would literally walk into my shop every week or two wanting collectible King stuff.  It's now probably been several years since someone even inquired about them.  

So definitely the book shop business is all but collapsed.  Larry McMurtry owned a famous bookstore (actually a book village) and was quoted late in his life that "there are no longer buyers for what I have to sell" (paraphrased from memory).  When I started out ('80s) I had a small room of used science-fiction paperbacks and would do about $500 per week in sales.  Before I closed it out I had a huge 1000-sq. foot room filled with paperbacks and hardbacks we marked down to $1 each.  And these were quality titles... I didn't carry the multitudinous mass-market stuff you could find at every Half-Price books.  All high grade.  Toward the end we were down to doing $20 per week.  Now obviously these weren't collectibles, but it's indicative of the overall desirability of physical reading copies.  

But you are right in that rare stuff in quality jackets can still sell (maybe not locally) for now.  But a lot of books under that criteria are scarcer than most comics (even golden-age) to begin with.

On 6/21/2023 at 10:46 AM, october said:

Would like to hear more about this. Are former $100-200 books now worth $10-20? What about $1000+ books? Why do you think this happened? General readership decline? eBay showing that former rarities aren't rare? Something else?

You have a couple of generations now that really don't read (or at least, read digital only).  Books are costly and take up a lot of space.  It's almost impossible to buy quality bookshelves anymore without having them custom made, because it doesn't pay to manufacture them.  The concept of a library isn't even calculated into the construction of even expensive homes anymore.  Physical books are now considered archaic.  And... the current generation (teens and early twenties) don't really collect anything... all of their time is taken up texting and visiting YouTube and blogs.  And to be fair... whole swaths of authors just aren't relevant to current generations.  As i said, some of the really expensive books are still expensive for the time being just out of tradition.  But many others just don't have much of a market.  Markets are more art-driven now, and most hardback books don't have that much artistic design (with some exceptions like Burroughs).  So if you don't even know who the author is, and the jacket design is just routine... why would you be motivated to shell out money collecting them?

On 6/7/2023 at 12:49 AM, OtherEric said:

You're not wrong, to the point where I almost wonder if the date is a typo...

The book being advertised, "Strictly Private", came out in 1929.  There's no telling what sort of reprint this is, however, or when it was released.  It's possible the entire magazine is cobbled together from older reprints?

On 5/26/2023 at 11:12 AM, manetteska said:

While Pulps overall have increased in price, whatever Heritage is up to is borderline insane. I wonder what they're up to over there...

There appears to be a lot of new pulp buyers leaping into the fray that have no real background knowledge of the market.  1940s Weird Tales issues are quite common.

On 4/27/2023 at 3:23 PM, hyhhyss12 said:

Something to realize which I wish people new to this hobby is that the majority of comic shops are predatory to those in need and or those who do not understand the pricing and worth of comics. For a dealer to insult someone by saying they'd only pay a few cents on each comic is really terrible.(There are plenty of comics that aren't even worth that).  It is always worth it to sell things yourself. (No)  Even if you get someone to do a consignment for you it'll be better than selling to pretty much any shop. (No) They'll make hundreds of percent in profit for each comic you give. (No) Because this market is still looked at as niche you will always have people assuming the comics are worthless and give them away to these vultures for pennies. (If you do absolutely no research about who you are selling to, then yes, it can happen).

On 4/7/2023 at 10:40 AM, Robot Man said:

I don’t know how the rare book world views it. Obviously in nice original condition is probably most important but is resto as big a no no as it is in comics?

The "rare book market" is so old that it actually is far more specialized than the comic book market.  20th-century books are most comparable to comics... with this, usually, the dust-jacket is king.  You want the jacket as sharp and in as original condition as possible. What is interesting here is that unlike comics in which "married" parts are a big hit in valuation, in books it doesn't matter if the book and the jacket are from the same copy, as long as both are original to that edition (in many cases there wouldn't be a way to tell anyway).

With older books it gets trickier.  Especially with books from the 1700s and earlier, it can be hard to determine what exactly is an "original binding".  Many books were sold as loose sets of pages to be bound by the owner in the manner he saw fit (often to match the "look" of a library).  In some cases, a fine leather re-binding of an older book, especially by a famous binder, might actually be worth more than its cheap original binding.  Fiction collectors often desire the book to be as issued from the publisher.  Non-fiction collectors (science, exploration, etc.) are often more interested in the content than overly concerned with how it was bound.  Of course, in all cases, completeness is critical... are all of the illustrations (plates), maps, endpapers, fold-outs, etc., still intact...

On 4/6/2023 at 10:45 AM, Tec-Tac-Toe said:

 (recently, my jokes land as flat as flat can be)

Oh no!  Another pressing thread!  

On 3/4/2023 at 12:07 PM, Mmehdy said:

This is the danger that CGC has to deal with in  which making the CGC slab more foolproof should be the goal. We have to agree that all buyers are not equal. What we do not want is for a 40 year collector who wants to start buying slabs be treated like this....it is bad for everyone....we need more acceptance from older collectors that slab collecting is safe. Raw of course this fraud could not have been accomplished. So if we want a heathy growing slab market....we need to create a posting with suggestions from everyone here as to how to improve product security. Here is one of mine...have a website reference special ID number and website IS ON THE FRONT OF the slab  thats says " Verify with CGC prior to purchase"  A sort of disclaimer...or warning....it would prove especially helpful in this instance..a newbie slab buyer. What is your suggestion?

Though to be fair (and I may be wrong about this) weren't the slabs being used an older version than what we have now, despite "newer-looking" labels being inserted in them?

On 3/4/2023 at 10:56 AM, GrasshopperFF said:

You don’t need no Steenking badges, either. There’s golf in dem der hills. Great movie. 

On 3/3/2023 at 11:15 PM, Man Behind the comics said:

Hey there everybody. A word from the horse's mouth. Yes I was scammed. Yes it was probably my own fault. You see I have been collecting for 40 some years but that makes me the perfect Target for a scam like this. You see I am old school. I don't do much with cgc books and as a matter of fact I didn't even have a cgc account until tonight. So no I am not an expert in cgc counterfeits nor do I use a Jeweler's lens. I have never even cracked open a cgc book. Out of my personal collection of 50 plus long boxes less than a half of a short box  are cgc books. I truly believe that Marvel's kryptonite is the scammer that sold all of these counterfeit books. He is trying to sell his story on here just like he tried to do on my Facebook page. Marvel's kryptonite is the same person as Vera bjornsen out of Seattle on Facebook, Ryan lacklighter and Riddick somebody or other. These are all aliases. His Facebook was created an hour before he posted on my site. No photos of course. So yes I blocked him when I realized he was the scammer himself.

I don't use cgc often. I don't go by cgc prices, I go by overstreet regular book prices. I paid a fair dealer price for the Hulk number one counterfeit. Let me put it this way, I could have bought a decent car for what I paid. Yes, I told him it was worth more than my offer and even showed him examples. Yes I have a bill of sale in the scammers own handwriting to prove what I paid. Do you think I would have come out and told everyone my story for just a few thousand dollars lost? You think I would have endured the ridicule of all of the armchair cgc quarterbacks out there?

I know I will never see a penny of my money again. That's a given. I shared my story because I didn't want this scammer to take advantage of someone else. Even though I could have saved face by simply saying nothing, I didn't want any of you to fall for the same thing.

Here are a few facts. The scammer knew what he was doing. Prior to selling the Hulk comic to me he tried to sell them to a dealer on the west coast. That dealer informed him then that they were fake. So yes that means when he sold them to me he knew they were fake even if he did get them at an estate thing which I do not believe one bit. Simply for the fact that photos from the scammer have surfaced with different serial numbers for the same Hulk comic.

Fact number two, his story of them being on hibid and at an estate sale place came up false. I looked into the places where he said he purchased them. He lied.

Fact number three, I used my real name, my real email, my real phone number. So far our scammer has given at least three fake names.

Fact number four I am only one of three people that was scammed by this fellow. The other two didn't even know they were scammed until I made my announcement.

Fact number 5 when I first found out they were fake I gave the scammer the benefit of the doubt and notified him. He gave me the runaround saying he would make it right of course and then he ghosted me. I informed him that I would be contacting the police the next day and that if this was all just as misunderstanding that he should come down and give his side of the story so we could all be on the same page. I gave him that opportunity before I knew just how oceans 11 this was. 

The scammer Ryan / Riddick / Vera bjornson/marvel's kryptonite has told so many lies that he can't keep track of them all and we can easily point them out.

Thanks.  This clarifies a very confusing situation that was spread across 2 threads, though I think in the last couple of days most of us began to figure out what was taking place, especially with the sudden burst of incoherent rants that came out of nowhere from the one poster.

https://www.ha.com/c/search-results.zx?N=0+790+231+4294937841&limitTo=4294937841

On 3/3/2023 at 8:03 AM, ThothAmon said:

Swipe or copy?

 

Both are Street & Smith publications, so it's just an in-house re-use of George Rozen's art.