Bronty

At the very beginning (I'm talking first year of VGA), that was pretty well their only grade (85). THey basically didn't give 90s and 80s weren't worth submitting. Eventually they added the half grades which helped a lot, and started grading more leniently, meaning more of the range was used, but I hear you.

VGA provided a service but didn't grow the market. Wata partnered with heritage, which is huge, got clink going, hit the shows and reached out.... lots of people love the material, we all grew up with it. Its just getting them to know its even a thing. They've been successful at that where VGA (with all credit to the work that they do) never even attempted that.

I dunno about all that Joe but I know that when you bring down barriers like education, liquidity, and price tracking, prices go up.

Nah the retail boards are well built. Prototype boards are less stable.

You know, I once sent a book on St John to a favorite artist of mine (Tom DuBois, painted a lot of the late 80s to mid 90s Konami covers) and after Tom read the book he came to realize that he'd seen his work before; when Tom when to Art Institute in Chicago, his drawing teacher still had St John pencil samples up for the class to learn from. The teacher's teacher had been St. John. Was quite a revelation for Tom at the time and quite the unexpected connection for me between two artists I regarded highly.

Did the neck bother you in person? The bird's neck looks off to me; I find it distracting and as much I love love love St John, I'm not sure this would be my first choice. Of course, there isn't much out there to choose from as far as I can tell.

preduction = theo nothing to do with donnellys

It’s epic and the fact you took it to the next level with the plunger... respect

Yes! However, the head of that turkey appears to have been severed for use as a plunger, so I'd say his days of having objections to where I poop have long passed

Back around that time, I sold a friend's collection in that manner, and Brian, that bought out an old distributor from Hawaii, had weekly auctions also. I wonder if you bought any from me and/or Brian. Brian's were distinguishable by generally having two price tags with inventory codes rather than prices on them. There's still stuff out there, 100%. But I can tell you that every year there is less and less and less. Today, far less is found than back then. Asking an old store owner to store a room full of stuff for from their closed-down shop for 30 years is asking a lot. Now that ebay has been around for 20+ years, the large majority of those old hoards are gone. But, still a few remain, no doubt. The thing about those finds though is that its amazing how many sealed NES games some stores had without having anything good. All the same crepe titles in quantity but quantity zero or one of anything you'd want, etc. Over-orders of unpopular titles, in other words. Unsold stock.

Mind? I'd find it borderline amazing

When I started collecting in 2002 my early collecting buddy Mike had just bought a sealed Super Mario Bros for $3 on ebay. Three dollars! Many low to mid five figure items now were low to mid three figure items then. And, overall, the in-demand items have risen faster than the rarity driven items. If rarity was the end-all, sealed Myriad 6 in 1's should be six figures. But instead they've languished at the 5k asks for ten years now with what appears to be zero demand.

heheh cool

actually, that's changed/changing. Its been heading away from rarity and towards popularity slowly for a long time and these days SE is not top dog anymore.

That's patently obvious, but which do you think is the better potential for the long term? The one where utilization (readership) fell off a cliff 25 years ago? Or the one with lots of tons of utilization to spare? The answer to that should be obvious too. Anyways, the biggest things holding it back have been: - learning curve and lack of education about about print variants - no sales at public auctions like heritage - lack of visibility of the hobby - no real "dealers" - no GPA equivalent In other words, lack of infrastructure. Every single one of those infrastructure points either has, or is in the process of being, addressed for the first time. That collecting infrastructure builds a ton of value because it makes it easier for people to collect. As a result, it should be no surprise that values have risen. There's less effort required.

hopefully no one will mind a plug for the original game art (video games, pinball, etc) FB group I run... come check it out if interested https://www.facebook.com/groups/502536466816380/

As I've mentioned to other people, if you have zero interest in it, speculating was never going to work out for you anyways. You would have bought the wrong material and sold it too soon. You have to at least have some attachment to the material to do it right in the first place. Not to say that it has to be a lot necessarily, but at least some clue, some marginal warm n fuzzies, at least a memory of having enjoy SOME game when you were 12 or whatever. So no point feeling like you missed out. (And conversely, if you do have some attachment, its not too late to buy some nice material).

OMG I just noticed the turkey toilet and plunger. Spectacular

^ well you can mark that on your calendar . The Illumination people (despicable me, minions, secret life of pets) are working on a Mario movie right now. 2022 release IIRC. Hard to see that combination of character and studio being anything but a massive hit and if it goes as expected I’m sure they will roll out the other characters, sequels , etc etc

No strip is for everyone.

Fine then you misconstrued what I said

Depends on the dragon rendering divided by the square roof of the baby oil

You’re missing the point. I read peanuts for 10 years despising it. It was only when I went back and read the first 15-20 years (which is why I said beginning to end although really one can stop at somewhere between 1965 and 75). To appreciate THIS strip, you need to start at the beginning. Noe maybe it still wouldn’t be for you, whatever. But it became popular for a reason.

Now we are getting somewhere

It’s not by Sal; overpriced!