Westy Steve

Yeah, I wouldn’t go that far. Second half of the movie was good after Mystique died.

So recently, disenchanted with the prices of the silver age keys and even the bronze age keys that I tend to chase, I decided to go after some of the “bronze age“ books of my late teens/early 20’s books that I bought off the stands and read when I first collected seriously. I was surprised to find out that, depending upon the source, of the definition of Copper Age, those Bronze Age books that I read off the rack were really copper age books. Apparently I was reading in collecting right through the transition from bronze to copper. So X-Men then I bought off the stands were predominantly early copper, but the earlier back issues I tracked down were bronze. so yeah, kind of surprised to figure that out. Turns out there are a lot of books I’m interested in hiding in the copper section of this website. Not just that, but I’ve seen some copper books masquerading as Bronze Age books in the sales forums. The line of demarcation is blurry, so I’m going to forgive myself for my own 20+ year-old misattribution.

Fair question. It’s like a spiderweb. I think most of it will come out with a press, but I need a very skilled presser. I don’t think all of it will come out, but I really don’t know how to CGC will handle it after the press. Also this book doesn’t need cleaning. I just had too many shadows in my prior photos. Here’s a better photo. In my humble opinion, after the press, it will be a 9.0 or a 9.2. My reasoning is that even if the press doesn’t fully remove the spiderweb, It will still be a better than some other book with “9.0 ticks” on the spine.

Take edit: Thrilled to get this. I’ve been wanting to put together a set like this for read.

There is a new YouTube commercial by expedia.com that shows Ewan McGregor walking toward the camera and he asks: “Do you think at the end of your life you’ll regret the things you didn’t buy?” Dramatic pause ”…or the places you didn’t go?” (Begin Expedia jingle) When he asked the first question about buying things, I always think, “well yeah, I have those regrets now.” I mean…I can still go places now, but I should’ve pulled the trigger on that Batman #1!

I agree with the 6.5. I think it would go 7.0, but it looks like there’s a stain in the lower left of the back cover and CGC hates stains.

I was inspired to buy it after the last trailer was released. (And by inspired I mean FOMO). Thanks for any opinions. Notice the upper edge and lower edge of the cover. I think the cutter was dull. The colors are uneven, that is my shadow where it’s darker.

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This happened to me. I pressed one book with a Enormous success. Then several months later I sent in an X-Men 94 in a slab graded CGC 6.0. The spine on it was nearly perfect and it was obvious that a press would take it up to a VF at least. Waited several months for the book to be cracked, pressed and graded. It came back as a 6.5, and there was a visible non-Color breaking crease on the front of the book that looked easily pressable. Spent all that money for almost nothing. Sold the book in disgust for a loss.

I’ll take this. I want to read this!

That’s an interesting insight. I hadn’t considered what a promotional machine Disney is. Now let’s discuss this no further…I don’t want competition.

Rob, you’re speaking my language. I’m a finance/graph and chart guy. I’ll argue the other side here, but please understand not with great conviction. But for fun, here’s a few thoughts. Gold is affected by leverage. And there are shorts in the market. This creates volatility that you don’t ordinarily see in relatively illiquid collectibles like comic books which must be mailed back-and-forth from owner to owner. I’ve studied the coin market crash a lot, and I believe that it comes from the novelty of slabbing, rather than the 200 year old hobby of coins. FWIW, we are also seeing the same reaction with sealed video games…might end badly. What happens is demand moves from demand for collectibles to demand for slabbed collectibles only. The key is that slabbing was a new phenomenon that brought prices to new territory. Likewise bitcoins are a new phenomenon. Further slabbing a video games is a new phenomenon. Unlike comic books, we are well used to slabbing, but I will admit the stale newness of slabbing comics may be at play. Last, if you look at the graph for the X-men, It is essentially curved which would make it a straight line on a log scale. Classic geometric growth except for the peak. And so you have to ask yourself, is that peak supposed to be the crash? If yes then should price be rising so soon thereafter? If no, then how can we say that we won’t break the old high? Especially in light of mutants joining the MCU? In general, I’m bullish on X-Men. I don’t think they ever recovered after the collapse of the late 1990s. There’s a lot of nostalgia for them. I have a different feeling in my spine looking at X-Men books than I do looking at other books. Again that’s just me though. My nostalgic kicks into overdrive and I know I’m not alone. Got to say, there are definitely books that I wished I still owned, and I would view the crash of the comic book market as a great thing, even though I lost money on the X-men 94. But I just can’t bet that that’s gonna happen. But again, I’m not filled with conviction about my position on where things are headed.

I hear you, but when nightcrawler teleported one of the enemy combatants in front of a train, that was pretty darn cool

Yeah yeah, another fan boy saying it was a terrible movie. :-) If you go to the thread for the new Doctor Strange trailer, there’s actually a post from a guy who said he didn’t like it! Growing up I remember watching stuff like Sinbad the Sailor and it’s associated bad animation. It’s all we had. Like a dog that has been abused, I’m grateful for anything. *disclaimer: Dog abuse is deplorable. You can’t consider yourself a success unless a dog cares about you

In all seriousness dark phoenix wasn’t a bad movie. I enjoyed it except for the fact that mystique was everyone’s conscience, found and solved every problem, lead the team on missions and corrected Professor X multiple times. How egocentric does an actress have to be in real life to demand those kind of edits to the movie? It almost ruined the film, and I’m not exaggerating that I cheered when Mystique died.

I think it was in the late 1990s, I was getting sketches from artists Alley. This was at Megacon in Florida. I asked George for a sketch and he said that he wasn’t doing sketches today because he needed a break but he would be happy to sign my book. Check out his ”signature”. It took him like three seconds. What a great guy!

I finally got to see this movie tonight. I have to say, my absolute favorite part was when Jennifer Lawrence’s character died.

Here’s a snapshot from go collect. Prices started going haywire at the beginning of Covid, and I know they did because unfortunately I sold a 6.5 at that time for right around $400. Go collect shows the price at that time at $409. So between then and now prices have doubled plus a little bit. However, recognize that since that time, most of my rental properties increased by 50%, lumber prices have gone way up, food prices have gone way up, etc. I’m not saying that I disagree with you that my book can backslide, but once Covid started a lot of “free money” began to circulate around the economy, causing inflation that may not slow quickly. We can’t blame these prices entirely on the MCU, because I’ve seen similar price increases in other kinds of things that I collect. The question is whether these prices will be consistent/permanent. Your crystal ball is as good as mine, and I am hopeful that some of this it is temporary but I do remember the cost of candy bars increasing in the 1970s and they never came back down after inflation was tamed. Hard to put the genie in the bottle. There’s also a wise old saying that once a democracy learns to vote for its own benefits/money, the handouts will never end and will be the ruin of the economy. (Or something like that). Further, when the government owes a bunch of money the easiest way to pay it back is to halve the pain of repayment by halving the value of the debt. Inflation may be around a while until our debt shrinks relative to the GDP. So where does that leave us? I’m not sure. I saw baseball cards collapse. But I don’t think that will happen to comics in the same way because we are more entrenched. So many of us talk about our plans to pass on our books to our heirs because we plan to die with them. I saw this with coin collecting too. Terrible demographics in coin collecting, but it keeps chugging along. Want to feel young again? Go to a coin convention. I bought my X-Men 94 because it was a relative bargain and to replace the one I sold. If it backslides farther I’m good with that because I can upgrade. The success of the comic book market hinges on inflation moving forward and potentially the people’s acceptance of comics as an alternative investment, which the younger generation may readily accept. Traditionally comics have moved up nicely. If it was a stock, I wouldn’t have the courage to short it.

That’s where I look…the lower part of the curve. Our habit of only considering the last sale skews things too much on the other end of the curve to be very useful other than rough estimates. If two books have the same price in 9.4, it could be because one had a terrible auction turnout or the item seldom comes to market so there was pent up demand, or perhaps it’s just outdated data. I expect to see a better reflection of demand on the lower end of the market, except in cases where high grade books are plentiful. Will WWBN32 almost permanently be worth about 2.5 times as much as X94 in low grade? IMHO, something is wrong there. Price per point makes it more apparent.

Interesting that you use that book as an example. I just bought the best one I could afford at the moment, which is a 6.5. Why did I buy it? Read on. In my humble opinion, the market has really stratified. I know you guys say that dollar bin books are expensive, but realistically it’s only some movie tie in books that get hot in those bins that get hot. And books get hot fast because of FOMO and because the good stuff is so expensive. I’ve come to terms with the fact that $500 is the new $200. I tend to collect more “important” books and my old threshold of $200 doesn’t buy a very important book unless I want low grade. So based on that analysis, I feel that X-Men 94 is a good purchase relative to other stuff out there. I’ve started looking at prices per grade point and it’s taught me that books like X-Men 94 at $160 to $175 per point seem cheap relative to their relevance. Many of us remember when GSX1 (now at $700 per point) and an X94 cost the same. It seems the X 94 is about equally as painful to purchase as it was when I was a single guy just out of college with a good job. But GSX1 is ridiculous. Earlier appearances, once coveted by collectors, are taking a huge backseat to first appearances. And the MCU is driving the bus with such an iron grip that collected books are being forgotten. If you want to collect the “new X-Men“, you’re going to need an X-Men 94 which will cost you about $160 per point mid grade. Figure out what a werewolf by night 32 will cost you per point (more than twice as much!) if you want to collect those early appearances. Movie madness! X94 is the relative bargain.

If this is 35% off I’ll take it.