Westy Steve

I've seen them out of position but they can't move very far. Might depend on what era the book was slabbed in though.

I have to share this. Back when I was growing up, the movie Scanners was required viewing for anyone who hoped to hold a nerd card. Alas those days are gone. Yet this weekend, my high school age daughter was completely bored, so I asked her if she wanted to watch Scanners, since I'd captured it on my DVR. She is beginning to trust my taste in Sci-Fi so she agreed and watched it. I have to tell you, seeing her reaction to the twist ending of the movie was priceless to me. The ending surprised her. She thought the special effects were dated, but she was still grossed out by them, so I guess they hold up. To stay on topic...did they ever make a comic book out of Scanners?

I have often wondered about having a decoy safe. You know, get one of those small safes, then fill it with bricks and leave it somewhere conspicuous. But don't put any books in it. Thieves would waste their time trying to move it or open it.

My favorite so far. I tried to share it with my family but the sewer scene was too much. I was laughing hysterically and my wife was horrified. Tried to explain why it was funny, but it just didn't work.

To me, it's Rick's ego, and how he's always in control even when it seems he isn't in control, which makes the viewer question themselves on whether they are every really in trouble on their adventures or if every single thing is just part of Rick's calculation. Perhaps even the personal issues are calculated. The show has levels and levels.

Talk about reviving an old thread! Good topic though. I need some of those silica things. Nobody talked about hiding stuff in this thread. That's another solution. False walls, floors and whatnot. It amazes me how many folks will display their books when they can just display a color scan of it and it's virtually impossible to tell unless you get up to it with a magnifier.

I've been singing the praises of the early Bronze "new" X-men. They aren't over-hyped so I feel/felt confident buying them. The company that owns them right now is not doing a terrible job making money with them and will likely continue to build on what they have since it is their best avenue to tap into a superhero movie market. Plus there are so many X-men movies that will be re-run on television for years to keep them in the public . Lastly, good art, good stories and the early ones are harder to find in higher grade even at a big convention. You can't really find fault with the early "new" X-men. I am "talking my book", but I bought mine because I had confidence in the series.

Wasn't a big deal here in Tallahassee. We didn't even lose power. Knocked down a placard at our door step and that's about all. No texts from my rentals either (Thank God).

I try to buy stuff that meet three conditions: 1. It's got to be something I really want...not just something I found the looked like a good deal. 2. I have to stretch to get it 3. It's nicer than I thought I could afford for the money I spent...(it was a good deal) While criteria #2 sounds like a recipe for overpaying, putting the other criteria on it means I don't buy very often. I feel good about my purchases because I walk away with a feeling of "I'll never be able to do that again" or "I'll never have to do that again". This also keeps me from selling it in the future because I feel like it's a one-way trip...which is good because I apply this criteria to the best stuff I have. To be fair though, I don't go after things that are so rare that I have to wait for years if I miss them. I have collected stuff like that, and it's not fun. IMHO, the only way to collect like that is to have a second collection that you're also collecting...a cheap one. It's important to get packages in the mail every month! Lastly, nothing should preclude the serious collector from ignoring the quick flip to help finance your sickness (habit). But recognize it for what it is and don't fool yourself into thinking you're buying something for your collection when you clearly bought it because you got a good deal on it. Sell it for a still-good price without guilt.

I was casually offered a job there once. Doesn't pay as well as engineering, but I sometimes wish I'd have done it anyway.

I'm just waiting for it to come to Tallahassee. Supposed to be a direct hit, but thankfully it should only be Cat 1. Tallahassee is "Tree City USA", so we're going to lose power. I'll be living off a generator, but that's OK. Maybe I can read some comic books. Ready for this thing.

The 212 and 213 are pretty cool too.

I'm not too worried about it. I live in North Florida home of the Seminoles. We find that the hurricanes are awfully blustery and not very strong when they get up here. Of course this year we lost our quarterback so who knows. :-)

Hey something to consider is that westerns persisted on television long after western movies faded out. Same is true with musicals to a lesser extent like Lawrence Welk. Another thing to consider is that whatever form of fiction the movies embraces next probably has a comic book counterpart. If they move into westerns we got western comics. If they move into sci-fi we got Syfy comics. The different genres within comics mirrors the different genres within movies. I can see Disney just changing their game but continuing to make money off of their properties.

Never mind....got my answer. Thanks.

I went to a local Pizza place today for lunch and they were playing some serious Metal music. You know, fast beat, heavy guitar, and a guy with a frog in his throat yelling about something he was P.O.ed about. I don't actively seek that kind of music out, but I sometimes enjoy it when I run across it. It reminds me a friend of mine from the old days who was really into that, and he and I also did a bunch of comic book shows together. So when I hear that kind of music, it transports me to the days of hanging out with him, listening to that music and reading comics. Great times! Then I started realizing that while it would be fun to experience the nostalgia of reading comics to some metal again. But then I realize not every comic is right of that music. For example, I don't think Superman stories would go well with it because he's so straight-laced. Perhaps some Batman, but not the ones that are cerebral crime solving sprees. You need something weird...something that will take your mind to different realms and weird places. So I realized that this was perfect music for the flavor of bronze age books, but only certain kinds of books would fit in well. Maybe like Man Thing or Dr. Strange. And yes, Heavy Metal magazine is probably an obvious choice. What else is a good fit?

I get what you're saying. It's hard. But the thing is that most of the comics can be read on-line. I think it boils down to the type of comics you collect. If you collect silver age, most all of it is in reprint somewhere. If you collect golden age, that's going to be tougher. For me, I have a mac-Daddy Conan that I love to stare at through the plastic while I read Conan's on my laptop. I also have a box of Savage Swords that I don't consider part of a collection...just reading material. Is that cheating? Here's a coin collection from a guy I know on one of the coin boards. Great guy, BTW. Anyway, this will give you an idea of the quality of material you can move toward with this method. Even if you don't know about coins, you'll understand that these are quality items: https://collectivecoin.com/lordmarcovan/5tAOUvzFOrtI8s8A7P3c

That's interesting and it really isn't that hard to do. You can look at ebay past sales in the comics section and then screen for sales between $99 and $101, and then look at how many results/hits you get. Ebay tells you the number of matches to your search parameter. My problem with $100 books is that if you take a $40 book in NM and you slab it, the market considers that a $100 book. So the number of hits you get might actually be a function of slabbing activity or collector acceptance of slabs. But this method would track whether more money is being spent and that's valuable information....so I see your point.

Wolverine is soooo incredibly entertaining. His character just exudes coolness. I think Hugh Jackman nailed his persona, but Wolverine as cool before Jackman and his death in the comic book doesn't take away from all of the great stories that many of us still haven't read. And we also need to consider the affect of re-runs. There are so many X-Men movies with Jackman in them. In fact, can anyone name a character/actor combination that has been in more movies? Possibly Downey Jr's Iron man, but that's about it. Going to $70 by 2040? No way...not when some of us will still be able to watch reruns of Xmen movies with Jackman in them with our Grandchildren. So what will repeat the success of IH181? I don't think it can be repeated, in the same way that kids buying NM copies of comic books can't expect the same kind of return that kids from the 40s/50s/60s/70s had when they bought stuff off the stands and took care of them. There are too many choices today, and the clock has had decades to determine that there won't be anything close to the IH181...if it hasn't emerged now, it probably won't. My advice? Bank on a winner...buy another IH181. Or better, buy Wolverine's early appearances. It amazes me how cheap IH182 is considering the value of the 181. A good second appearance should be....what...20 or 30% the value of a 1st full appearance? Yet clearly it isn't. Its about 5% if you shop around. And his early appearances in X-Men are stupid cheap too.

OK, I know some of you might be critical of this. Perhaps it doesn't go far enough. Perhaps I shouldn't omit unslabbed comics. But here's something I'm going to track monthly. These books are a cross-section of what fairly serious comic book collector would buy. It doesn't include Action 1, AF15, etc. But it also doesn't include the drek. It's intended to represent the kinds of books most of us invest the biggest chunk of our money into routinely, or at least would reasonably consider buying. I'll make the data presentation prettier next month when I have something to compare it to. My baseline is from last available sales on ebay and I will be as impartial as I can. I will take auction values when they are available over buy it now prices. When I have multiple prices to choose from, I'll try to take the most "median" value, rather than average them. So yeah, I'll be taking what I would call "sensible shortcuts" where needed because I just want to approximate market direction more than nail down specific perfect rates. I am not including "raw" books because then I'm hostage to my own, or a seller's own grading bias. Also, that would take way more time than I have to devote to this. I think that, in general, the value of slabbed book should help one derive an estimate for the value of a raw book anyway. Each era is represented by a nicer book, a medium book, and a more common book, but the books all still represent some of the nicer, more collectible books within their respective era. One could argue this is a semi-key to key index, omitting mega keys. I wanted to normalize the data, so I'm dividing my starting prices (the "Baseline 9/1/2017" column) by a weighting factor (my "100 factor") to arrive at a baseline normalized value of 100. Next month, I'll divide the new prices by the same 100 factor so if we see that it computes to a value of 101.2, that would imply that the comic rose by 1.2%. If any of you have access to GPA, it would be interesting for you to compare the shortest available average (3 month?) to my baseline prices to see how far off I am. Hopefully this will demonstrate that my estimates are fairly good, though doubtful they are perfect. I invite anyone interested to make up their own monthly index if they like...especially if they hate mine. Baseline Sep-17 100 Factor 9/1/2017 Normalized Silver ASM 14 4.0 VG 6.56 $ 656.00 100 Silver Green Lantern 1 5.0 VG/FN 7.75 $ 775.00 100 Silver X-men 3 4.0 VG 3.12 $ 312.00 100 Bronze Iron Fist 14 9.0 VF/NM 3 $ 300.00 100 Bronze X-men 101 9.2 NM- 4.37 $ 437.00 100 Bronze Batman 232 6.0 FN 2.64 $ 264.00 100 Copper ASM 300 9.6 NM+ 7.25 $ 725.00 100 Copper TMNT 2 (first print) 9.4 NM 3.29 $ 329.00 100 Copper Swamp Thing #37 9.6 NM+ 2.01 $ 201.00 100 Modern Batman Adv 12 9.4 NM 5.5 $ 550.00 100 Modern NYX #3 9.4 NM 4.5 $ 450.00 100 Modern Walking Dead #2 9.4 NM 4.8 $ 480.00 100 Total: 1200 Avg: 100

Dropped off books at Tampacon on July 28th. Had them fast track pressed at CCS. Some of the books went modern fast track. Others went value, fast track. The modern ones are now finished at CCS and about to go to CGC for fast track grading. The guy told me another 4 weeks on those. The others should be getting close to being finalized from the pressing, so they'll go to CGC soon for value, fast track, which he estimated is 5 to 6 weeks. Any truth to his estimates?

Honestly I thought about running one, but you need all kinds of special licenses to run a fund for that. However, (I think) a way around that would be to start an LLC that has a charter to buy and hold comics and then sell shares in the LLC.

Funny thing about your complaint was that he was complaining about how things in the past were better and what he'd like on the future. So his complaints had more to do with the way things are in general than your store. That would be a decent reply to him...."I'm sorry that the industry has moved away from what you remember, but we're trying to bring that kind of thing back". I think you should welcome the complaint so that you can learn from it...I mean, I want people to tell me I have a bad haircut instead of saying "you look nice" to make me feel good, as this would give me something to improve on. Here's a recommendation. I saw this happen to a few new shops. A lot of your early comic book sales are going to be people cherry picking every perceived bargain. Once that initial burst of sales is over (which you are experiencing now), your stock will consistently be of an average value because all the good buys will be gone and all the better books will have been purchased. Seems that the stores that survive pay more for the better books, less for the less interesting books, and price them the same way. If you buy a key, price it like the "buy it now" prices on ebay (which can be slightly "dreamy"). But blow out the common stuff. It's the better material that will attract the real collectors to your store and they either want bargains on the common stuff or will pay higher prices on the nice material if they can hold it in their hands and don't have to take the risk of buying it off ebay. What you don't want is collectors like me thinking to themselves "nah, I don't want to go to that shop today because they never have anything good". Besides, if you price your better material at higher prices, you can use it like money in the bank and sell it quickly in a fiscal emergency just by having a sale. Steve

So much discussion about which way the comic book market is headed. It makes me wonder if we need a comic book index. Sort of like a stock market index. Or does one already exist? If not, we need to make one. I'm toying with the idea of making one. But then I start realizing that if I do make one, it's something that has to have a meaningful monthly update. For example, it can't use Action 1 as a benchmark because they don't sell often enough. So here's some of the stuff that I think could go into it: 1. An early Action Comics that trades often enough to track monthly. Maybe the first Luthor? 2. An early Batman that is comparable...perhaps first Penguin? 3. A few non-key golden age books with interesting covers 4. A few "mega key" silver age books in mid-grade. 5. A few "mega key" Bronze Age books in the 9.0 range. 6. A few mega key Copper Age books in 9.4 7. A few mega key Modern books in 9.8 (but not 1st Ninja Turtles or Walking Dead #1 because it would skew the index) 8. About 10 non-key books that are a mix of Gold, Silver, Bronze, Copper and Modern Also, I was thinking that instead of trying to average a bunch of prices, perhaps I could take the median price of 3 to 5 sold prices. This would approximate an average but wouldn't take as much work. How would you do it? Looking for ratification, criticism, or any other kind of input. Or does such an index exist and I don't know about it? Steve

Agree.