Westy Steve

So let the shill do his job and keep your bid very high. Then in the last minute of the auction, retract YOUR bid, and let his shill buy it.

What era are you collecting? If you're collecting modern, a 9.4 would be considered low grade. If you're collecting golden age books, a 6.0 would be considered high grade. I'm now collecting Bronze stuff from low VF to 9.4 because I like a book that gives the impression that it's been well cared for. But when I was collecting Silver Age, I was happy to have Mega Keys in any grade and I liked a book in Fair (1.0) as long as it didn't have certain kinds of flaws. My point is that you should find the grade range and material that fits you best. And don't fall into the trap of feeling that if a book isn't a 9.8, then it's not worthy of a collection. Fact is, even some of the most seasoned collectors send books off expecting a 9.8 and they come back lower. There are also cases of people cracking out books and having them come back lower or higher. Grading at the upper end is so subjective that it gets ridiculous. Plus the technical grade doesn't always paint the best picture. For me, I love a book that has a perfect spine, even if the edges of the book hold the grade down. And I love a books that have bright glossy covers. So if I had to choose between a 9.2 that had great color and a perfect spine, or a 9.6 that had staple stress lines and a little tinge of fading, guess which one I'd pick? Don't stress, and try to enjoy yourself. Buy what moves you.

I'm surprised they don't denote that this reprints the first issue. I always thought that was a cool feature of this issue.

Exactly. Horrible demographics. We have demographics that that the coin market would kill for. Yet, only recently have key coins softened. We are over-estimating the desire of the die hard collectors looking for those special comics...they'll be trying to outbid each other for years moving forward.

Nah, we got at least 13 years. Know why? When I collected coins, I was the bottom 25% in age, at age 42 and it took 10 years for prices to retract. Right now the bottom 25% is about 39 years old. So I figure they have at least until they are 52, and that assumes that the bottom quartile doesn't continue to drop in age due to new entrants who enter the hobby because of the movies and TV shows.

The thing is, I like to snack when I game. Not only that, but one of my local comic book stores will order a bunch of pizzas on their gaming nights and sell two slices and a coke for $5. Even if I ate before the game, I somehow ended up buying that pizza! And yes, I'd have paid more for the privilege...$7 or $8 wouldn't have been out of line. I have a friend who runs another store that sells cappuccinos in the mornings.

Ah...that explains it.

I know people are going to throw rocks at me, but I could swear I've seen a book graded 0.1 before. I think it was missing a lot of wraps. And I promise I'm well versed in the grading scale. Maybe I just dreamed it.

One thing you need to be aware of: A buddy of mine told me one of my books only needed a quick press, so I asked for one at the CGC booth at a show. I was told there was a minimum (high) number of books needed for submittal to be granted that option. Full disclosure: I've only had my books pressed by CCS and I've been extremely satisfied with the results. That being said, I'd be curious to know what the turn around times are elsewhere.

Hope you're selling Snacks and Drinks (bottled water and soda) if you can figure out refrigeration. Seems like that would be easy money if you bought it in bulk.

Forgot to reveal the grade! Actually it's an old label 9.0. I might have zoomed in too hard on those spine ticks, but this does confirm that I won't liberate the book from it's slab.

I've seen 6.5's like that. But the weird part is that I've also seen a lot of 8.0's like that. What's bothersome is right now on ebay there is a 7.0 that is advertised as being "recently received from CGC" that looks better than your copy. The really troubling part is mine is also being graded right now too, and looks comparable to yours but with differences. I think CGC has a lot of problems grading this the book because it's a black cover so it really shows spine wear quickly...I think sometimes they mostly grade the spine and other times they are looking harder at the rest of the book. So it's a carp shoot.

Can I have prize number 24?

OK, OK. Uncle! Uncle! I guess I should never say never. But there are a ton of examples of things made to be collectibles that failed. I guess if you're creating a "contrived rarity" within an accepted collectible genre, you have a better chance of launching something that will actually take off.

I agree that some of the baseball cards were expressly made to be collectibles if they were special limited production cards. But Magic cards were not, because they were all meant to be played. What I mean is that a Mox was no more expressly produced to be a collectible than a Demonic Tutor. They were still all meant to be played, even if they call themselves collectible.

Give me some examples of great collectibles that were expressly produced to be collectibles and still had significant value 10 years later. Anyone?

Been a lot of talk about demographics elsewhere. So how old are you?

You make some good points. But consider this: Look at coin collecting. Essentially, it hasn't been possible to put together a meaningful coin collection from circulation since the late 1960's after silver coins stopped production in 1964. 10 years ago, I made a poll on a coin forum like this one to ask collectors how old they are. (Hey, I think I'll do that here). Anyway, I found out that even though I was 42 years old at the time, I was in the bottom 25% of collector age. In other words, 75% of all of the collectors were older than me. And yet, coin collecting continued to flourish, though it has turned south as of late. But we've had comic book collecting in the 70's, 80's, and 90's with great strength. And we have comic shows were kids parade past the comic book tables dressed up like pop culture figures, rubbing elbows with us. Meanwhile, 5 year old kids dress up for Halloween like Ironman, they buy Batman Lego Sets, they play with Ninja Turtle action figures. My point is that there was never such an upside down demographic as U.S. coins, and yet they flourished as the die hard fans who had grown children and nothing much to spend their money on fought each other to finish their collections. This hobby isn't going anywhere for a long, long time and it's only going to get more expensive as the barn and attic finds turn to dust and we all compete with each other to finish our collections while trying to stiff-arm those ironman wearing, ninja turtle lovin' 5-year olds who grew up, got degrees, jobs, and spending money to try to outbid us.

Wow, I'm thankful the worst you can get is -1 points. I completely blew it on that Human Torch. I feel good that I had positive points in this round.

I can't figure out the trick. I either have a reflection of my camera, a reflection of my light fixture/ceiling fan, or it looks like it was shot in a cave. How do ya'll do it?

This will explain the box further: The purpose is just how I choose to collect. I'm enjoying this collecting method so much with coins that I'm extending it to my comics also. Fun and beauty.

We're almost to real time now. My recap is winding to a close...I have two more books to show. Here's the first: I bought this book sight unseen from a good friend. I was absolutely stunned to open the box and see this. I knew the grade but that was all. I won't usually pay these kinds of dollars for a book (though I got a great friend-to-friend discount), but this is one that I've thought about buying for a few decades. For the grade, it has everything going for it. Nice centering, white pages, and almost no spine or staple stress.

Great list! One of these is also one of the two mystery books that I already bought. I know for sure I'll be getting a GL76 and Bats227 at some point. Funny thing is that just the prospect of owning them gets me fired up. Really enjoying comics right now.

Just to hold them. I guess I should disclose that I always keep a duplicate electronic or TPB/Reader copy of my slabs so I can read the story when I want to. I like owning them in slab because they are like artwork to me and I think higher grade books framed by the slabs are attractive. I enjoy just looking at them.

I changed my thead title to make it more clear what I'm asking. Yes, what 16 books would you buy? Like if you could only have/own 30 books total, and you already owned 14 books you loved, what else would you buy ?