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Hey, there is a Thanos Quest 2 in the Pay It Forward thread in CG. http://boards.collectors-society.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=261817&Number=7199021#Post7199021

My math was for slow track. Let's look at things from a marginal standpoint - how much does it cost to get one more book graded? Modern fast track is $28 - or $22.40 with a 20% discount. Let's assume marginal shipping to CGC is the same as return shipping: $2 each way, or $4 total. With a comic costing $2.99 retail, and assuming a discount of 40% as if bought from DCBS, you are looking at a total cost of $28.19. Shipping materials really are not that much and most can be obtained for free for endeavorous individuals and are included in that $2 marginal cost. $28.00 - grading fee (5.60) - less 20% discount 22.40 4.00 - total shipping 1.79 - raw comic cost, less 40% discount 28.19 - Total Grading cost So you are now looking at an estimated profit of about $6.81 per comic at a price point of $35. That is much more than you will make on a raw comic sitting on your proverbial new release rack. Multiply that by a large volume (let's say 100), and your are sitting at $681 gross profit. I would imagine someone like Dre goes thru hundreds of comics each week. Also keep in mind some of the comics getting graded are variants/con exclusives/etc that may not have much higher of a raw cost (to dealers, that is) but will yield a much higher price point and profit. For the nonprofessional, $35 seems like the breakeven point ($28 grading, $4 shipping, $3 raw cost), but you can now see where dealing in bulk can make a difference.

@holden I would bet most heavy slabbers are buying their books directly from Diamond or the thru a discount source like DCBS. On a $2.99 book, That'll bring your cost down to 1.50-1.80.

Like James said, most of these sellers are subbing hundreds of books at a time. Let's say you sub 100 and sell thru 90 of them. What makes more sense from a business standpoint: sit on those slabs forever at $35-45 ea or move them at $25? You might be taking a loss, but now you have about $250 that you can reinvest as opposed to sitting on dead inventory. Now, some people are obstinate and will sit on that product until they can sell it for a "profit" but I'm sure you've all walked into a store that had tons of old stock, be it 90's comics or baseball cards, and refused to sell it for anything less than the going price when it came out. These people fail to understand concepts like opportunity cost.

, sorry I've been busy prepping for something my friends and I call, "Nerdsgiving." It's Thanksgiving for just my group of friends. I just checked CGC's website and the cheapest shipping method is UPS at $10 for the first slab and $2 for each additional slab. Assuming a submission of 30 books, at $14.40 per book ($18 w/20% discount), a $5 invoice fee and $68 shipping, a total of $505 is $16.83 per book. If you sell a slab for $25, the PayPal fee on that (separate of the fee on the addl amount paid for shipping) is $1.03 (2.9% + $0.30), which leaves a profit margin after slabbing of $7.14. That is over twice cover on most comics. The same slab on eBay yields a fee to them of about $2.50, and reduces your profit to $4.64. So selling a slab for $25 can be profitable. But like some others have already said, the ones that go for $25 are going to be the ones your clearing out to get that marginal sale after you've made money on the rest of the slabs you subbed.

It is.

Very nice page. This is a most apropos place to post WD OA.

I was suspended for two weeks. It was during Christmas time, so it sucked.

Correct me if I am wrong, but if Retro got his sketched 115 signed by someone else and witnessed, would it get SS then?

True. Because the Buyer Protection, I was less likely to inquire into a book's condition before purchase. But now I do that all in advance.

I counter that everything is not returnable. eBay has and will revoke your coverage under their eBay Buyer Protection program. This actually happened to me. I was buying a lot of raw WD comics on eBay. If something came in not in grade due to nondisclosure or poor shipping, regardless of whether the seller offered refunds or not, I contacted the seller and told them what happened. All of them proactively apologized and offered a partial refund for me to keep the book or full refund for return. Except for one seller. He posted a WD #7, NM no refunds BIN for something crazy low like $30. When it arrived, it was creased down the length of the book (it was shipped in a simple bag and board in a manilla envelope). When I contacted him about it, he said sorry, no refunds, what do you expect for getting a good book so cheap (keep in mind, this was not an auction, he set the BIN). We went back and forth and it went nowhere, so I filed a claim. eBay paid the claim, but promptly suspended me and removed my protection under the Buyer protection program, saying I was requesting an inordinate amount of refunds and pressuring the seller into doing so. Even when I pointed out to them that I never initially requested a refund (only in the last case), that the solution was always prompted by the seller and photographs were always provided as proof of damage.

Yes, just less points. SS 9.8 (yellow) = 35 (10% more than universal) Universal 9.8 (blue) = 32 Qualified 9.8 (green) = 27 Apparant 9.8 (purple) = 16

Nice 10.0!

That's why I only buy from eBay sellers that offer returns. I have had too many crappy comics come in from either lack of disclosure, poor shipping or both. Retro, that "feathering" is pretty common on early Walking Dead 9.8s. I think it's ugly, and some of my 9.8s have it. I bought them on eBay, all from one dude. I wouldnt have bought them if I could have seen the feathering in the pics.

He did one of the Walking Dead Heroes Initiative Covers:

Yep, I agree. Looks like an action figure.

Ezekiel seemed to have a decent amount of people, and I would guess that will be his biggest contribution to the war unless he goes after Negan individually. However, I would bet either Jesus will have a bigger impact. I wonder which biblical character will show up next? Lazarus would certainly be appropriate.

Holy carp, Schmidt. Nice 9.9s!

BTW, a prequel series for the WD show sounds AWESOME!!

Very nice, James. I saw that 10.0 while looking for label data and thought of you!

I agree, there does not seem to be a price difference. But it is hard to say that for certain because the price of any WD #1 is pretty volatile.

I scoured eBay and the registry to find more verifiable WD #1s and I was able to increase the sample size from 132 to 227. The results increased the total estimate of black labels in the population but narrowed the Confidence Interval and the margin of error. Here are the results from the initial data: With the new data: This means that we can be 95% confident that the true proportion of black labels falls between 13.45% and 23.55%. When multiplied by the population (7266), that gives a range of 977 to 1711. You'll notice this narrows the range from 889 to 734, even though the band itself is higher than before.

I will James! In fact, in a few minutes. And thanks

Nice, thanks!

Sure Mark. The difference is in the "Mature Readers" warning below the issue number and price. Here is a pic, courtesy of Maloney's WDFAQ: