Arkham

Today’s mail call:

Today’s mail call:

50 copies arrived great! Can’t wait for the others I preordered at shops

Couldn't pass up on the newsstand #1, and I'm a fan of Capullo's work so I grabbed the #16 and #70 as well.

Couple highlights from some stuff I picked up:

Stoked to add this Frankie’s exclusive Dell’Otto Variant C to the collection. Massive shout out to @Blankedboy who knew I was struggling to find this and put me onto a seller. I’m now only missing the DF signed & remarked by Ken Haeser variant #1 and I think I’ve got the whole run. (Or will by end of April anyway). Thanks mate!!

I hate it. 
 

Hi @wytshus / Brian, 
Nice to meet you. Thanks for the intro and background! Congrats on your new gig and I wish you all the best with it. I live over the pond from you and I've been hopeful that the recent acquisition and commentary around expansion will see an increase in CGC presence over here. 🤞
My name is Dan and I live in a beautiful part of world - Queensland, Australia.
Growing up I was mad keen on The Phantom, Batman and Wolverine. Wolverine is a badass, but I loved The Ghost Who Walks and Batman because they were just men. Obviously men with means and resources and support networks, but they were powered by their grit and determination not magic or alien influence. I really appreciated this about Ironman as I got older and got introduced to the character too. I wrote some more on my focuses earlier in the year when I decided to finally start a journal. But, in summary, I'm keen to build a competitive set for The Joker (1975) and I chase 1st appearances of Batman Villains in slabs - which I intend to build a custom set for as I struggled to find an appropriate competitive set in the registry. To scratch my "completionist" itch, I'm chasing The Joker vol 2 (2021) in raw format. 
Living where I do can be challenging with this hobby - firstly, I'm in a regional area... the nearest comic book shop is about 150 kilometres away and it's not easy for me to get to it around work and family life. It also doesn't stock any CGC books... So, rather than carefully paw through the bins and shelves to curate my collection, I am restricted to buying all my raws online and hoping for the best when it comes to the condition they are in when they arrive. The shop absolutely does their best with the shipping, but they can't be as selective as I would be in person and (like everyone, everywhere) I'm up against it with the post. (Yes, I grind my teeth in my sleep like a deadset champion). 
In some ways this is true for slabs (in that I also have to buy online). Luckily, I know exactly what I am getting thanks to CGC. The only risk to the transaction is how well they are packed when they are shipped and most reputable sellers pack very well!! It is very rare for me to find a book I am chasing available in Australia, so it is mostly coming from the US or my good mate in Canada.
My next challenge is climate. It can get pretty sticky here in summer and we are forever fighting mold on leather or with our clothes in the wardrobe. I found the forums here to be an amazing resource to learn how others around the world are keeping their collections in top condition and I'm pleased to say that while I might have had to turf out a t-shirt here and there, my comic collection is pristine!  
Thanks for starting this thread. I enjoyed reading your post and also @Sensei Ryan's. I hope more people post responses. I consider this community the best for comic collectors and I'd love to read more back-issues from its members. 

I hate it. 
 

This is what I am trying to avoid and if the glitch keeps saying I owe fees, would I even be able to? 
I have a fair number of followers and feedback (by my standards) and would hate to have to "start over" but if it comes to it...I may just have to.

Yes! Sorry team - I meant orders/distribution when I wrote "print-run". (I've got print-runs on the brain at the moment). The rest of the bolded text was implied by the source. 

Yes! Sorry team - I meant orders/distribution when I wrote "print-run". (I've got print-runs on the brain at the moment). The rest of the bolded text was implied by the source. 

I hate it. 
 

Yes! Sorry team - I meant orders/distribution when I wrote "print-run". (I've got print-runs on the brain at the moment). The rest of the bolded text was implied by the source. 

Yes! Sorry team - I meant orders/distribution when I wrote "print-run". (I've got print-runs on the brain at the moment). The rest of the bolded text was implied by the source. 

An early birthday present from my missus arrived today :

Definitely a bug and it does sound like one that would be beyond typical support tooling - leaving them no option than to escalate to level 3 or level 4 engineering for resolution.
But there is definitely a customer service issue. From what Wall-Crawler has written above, this sounds like an embarrassing display of service management for a company of eBay’s resources and size. It says a LOT about what they value and how their teams are being managed.
Instead of each instance of account suspension being treated as an individual incident and closed when the account is manually re-enabled, these should be being grouped as a problem (it’s obviously not resolved). There should be a singular point of contact where Wall-Crawler can communicate back and forth with the customer service team and be provided updates to the problem resolution. Ideally, this will be managed by an agent or a small team of agents - not requiring their customer to re-explain the issue at each point of contact. Their team should be assisting in restoring the store and all listings or providing tips and work-arounds for a quicker restoration when this happens for the fifth time… (Which I think is a safe bet at this point, sorry to say. It’s some kind of dunning process being triggered periodically by an incorrect debt recorded against the account. Manually re-enabling the account is not removing the dodgy record that is triggering the dunning process). 
It’s obvious that, while individuals in the team might care - the internal structure and supporting processes don’t support them in providing customer care. I understand - many products/services/service providers make it difficult to log a ticket, because managing tickets is complicated and expensive. It is far cheaper to have someone engage in self-help. You don’t have to handle as many tickets, so you don’t have to hire, train, retain, and insure so many customer care representatives. 
But even if that is (in my opinion) a (barely) OK approach, it doesn’t make up for poor service management practices from a company that reported more than US$2.1B in revenue in the second quarter of 2021. 
I would be freaking furious if I were you, Wall-Crawler. I think you’re 100% justified in being peeved by this and the difficulty in escalating this issue. Losing your account four times in three months and what that represents in lost sales and loss of time in re-listing items and chasing support to end-up not feeling supported. It’s just not cool at all. 

I hate it. 
 

I hate it. 
 

If it is only a small step between the 9.6 and the 9.8, I’ll often buy the 9.8. But not when it hundreds of dollars different. Given I often can’t spot the flaws between the 9.6 and the 9.8 in a slab, I’d literally only be spending the money for what CGC had written on the label. For example, when I wanted to pick up a 1st Batman Who Laughs the 9.6 was $190 and the 9.8 was $780. I 100% went for the 9.6 without a second thought. I used the money saved to pick up a sweet bronze book for my personal collection. 

My two cents added is that there is more to the equation, at least for me, than just the costs. Space can be at a huge premium especially if you are talking about graded comics. So it may make sense from an investment standpoint to get more books that are lower graded but if you are talking about potentially dozens or even hundreds of slabs you need to have lots of room to store them and a very forgiving spouse. From this perspective it may make more sense to invest in one expensive 9.8 book over several lower graded ones. 
I guess a second two cents (three cents?) is depending on the book you are talking about it may be difficult to resell lower graded books down the line when you want to cash in on your investment. When you send books to auction keys that are in high grade typically push the fair market value at the time while lower graded and less valuable books, especially non-keys, can sometimes get poached at a fraction of value. So if you are planning on making the books an investment for your family to cash in if something happens to you (which I do) it makes a lot of sense to distill a bit and trade a lot of lower value or lower graded books for a single higher end one. 
I hope this helps, and best of luck with whatever direction you choose to go in  

You mean if someone used 2021 as the starting point?  I was testing whether the "9.8 or nothing" recommendations since the beginning of CGC were correct.  Buying in 2005, selling in 2021.
The correct answer (2005 to 2021) would have been buying 13 copies of ASM #300 in CGC 8.5.  As in all investments, past performance is not a guarantee of future returns... but from what I can tell, no one was even checking past performance.  People continually repeat "9.8 or nothing" despite being wrong (on the most submitted book of all time) for the past 20 years. 

Theres not much difference between a 9.8 and a 9.6...true, BUT an in demand 9.8 will always sell in todays market if priced right. Ive sold some fugly looking 9.8s by setting the prices lower than all the other copies available.
Me? I wont buy a 9.8 if I see a single flaw in the pics but there are MANY buyers out there that just want that 9.8 on top corner of the slab.

concierge service?
2 days I could deal with. 
I just had my account reinstated (for how long) but now the customer service agent I had on the phone can't figure out how to restore my listings due to the suspension so I can actually relist them (another agent did it before in like 10 minutes) and now I am on hold...
Sigh.
Anyway, I will not continue to post (rant) here anymore - I don't think - but may update if I actually get this thing sorted out.

I hate it.