VintageComics

So you're saying the rules should be different for different people? What is so difficult to understand? INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY is the only correct answer whether it's a family member, Satan or some anonymous person on the internet. You're proving my point. Now replace Jonathan Majors with Johnny Depp. Someone should now be expected step down simply because a bunch of whiny people are talking about it all over the internet. Sounds about right for people today, and then they wonder why they can't have world peace? People are quick to jump onto bandwagons until that bandwagon burns them. Anyway, I'm not going to push the point any longer. I've established my points and people are free to be wrong if they choose to. Louder voices don't make an incorrect answer correct.

That's a great attitude to have now, and I have the same attitude but it still doesn't excuse poor behavior. Gossip is poor, inexcusable, historically poor behavior and always will remain so, regardless of how society twists it.

I think you've just explained why this isn't a truly random economic selection of data. We've never seen an entire economy do what it did in 2021 compared to what it's doing now. Not even the world economic pump of 2005-6 and the drump of 2007-08 was this extreme. If the collection came to market at any other time, like when other major collections came to market and was resold at any other time, I'd argue you'd see a far smaller swing in prices. What happened in 2021 was as much about the world economy as it was the collection and so it's just really hard to unpack and pinpoint how much of the buying was directly related to the hobby and how much was directly related to the economy. It would be really interesting to note how other hobbies fared compared to comics in a macro study - ie how many baseball cards, or cars, or watches or whatever are coming back to market and reselling.

You sound like all the bitter people in 2006 who made a lot of mistakes about understanding the process, only because they were so emotional and unreasonable about the topic. Pressing a book isn't trickery. It's a benign, almost natural process in much the same way that if you lay on a bed for long enough, you'll actually get taller. I've told this story many times, but I uncovered an incredible, high grade, original owner collection in a tropical climate and the books were stacked for many years raw. This pressure from stacking along with the natural humidity caused them to naturally press and preserve their condition. Should I disclose that they were stored in a humid environment, stacked for years? People who talk about "the long term impact of pressing" know nothing of what a book goes through before they're printed. They go through much worse conditions during the printing process BEFORE the books hit the stands, than a properly pressed book. The heat, the pressure, the violent forces - have you EVER looked into the process or seen it on video? Those books aren't treated with care. At least a presser is treating it like a collectible. How about when your books are sitting in the delivery truck out in the desert, and it's 120 degrees outside, and nearly 200 degrees in the truck where your plastic starts to melt? Do you think the truck driver cares about your precious collectible? The fact is that people have been scraping boogers off of books, pressing them and trying to make their nice books look better for as long as there have been comics and some are just better at it than others and it's been an ever evolving process since Pop Hollinger, arguably the 1st vintage comic book dealer was taping books together to preserve them back in the 1940s. What people take exception about is the money they leave on the table. Well, tough bananas. I've left 6 figure life changing money on the table. We've all done it. As adults, you take your lumps in life, learn your lessons and move on. Or just stay bitter forever. The choice is yours.

...but how is the content of the text messages that were released "gossip?" That's a factual thing, and if someone wants to call Majors a scumbag in this forum after reading those then they certainly can. It's part of the discussion of this movie as it's part of the process that could oust him as Kang and change the plotted course of upcoming Marvel movies. I wouldn't call that stuff "gossip." It may be factual, but my statement goes towards the desire to discuss the personal lives of people with such relish. It's something I've always disliked. The media can destroy the lives of innocent people when this gossip happens - again, Depp vs Heard - the general audience was initially split and Depp was a marked man, portrayed as an allegedly abusive partner until the trail vindicated him. The allegations were so bad Hollywood dropped him before he was found to be innocent. This isn't concerning for anyone? That innocent people face consequences for things they didn't even do? Have we gone insane? Would you like people talking about your personal life and judging you that way openly on the internet? It's the drive for people's need to judge before a fair trial and the insatiable need to know all the gory details before the trial that is the problem and it's all a psychological, social programming by social media, which drives people to crack-like addiction. It's just not good for society, and it's not good for the individual people who like a crack addiction need that stimulation and I can't even believe there is a contingent of people defending this abhorrent behavior. 20 years ago, pre social media we used to mock papers like the National Enquirer that promoted this stuff. Now we love it and gobble it up. The word pathetic is apt.

It was genuine. You're thoughtful, insightful, inquisitive and patient. All longtime, well respected qualities that seem to counter a lot of energy that seems to pour into here these days. I put the laughing emoji because I'm not sure what you have up your sleeve But so far, great stuff!

I'm not that much older than you, but can I say how much I enjoy your insightful replies and questions (so far, anyway )? They're like a breath of fresh air on the internet.

The primary reason is storytelling quality. It's a lot tougher to tell an interesting story with a cartoon character with limited emotional facets than a multi-faceted human-based character, and for that reason it's not as easy to get emotionally invested in cartoons. Barks managed to do it, but there aren't many others that rose to that level of depth and popularity. This guy explains it really well.

It's not thinly veiled at all. It's an outright statement that if people prefer to discuss gossip about celebrities to more a constructive discussion, I consider that a pathetic and fruitless endeavor. And if you approve of the "guilty until proven innocent" concept, then that speaks more about you than anyone else. All you do is troll my posts. Not sure why, but keep on keeping on.

That's the difference.

My buddy owns Andre The Giant's underwear, which he purchased for over $70K IIRC.

Nobody said it was Heard vs. Depp, but thankfully INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY is not based on H vs D either. It's pretty sad that this movie forum has become the gossip forum and in some ways no better than the casher racks full of gossip rags and it's worse that people care so much about the gossip.

I haven't watched the video, but the press and resubmit game is not money squeezing trickery, because it's been open knowledge for almost 20 years and reasonably common knowledge for longer. The money squeezing trickery for fraud artists went from trying to mess with the comics to messing with the slabs. With each countermeasure taken, much of the fraud is eliminated but the persistent ones try to find NEW ways to deceive the public. A good parallel is protecting your money. Locking your money in a bank protects your money from MOST common thieves, but then the uncommon thieves start robbing banks rather than robbing your home.

This may be the most accurate thing I have ever read on these boards.. The problem is, we collectors are all in the same asylum and vouching for each other that we're all sane. "but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise"

It was cool to finally meet you last month! I'll check that thread out.

I think everyone should have something BAD but untrue to happen to them to fully realize how damaging and painful rumors can be, because most people are very frivolous (and self righteous) with such things these days.

I've met a lot of influencers (and frankly, I was the forerunner of an influencer on here 15 years ago before there were influencers) so yes, you're correct, I meant, there isn't a whole lot of profit in being a comic book YouTuber. It was the same thing when people started their pressing businesses and some even people teaching others to press books. I never understood why someone would go through all that trouble when there's never as much money showing someone how to do something, or doing it for them as there is to just focus on doing it yourself. Agreed. For the record, I didn't even watch the video, I just concluded that it's great advertising for his business, but I do agree that admitting you were wrong is a rare and commendable thing.

Post that fugly thing.

It will slow it down for sure, because you stop further migration. I can't answer whether it stops it definitively without any other treatments. Keeping the books stored in a decent environment, which most likely do anyway, is probably going to negate the growth to the point where it's almost negligible.

I agree, but I'm also not sure how much stock I'd put into someone making a living off of comics and posting YouTube videos about it. It's like putting stock into reality television. Very successful people don't tell you what they're really doing, because of they did everyone would be doing it and they'd be out of business. I also don't think their sole goal is to be popular on YouTube because that's not nearly as profitable as being successful in business, so this video is probably being used primarily as a vehicle to promote their business. If I was putting out videos this is exactly what I'd be doing. Fun to watch, and I feel for people who lose in a down market, but I wouldn't be starting a donation thread for them or anything. They guy's dad was a very successful dealer, remember. And we ALL liquidate assets to make life changes. I sold my Timely, Fawcett and Baker runs which were very precous to me, to expand my business. That's just real life for small to medium sized businesses. I don't think I complained once about it. The best story I ever heard was John Verzyl telling me about his first huge collection find when he was a newlywed. He came home after viewing the collection and told his wife "honey, we're selling the house to buy a comic book collection" and they did. They sold the house and bought the collection. And look where he ended up: One of the wealthiest comic book dealers on the circuit with one of the greatest collections in the hobby. Big risk, big reward.

Did I ever say that I love it when you post?

Everyone keeps trying to find logic (why people buy things) in an illogical endeavor (collecting). Why? Collecting is about as illogical as consumerism gets. The only people who will be logical about it are the people who don't like or collect comics.

Ultimately the staples in comics will rust away to nothing - the only question is how long it will take. I know that collecting institutions often remove staples from items intended to be stored in perpetuity and replace them with sewn thread to obviate any possibility of paper damage in the future. But the comic market clearly frowns upon that, and for books kept in good storage conditions it shouldn't be an issue for the bulk of our collections. That said, I have replaced or cleaned staples that are very rusty because they have already caused some damage to the comic. It's a bit trickier than you might first think, so if you decide to do it, practice on some beaters first. I started a thread about 15 years ago discussing conservation techniques, specifically deacidifying comics due to the inherent nature of paper to acidify. We also discussed replacing staples, the rationale being that eventually you're going to HAVE to. There was a lot of pushback against it. The hobby is still relatively young. Let's face it, 80 years is nothing compared coins which have been around 1000s of years, and people were very resistant to the ideas, but eventually they will have to catch on. Because the hobby is young and most collector's books are stored reasonably well, in our lifetimes it's probably something not to worry about but eventually people's mindsets will need to change to adapt to the fact that time is undefeated.

This isn't mold, technically. Everyone has already identified it as rust migration. Mold, from what I've seen happens on flat areas where the pages contact each other over larger surfaces and the pages can't breathe from being stacked and it looks like black splotching that spreads (with no rust to spread). Typically, mold doesn't happen in areas where the paper can breathe, like around the staples, where the paper has the ability to breathe due to the gap along the length of the spine.

Not true at all. INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY and let's not start abridging that. Johnny Depp is the perfect example. He got blacklisted over the Amber Heard trial while he was innocent and she was a nut. Would YOU like to be presumed guilty until proven innocent?