VintageComics

I think I was spending too much time on Instagram watching people overpaying for almost everything and then getting congratulated by everyone on the "deal" they just got. That was just ridiculous. I had some younger dealers calling me up and literally wanting to buy 9.8 bronze at full GPA to resell, and I couldn't get rid of it fast enough. I gotcha. I think this is a good idea. I'm not going to hold you to it, but how many comics do you think would need to be included in such an index? How many per genre, or per age? I don't know. That would be a great crowdsource thread and an even better discussion.

How do I account for why a certain individual decides to do something? The reasons are legion, but it comes down to the fact that they were willing to pay that much for it. The more pertinent question is what the MAJORITY of people are willing to pay for it. Values don't go up or down in a vertical line. What I meant was, how do we grab enough segments of the market to make the analysis reasonably representative of the market. I wasn't on the boards much in 2021, but I can tell you that as dealers we were talking about how unrealistic everything was. What impact does the sale of a Ferrari have on the sale of a Ford Focus? To me, this portion of the comic market is inconsequential to the broader market due to the limited supply, sales, and pool of individuals who are willing to spend the money. If Bezos and Musk get in a bidding war over that 9.8 Amazing Spider-Man #1 and it sells for a billion dollars, I don't think people will be able to sell their 2.0s for $200 million. Though I'm sure some people on eBay will try. I was speaking of personal interest for myself. We had chatted about how I saw some sales in the last Clink action that went well over GPA and was still following that line of thought. But, if Ferrari sales are spiking, you know the wealthy are spending and if Ferrari sales are dropping, you know they're not spending, so that is still useful information in the grand scheme of a discussion on economics. Anyway, I personally was discussing how to build a spreadsheet with a broad cross section of data, with samples from various areas of the market but it was all theoretical.

6'3" is only 5'11" in 1961 inches. Meh. It's all an illusion in Hollywood. MOST actors are MUCH shorter than you think they are in real life because shorter people cast well in a square screen. Some actors are much taller but they need to be made to look shorter for film to match the rest of the cast. How about Gimli and the dwarves in Lord of the Rings (or even the hobbits)? They were all full grown men. Tom Cruise? short. It's all camera tricks and real life height is totally irrelevant for Hollywood movie magic.

I worked in the automotive industry for 13 or 14 years or so, and during that time my wages climbed. I went from $18 an hour bit at one point toward the end I was making a solid 6 figures for a few years. The, the industry felt they needed to cut costs, so guess what they cut? Our wages. No matter how much we screamed and yelled, and it was genuinely unfair, there was nothing we could do. For the next 8 or so years, we basically worked much harder for the same pay and eventually I left the industry entirely because I didn't want to argue with a big corporation for a fair wage. It sucks, but thankfully in the West here, there are options and sometimes it's better to move from a position of weakness while you can before you get pushed out. This is one of the reasons it's important to live within your means, because sometimes you don't know what tomorrow brings and your 'cushion' can quickly disappear.

And is that a new trend (of having so many flops?) I saw Irishmen and it was not great. It was long and slow and frankly, the actors didn't look great. Not sure if it was poor makeup, or what but to me it almost looked like it had the quality of sub-par a 1950's movie. Not the type of stuff Scorsese is known for. Sony seems to be onto something with Spider-Man and they could quite literally build an entire MCU type universe around this one character, if done well.

Oh, it wasn't me. I'm a love, not a fighter but I'd make an exception for you.

Didn't work so great for Scarlett Johansson. And scaling grading fees to value is fraught with issues. If the grader can guarantee TAT's and the customer agrees, then within reason of course. The whole scandal with Marx (sub-company for PSA) is that they were getting their cards back too late, and the market changed enough for them to be taking a big hit on their subs. So they decided not to pay PSA. When a grader uses a peak price to value the item to determine the fee based on percentage, it's imperative the item doesn't take 6 months to a year to return, and that value isn't 30-50% less than the value arrived at by the grader 6 months to a year earlier. Big risk, big reward. Scottie Pippen was a conservative businessman and he locked in a tiny salary for a long term contract that he knew he could count on. It came back to bite him in the rump and created a lot of bitterness because when they started winning trophies, he was still getting his tiny salary....but it was HIS decision. Nobody else's. He didn't trust in his own skill enough to take the risk and that's all on him. Risk is one of those things that separates the greats from the not-so-greats. People who are confident in their abilities are willing to take that challenge and step up to it. Wasn't Scarlett Johansson's situation slightly different in that they wanted to stream something during the pandemic that was originally supposed to be a theatrical release, or something like that? You can't win every time. If you did, everyone would be doing it and it wouldn't be a win anymore.

Bosco, because there is so much talk about Disney's movie profitability, do you have any statistics that compare genre to genre? Like, let's say in 2023, are there movies that are outperforming Disney in the comic book / action hero / superhero genre? I'd be interested in profitability and also gross revenue. For example, we talked about Blumhouse movies which generate less overall revenue but are highly profitable but those horror movies are an entirely different genre. Are ALL movies flopping this badly? Are some movies or genres more profitable than others? I realize this is an apples, oranges and pomegranates question but I'm trying to figure out if there are other comps to the Marvels flop that can help pinpoint whether it's comic book movie fatigue or is it an industry wide problem that people are spending less in theaters in general?

The evidence about "privilege" is manufactured. Men are less agreeable psychologically. Women are MORE agreeable psychologically. This is why many men succeed where women don't. They push harder and sacrifice their relationships where women acquiesce more and won't sacrifice relationships to succeed as readily. This is ALSO why WOMEN succeed where men don't. This leads women to dominate in certain industries and men to dominate in other industries. For example, there is FEMALE PRIVILEGE in the caregiving industry, because women are more conscientious. Should we try to force men into there, or should women dominate that industry? Forcing men in would in my opinion allow less qualified people into that industry. This is why men succeed in industries where sacrificing their families is necessary. The majority of people who die young, get addicted, turn to crime, end up in jail or die from crime are all men. Wait, where's the privilege? Do you REALLY want EVERYTHING to be equal? Your logic is not sound.

This is utterly ridiculous, political baiting and you did it (unsuccessfully) in the Mary Shelley Frankenstein discussion as well. As someone with many successful daughters and female ex's and friends, you're doing yourself a disservice by baiting people this way constantly.

Like regular comics, most people don't need to worry about anything in their own lifetimes. People generally get wound up about things they know very little about. I remember the uproar here about pressing that even devolved into physical fights at cons 15 years ago. It was ridiculous, and all because people thought books were getting "ruined" but they had little knowledge of how books were printed. Books when printed endure much worse things than a proper pressing.

A lot of people get hyped with the hate and run with it but in truth, it's a brilliant business model strictly from an economics point of view. That model is used in many industries, the movie industry for example. Rather than pay an actor a wage, they're given a percentage of the profits of the film so they bet all of their financial reward on the success of the product. Jack Nicholson did it famously in Batman in 1989, but now movie houses like Blumhouse produce all of their movies using this formula. It's brilliant because it keeps costs down.

Many books with a lot of resto feel 'off' so that's not a judge of anything really, and I say this because most people won't realize this as they don't handle many heavily restored books.

Who is 'they'?

This is an unfair characterization of the books. The books are restored, not reprinted. Who determines how much resto is too much resto? The audience?

Dude, you've been following me around and talking about me for weeks whenever I post something you don't want to read. There were like 6 different people involved in the conversation, it diverged slightly, as ALL conversations do and now it's over. What is wrong with people these days when a few people can't have a polite conversation without everyone always trying to make things worse. Relax and put me on ignore.

Oh, well I guess we'll take the Tik Tok influencers over real life. You're obviously younger and lean a lot more on social media than I do, but my personal definition matches real life a lot better than Tik Tok does, at least in the free world, I can tell you that. The roots of most bitterness come from not addressing root causes, and the current narrative does NOTHING to address root causes, it only addresses the symptoms which makes the patient worse, not better. If you want to get into root causes, you need to understand how and why men and women interact differently. There is no "supremacy" in my family. I'd love to have a discussion with you on "white supremacy" but this is not the place, so if you want to do it via PM or elsewhere, I'm game. And with that, I think we can either agree to disagree or chat elsewhere.

Wow, dude. If I told my daughters and exes how you people are portraying women they'd want to meet you in Phil's parking lot for a smackdown. I agree with @CAHokie, that MANY MORE women would prefer to stay at home and raise their children IF THEY COULD. It's in their evolutionary biology and psychology. Their evolutionary biology is not to want to be a CEO. That came much after, as a backlash against society because the media programmed them to be bitter about it. The media projects what people don't have and makes them bitter, in order to make people want things, and bitterness is a never ending well that transcends all generations, demographics and even time itself. If you make someone bitter they can stay bitter forever. The antidote to bitterness is gratefulness. We are quite literally living at the pinnacle of human history. If you have weekly food you're in the top percentile on earth. If you can vote freely and get a job, you're in the top percentile on earth. Yes, there are always deficiencies but these deficiencies are being projected as though they're life and death and much worse than they are. How about instead of portraying what people don't have, and pitting people against each other, media portrayed gratefulness for what people DO have and we grew from that common ground instead? The world would be a different place. And I'm going to say it: Not everyone can be and do anything they want, which is the message that a lot of movies and media project these days. There are limitations and you can't pretend those limitations are not real.

Well then you have it all wrong because that's not the traditional lifestyle I was raised in. My grandmother absolutely had a say in what happened in the household, in fact, both my grandmothers were the strength in the family. My mom had a say. My exes had says. My daughters have says. Full stop. Maybe you need to update on what "traditional" means and need to stop getting your facts from social media and the news, which is where all of this info and programming comes from.

Do I? I'm actually acutely aware of how diverse the female population is. I have 3 daughters, a step daughter and two ex wives and they're all different. Why does everyone always assume their view is the correct one when mine is diverse? I've spoken to two of my daughters about the Barbie movie now. They both thought it was dumb. My youngest, unprovoked and unsolicited called it 'extremist' twice with emphasis on that word. Why? Because they're not representative of the charciature that you and others pigeon hole women into. They're both strong, successful, making careers for themselves, and yet prefer to live in their feminine energy with their men, and if they saw the way you guys were talking about them they'd take offense to it.

Wow. I did NOT realize you thought that way about traditional roles. No wonder you're so cynical. Why do you and Bob always go to the worst example possible, which is NOT representative of real life? How about an amicable pairing of husband and wife, where BOTH people are on the same page as far as decision making, but the women prefers to be a mother to her children rather than farm them off to society for programming and the father agrees to do most of the heavy lifting to make it happen? My children were raised by their mother and not a bunch of strangers, and I'd cut off my right arm if I had to, to make that happen again. In fact, I almost did.

Parrino dumped because he moved into another field that made itself available. He was a huge coin dealer, made his money and then moved from coins to comics for a couple of years. He got fleeced pretty good by offering a blank checkbook and a lot of dealers took advantage of that. He ended up selling his comics to move into a huge Vintage photograph collection in 2006 (undisclosed sum). He ended up selling that collection just over a decade later for north of $30Million a few years ago. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/rare-photo-collection-goes-on-sale-announces-artifact-brokerage-firm-llc-300738466.html

Prince Charming (Sleeping Beauty, Snow White): Young women need being saved by a man to make their lives worthwhile Why are you denigrating women that way? It's not about 'feeling worthwhile'. Many women still want to live in traditional roles. They are biologically wired that way. Do you ever even speak to any women? I talk to MANY and the many that I speak to generally prefer traditional roles. It might even be MOST women I speak to, but I didn't start a spreadsheet about it. As long as the roles are respectful and amicably arranged, those women WANT to live in their feminine energy and want the man to live in his masculine energy. And I'm not speaking out of preference. My personal preference has always been to gravitate toward strong women, as both my wives were and my daughters are. The media (or old Disney) used to project the wants of the many. What is happening today is that media pushes the wants of a minority and projects it as though it's what the majority wants. That's the disconnect. Just start writing great stories that represent real life accurately and it will sell, because THAT'S WHAT HUMANS WANT. Not a parody or a patronising of real life.

Man, I appreciate those kind words so much. They mean a lot to me. I agree with you 100% and if I can add, I think a lot of people see the old Roy and not the new Roy. If you've followed my posts since I've been back, I've argued a lot less with unreasonable (and ignorant) people. In fact, if you pay attention, what you are generally seeing these days is people arguing with me while I don't answer back most of the time, like at the top of this page where someone is calling me out with multiple posts and I didn't give them any air. Now, there are a few times that I do reply back, and it's generally when someone makes a personal attack about me that maligns me in a way that is very unfavorable and I simply want to set the record straight OR, if I feel that we're on the path to some closure then I'll try to wind it down that way. A few examples would be my reply to jsilverjanet above. We ended amicably and came to a solution. As long as he doesn't start attacking me I think we have an understanding. Or yesterday when Lightning and I ended amicably after a back and forth. Sometimes everyone needs a little closure. This place used to be FULL of back and forth banter, and it was the lifeblood of the place. I don't know if people have been pistol whipped and programmed by social media to not be themselves or people have forgotten post pandemic how to have fun, but the internet has become a dull, dry place - not just this place but all social media. I'm not cut from that cloth. I love jousting and joking and conversing. I do have a long history of people attacking me, and I have genuinely changed as a person. I don't feel the need to reply anymore to everyone and most importantly to me, I have an agreement with Mike that I won't bite back when people bite me and that he'll take care of it. I trust Mike to do that. Anyway, it takes some courage to type out what you did, and I genuinely appreciate it. It's discussions like this that actually make this place better.

Oh, don't worry. Under the new rules there will be more.