VintageComics

I picked up a raw AF #15 there once! Flew out from Toronto for it on St. Patrick's Day no less! What a pretty, pretty town.

I'd say at this point you have the best person on the job and I'd give @CGC Mike the benefit of the doubt and let him work. I think that feeding the rumor mill probably won't help your chances any so give it a bit of time and see what they come up with.

Honest question, why would they be harassed if they did nothing wrong? Privacy laws are meant to protect people from the lowest common denominator in society. Unfortunately, it used to be that in society the lowest common denominator was much higher than it seems to be today. Personally, I'd love to work on raising that lowest common denominator and make the world a better place for EVERYONE. But this is where we're at right now, and unfortunately I don't see a way of raising it anytime soon.

I don’t know if that’s the case or not. Only video can show the action of any employees and how they handled things. But It may have to come down to that. I tend to not believe theft but possible error on how it was separated and catalogued. Why should I or any submitter be at fault of their error. They make a very valid point about viewing the video as a non-employee. All sorts of privacy concerns. It's why Collector's Society have such strict limits on who is even allowed on the property. I've been there a few times. You basically just see one door and one room. That's it. They don't want people peering into the inner workings in much the same way TSA won't let you take pics once you're in a secure area. They don't want every detail being made public.

I'm not knocking their security. They may very well have. Blackstone is no dummy. The dude didn't become one of the wealthiest people in America being a dork. I would really be surprised if they didn't have more security than people realized. I've walked into restaurants for celebrities that hire their own private "militia" where every security guard (and there are several in one place) is 6.5 feet tall, 300+ lbs and are packing double heat, and I've been to some incredibly large auction houses that also have their own security to protect assets - we're talking the type of security that would protect a foreign national. I wouldn't even be surprised if at a certain level they're using near military level tech to protect their assets. People tend think kind of small unless they've been exposed to other realities. You can't cut it with just a motion sensor and a retired security guard over night anymore.

I'm betting it's more than just a few million books. More likely $100's of millions in books. Now talk to me about coins...and multiply by a factor of 100 for coins. Those are industries that handle BILLIONS in products each year. Millions of today are the $100,000's of 2019.

I had an buyer beat me down incessantly on a decent sized book and ask if he can do time payments. I said I'd do time with a 20% non-refundable deposit. He said he could only send 10% - I repeated that it was non-refundable. He agreed. He sent me the 10% and less than a day later asked for a refund because his wife wouldn't let him buy the book. I explained that the deposit was non-refundable (screw you, you wasted my entire day negotiating with me only to back out?) and because I sympathized I told him he could put the deposit toward a future purchase. He went on to talk smack about me and threatened to tell everyone how horrible I am. Never heard from them since which is fine by me. That is EXACTLY how it went down. You reward horrid behavior and they only come back to annoy you again. Every horrible human story has two sides, and I've got plenty just like that.

Wait. @Tbone911t Where in Canada are you? Daves in Montreal and I'm near Toronto!

Oh yeah. Rolls actually had a hydraulic system that was "designed to leak a little" They used aerospace technology to create an ultra high pressure pump that pumped 1000s of lbs of pressure and they put a pan under it to catch leaks. Wiping the pan down was a part of the service. I just can't get excited about American autos. They're just not what they used to be, although I can't really comment on the new C8 as I don't have any experience with it but I did comment that it looked cool when it came out and that moving the engine to the mid section was inevitable if they wanted to stay competitive. It's just physics. You can't have a heavy weight all the way at the front and still be competitive with a balanced, mid engine car. Yup. You know, you just brought up an INCREDIBLE point. Which comic would you have bought back in 2013 for $55K? And what would it be worth now? What would that 911t be worth now? Did that asset outstrip the AF #15 in 7.5 or fall behind?

A product of the majority of today's society.

This is called wisdom.

American cars give you a lot of power with their American muscle, but the chassis is not as refined to put that power down to the ground effectively because refinement and engineer cost lots of $ and that's not the target audience. People always complain about how expensive European cars are to buy, but there's a reason. You are paying for the engineering that makes it feel like a quality product and a lot of that engineering is a trickle down from racing. The English are famous for having great rides and handling (Colin Chapman from Lotus was considered a genius, as well as Jaguar and Rolls all had incredible handling and rides).

Disney delaying the FF and X-men franchises are MONSTER factors in the decline of anything related to those two titles. They were heavily speculated on before Disney bought FF and X-men from Fox for $97 Billion and now with the pandemic and the SAG-AFTRA strike delaying progress as well as Disney waiting for contracts to expire, I believe this collection of things is what is causing the #1 problem for demand. Just imagine a Surfer story line is released through film? That book goes right back to where it was at it's peak.

Dave calls me on the phone every time he takes one of these home from the shop.

You should also tell the story about the OO date stamp history, as well as the little stamp that was on some of your books. Cool stories!

You are such a great diagnostic technician!

A good solution is make sure they are somehow bound together and not dropped into a box separately.

To CGC's credit, I've on occasion sent an EXTRA book that wasn't invoiced and they've caught it. But in your case, I'm wondering how they were packaged? Where they all packaged in one stack? That's how I usually send all my books - even if they are all different sizes, I manage to wrap them safely together so that they have to go through EVERY BOOK before the package is disposed. I've long avoided dropping separate packages into a box for this specific reason.

Edited my post above.

Were the two invoices protected separately? Meaning, 2 comics in one cardboard sandwich and the magazine in it's own cardboard "sandwich" ? Some of us have had this happen to us. Sometimes there is more than one cardboard sandwich stacked in a box and we may miss the 2nd one when opening a package, especially if it's thin and on the bottom. This happened to me recently. There was literally a magazine in the bottom of the box but the cardboard sandwich was so big it lined the bottom of the box so I initially only saw the comics in the larger sandwich and thought the 2nd sandwich was the bottom of the box. After a few days, I realized I was missing the mag, inquired about the missing mag and I was assured it was in there and upon deeper inspection it was actually there...only it wasn't apparent because it was camouflaged. Thankfully I didn't throw the box out. . -------------------------------- EDIT: Also, were the invoices added separately inside each sandwich or together, outside the sandwiches? If they only found the one invoice from the 1st sandwich, they may not have even thought to look for another set of books in the box. This is one important reason when I have different items I make sure they're all bound together to make sure they're all opened. If you stack them in a box they may forget to dig deeper. Just spitballing.

I'd totally have a drink with you even though I'm never wrong.

It hasn't. Population growth has virtually flatlined since 2021. And growth is projected to be minimal for the next 30 years. I'm well aware of the stagnation of the population and how the fears of overpopulation were unfounded AND fear mongered to the point where we now have to worry about the world's population declining and I'm aware that new research shows that the earth can handle WAY MORE people than are alive on it now, meaning those population fears were overblown. What I meant was that for the past 90 years that the hobby has been around, population growth was a LARGE part of the inflation of prices of everything including comics. Demand increases. Plus, while we may have a few stagnant or slow years, but you're only thinking short term. We WILL start expanding the population again. You have to or the earth goes extinct. So over a much larger timeline you still still experience population growth. Plus the hobby continues expand into new arenas you get new exposure. Anyway, all this to say I'm just not that bearish long term anymore after reading about the inevitable collapse of the hobby since I got here.

That seems to ever be the pattern. People who don't need to sell just hold, the market gets a bit stagnant then when things start to look cheap due to a new movie, deflation or whatever, they start to climb again. I've said this a lot but if your comics suddenly drop in value overnight, that's going to be due to much larger problems than just the hobby and if that's the case pretty everything else will drop in value too and the only thing you'll is some of this.

At SOME point EVERYTHING has to peak. But without sounding condescending, we have been having this convo for 20 years and this has been the point made by everyone who believes we're headed for a correction. It was said in 2004 when prising were rising so fast nobody could keep up, it was said in 2008 when the stock market collapsed, it was said in 2010 when you joined and multiple Pedigrees were found (Billy Wright, Twin Cities and I can't remember which others but there were at least 3), it was said when AF #15 double and tripled in price in 2017 and again in 2021. I believe on a macro level that the $$ that can be spent on comics AND the number of people who will want comics are both expanding. In the last 20 years we've created more money than in the history of civilization (OK, that may or may not be true but you know what I mean) and that wealth continues to expand looking for things to buy. Plus, not only has the population expanded but the collecting base within the population expanded as comics and movies spread to other countries where they had never been. Part of the explosion in prices in 2010 / 2021 were people WITH MONEY getting into comics that had never been in comics previously. At this point, comics are no longer a niche market. They're worldwide, they have the attention of investors worldwide and these investors have more money than they know what to do with. Everyone wanted to get rich off their collections. Well, you got what you wanted. It's a double edged sword. Now you need to pay more too.

Because the engine is in the back (not even in the mid section) the car is very tail heavy and in corners, when people try to sly down in a fast curve the tail end inertia causes it to whip around. The car is terrifying at speed but then that's half the fun (trying not to die). I worked on British cars for about a decade and never heard this joke before. For anyone that doesn't know, Lucas did all of the electrical systems on most British Cars for decades until the 90's they're known as The Prince Of Darkness among insiders because they never worked properly. Apt for Hallowe'en.