AndyFish

Andy and Veronica Fish

First year in about five Veronica and I didn't set up at the show. The Heroes Crew is tops, they throw a great party back at the store after the show wraps on Sunday night-- music, food, open bar. The Uber cars to the airport were in a constant and steady stream last year, and yet they still offer to drive you (and they did) because they know how to treat people. Weather wise all of my friends who are down there insist it's not usually as humid as it is but every year it's crazy humid-- not Tokyo mid August but close. We went out to dinner with friends, walked through the great little downtown area (sweating) and came to a famous BBQ place. "You'll love this place, it's air conditioned!" My chum offers. I swear it was hotter inside that it was outside. I think you folks in the south just get acclimated to humidity. But it's a great show-- I think it beats San Diego hands down because it's about COMICS.

Went black for a week in honor of Adam West's passing, but now we're up and rolling again. Batman continues...

THOSE are the best presents you could ask for. I've got a Godzilla drawing my youngest son drew for me when he was 7 or 8-- and he's now coming up on 21. That drawing still makes me smile every time I look at it. Enjoy them they aren't small very long.

"The difference is the psychology of bidding. If an item has no bids or one bid and bidders are watching it, they might wait till the last moment and make some nominal bid thinking they are he only one interested and they will get the item. If everyone is putting their max bid the item may be at $100 with days left to go in the auction. Now the cards are on the table and people realize what they may have to bid to get the item. An experienced sniper will wait in his gilley suit with his max bid ready-then when people place their nominal bids his max bid swoops in and grabs the item. Example is a 3 pair of soccer socks I just sniped. Bid was at 99c for days, then jumped to $5. I knew if I bid my max of $13 with plenty of time left in the auction, someone would probably outbid me. The socks retail at $20. So I waited and 4 sec before auction bid $13 and got the socks for $5.50. " -- KAV Exactly this.

I honestly don't have any idea-- I don't have that kind of free time to hover over an auction which is why I do the gavelsnipe thing-- set the bid and forget about it.

I've cracked open more than two dozen slabs and if this one was put back together it's in a lot better shape than any of the ones I've had experience with. I think ONE out of the 24 came apart in two fairly clean pieces but there was some serious cracking not scratching on the plastic. It's hard to tell from pictures but this looks like it was just roughed up not broken, at least to me.

I third the microchamber paper theory.

I had a friend who used to sell on eBay all the time, and there was a guy who would often win his auctions who lived not that far away and the guy would always arrange pickups of his wins. My friend wasn't crazy about this-- while it might seem like it was great to save the hassle of shipping these were mostly comics and mailing them wasn't all that hard to do. Taking time out of his day to go and meet in neutral territory was actually more work. Now this guy won a LOT of items he put up, but that meant he bid on a lot too-- and it turned out this guy was ONLY bidding on stuff my friend was selling because he was local and he liked the idea of being able to pick up a win and not have to wait for shipping. Trouble was, when you looked at it-- it looked completely shill. Not only was this guy not bidding or buying other people's stuff very often, when they would do local pickup there was no tracking to prove he'd gotten it. It created all kinds of trouble when someone reported this apparent shill bidding and it caused my friend to sour on the whole process. He's since back on but he insists on shipping even if the person is across the street. But my long winded point is just because it looks like shill bidding doesn't mean it is. There are a ton of people on eBay who don't seem to use the "max bid" and let it go feature, choosing instead to bid up in increments. Me? I use Gavelsnipe so I set my bid and I forget about it, but I'm always hesitant to assume a seller is crooked unless there is more evidence.

Now what makes you think it's a shill? There are plenty of buyers who do stupid things-- we've had auctions where the high bidder cancels his bid because they "accidently" bid the auction up-- we've had people with zero feedback bid in increments of a few dollars-- all of which looks like shill bidding while we don't do that. This type of thing gives honest sellers a bad name. As for overpaying-- that's part of the auction process, people get caught up in it. I for one always check to see if an item is available in the same condition elsewhere-- but not everyone does. I think we should be less inclined to call foul unless we have some evidence to the contrary-- it's not fair to the seller's reputation.

Thank you very much! Just wait to see what's coming up! 19 weeks in and more to go!

Batman's got guns because this is set in 1940

New England in Cambridge is on the smaller side- but they have a decent stock and its only around the corner from the Picnic. Million Year Picnic USED to be the entire basement floor of the building, and they had golden age comics displayed for sale on the roof beams. I bought a Batman #6 there as a teen after riding my bike the 40 miles to get there, rode it all the way back home only to find out the centerfold was missing! But they were good about it the next time I was in. Today it's a tiny shop but its crammed with stuff-- mostly modern and collected editions but the selection is great. There's also Comicopia over near Fenway Park which is also a more modern store. If you're looking for back issues one of the New England Comics stores has a Golden Age room-- it's NOT Cambridge or Brookline because I've been to both of those often. If you're going to be renting a car-- drive 45 minutes west and you can hit up THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT which is a 10,000 square foot comic shop in Worcester, they have a ton of bronze and copper in hundreds of bins, and a smaller selection of silver and gold in a display case in front, and if you're bothering to make they trip to Worcester, Holden is only 10 mins north of it and you can set up an appointment at SuperworldComics and see what Ted Van Liew has-- but he is appointment only and they do Detroit 5/19-5/21 so expect them to be gone a few days before and a few days after that. Ted has an amazing selection and is one of the nicest guys in the biz. The good looking young guy who works for him is my number two son Joe.

One of the benefits the artists have is we don't pay for our tables (well, the folks in Artist Alley do) or travel and hotel so in that regard we have it over the dealers. The downside is you're drawing almost the entire time you're there, and that includes off times-- because you either have commissions due or you're participating in the drink and draw charity events, and even though if we stayed home and worked in our studios we'd be drawing all that time as well, it's much harder on the road because the conditions are not ideal. You always forget a supply, the lighting is sometimes bad and you're sitting in a crummy folding chair.

Great thread-- I'm really digging it. I'm not going to hijack it, so I'll keep this short; I've done shows as an invited artist, last year I did close to twenty five shows from East to West Coast. All of these were big shows-- Heroes, Wizard, Rose, Emerald, etc. and once a year I help out a friend by driving his collection halfway across the country to Chicago and I spend the weekend working his booth-- so I get to see it from two perspectives. It's quite a world "behind the scenes"-- the biggest take I got from being a comic dealer is that if (at least at the big shows) you are a collector the thing to do is to somehow get in to help your dealer friends set up because THAT is the day that all the wheeling dealing is done. Dealers run around buying from each other, and sometimes at crazy prices-- and then sell those very books at their own booths at the very same show. There are lot of big collectors who are not dealers going around too. Set up at the big shows is crazy when you compare setting up as an artist. For dealers there is a load in time usually a dock area or they drive their trucks and vans right onto the show floor, it's pandemonium trying to get pallets of stuff through the aisles and you are very likely blocked in while you unload. Then there is a mad scramble to get the vehicles off the floor. Break down is almost the same but most of the trucks and vans are off the floor this time, and instead you have dealers dragging pallets to the loading zone area at a race to see who can get out first. Contrast with setting up as an artist-- you don't arrive a day (or two!) early, you arrive about an hour before the show opens, you check in, they give you your meal passes, invitations to events, a heads up as to where the free food and refreshments will be set up off the show floor and most of the time an escort to your table and even an assigned staff member who will be your gopher for the weekend. At various times promoters will come over to make sure you're doing well, and you're asked to donate art to the event auctions or charity projects. Biggest thing for artists vs dealers-- an artist has a great weekend if he does $4-$8k a dealer five to ten times that.

Wow seems like another CGC stumble here.