lighthouse

Sorry. I’m all full up on kidneys after my last deal with Greggy. Did you know you could fit over a hundred kidneys in a short box? I sure didn’t.

As for where they are, I believe a vault at Heritage would be a good place to start your search. But I expect their location to change in April.

On 2/2/2022 at 7:16 PM, october said:

You had multiple raw 9.4 FF 1s walk into your shop?!?

WTF?!?

Is there a back story you can share?

Not THAT pic. 

The pic directly above the comment. The 2 and 3 both got 9.4. Same original owner as the five number 1s.

There are two fresh 9.4 census additions in that pic.

On 2/2/2022 at 11:49 AM, KirbyJack said:

Ok, but do you have anything good?

I mean when you see what’s in the April Heritage Auction you might have an answer to that question.

On 1/16/2022 at 8:12 AM, lighthouse said:

I’ve always loved that the only dial that’s actually labeled is AIR. None of the other dials are important enough to need labels.

Got the grade back on this copy today. It’s a 9.2...

Knowing how to “read” the bar codes is extremely helpful for sorting books from series that get restarted all the time. Looking through a stack of random Punisher issues and not knowing which are volume 5 and which are volume 6... does this issue 7 go with this issue 4 or not? Etc. You can group all your title 08021s together and know they are volume 10. Group all you 08413s together and know they’re volume 11. All without opening a bunch of books to check indicia. First 12 digits is 7 59606 07619 2? That’s a marvel title (“59606” means Marvel), in this case Punisher Volume 9 (“07619” is the title code). 
 

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve bought a collection with a hodgepodge of Amazing Spider-Man, Punisher, Captain Marvel, and Avengers. And my first triage isn’t even to look at issue numbers. I just stare at barcodes and shuffle them that way.

For this particular one, you can look at the MyComicShop listings and see the long bar codes for covers A-C of issue 1. Zoom in and you’ll see the code pattern I described.

https://www.mycomicshop.com/search?TID=405391

Long barcode vs short barcode. 
Direct edition barcodes have five digits in the secondary section. (First section is single digit, then five digits denoting the publisher, then five digits denoting the title, then a check digit). Newsstand bar codes have two digits in the secondary section denoting just the month of publication.

On a direct edition barcode the five digits will 99.8% of the time be: three digits for the issue number, then a digit for the cover number, then a digit for the printing number. So a first print cover A of issue 1 will be 00111. A first print cover B of issue 1 will be 00121. A second print cover A of issue 3 will be 00312... So if you’re perusing a box of Nightwing back issues all the first prints will end in 1. Issue 58 would be 05811 for cover A and 05821 for cover B.

The only time this breaks down on recent books is when they do more than 9 covers, especially for new #1s. So you might see covers A-E be 00111, 00121, 00131, 00141, 00151. But if they did 27 covers of issue 1 you’ll get squirrelly things like 00138. Where you KNOW it’s not an 8th printing of cover C. Hence “99.8% of the time”.

On 1/18/2022 at 5:41 AM, ThothAmon said:

Never heard of this title. 
 

Hard for a miniseries that took 19 months to put out 4 issues to get any buzz. 
That one also looks to be direct edition rather than newsstand. 

I’ve always loved that the only dial that’s actually labeled is AIR. None of the other dials are important enough to need labels.

On 1/14/2022 at 7:47 AM, Robot Man said:

Wow! Congrats! Stuff like that rarely happens any more. Original owner?

I wouldn’t call what you have ahead of you work. More of a labor of love!

The roughly 1955-1965 books are original owner. The earlier books were likely acquired secondhand sometime between 1961-1965. 
That’s purely a guess from the evidence in front of me. Conditions start low grade in 1955 and gradually get better and better (kid taking better care of his things as he grew up) until they’re consistently high grade by 1962. With the books from the 1940s in higher grade than any of the 1955-1959 books. Presumably bought after he started caring about condition.

Per an email from Gerber today, they are no longer even taking orders on boards, and won't even be taking backorders on boards until February.

Current turnaround time on the mylars is 10-14 weeks and harshly limited to ration them out.

This has been quite the thread. There's complaining, complaining about the complaining, complaining about the complaining about the complaining, cheeseburgers, and complete sentences from Greggy. I'd recommend it to all my friends who like Belgian films.

I must admit, I'm a bit confused though. Since I can't imagine there's too many Avengers 4s and Amazing Fantasy 15s tied up for months waiting in line behind the thousands and thousands of modern drek. It's random Silver and Bronze drek worth less than $400 that's sitting in line behind Modern drek worth less than $400. My last submission of walk-throughs in September was done in 3 calendar days, the Express were done and shipped out in 8 calendar days, and my Fast Track Moderns were done well before I expected them to be. Sure, my "modern drek" submitted for cheapest possible processing is waiting in line and I don't expect to see it until next spring. But premium tier submissions seem to truck right along just fine. TATs look a little slower right now than a couple months ago. But that won't stop me from throwing another hundred books on the pile, another couple dozen that will come back "quickly" and a few dozen that can come back in June and I'll be just as happy to see them.

And for the record, the worst number of cheeseburgers to order from McDonald's is 37. Because only 36 fit on a grill at once. I've never eaten more than 16 at a sitting myself, but there's some helpful advice if you're trying to plan ahead.