jimbo_7071

I've never stored my books standing up; I've always kept them in stacks, so that wouldn't be a factor with my books. I've tried to keep my books away from temperature extremes; there have been short-term lapses, but nothing prolonged. I can look at my old-label slabs to see how many have visible warpage.

Bare chest to bare back.

That slab has the most bowing of any that I've noticed, but I've seen a slight amount in others, too. Just to clarify, the slab is not opening; the dime is slid between the table top and the slab itself, not between the two halves of the slab.

I wouldn't expect the tightness of the seal to be a factor one way or the other. The warpage probably has more to do with the material properties of the polymer that was used and with parameters of the injection-molding process. (It's possible that the warpage occurred at the time of manufacture but that I simply failed to notice it; however, it seems like something I would have noticed.) If there's less space in a particular slab (between the outer and inner wells) then warpage of the outer well has more potential to cause a spine tic. My old-label slabs vary greatly in thickness and also vary in the tightness of the book within the outer well.

They are GA books. For the most part, the bowing is too slight to show up in a photo. However, I took this picture of the one with the most bowing. With the book lying flat, I was able to slide a dime under the center of the book. A penny wouldn't fit.

The Waiting - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

Somebody's Watching Me - Rockwell

I have several old-label books that I've owned since around 2001. I haven't noticed any changes to the books, but a couple of the thinner slabs have started to bow slightly, so apparently the outer wells aren't perfectly dimensionally stable over time. The only time I've ever noticed changes to books is when I kept some in Mylar sleeves open at the top; with those books, I noticed some darkening along the top edge (after ~20 years).

We are Family - Sister Sledge

Don't Stand So Close to Me - The Police

I've wondered how he goes about locating collections to consign. Maybe one of his techniques is to buy an item from someone on eBay in order to acquire that person's phone number for cold-calling purposes.

Do you mean Greg Jortner? What kinds of questions was he asking? I'm just curious. Can I assume they went beyond, "Have you thought about consigning any books?"?

Lola - The Kinks

From Atta to a dog who deserves an "Atta Boy" . . .

Heat of the Moment - Asia

In Too Deep - Sum 41

Breathless - Jerry Lee Lewis

Arachnid to insect . . .

Jumbo #156

From ghost to spectre and from "Death is a Dream" to "Death's Highway."

I don't even care whether my comics appreciate in value; I just don't want to buy comics and then have them lose all of their value. I'm sure most of my comics will be sold by my heirs, not by me, but I still don't like the idea of (potentially) squandering money. I'm not convinced that the recent high prices on sci-fi, horror, and books from second-tier publishers will hold, and those are the kinds of books towards which I tend to gravitate.

Patty O'Day to Maximilian O'Leary.

Creeping horror to crawling evil...

Regarding the funding of comic books with stocks, I more or less did just that. After losing quite a bit of equity in 2008 and getting most of it back in 2009/2010, I basically cashed out and bought comic books. I guess I figured that if there was nothing safe to invest in, I might as well keep my money in something I enjoyed. One thing I would want to know in order to assess the health of the GA market is, how old is the average collector now vs. 10 years ago vs. 20 years ago? If the collector base is aging, then the robust GA market that we see now has an expiration date. I know that some younger collectors are entering the hobby, but I don't know how many. I'm 43, and offhand I'd say that most of the GA collectors I know are older than I am.

I had a mixed bag, but mostly mid—high grade GA, including Bats and Tecs. No key books but some Joker covers. I'm pretty sure about the year. My only outlet for books was local dealers in the Detroit area; things may have been better elsewhere.