jimbo_7071

Foliage to foliage.

A sledgehammer oughta do the trick.

I'm in!

Gazing upon each other's chins to gazing upon self images.

My first thought was, I can remember when $7,200 would get you an unrestored VF copy—if you could find one. (I know there are probably guys here who can remember when $72 would get you an unrestored VF copy.) Your copy does have better eye appeal, but I have to be honest, I pay more attention to page quality than to anything else, so I would have to go with the 2.5 OW/W if offered both books at the same price.

Penetrating the skin with a syringe to penetrating the atmosphere with a drill.

Tied up and awake to wrapped up and asleep.

I have been looking for my OWL card for quite a while now. I think I must have left it inside a comic book. I looked inside most of my comics, so I'm thinking that I might have left it inside on of the books that I submitted to CGC. Hey @The Lions Den, when you were a grader at CGC, did you ever find any OWL cards inside comic books? I don't mean that you would have found mine, obviously; I'm just curious whether that ever happened.

I wouldn't even call the drawing of lines through the "10¢" writing; I'd call it doodling. I don't think I've ever seen a book with doodling on the cover get a 9.8 or even a 9.6.

Hanging by the neck to hanging by the wrists.

OK, this one's perplexing. The name Jean is written in the speech bubble, AND someone (probably Jean) drew diagonal lines through the 10¢ price with pen, and the book still got a 9.8. Does anyone else find that odd?

I wasn't thinking of any particular book, but that's a good example. A narcissist would prefer the book with the highest grade even if most collectors would rather own the other copy. The narcissist would have no self awareness, though; he would immediately dismiss any claims that the other book was a nicer copy as "sour grapes" because that's the way narcissists think (and nothing you or I could say to them would ever change that; a narcissist would immediately devalue our opinions). Sometimes the highest-graded copy is also the nicest known copy, of course, but sometimes it isn't because CGC has chosen to de-emphasize certain flaws, such bindery defects, below-average color strikes, and page quality. Grading isn't perfectly consistent from one grader to the next or one day to the next, either; it certainly isn't consistent enough to justify the huge price differences between highest-graded copies and second-highest-graded copies—until you understand how narcissism intersects with collecting, and then those huge prices differences make perfect sense. I'm with you in terms of which copies I like best; I look at the page quality first and the eye appeal second. The technical grade is a distant third for me, but I do use it to determine how much I'm willing to pay because I know that the grade is primarily what determines the price in the market.

Not at all, actually. My interest in narcissists initially had nothing to do with collecting; I learned about them for other reasons. But now that I know what makes them tick, it's easy to understand why the highest-graded game is the perfect lure for them. Maybe someone who's been around longer than I have could tell me whether there was any sense of competition among collectors prior to numerical grading; I'd be curious to know. If there was, then there must have been some narcissistic collectors in the hobby even back then. A narcissist probably wouldn't be interested in any hobby that lacked a competitive element. (I've listened to the Comic Zone Radio interview with Jay Maybruck; he was obviously a narcissist, but he was a dealer.) I've been collecting since 1984, but I really never interacted with other collectors until I joined the boards in 2012. I had never seen anyone else's collection or shown my collection to anyone outside my family. I never approached collecting as something competitive in nature; it had never occurred to me that other collectors might.

Slaying on a rooftop by L. B. Cole to a guy who likes to park his sleigh on rooftops by L. B. Cole.

It isn't surprising if you understand narcissism. Any of us would be happy to acquire the nicest copy we could find of a given book, but the guys who must have the highest graded copy—even if it means paying ten times what the second-highest graded copy costs, even if the highest graded copy is very softly graded, even if the highest-graded copy doesn't have the best eye appeal or the nicest pages—are grandiose narcissists. Any hobby where competition comes into play attracts some of them. They think that they're better than everyone else, so they have to have nicer comics than anyone else. And to be clear, they don't really care about the comics. They don't collect comics. They collect the admiration and envy of other collectors. That's what feeds their narcissism.

Are you talking about the Allentown Cap? Isn't it already slabbed as a 9.8? (I personally don't think a book should get a 9.6 or 9.8 grade unless it has OWL 10 pages, but CGC has not yet solicited my advice.)

Getting slimmer to looking slimmer.

I thought you were going to say that it was a Commodore PET.

You still use a desk-top computer? Man o man! Do you listen to Guy Lombardo on your reel-to-reel tape deck while you're typing away on said computer?

Questionable ad to gross ad.

Gum to candy.

Red dress to red cape.

Bandaged toe to bandaged foot.

40 years ago I was in 2nd grade and hadn't started collecting comics books—although I had been reading comics occasionally for a few years. You could have given your More Fun 65 to me; I wouldn't have said no. If you want to buy me one now to make up for the one that you didn't give me in 1982, I'll be happy to accept it.

This is my first purchase of the year. I don't have it in hand yet.