justafan

DANG! I love going to the VA Comicon but usually it's in Richmond which is a hike for me. I can't believe I missed that one in GMU which is much closer. Aw crud. I know of the Schoff promotion shows. $1 admission if you bring the ad. They are pretty classic hotel conference room style shows. low key and friendly but I already shop with most of those dealers so often that I need to take a break every 6 months to allow for new stock to come in or else I'm just digging through the same old stuff. I see many of those guys already 3 times a year at AwesomeCon, Baltimore ComicCon, and VAComicon whenever I actually make it and sometimes even at Heroes con. I'm down to just those shows. No more long distance shows for me. I can pretty much get all I need from HeroesCon and Baltimore. NYCC was better than SDCC since I got to see more Canadian dealers than I ever had before and snagged some decent Canadian price variants and late 2000's newsstands. I digress. As mentioned before, comic/gaming/toys pop culture and back issues are not in danger yet. It's the new fresh off the press comics we're concerned about here. Though somewhat related, I have caught on to the benefits of waiting 6 months to buy my moderns at a show where they are in dollar bins or on recent back issue shelves and able to cherry pick 9.8's. This strategy is also negatively impacting retailers but it's what I have to resort to since my LCS is no longer cherry picking/guaranteeing pristine copies for me and has even begun missing/skipping issue numbers for my pull box. After that started happening I cut my subs down to 1 title and they are still having issues with that. Hate doing it but also when an LCS's entire order comes dinged or has ugly color rub/ink streaks and can't guarantee a reorder, I have to suck it up as well. Diamond or Publishers should be either replacing the order for LCS for free or reimbursing them for the loss. I'm about ready to cancel sub orders with them and just go 100% dollar bin modern hunting at this point.

I used to think that was the solution but casual encounters with comics just don't happen like they used to. Besides, the publishers hate that model. Not doomsday if shops start closing but the market will contract to demand sustainable levels where speculation and investment on new/current titles has dried up and only the core monthly new issue reading customers are left which will be aging 30 year olds. From there the market will slowly diminish as lack of new customers enter and older customers phase out over the next 20 years. The question is, at what point does Disney/Marvel or any of the other publishers just pull the plug on monthly print? I mean if Disney streaming takes off and becomes the standard (more reliable) vehicle for getting it's characters and thus it's licensed merchandise marketed in front of kids, and print has declined to barely profitable levels, how much longer would they try to sustain it? Most companies operate some divisions at a loss strictly due to their impact from a marketing/publicity advantage. But if comics no longer serve as the primary vehicle for introducing and marketing characters/stories/toys/shows/movies, then why bother? I wonder what would be the minimum order numbers for a title in consecutive weeks before they think about killing it off? What would be the minimum orders across the board before deciding to cancel all titles? Would it be 20,000? 10,000? Jeez. I mean I think the lowest order numbers I've ever seen on a flagship title like ASM was in the high 40,000's according to comichron for 2-3 months in a row but movies and variants always tend to create a spike or boost which quickly fall 6 months after a movie is released.

dang same here

Perhaps the title needs to be refined but I'm going off of the speakers concerns in the article referring to the Direct Market for new comics and burdens the publishers are imposing on LCS, not backissues. Comics (movies, back issues, graphic novels) are thriving but it's the sustainability of the current publisher/distribitor/LCS model that i fear is in jeopardy as well as the ability for the direct market new issues to attract young readers to breed collectors of the future. it's great that you've found some good reads in modern new releases and shared them here (helps me but I'm old) but this forum is not a hotbed of preteen and tween members. and even then those may be good reads to you but may not be as interesting to kids. the trick is getting kids to test out every possible (age appropriate) new and current titles and see what sticks. what are the publishers/distributors/LCS doing to get comics in front of kids and get kids in front of comics and actually get then to try it out? Free comic book day? 1 day a year where kids are invited to take home random free comics that are barely a real sampling of the current titles still at a cost to LCS? which has actually become a semi speculator FCB day variant frenzy where most of the best free comics are taken before kids have a chance to grab one and resold on ebay. The ASM issues are the first to go. even if the LCS limits to 1 per person, I've seen dad's get multiples for him and his 4 kids 2 of which are not of reading age. most of what's left and taken home probably go unread and end up trashed. No, how about a free reader Week/weekend every quarter where kids can come in and read, for free, any/all age appropriate current titles in stock (none held back) in the store and pick one free title to take home with an additional free title for every additional one purchased at regular price. all comics taken for free should be reimbursed by the publisher or as a credit for the next month's order. the logistics would need to be worked out but what other ways can you expose kids to every current title and get a data point on their interest?

any cases of counterfeit OA? I figure there are incredible counterfeit artists that make it impossible to tell priceless renaissance art from the original it's only a matter of time and value. The choice in OA would have to be carefully chosen since most valuable OA has pretty well established provenance, a tight community, or known to have been destroyed. For example it would be foolish to sell counterfeit AF15 OA considering most collectors know how impossible that sale would be. But if you found a bigger fool it would certainly pay off.

To be perfectly honest, I think comics as a printed medium have lost the younger generation and I just don't see digital doing it for them. Out of sight out of mind is one possible excuse (i.e. death of the Newsstand sales) but my kids who see me with comics all the time only ever ask for a comic on the rare occasions I happen to take them with me to the comic shop and only after I say no to buying action figures and toys. And then they promptly forget about the comics they picked out as soon as they get home due to all the other distractions and options kids now have at their disposal. It's been 2 weeks and they still haven't recalled that I bought them 2 comics. If a kid has a tablet and is given 1 hour a day (I know it's way more for some) to play on their tablet which do you think they are going to spend their time with: minecraft/youtube/fortnite/games that was either free or only cost them a one-time price of $3.99 or read a digital comic they either have to pay $1.99 for each or a monthly subscription that costs more than a popular game download. The only way I see comics overriding games and youtube on tablet time is if the comic stories are like Dogman and Captain Underpants books (my kids love and devour those books) or if the Department of Education partners with the publishers and promoted comics and enforce STEM based educational stories in them to get them into tablet time as mandatory educational reading exercises. I almost see printed comics like vinyl records or even CDs. Only audiophiles and purists who care about the quality of the sound and have the money will pay the money for media but the vast majority including the youth are simply content with digital files on their phones and tablets. I see digital comics like digital copies of the NY Times and Washington post. If I'm not going to buy a subscription to those newspapers (even to do the crossword puzzle and get the coupons) why would I pay for an online subscription to their newspaper when I can get all my news in syndicated form up to the second and in video from a bunch of other news apps or sites?

I read and agree with everything mentioned in the article especially about the variants and new titles/reboots/one-shots. However, I do not see the publishers or diamond agreeing to several of the key fixes that the speaker presents and that is where we will begin to see a breakdown in the medium. As of right now, much of Marvel's sales and comic revenue tends to come from reboot/new titles and the 10+ variants they spawn and the control they wield over the distribution and ordering. Eliminate that and things could get ugly for them. They are basically doing all they can at this point to keep sales up. How long do you think Disney will keep the division open if it begins to be a draw on their bottom line? If they were to get rid of the reboots/new titles/variants/incentives and lose the completists/speculators/investors/flippers, they would have to jack up the cover price on every comic to $15-25 to make the same revenue on a smaller market's print run. This will further isolate the market's demographic to older men. Can you imagine paying $20 for a 32 page comic every month simply because Marvel is only selling 10k issues of that title? Neither model is sustainable as those older men will eventually retire and die out. Would the reverse be true? If they slashed prices back to $2/issue, used cheaper paper, lower cost coloring, cut rate art and stories (can't be much worse) would that draw in the younger readers and sell more comics? Face it, the variant market is practically subsidizing the reader market. Do you really think collectors that are buying 5+ variants of a title are actually sitting down and re-reading the same story 5 times each with a different cover each time? Maybe, but what they just did was pay 5x or more to read the same comic if they even read it at all. So what's the difference in paying 5x the cover price for a no-variant title? The hope/speculation that just one of those variant cover's value will be worth more in the future and the art is better, the secondary flipper market that buys out all the artificially low print run copies in 2 minutes and resells them on ebay for a profit, or just trying to squeeze another $4 from the completists. But is Marvel even analyzing the data to identify which artist and covers are more popular? Wouldn't it be better to produce just 1 really awesome cover a month with amazing art from the hot artist and simply charge more for that issue? And wouldn't it be even better if the story in that issue was 5x better than the average dribble being pumped out? Would that be worth paying $20/issue for? The other problem with the direct market that lags behind other industries is the availability of big data on customer demographics. Not sure if every Diamond customer has to report in the age, sex, ethnicity of all their customers but that is a huge source of market info the publishers are unable to take advantage of. Last I checked, kids are not the primary or even secondary customer of comics. Maybe it's just my area but I've only ever seen adults and older teens buying new modern comics in the LCS near me and it's mostly men. The occassional women that do enter, most are picking up their husband's monthly pulls or buying Pops toys. Most of the men I see shopping are not in the favored demographic of 18-24 year olds. They are usually men 35-40 or older. I think this article is more of an obituary. I disagree with the optimism of the speaker's concluding remarks but I hope he is right and I am wrong. The LCS B&M stores will be the canaries in the coal mine.

That kinda scares me. I had always expected that they would honor the insurance paid up to that amount as they are supposed to keep the comic and all contents. Did they bother to refund you the extra $4 for the cost of insurance above their free $50 that comes with priority mail? I wonder if you could have requested that they keep the comic and pay you the full insured amount or presented an argument that the value of the book prior to shipping was $180 but in its current state was between $0 and $x based on what a raw book in its current grade might go for based on past ebay sales, GPA, or Overstreet. If it was a not very rare modern and the book is now in FN/VF and lower, that book is practically worthless meaning you should have been fully compensated by insurance. On the latter point of Best offiers. I usually set a minimum offer auto decline. But the blob is right. Many are just testing the waters to see if they might get lucky or find a seller with a TON of wiggle room just looking to move product. The downside to setting a high auto-decline is you might lose out on a sale with a more realistic counter closer to your price since many buyers might be too fearful of shooting over that price with their 4-7 offer limits. That's the one great thing about their new send an offer feature where you can now send potentially interested ebayers the lowest you'd be willing to go to move product vs listing as an auction and then having to wait for an auction to end.

Yes, they take care of that for you. And yes they state that is a service they provide to you free of charge. It would be a PITA and a liability making us do it. At least they don't include the sales tax in their calculation of their FVFees....I hope.

I may give FB and Instagram buying/selling a shot. Just received the ebay selling changes update email yesterday. It's bad enough the fees are killing the sales prices but now they are being forced to charge sales tax on some states with more on the way. I don't know if they tell you up front what the sales tax charges are before you buy but I just had a sale where I as the seller didn't get to see the total tax until I invoiced the buyer. Most states have a sales tax and they will all likely require ebay to charge. Only Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon don't have state sales taxes. Hawaii and Alaska having the lowest sales tax under 5%. While I support the case for charging sales tax if you have a physical presence in those states, I don't really see how this applies to an online only seller selling to a customer in a state where you don't have a physical presence let alone a hobbyist that does low volume or less than a few $k in sales yearly. The argument that it isn't fair to brick and mortar stores doesn't work if what you are selling is not new merchandise or is not typically common for a lot of B&M LCS. Not really ebay's fault if states are passing laws requiring this but it pushes the little guy over the edge. If paypal is forced to do this as well then it's game over for that argument until something else comes along. The other change coming that kills me is the changing of all fixed price sales durations to a mandatory Good 'til Cancelled setting which will auto-renew/extend all unsold listings after 30 days. Yep, so if you are not an ebay store seller and only get 50 free fixed priced listings a month and then get a promotional 200 fixed priced listings and you go ahead and list more than 50 items, you have to make sure that you delist any that are over 50 listings before their normal 30-day expiration or they will continue and charge you their normal fixed price listing fee for any over 50 that you still have. As a buyer if I'm having to pay sales tax on my purchases and it doesn't show up until I'm at the checkout page, I am going to either have to pre-calculate sales tax to get a true price estimate or adjust my best offers/bids accordingly. From a seller's perspective I figure some sellers factoring in the sales tax into the price to account for the sales tax adjusted offers/bid buyers will be putting in. and so on...

I'm thinking it's close to the average of non event, non #1 renumber, non variant Superman, Batman, Spider-man, X-men sales + the average of all non #1 indie comic sales in a given month that is not May or december.

First seller I've encountered this with. No other option than to use my cc. I wonder if the new payment option gives sellers a better fee rate with ebay. Paypal was dinging sellers 3% + 30 cents on every transaction. Anyone know what the advantage to not using paypal and opting into ebay's new payment system will be? As a buyer I feel naked providing my CC directly on the website as I really do value the protections paypal offers. As a seller I can see the appeal if it offers better seller protections and saves them money. What have our experiences with this been so far?

ASM Issues taken per PM. - 387 NM - 394 NM Copy E - 396 NM+

another option would be to see if you can just drop it off with them at the next show you attend where they will be. but then again, they will probably only be paying for up to $10k on the return shipping also. so you're probably just better off using collectibles insurrance. I thought CIS only insured shipping under the more pricey dealers insurrance option.

same here. I wonder if that's what they r waiting for. more sellers to ramp up their listings past a certain threshold before putting out a coupon. or they are waiting for after tax season is over.

I used to be a big fan of theirs but I do not agree with how they are flooding the market with variants. What I found to be most dissapointing and greedy on their part was marking their variants as sold out after a certain amount was sold on their website but they were holding back stock until the prices began to rise and then began selling them at eBay prices. I found that if you just wait a few months you can get their back stock at a huge discount to even what they were initially selling for on previous order. their order fulfillment times have also slipped. when it was a pre-order I could understand why it took a while to receive but my last order towards the end of September was for items that had already been out for a couple of months so I figured it wouldn't take more than a couple of weeks to receive. I just got them at the beginning of January. 3 months is too long to wait. I may not order from them again.

ASM Issues 403, 441c, 446b, and 664 taken per PM

LAST CALL! 25% OFF! going...going

Dang it who drew this tub in front of the door again! Murphy tub? and I thought I'd seen crazy cramped new York studio appartments. but I see I'm not the only one who leaves their plunger in front of the doorway.

and it's a good thing too unless you were just joking because sending cgc a cbcs 9.9 or 10 for crossover service will end up the same as if you sent them a cgc 9.9 or 10 for regrading: you'd probably just end up with a cgc 9.8. but if the cgc label means more than the grade go for it.

Probably this. Just heard they reported record profits for the 4th qtr.

All books now 20% off listed prices!!! PM's also welcome.

wow, any guesses what grades the dentist' s copies would get if he ever had them slabbed? or do you think he's read and handled them so much since that they wouldn't be higher than Erics?

I didnt think paying $3k for a raw copy of ASM 667 on ebay 4 years ago was insane despite reading a ton of comments about how crazy that sale was on here with many questioning it's legitimacy. I barely batted an eye as my max bid was $4k. And after I got it back from cgc, I gotta say I was pretty happy with my 9.6 W copy and still am. was this recent sale for 12k insane? Maybe to some of us but not to the buyer and seller and that's all that matters.

All books now 15% off listed prices!!! See list on first post.