the blob

The last show I went to was probably 2019, but it sounds like things are cheaper now? I always found that I could go to a show with $300-400 and walk away with more cool stuff than I could carry and those were in NYC, where it might have been more expensive. I'm getting the sense that it is no longer possible to spend $400-500 at a show, sell $1000=1500 of the stuff you bought on ebay (all the low hanging fruit), and still wind up keeping 75% of it?

Was this really happening? I was participating in the frenzy in 2021, but I wasn't able to sell filler books for $5, just a lot more stuff became interesting to people (any moon knight with a cool cover, etc.), a lot of semi keys appeared, I might have stopped selling before things got too nuts.

for a raw, book in hand, trust in condition, don't need to pay for shipping let's stop harping on this while we have copies to sell please, i have to figure out how to pay for college for two kids (somehow my parents didn't seem to have this problem because it was my problem, but I don't want them saddled with excessive debt)

Sure, but maybe not lamenting so much. Fact is, the speculators made it harder for dealers to get stuff that was liquid, although I suppose in the peak of the madness it may have allowed them to sell some books that had been illiquid (is that a word?) for a while, maybe, I'm still not sure how it impacted their more generic filler stock, although anything that could be remotely considered a borderline semi semi key was lifted.

Yeah, that's always a bummer, in 2020/21 I did a lot of de-bagging of old bags that had gotten yucky.

Aside from the great finds in there it is nice to get something likle that already bagged and boarded!

"we get people flying"...is this an aviation product? Does Alaska Airlines use it?

It wasn't that long ago that almost anything seemed like it could become not worthless overnight and I'm not just talking about 2020/21.

Ahhh, back when color TV repair jobs were the fastest route to a comfortable middle class life

There was a "sky is falling" period in the beginning of covid

Jan 2020 or Dec 2019? I was wondering where it was when things were good, but before the madness of later 2020/21, Dec 2020 is right at the madness no? With that said, things were sill silly into 2022, right? I remember conversations with a young guy in April/May 2022 who started at my office and he was hot and heavy into speculation.

All I hear is down from some 20/21 peak, I'm more interested in how far down from 2019. Sellers had a goooood run on a lot stuff from 2012 - 2021 with a little blip in 2020 down and a few other blips.

Yeah, I bought them out of dollar boxes for a long time. I sort of remember them having silly values in Overstreet, one of those BA books that I had to wonder how they came up with these prices.

Where are those keys vs. 2019? I think we should stop basing this "things have tanked" on the madness prices of late 2020/21 that presented some weird historical anomaly. Things felt pretty good in 2019. I know, things are always measured by the peakity peak of any given madness and if you bought at those 2021 prices, ouch, but still...

I remember a late 90s St. Paul's church show where Zurzulo (pre-Metropolis) had 10 cent books. It actually wasn't all junk , a fair amount of 70s B and C tier titles (I think he had started the day at 25 cents and made them 10 cents at the end, which got my attention). I bought like 300 books, which were a pain to carry home in addition to the 100 or so I had already bought (I may have taken a cab, but I still had to drag two long boxes to the street and I am pretty sure I did not have a hand cart). I had actually run out of money and he was ok with me promising to pay him $20 of it the next show I saw him (which makes me think I walked home with the long boxes on my shoulders). Ahh, the good old days, when I wasn't physically broken.

And not just speculators and cover collectors. I know there are folks who have been doing this for years who are these, a few people on these boards, but having some sort of nostalgia for the characters, stories, and genre in general helps keep you in it. I will admit I have not read a whole lot of comics in the last 20 or so years, I would not say none, but a tiny fraction of what I have bought for sure, the reality is if my wife saw me reading comics she would immediately come up with a chore I could be doing (she seems to be more forgiving about graphic novels/TBs), but my childhood and and middle school I definitely read a ton of this stuff and then got back into it in the early 90s. Here I am 30 years later, still at it(although cooled off lately, I'm just not feeling like buying when I am dealing with college tuition)

Thanks. I probably have 50-70 items I am considering sending over. Probably not five figure stuff.

Were these worth something once upon a time or is that just some sort of Overstreet fabrication based on dealers having boxes of them they wanted to unload like Shadow 1 and Shazam 1 (before anyone cared about Shazam 1). I know if you grew up reading Mad in the 60s and 70s these probably feel pretty cool, but if you're under 50, I dunno, frankly, they're borderline cool for me and I'm over 50 and read Mad in the 70s.

Well the homage cover isn't really worthless drek, it was pretty much worth something when it was released

What is the experience with comic art? Is that an area you are looking to expand in? I don't see many listings. Last time I tried to consign art with Heritage they said no because they only thought it was worth about $750. I wound up selling it for closer to $2,000, so I'm not going to bother with that again.

Maybe I can get my 75 cents back

Yeah, last year around this time I was making plans to start doing local shows for the first time since the 90s, trying to line up my teenager to assist, etc. Then I tore my frigging achilles and I can barely move a long box off a shelf anymore much less drag 15 of them around to a show. So the question is, is that book a $10 or $5 book at shows now?

Yes, my pension is not as generous vs. my salary as uniformed folks and teachers, but i can't complain. I will not be living high on the hog despite what some would consider a pretty nice salary in the real world right now, but I am hoping what is considered the equivalent of a middle class salary in other parts of the country (and maybe well off in some other parts of the world) will be enough to live on decently until I get SS as well, in addition to my savings. Health insurance is the big scary thing. My wife has a pension, but it is garbage because she is Tier 6. I need to stay to 62 and have put in my 30 years to crack six figures (at current salary levels, I suppose we could have more runaway inflation and they address that in the salary, but I am pretty sure my COLA was 2% when we had 9% inflation in 2022) and I am pretty sure another 10 years of this job will kill me, frankly I am worried that another 5 will too, so that's not happening.

Yeah, I can't be bothered selling $5 books on ebay, by the time I am done with fees and dealing with them I am making about $5 an hour for my time and if I am going to have some headache of a buyer I don't want it for a $5 book. My process is just not efficient enough for that. The only way that works is if you're selling tons of them and regularly have multi-book orders or charging so much for shipping you are making a few bucks there. At $10 it starts to make sense, just barely.

Unless I have misread it, they just pay back my contributions with 5% interest. So we've had people retire at 59 even though they were still enjoying work because they were concerned about dropping dead and their spouse not getting the pension. It is a pretty messed up system. Also, if I leave at 54.5 and then take my pension later at 55 (the earliest I can, but with a massive penalty), 59, 62, whatever), even after 30 years, I lose the retirement health benefits. I need to leave at retirement age and start collecting to be able to stay on my cheap (relatively speaking, it isn't THAT cheap, but I'm not crying about pay $650 a month for a family of 4 either, I know that is really good nowadays) health insurance. On the plus side, the spousal survivor pension is not halved if I die like some are. I opt to make her my surivivor and I don't think my payment is even reduced by 10% because we are the same age. I could even make my children the beneficiaries (or even make them beneficiaries for 25%), but my payment would be reduced a lot more due to their ages depending on how much they get.