The Less Blob

About $800 for a nice copy. I have a few. And 2 and 3. We can do a group deal for $900 for 1-3.

Yeah it is. I saw that in groups and my phone is so fuzzy I didn't see him.

Not that it matters, but is this the first mace windu appearance on a cover?

Bill is an awesome looking creation with the stupidest of names

Overstreet only goes up to 9.2 (or did they move it back to 9.4?)

So when does the crossgen stuff make an early valiant style come back? Outside of Dragons Lair, the ROb Zombie books, Space Ace, Mystic 15, and maybe the Sojourn Prequel / #1 it doesn't look like any of them get cover price? I remember paying attention to new comics again around 2004 toward the end of crossgen and remembering how attractive the books looked, but I guess after the initial excitement, fanboy speculators settled in their usual ways and decided fantasy comics aren't a good investment vehicle?

yup. i fell asleep at the end, but I was really tired and it was late, I don't blame the movie. i am trying to figure out the economics of these cartoons ... this one made $2.8 million in DVD and blue ray sales. That couldn't possibly cover the cost of making this, could it? And I guess it is on HBO Max so they get some value for the content and perhaps it generated international revenue I don't know about.

hah hah, i watched the suicide squad one with my 9 year old

"Remember those long boxes of back issues that sat in every brick and mortar for years? Filling virtually the majoroty of floor space? People are "CGC'ing" those books. Books worth zippo with no significance." Seems like plenty of 9.8s don't sell for the cost of slabbing. It doesn't seem rational to lay out all this money on encapsulation unless there is a clear upside. Looking at recent completed sales and even some decent books don't pay for themselves. And if you figure those 9.8s are actually the product of pre-screens at $5 a pop that resulted in a bunch of rejects the actual cost of those slabs is quite a bit more. Do we really see the census full of books that aren't going to sell for more than $20-$30? I get it, someone new to slabbing might make this mistake, but after shelling out all that money I suspect they learn their lesson quickly.

Oh well, I guess us non hedge fund managers (well, the ones who didn't try to short gamestop...) can't get a 9.8 of some books. Such is life. I can't afford a Picasso either. VG+ used to be my sweet spot for a lot of books....

I see this being tough to do live action in 2 hours... and they'd have to step up the animation quality to do it right. Having gotten the hbo max app for WW84 we have been enjoying the extensive library of cartoon movies. I did not know DC had cranked out so many of these over the years as they largely gave up on theatrical releases a while ago. I guess people are not willing to pay movie theatre prices for 90 minute stories that have the same production quality as the 30 minute cartoons they get free on TV. these would be good for saturday matinee at half price or something, but i guess theatres don't think that way.

Is there something percolating with the Kingdom Come story? There were sets selling for under $10 a couple of months ago and now everything is more.

a $25-$40 comic a few minutes ago that now people are trying to sell for $200-$300. I guess the current auction will illuminate the FMV.

You aren't getting a list of books I am hoarding! Anyway, "$50" is pretty broad. What is an acceptable grade? If you are willing to go low enough you can get a lot of keys for $50 or less. With that said, $50 can get you a pretty decent 40s/50s Barks Duck or a couple of them. Are these books good investments? Honestly, I have no idea. Most of them have not been for the last 25 years. These are the kinds of retail prices I saw 25 years ago on many of these books, although I suspect there was always a lot of negotiation (my shop gave me 50-70% "off" depending on how much I was spending). But they're great, 65-75+ year old comics with international appeal. I guess the problem is they were just so dang popular back in the day and, on top of being popular, it seems people kept them, quite likely for their kids or siblings to enjoy. So, while some genuine high grade copies, which are hard to find have done well, https://www.ebay.com/itm/Christmas-Comic-Donald-Duck-Christmas-For-Shacktown-Four-Color-367-Barks-/333796456099?hash=item4db7d1b6a3%3Ag%3A2AwAAOSw2vpfuBwZ&nma=true&si=BZbpsjZvXBDBh7scMVfgI%2BAabNw%3D&orig_cvip=true&nordt=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557 https://www.ebay.com/itm/Four-Color-408-VG-4-5-1-Book-Golden-Age-Dell-1952-Donald-Duck-Carl-Barks/193844576999?hash=item2d220982e7:g:jmYAAOSw0Nxf-5NG https://www.ebay.com/itm/Walt-Disney-s-Comics-And-Stories-76-1947-Carl-Barks-Donald-Duck-Nice-/333843450911?hash=item4dba9ecc1f%3Ag%3A9uoAAOSwh-Rf7qfc&nma=true&si=BZbpsjZvXBDBh7scMVfgI%2BAabNw%3D&orig_cvip=true&nordt=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557 https://www.ebay.com/itm/Walt-Disney-039-s-Comics-and-Stories-103-1949-Carl-Barks-Golden-Age-/353100220610?hash=item523669c8c2%3Ag%3AFZYAAOSw6Uxe3ZW2&nma=true&si=BZbpsjZvXBDBh7scMVfgI%2BAabNw%3D&orig_cvip=true&nordt=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557 The interesting thing about bidding on these books is that there are a decent number raw floating around and you can definitely snag one at a good price at auction that could actually be worth something in a slab. I got this for $25 ... it maybe isn't a 7.0 (as I don't think CGC is as soft at grading GA books as it used to be ... this could have been a 7.0 in the early 2000s ... and it looks better than a recent 7.0 that sold), and a 7.0 slab sold for just over $200 recently (it wasn't that good looking) and another nicer 7.0 sold for $280+ .... do I want to roll the dice on getting this slabbed..I dunno, if it is a 5.0 I am breaking even:

Hold on, this has for many years been a books that was hardly worthless in OPG and many dealers brought it to shows and slapped a $20, $30 whatever price tag on it. I have no idea what sales were like on it, but this was not a dollar box book 2 years ago (ok, I have fished them out of dollar boxes, but not ones in good shape ... unlike Eternals 1 and Moon Knight 1 and Devil Dino 1). Indeed, there has been a lot of action on the title for 9.8s, but yes, mostly focused on the later issues that are HTF in 9.8. With that said it is interesting what the sales price ration for 9.6 vs. 9.8 is as I don't see 9.8s cracking $300 yet and 9.6 is over $150. That is a better % of 9.8 price than many 9.6ses get. What I find amazing is Moon Knight 1 being $500 in 9.8. That is crazy. It is the one billionth appearance of Moon Knight! It was a book heavily ordered by shops and speculated on.

I like his work, but unless it has that painted effect (is it painted or air brushed or what?) like you have in catwoman 51, etc. his regular comic stuff is less exciting, it is still very good, just not "gotta have it"

There was a Godzilla movie in 2019. The girl from Stranger Things was in it. It lost money. Did it do anything for the comic? With that said, I kind of want to see Godzilla v. Kong. When it is on HBO Max.... I hope Godzilla 1 is a $100 book, I have a few of them. Devil Dino isn't doing much now. Yeah, Eternals 1 is bizarre, but it does tie in with Marvel universe. I agree, Eternals 1 does make anything seem possible. Godzilla movies do not tie in with Marvel. With that said, it is already often a $40-$50 book in nice shape, but I suspect VG copies will be doing better than the $10 they were getting a few weeks ago.

Well, Godzilla 1 has been worth something for a long time. Whether it should be a $100 raw book is another issue.

It is ok. One day I will snag one in a dollar box at a flea market or something.

"Prior to 1985, i would actually pay more for a direct edition." I really don't think that would be true for any book that shops might have ordered extra of for spec purposes. That could be just about any X-Men book, Perez NTT when it really took off, Wolverine mini, any time Byrne started on a title (or Byrne books in general), the last few years of Miller DD, New Mutants 1/Alpha FLight 1... you get the idea. You can look on ebay and pretty easily get a sense of the ratio of news to direct for any given book.

It sure does seem like 230,000 newsstand copies of wolverine 98 did get pulped because there aren't a zillion of them on ebay. can you imagine, EVERY MONTH that many books for a SINGLE (albeit popular) title getting pulped? Over all the marvel books are we talking about 2 million or so (maybe 3) books a month going unsold and pulped...amazing, like the whole inventory of mile high ... so the guys who provided the MH2 books, really, they were only stealing the tip of the iceberg it seems

hoarding my 51s!

Hmm, I guess these started falling more than a year ago, but the 51 seems to have started up again recently..a 9.8 sold for $200 or so shipped in December and now we're at $300?: https://blog.gocollect.com/adam-hughes-variants-high-priced-high-performance/

Here is an article from 2016 talking about 51 as then being a $100 book (unclear if raw or 9.8, but as it also talks about 74 as being $10 not much earlier and now $50, I assume the $10 was not a CGC price (and the modest print runs of all of these hughes covers): https://comicbookinvest.com/2016/09/27/catwoman-vol-3-51/ ... so I guess this spike was about 5 years ago? Maybe around then more folks decided that a great cover in itself could make something a $100+ book, i dunno.

While it does not make much of a difference for your typical 9.4 or less book, I think it could be subtle for many of these, particularly if they're not keys... perhaps the books sell a little faster, maybe someone is willing to pay a buck or two more, particularly when you get into the 90s. I found that once upon a time the very early marvel direct editions sometimes have some of this going for them..slight price premium, faster selling. if you look on ebay the newsstands actually outnumber them by quite a bit...take ASM 165 for example .. newsies outnumber by about 10:1. but right now with everyone pushing newsstands as supposedly being rare, buyers are not going to understand that a direct from early 1977 is actually the one that is harder to find (not that hard, of course) I love people pushing newsstand status on books that existed before direct versions, like ASM 161, 162, etc.