The Less Blob

OK, I thought you were talking about ones with stickers, which I have seen in the 50s (I think they're stickers) and remember them being on the front. These were not printed with dot matrix, I don't think dot matrix even existed then. Not sure how they were printed. Yeah, I guess I have never seen it actually printed on there, just mailing labels. And yeah, a high grade copy ought to be a rarity, this thing was stuck in the mail with no protection practically, did these have a brown paper slip or something? So what kind is this?:

Why would this be a variant rather than just a copy with a subscription mailing sticker on it?

OK, everyone got shipped yesterday. Sorry for the delay. Apparently, there is a canon inkjet printer ink shortage in NYC and staples did not have any. So I bought a lazer printer. So tired of spending money on inkjet ink.

Heck, I didn't think Solo was bad. Not great, Should have been better. Following up too close to a bad "Last Jedi" movie hurt it, maybe a summer release (when folks were acclimated to December Star Wars releases).. I dunno. I was angry as how bad Last Jedi was, not Solo. But it shouldn't have been the basis to re-think the spin-off movies. And a $400 million box office is not the end of the world, it isn't like people didn't see the move... unless you spend $275 million to make it.

The re-releases get really good money often, better than the originals often. I looked a lot of them up, I don't have any "rarities," but a few sealed ones that do well and a fair number that sell regularly in the $8-$20 range, a few more. If I don't have a problem selling comics for that little, I probably shouldn't have an issue selling records for that little, but i will have to invest in some record mailers. which, as noted, can double as magazine mailers, which is nice. I don't have a working record player though, so I guess I need to eyeball them for scratches and warps. I just had to ship out a magazine and finding a box was a big pain as none of my geminis or uline boxes fit. a had a couple of 12X9s that do, but insufficiently_thoughtful_person that I am, my cardboard sandwhich was about 1/8-1/4th inch too big and I didn't want to take it apart and shave it off.

Thor Dark World made money, but it was a real snooze fest.

Insane not to delay that release a little longer. Theatres will not be open by me then. I live in a metropolitan area of nearly 30 million people. Outside my city of almost 9 million, the counties that do have movie theatres can only have them 25% full and you need to watch the movie with a mask on. Who on earth wants that?

The artist in question should be forced to sign and sketch on every single one of those 1:25s before they get shipped. It is the only way to solve this.

The $3 copy was a beater, at the time the market looked more like $30-35 for a nicer copy.

Dark Phoenix did suck. Totally though.

Shawshank Redemption, one of the greatest movies ever made, was a box office bomb, pulling in $16 million at the box office vs. a $25 million budget. It eventually got up to $58.3 million total with international, but that is still a loss under the you need to make 3X budget to have a chance at profitability. No covid. Just a weird market. I assume it eventually made money getting played on TV a billion times, but still. And it is hardly alone.

I disagree. Good movies can fail in this environment (heck, they can fail regardless). Theatres are not even open in my city. They haven't been since March. New Mutants, for example, might have sucked, I will find out eventually, but if theatres aren't open, and where they are open half the population (or more) is scared to go to them, a $100 million budget movie is going to have problems. Theatrical releases in the near future are destined to be disasters given how much of the population is living within restrictions. And I am not going to spent $20 or $25 or whatever pay per view is. And sure, that makes no sense because I spend that on a movie, but I like seeing it in the theatre vs. the living room I am in all the time. I only have a 50 inch TV, so it is not that much of an "experience." I haven't seen all (or most) of these movies, but I agree that some of them did not deserve to bomb: https://www.indiewire.com/gallery/best-films-box-office-bombs/warrior-2010/ https://www.gobankingrates.com/money/business/critically-acclaimed-movies-that-bombed-now/

How many copies do you think this 1:25 will result in? I am not RMA, so I do not know the precise answer. (Is he still alive?) But yeah, if they need to order 25 to get it, and have ordered 20 to get 2 copies of the other one, I can see them maybe just sticking to 20 copies.

Here it sold for $3: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Tenage-Mutant-Ninja-Turtles-volume-1-47-may-1992-comic-book-/303782472059?hash=item46bad8a97b%3Ag%3AGaoAAOSwB8BfvawG&nma=true&si=BZbpsjZvXBDBh7scMVfgI%2BAabNw%3D&orig_cvip=true&nordt=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557 There was one BIN at that price ($100). Every other sale has been $31 or less. So now all the sellers jacked up the price. It may be a $100 book, but i am not sure it is yet. It has a pretty cool cover. I need to see if I own it. Then I will definitely say it is a $100 book. I feel like although I own a lot of issues from around then, I may not own that one. Oh well.

I agree, a variant cover should be eye catching and special, not generic (although, seriously, shouldn't every cover get 150% effort? I can understand maybe the interior pages not getting them in every panel, but the cover ought to.) Give someone a reason to spend double digits beyond "it has a low print run." I just don't think the cited image looks like a 7 year old did it unless the kid is a prodigy. It looks like something that would make more sense on an interior page.

There's nothing "rare" (from the auction) about the previews though, right? My comic shop got tons of them every week. They'd often give away their extras when they got too many. Folks with pull files who got them free either held on to them or they did not. Given that some of these have popped over the years it seems that folks who got them free would have held on to them, no?

I don't think it looks like a 7 or 8 year old drew it at all. It looks pretty professional. It is not something that would get me excited, true, but there's nothing especially crappy about it compared to the many, just as generic, covers out there. These covers are pretty mediocre too:

my guess is that this is a reproduction of that poster despite it saying "vintage" in the title: https://www.ebay.com/itm/PRIMO-DEFENDERS-vintage-1978-BUDIANSKY-poster-Marvel-comics-pin-up-art-HULK-SS/233172084469?hash=item364a23a6f5:g:0BIAAOSwNXpcP4gk It seems like there are tons of what appear to be reproductions of marvel and other comic posters on ebay. it is so easy to grab an image and have it printed professionally nowadays for pretty cheap.

Ok, the "rarity" and "variant" chromosome is obviously not strong in you. $8K seems like a lot in general for a comic book that is not historic. That is my comic budget for like 8 years. You can buy a lot of keys, in slabs even, with $8K. But I guess someone out there with the funds has been hunting hard for THAT book and now they have it. If you sold your tech start up for $100 million and are also a comic nerd, then $8K is nothing. I have no idea who is dropping that much loot on a book like that. I "get" someone saving up to spend that on a key book, don't get me wrong, it's the only way you'll get a presentable copy of most of the big key books out there.

238 might be overpriced, but as noted, the tatooz issue makes 9.8s harder, although if it i easy enough to switch the out from an FF 238, no big deal. I only think it might be overpriced in that while Hobgoblin was a big spidey nemasis for 50 or so issues after 238, perhaps the biggest during this period, he has kind of faded (and there have been how many versions?) into a second or third tier viillian. I think Rocket Racer is far more important to the Spidey mythos.

What is wrong with that? It is better than half the comic art I see out there. It is a bit generic, sure. Once upon a time variant covers were special extra awesome covers, now some of the variants are crappier than the regular covers, just rarer.

It was such a bust at one of my local shops they had tons of them in their 25 cent box. I actually did not know what it was, but I figured spideys for 25 cents, whatever, worse comes to worse I give them away on Halloween. I bought 4. I am pretty sure there were a ton more I did not buy, but this shop got pissy when you'd buy a bunch of multiples, so I'd take 4 and spread them around the pile of other stuff so they didn't realize I bought 4 of the same one. I blew those out the moment they were $10-$15 books! GENIUS!!! Granted, in the polybag I don't know if they were 9.8s, could have been 9.2s, who knows. (The same shop had Saga 1 for cover price for months... and WDs in the 90s left over on the rack at cover when they were $10+ books... it was NOT a collectors shop, they had no bags and boards, no back issues (only 25 cent overstock) ...and while they were struggling they'd tell you not to buy multiple copies of books off the rack at cover (even when they had different variant covers)..even months after released .. i tried to buy the different #1 covers of Southern Bastards when it was already at issue #3 and they said I could only buy one. I was a semi-regular there buying a stack of books once a week. Shockingly, they closed.

It is going to be a while before we have billion dollar theatrical releases. If they rush it to the screens it will bomb. There may be a lot of pent up demand to go out and see a movie, but there is also a lot of fear. I'm not sure I would risk it and I don't know if I want to wear a mask for 2 hours in a theatre. Heck, I have eaten in a restaurant twice. Once was very uncomfortable as a crowd of drunk maskless guys was on top of my family. The other time the restaurant was empty, so no issue.

They definitely were. For years I grabbed every one i saw out of a dollar box. Probably had 15 or so. I used to sell BA grab bags on ebay ... $500 in OPG for $200 or whatever, and I'd often toss a nice one in there because I think it was $15 or $20 in guide in NM and i paid $1, I figured I was being a genius. Unfortunately, I also tossed a lot of Special Marvel Edition 15s in those grab bags because it was a book that was like $100 in guide, but I couldn't get more than $30 for a nice copy and I had paid $10 each for them when I bought every copy kochcom had. They were nice solid 9.0 - 9.4 copies. I got rid of at least 10 of them this way. It would often be the centerpiece "expensive" book in the grab bags. And Ms. Marvel 1s. DD 181 and Avengers Annual 10 too. Books I could get cheap live that I figured would never be worth anything close to what Overstreet said they were worth. Genius!

Is there something about ASM 187 that I am missing? I know I have, in the past, been able to get a little premium for the non-newsstand versions, but I am seeing folks shelling out $15 (including shipping) or more for ieven the newsie, sometimes a chunk more total: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Amazing-Spider-Man-187-FN-5-5-1-Book-Electro-Captain-America-Jim-Starlin/193764384875?hash=item2d1d41e06b:g:wTMAAOSwbDtfueGX ...., that is an outlier, but there are still a few in that range. a few months ago I see a bunch more in the $1-$3 range plus shipping. But i am not seeing wacky CGC prices (admittedly, there are few cgc sales). Electro and Starlin art don't seem to be a good reason to shell out $15 for a mid-grade copy. Dum Dum Dugan? Anyway, I see most of those Spidey's not in high grade with nothing special about them as $1-$2 box books I'd hope tp flip for $5, but maybe I need to readjust my reality.