The Less Blob

Right, except Lichtenstein's estate may still be selling prints (or getting royalties) and may even be licensing the images (for shirts, etc.). The thing is, these were works for hire, I don't think the artists own the copyright, the comic publishers do, unless they reverted back, and if they did it was long after Lichtenstein sold them. As you point out, Lichtenstein wasn't selling these for "millions" at the time, that is the after market.

Andor was terrific and had a lot of episodes. Exactly the kind of show I hoped disney would be making. (Yes, my 11 year old was bored, my 17 year old liked it). I think it overlapped with Willow, which was a bit disappointing despite the potential. Trying way too hard to write for 14 year olds to watch. They need to be giving us 2-3 adult quality shows a week, minimum, to not be a rip off. Giving me ant man in 4 months doesn't cut it. most of the time we would have already seen the new marvel movie. Just combine it with Hulu already. Hulu is a terrible app. I am constantly getting knocked off and have to sign in again,

it isn't like ant man is losing that much. Warner is taking a huge hit with their last 2 movies. Disney+ is such a rip off providing so little new content given that they spend about $75-100 million to make 2 hours of television any "loss" that move makes should be considered wiped out by providing some content. I cannot believe I am paying for this service to watch the mandelorian and bad batch. say what you want about netflix, but we get a constant stream of content, good, bad, whatever. Tons of adult programming to watch.

Doesn't the next company after CGC do this raw, cheap, grading with a tamper proof label?

I knew a guy who started one of these in the early 2000s. He did it out of his home in Long Island. Blanking on the name. Elite grading? They used to show up on ebay for a while.

Well, its more that I just knew the people at this shop by my office. Another 5 minutes away is the downtown Manhattan Midtown Comics outpost, which is huge and not the sort of place you BS with the staff and regulars. My old shop was an interesting spot near Wall Street, so you had the guys who worked there who were fun, a lot of white collar professionals like me dropping by during lunch, blue collar types, tourists, kids, etc. We had a lot of interesting conversations. But at the same time I got a sense of what was going on in new comics.

I miss having an LCS where I can go and BS with the regulars and staff.

awesome cover and 1st, but DCs of that era in that condition are not all that hard to find, so I can understand prioce resistance at those levels

apparently thousands of mammoth tusks were dumped in the east river in nYC: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/15/treasure-hunters-dive-mammoth-bones-new-york-east-river-joe-rogan

I thought they were just some $8 stupidity to clutter the shelves, some were touted as valuable?

No. It is when you raise the price and claim the book is a NM- rather than the Fine you bought it at.

they are not toys. they just sit there on a shelf. poor and sick kids have no interest in clutter. these are not action figures.

It has been 5 high for 10+ years, no issues. I agree that adding those extra layers like I did is a bad idea, it was more to temporarily make space elsewhere. But I do not live in a modern house. Everything is very overbuilt compared to a modern home, with very strong timber, likely from virgin forests 120+ years ago. Anyway, I'm working on it. Getting rid of 20,000 comics would make it easier to move around, for sure.

8 high is not a long term set up. I think I was more like 6 high come to think of it. My goal is to get it down to 5.

Those numbers say I shouldn't stack the boxes three high at a max load of 40 pounds per square foot. That is silly. With that said, I probably should avoid going over 5 high. I thought this might help, but one guy was pretty sure the older homes have a much higher capacity. How much is another issue... https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-determine-your-older-homes-1920-2nd-floor-live-load-capacity

You may be right, but I live in a nearly 120 year old house and the beams are ridiculous old wood, so I feel like my floors are a lot stronger than current code. I had to cut through a non supporting 2X4 with my sawzall and this wood was so hard it took forever and wrecked the blade. On the other hand, that is my third floor, so it is possible they got cheap up on that floor with the beams. Anyway, that is actually how it has been for the better part of 10+ years except I probably have one more layer of boxes on top right now. Anyway, this is not a long term set up. Each of those magazine boxes weighs 30-35 pounds I guess. So each column is 240-290 pounds?

It is the cream of the crop of the era though. Those Byrne books were great and that was peak Perez. The Byrne X-Men were expensive 40 years ago. And yes, there is no such thing as a 1979 or 1980 Marvel that is hard to find. So what? Plenty of demand for those particular books for generations now.

Starting to tidy it up, I let it get messy. The hallway leading to my comic room.

My mouth hurts just looking at that

A lot of it is stuff I have accumulated for next to nothing (individually, not collectively) out of boredom. The 15 for $10 box out of my LCS (the 25 cent box at the one before it) visited 1-3X a week for 25 years, skipped lunch 2-3X a week, money spent on comics instead. Plus $500-600 a year spent on bargain diving at shows. Some of it turned out to be good. (Yes, I get it, collectively it is a chunk of change, but it was entertainment. I don't do drugs, I don't gamble/have trips to Las Vegas with the boys, go to sports or concerts, don't go to strip clubs, I drink but don't spend much on it.) I own a 4,000 square foot house in NYC. Half of my third floor is cluttered with comics. Let's just say I have made my [very illiquid] "fortune" in ways that don't have much to do with comics. And yes, I am married (almost 19 years), she puts up with it, just barely. Don't disparage the treasures of my GenX youth, Boomer! I may be 50. I might have a hernia. I might have the rumblings of arthritis in weird places and hair in weird places. I might have started wearing ugly reading glasses and buying "comfort" orthotic shoes. But I still have some fight left in me.

blah blah blah. $25-100 a pop is still $25-100 a pop. I have 50,000 comics cluttering up my house, I wouldn't turn my nose up at those if cheap enough. I'd rather have those than a bunch of low grade Dell funny animal books or low grade corny picture cover westerns nobody wants. it is a commodity, if your are re-selling and it isn't for your personal collection if something is worth $50 who cares whether it is from 1980 or 1950? the stuff from 1980 is worth something because people still give a krap about it rather than some oddball old oddity book nobody has read for decades. don't get me wrong, I have tons of GA, SA, BA, I'm fond of it all, but picking on Byrne x-men and Teen Titans 2 is really the wrong target.

Yeah, it must suck having stacks of easy $25-100+ sales

No. With that said, these are very common books so it isn't like anyone should see that and say "oh my god, there are 65 copies of x-men 141?? the market is going to crash!!" That is literally a book I used to see stacked 2 feet high at shows in the 80s. Yes, they wanted $5 even then for it, but Byrne/Austin X-Men were no secret by issue 141 and folks were speculating. Mainly, folks see you have 65 copies of a book and they're going to figure they can haggle you down more because you'll still have another 64 copies. And never blab until you have everything in your possession!!

20 years. Someone is making pharma in atlanta. Fedra drives cars and such. It just seems that a few quarantine zones have collapsed (they referenced Pittsburgh last episode). The western town has solar. Boston has plenty of electricity. It is all pretty precarious if Kansas City survived just because they drove the shroomheads underground and they were waiting to get out. Once they attack en masse they are hard to fight. We don't know how much industry is going on. All you need is one infected person to get inside and they could cause hundreds of others to get infected.

Reynolds was paid $15 million for Green Lantern, not $300K