The Less Blob

Rinse and repeat 1000 times and you have a used Maserati. Or 4 years of state U tuition. Just saying. I get the feeling that donut, 1cool, and a few other folks here taking a methodic approach to this stuff are going to retire years early (or will be able to even if they do not) due to all these "very minimal" sales

$2 or less

tah dah!

I have never lost money on variant speculating. In part because I have never paid more than $1.

seriously, NM 98 has 10X the # of copies floating around as most of these newer hot books, maybe 20-30X.

You don't know if he had been selling off the good stuff for years and this is what was left. If he's like me an a cheap box diver I could see this, but you'd accidentally have some good books in there even doing that. Definitely a concern of mine. I have bought a lot of stuff just for whatever reason on the cheap to kill time or to aid my diet (spend my lunch money on comics), sometimes it works out great like when I bought every copy of spawn over issue 75 I'd ever see for $1 (actually 65 cents at my old shop), but the vacuum cleaner approach brought in lots of drek too.

Is $50 the bulk rate per long box now? I know a couple of years ago folks talked about $20-25, but I know things jumped the last few years.

What does truly rare have to do with anything? It is nice if it is, but most of the books in demand are not rare. The last of us books seem to be picking up a little since christmas, anecdotal observation.

You gonna say that for every book?

I guess a lot of people here were behind on their rent, although some of them might have only been a little behind: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/27/nyregion/evictions-moratorium.html I guess a lot of hourly employees may not have been able to take advantage of enhanced unemployment benefits. My brother got the run around for 6 months trying to collect unemployment, luckily he had some savings.

Most of the folks posting here are old enough to be (me), or are, grandparents.

More likely the raw copy someone paid $200 for at a show and then sold

Ones near my office went under for sure

One of my local shops couldn't get anything, I guess he doesn't do paperwork well. He is right nest to a college and local high school that were all shut down for in person until september 2021, so even though he was allowed to open earlier, most of his customers were not around.

I have to spend $75 in time filling out forms and getting approvals so that I can send a package overnight by UPS for $15 more than priority mail.

All they had to do was keep their people employed, so I don't think it was fraudulent if they kept operational even if they didn't "need" the money

The funeral home might have had issues. Yes, they were selling more caskets and handling more cremations than ever, but they were not housing funerals so much. My mother died in early 2021 and they were not having funerals, wakes or anything here in NYC at least. I know things were more open in Long Island. They brought in $750 in revenue for her death whereas my father's funeral was 10X that much.

Do you have data on how many people were not paying rent during this timeframe? (I'm actually curious, not questioning whether it was an issue, I am sure it was in 2020/early 2021 for sure). I don't know a single person who decided this was free rent time, of course, the people I know tend to be somewhat responsible, nor do I know any folks renting places who got stiffed, although they were definitely worried about it.

To be fair, a lot of office furniture gets thrown in dumpsters by the private sector, it does not seem like there is a good market for it and the manpower necessary to sell it/house it/ship it while it is being sold may make it too expensive to do so. Most of the furniture in state offices for many years was made by Corcraft, which is the manufacturing wing of the New York State Department of Corrections. They pay incarcerated individuals about 65 cents an hour to make office furniture. It is actually a very desirable job in prison, reserved for guys with good behavior, so to a certain degree the money is being circulated back to the state.

This will be all Hot Flips at the convention or other vendors too?

To sell 15,000 comics. I suppose I shouldn't have taken 18 months off. It will still leave me with a lot of stuff, but I will be able to move around better in my comic lair and use some space for other stuff like an art studio, my home office (which is presently on the dining room table much to the dismay of my wife) and a lego studio for my kids. Maybe a work out area. That last one is a bit optimistic.

You did not qualify your statement. You did say high end, but that need not be just variants

Sure I am thinking more about devoting a ton of table space to dollar books. If donut is selling 3 longs of $5 books that’s $3-4k right there, very viable, mix in better stuff…

Early 80s a board was a serious luxury

Not to mention, with boards and bags even in bulk perhaps being 15 cents each after shipping, unless you want the inventory wrecked after 2 shows I just don’t see how $1 boxes make sense financially even if you are not paying for the books. Gas to/from. Cost of tables. Your time, a helper? You need to be blowing out $10-20 books. Aren’t there better venues?