The Less Blob

I was thinking about dollar boxes at cons that are getting pawed over not a collection that has been sitting

Comics4less sales prices seem to be not impacted…

It is only $118k I believe.

It was also a time issue. my goal in going to a show would be to buy enough books to flip over the next month or two to pay for my day and have a big chunk left for my collection/inventory. The flips generally needed to be $10-50 books. If I hit dollar box guys first and then the $2 boxes most of the gems would be gone. There were some $10 flips in the $1 boxes, sure, but rarely better, for me more like books that might need to age more like a big run of the bone books, or more generally books from 98 - 01 I like to buy or late bronze early copper in nice shape

So if you do this business with an existing collection the gains are calculated the same as before? If you incorporate doesn’t the business need to buy it from you?

If you have already hit your income limit for paying SS taxes the self employment tax should not be an issue

It was the very low threshold that pissed folks off. You could sell off some junk items in your closet to make room and after shipping costs easily exceed $600 and then boom you have annoying paperwork.

Uncle joe needed to bump that up to $6000 as we were headed into a recession.

I think that was just part of a list of things the OP was interested in

Hoping for an enemy ace movie but a sympathetic nazi might be a tough sell

Or finding them in NM at least is not a given in the boxes.

Depends on the dollar box and the dealer, but I agree, over the last 5-8 years that $2-5 boxes are where to look for missed treasure. Of course, 90% of those books (at least in $2 boxes) can be found in the boxes of the $1 guy. I’m just thinking more that with everything being more expensive a price point from 1996 just doesn’t make sense, not where there is a market for them.

I apologize if I have told this story before.

I was in way better shape then. I remember one show I filled up two long boxes with treasure and walked home 20 blocks away with one long box on each shoulder. To be young again. Today I would collapse after half a block trying to carry one long box

Considering it. Have not done a show since a carbonaro church show in the late 90s. Need to find a weekend where I can get my teen to help.

Leave miles alone. That’s why we have a multiverse.

I do not like agreeing with divad but yeah, 23 is so mehhhhh, if I am spending money it is on 24

My 17 year old is giving me sone hope. He regularly goes “thrifting” with friends and while he is more interested in clothing the others have wider interests

Comics are still a pretty good hobby for the millennial crowd who isn’t that into “stuff” as you can house a pretty nice collection in 3 or 4 short boxes.m. I don’t think it will be down as long as you folks think although yeah, it may be a while before random boxes of books have so many $10-20 books in them.

No, if there are 25% as many buyers the print runs are still much lower proportionally. I honestly do not know how many folks who got into comics in 2016-2021 are now out or if with inflation eating into fun money folks are just tight right now, but Covid and Covid savings/checks were just an added push to a market that had been really strong for several years. I know there were a couple of early 30s guys in my office early in the summer who had gotten into comics big over the prior 2 years, but yeah, neither had grown up reading them so I have to wonder if it stuck. Crypto collapsing has probably not helped that crowd who thought it was a long term investment vehicle. I’m just getting back in. Things were still cooking when I took my hiatus in 2021. I am not a modern investor by any means, but there are some books I have liked and don’t view 2010 books like 1992 books. Whole different landscape. For example, I paid realish money for the early goon books in slabs. I like the character and those had pretty small print runs. Unfortunately Powell has not moved it forward for a show or a movie, which it would be great for

The difference is even with all of that the print runs of many are 5-15k vs 500k 30 years ago. So when a book does pop, while they are almost all high grade, there are not many of them. Many moderns likely exist in smaller numbers than some 60s books. FF 48s are so common I have owned at least 8 of them and I had never even bought one on its own. They had typically been tossed in with a purchase of a stack of books to sweeten the deal they were so common

Like 50 Thor 339s I won’t take a pic of. My old LCS closed in 2001 and he sold them to me for 10 cents each. He had speced 1000 of them when they came out after 337 had become an instant wall book and these were what were left after years of sprinkling them in his 25 cent box to get rid of them.

Koch had a seemingly endless supply of nice SME 15s he never got more than the $9.99 opening bid on for years in the early 2000s. Ahhh the good old days for buying.

I’d need to dig them up but I have about 8 copies of Our Army at War 151. 1st Enemy Ace. It is not a cheap book, but not super expensive either. I read the graphic novel with George Pratt art and was turned on to the character. As a spec move, yes, folks collecting Kubert Sgt Rock books could die out and these go the way of Roy rogers comics as DC has barely done anything with him (guest app in Legends of tomorrow?) and who reads war comics? But Enemy Ace seemed like an interesting character

I have bought items with offers 30-50% of ask where the price was not nuts to start with, but maybe not super high demand