The Less Blob

OK, so I have been adding the offer option to auctions. It has actually resulted in some sales and is free, so why not? But what is it with the folks offering me 50-65% of my opening bid a day after I list the auction? Really? I swear, I am getting punished for all my lowball offers over the years. But when I am selling a group of 3 copies that tend to sell for $75-80, with an opening bid of $50, am I really going to accept a $35 offer 12 hours after I began a 7 day auction? I had another auction with a $100 start and was offered $50, Based on prior sales it should sell for $150 or so.

anything over $10K gets reported to the IRS

my old old shop had 25 cent bins until 1999 or so that had decent stuff in it. He got rid of it and replaced it with vintage records. He said he was making $10 a week from the space and it wasn't worth it as he was just selling the same comics on ebay for $1 each and $1 extra per comic s/h. He couldn't believe he was now making almost $2 a comic on his junk.

I have not watched anything but bits of the trilogy. I tried with #1 a week ago and fell asleep right around the scarecrow part. I'll try it again. Not saying bad, but it was after midnight and it wasn't riveting enough to keep me up.

He is supposed to be 32 in the movie. So a 25 year old Batman would be up against a Joker in his mid 40s (Jared Leto is 49 BTW, several years older than Juaquin Phoenix!). Based on the Joker in the 60s TV show that isn't such a stretch. We don't know if being outright institutionalized triggers something in him, hidden intelligence, whatever. We'll see if they make a sequel based on that world. It seems the new Batman is not going to be playing with Joker just yet. heck, people want dafoe (65!) to play joker vs. a 30 year old batman!

DC was owned by a movie company. Marvel was not owned by anyone. So they had to partner up to make a movie and it was going to be low budget krap like the punisher in 1989, which I don't think even got a theatrical release? By 1998 when they made Blade and had a budget for a proper movie, they finally made a decent movie, but it wasnt a "super hero" movie, it was a vampire movie. Having SPidey, X-Men, and FF owned by other companies sure didn't help matters.

But he looks the part, just like he looked the part for DD when he was younger, he just seems awfully stiff in the role. The Game of Throwns guy playing him in Titans is an interesting take on Bruce Wayne at 60ish.

At the time I looked it up because I was excited that my 3 million copies were worth $15 or $20 each, but alas, they were still selling for $5 and under. Pretty much like now. Newsstands were another issue. This may be a like X-Force 1 deadpool "rookie" cards that got stupid money for 5 days until folks dug up their long boxes of them. 11 copies for $19 best offer in January?: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Darker-Image-1-There-Are-Eleven-Copies-In-Polybags-In-Mint-/254837672751?hash=item3b55824b2f%3Ag%3AsqoAAOSwqJtgBQyT&nma=true&si=BZbpsjZvXBDBh7scMVfgI%2BAabNw%3D&orig_cvip=true&nordt=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557 10 for $15: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Darker-Image-1-Mar-1993-Image-bulk-lot-of-10-Still-in-polybag-With-Cards/393088269733?epid=85414076&hash=item5b85e2fda5:g:snAAAOSwj4Vf-JWY When was this drek supposedly selling for $15-20 a copy? 2 or 3 fake sales? Let's bring in Yogolak to analyze this for fraud and hijinx! I assume we are only talking about the maxx card ones?

Your experience running a shop in the late 80s was a different world than now. Back issues were a much larger % of total sales then, at least based on every single thing I have read. Turning $3.99-$5.99 cover price books into even $3-5 back issues now (below cover, not above cover like you'd do) would result in 99% of them going unsold. Midtown comics has tens of thousands of back issues of recent comics priced like this (actually, they might be a little over cover price). I wonder if they sell more than .1% of them a month other than half price sales. Nobody is paying that kind of $ for back issues unless they're hot books, which might be 2% of the market now, up from .2%. Most of the dollar box sections I see do not consist mostly of recent overstock. They look like the books folks sold the shop in bulk for 5-10 cents each (or stuff that has been in the store a long time). My old shop (until a few years ago) was about 25% recent overstock in the cheap boxes, the rest drek people sold the shop or ancient stock from the basement. My most recent old shop had been in business since like 1990, so I think he had a decent idea of how much to order, but he'd still get stuck with stuff, file customers wouldn't come back, books got dinged up and went unsold, etc. And sometimes he'd get stuck with stuff semi-intentionally, like if he ordered extra to get an expensive variant. So he'd blow those extras out best he could.

If I ran a shop I'd probably do the same and try to bulk out the worst of the drek. I wouldn't want to devote floor space to $1 books and have them compete with new issues or better back issues. Or I might sell grab bags, possibly at a better price than $1 a book. My old shop, I believe, had $5 grab bags with 10 comics in them. The book on the front was usually what would be a good find in the dollar box, the ones behind it, not so much. Part of it was he might have 50 copies of some book and he didn't want to just dump them in the dollar box. Oddly enough as he had a lot of tourists wandering in they bought a lot of them for cheap entertainment on their flight or whatever. Many shops don't have that, so the regulars aren't going to want grab bags like after 1 or 2 purchases. There are only so many hidden copies of Turok 1 anyone wants.

Running out of room is a reality. Renting storage is expensive. If you are out there buying collections you presumably wind up with a lot of drek. With that said, is any of it really drek anymore? Any X or related title, any Bat title, Spidey, Avengers...any mainstream marvel actually.... WW, Justice League...a decent number of Image titles... anyway, nowadays the list of titles that probably shouldn't be bulked out at 7 cents a book in a $20-30 long box is getting pretty long because, really, even if we are talking future dollar box books, does it make any economic sense to sell 225-250 or so dollar box books for $25? Yes, I get it, a certain % may not sell, but even if 50% do not sell, that's still a pretty big discount (particularly as the 50% that do not sell can then be bulked to the next sucke....I mean customer). Maybe if you have 1600 copies of Trencher or Ravage 2099.

kind of amazing that they're trying to sell $570 rings out of a comic book. 10 karat gold? for real? I can only imagine how bad the diamonds were then.

It seems a fair number of the folks here are pretty sure most of their raw books are 9.8s.

Conan 23 or 24? 23s seem to be 15-20% more expensive in the CGC 8.0ish grade I might want, but I like the cover to 24 so much more (I have a VG+ or so copy already though) --- it isn't just great BWS v. very good BWS or Buscema at his best, it is great BWS vs. Gil Kane mailing it in. I don't have 23, is the description of 24 as "first full" accurate, or is she in like half of 23?

The Savage Swords were loved, true. I'm thinking there weren't many folks buying one to read, 2 to keep in a safe pristine for 45 years.

I think you're thinking of Donut re: the renovations. I had to do some mold scraping and painting last week. I got lucky, I thought I would have to rip out a wall down to the studs, but the mold was just on the surface. Still gonna have to pay the plumber to cut out and fix a rotted out steam pipe that created the mold though, but heating season is over thankfully. Gotta find some more Thundercats #1s to pay for that!

It is important not to pay a huge inflated price on a raw book hoping it turns into a 9.8. 9.8 prices are what they are and it is nuts to pay 9.8 price minus slabbing costs for a book when there is no guarantee what its grade will be. Honestly, the raw market for high grade newer books should be its own universe separate from cgc prices. Heck, even folks here are so dead certain x, y, z is a 9.8... we've got folks who do 25 or 50 submissions a month who sometimes don't get them half right and acknowledge it. I will not longer say anything is better than NM and most of my ebay listings just say "high grade" (if I think the book is)... if I leave money on the table, then so be it, I don't need the hassle of a return. If someone wants to ask me what I think the grade is, then fine.

I get annoyed not because i don't want Spawn 53 to be worth something (and not with you)... I own a couple of copies, i have a horse in the race ... but I don't want people feeling duped. Believe me, I am happy the market is hot, I need the money. But if people feel duped and scammed they leave the hobby, may never come back, or maybe it takes decades, and I'd rather have these people buying my comics in the coming years. I think folks can accept that books get hot and cold and today's hot book might not be hot next year, but it may be worth more, we don't know. If they don't feel scammed I think they take it better. But apps giving people wildly inaccurate information is going to burn some people and they may drop the hobby as a result. A lot of stuff happened in the 90s to mess stuff up, but I think magazines like Wizard overhyping stuff as investment material probably burned a bunch of folks and they felt scammed. Nobody at Wizard ever wrote an article saying "2 million copy print run... it might take decades before this is worth cover price..."

But I can see the value of alerts even if 80% of them turn out to be false. If comic shops put their inventory on there we may never get a deal again.

Garbage in, garbage out, at least if values are going to get twisted by a newsstand variant sale. These apps seem to be responsible for a lot of people thinking their cheap books are worth real money. Some guy was on facebook selling darker image 1s for $15 or 20 each and folks were laughing at him. He defended it by citing gocollect or some other app., which had clearly been corrupted by newsstand version sales. But people look at this stuff at face value and pay too much.

Garbage in, garbage out.

From 2000-8 premiums increased almost 100%. From 2009-present it may have again. The problem is $150 to $300 hurts less than $300 to $600 or $575, so you felt that second doubling more. Not gonna argue with you that the current structure is not working for many, Just that the old one didn't either and you could get denied for a zillion things you can't now and 10% of the population was SOOL. My suggestion is marry a Canadian boardie!

Pension. I have 8 years until 25 service and can retire in 6. I am doing it because these last few years, vs. What I could collect at 55 or 57 if I left the job now with 17 years of service is huge. Not at all proportional. If I work 8 more years my pension is 3x as much. So I put up with not liking the job. Both my parents lived well into their 80s. Neither ate well. Both smoked.. My dad for 25+ years, my mom for 50, so there is some longevity in may family despite treating our bodies like garbage.

I paid cover price for the frison virgin that is selling for $125-50 raw

Insurance were going up 5-10% a year before ACA. Why do you think they would have gotten frozen at 2008 levels?