CKinTO

3 hours ago, rogue14 said:

Which book are you talking about?

He means Teen Titans 12, where Cover A had Batman Who Laughs on it featured prominently, where Cover B didn't... 

5 hours ago, 1Cool said:

Sold something last night that I know was a coupon book.  Guy offered $75 for a $100 item.  Countered at $90 and said it was $75 after coupon and he took it.

Well played!

On the few occasions I've won an Ebay auction at a price I knew was a "steal", I've followed up with the seller separately after he shipped to thank him for being an upstanding seller and shipping. Not that they're doing me a "favor" following through on a deal that they're supposed to (it should be the expectation), but we all know that there are sellers out there who will conveniently "misplace the item" and not ship when an auction doesn't go well for seller, so I do try to at least acknowledge that I know they *could've* done something else (without saying so explicitly).

I'll say something like... "Just wanted to say thanks for shipping this out quickly and packaging well. I know you were probably hoping the book went for a higher price than it did, but appreciate you following through promptly."

Rich, who is the S/S with for all the Doomsday Clock covers? Is it all with Gary Frank, possibility to get Geoff Johns? Cheers

I was in my peak childhood comic collecting years when this came out, and I remember the craziness of it... I was just 10 at the time, so didn't really understand the economics of it all, but even I remember all the different versions, polybagged, and what not. 

Given the enormous print run of this book, don't think it will ever have real value... I have a 9.6 of the poly-bagged version (with the "tombstone" cover) for my PC, but I think it's a $50-60 book today. I think the only version of this I'd really consider "valuable" is a 9.8 of the platinum version, but even still, I think of this is as more of an iconic nostalgia book for my PC than an actual book I expect may go up in value years from now... 

Unfortunately this is always the risk you take when you crack slabs to add sigs - especially when you're in the gray-zone between 9.4 / 9.6 / 9.8 (where the smallest imperfections can change the grade).

As joeypost noted, even if you don't do anything at all to the book and just re-submit, the book can come back with a different grade given some inherent subjectivity of the graders (again, especially in the 9.4 - 9.8 range). So add to that the cracking of the slab, the signing, and the shipping (in raw form), unfortunately this does happen.

If you want to CPR (clean-press-resub) to try and get the 9.6 back, to keep the CGC SS yellow label, I believe only CCS can do it. If you use an outside presser, you lose the yellow-label and it becomes green-label qualified "Signature on Cover"... If there are graders notes, take a look and see if they might be pressable and whether it may be worth it.

Really enjoyed the finale, and the first 6 episodes so far.

FWIW, I had a single book shipped just this week in one of these holders that came cracked... too bad, as it was a book I had been looking forward to getting for awhile! (a Dell'Otto mail-away SS!)

Kudos to CGC though - called them up, said send pics, and no problem, it'll get re-holdered free of charge. I've got a bunch of books being reholdered already, so asked if I could get them shipped together (will be cheaper for CGC as no additional shipping cost, and assures me the books will come packed in a box). 

Hopefully CGC changes policy back to small boxes, even for single / 2-book submissions! 

All great points above. The only other thing I'd add for someone new at this is how to figure out what the graded price for a book goes for. You saw above someone refer to GPA, which is a website that tracks graded sales of books over time (but requires a $10/month membership to do so).

If you just want a rough gauge on value, check EBay Sold Listings (Advanced Search, check SOLD listings). This will show you all sale prices for the last 3 months (although it won't show you the final price for Offers that were Accepted). This is a quick / free way to get a sense for approx. how much a book is going for - note: this won't help you that much for books that don't have frequent sales.

I continue to enjoy and watch the show. Some episodes are better than others, and I agree sometimes the acting can be a bit rough - although hard to tell if sometimes it's on purpose (ie. to not take itself too seriously). I watch both this and the new Star Trek Discovery each week as my "sci-fi" shows - they are both very different, but I like them both for different reasons. 

2 hours ago, cortown71 said:

I store all my comics laying down.I alternate every one with spine left then spine right.why do i do this? After years of boxes stored on top of one another.I found that the boxes on under stacks had all the comics curling.it didn't matter if the boxes were filled tightly.I have space constraints with over 60 short boxes.I'm hoping to find a shelving system eventually.

With mylites I use whatever are the regular boards you buy from bcw. And I stack them on top of each other.mylites tend get puffy when standing up verticle.really I'm surprised more people don't store their books like this for longer term storage.those bottom books get nice and flat ? 

I do this as well, though only for a couple boxes of books (because I don't have the space to keep them in same area stacked with my other long / short-boxes). I remember reading awhile ago about the method of alternating spines (essentially turning books upside down every other book) to keep the spine curl from happening - definitely the way to go, especially if you're stacking them one on top of another. 

Wowzahs!

12 hours ago, kevhtx said:

A couple I got in today from the signing that Im keeping for my PC. Still waiting on a bunch to come in.

Nice ones! Was this from the NYComics mail-away? I subbed one for that signing as well!

On 10/29/2017 at 2:50 AM, shadroch said:

Throwing percentages around makes little to no sense.  No dealer will pay 50 cents for a book he might sell for a dollar, but the same dealer will pay $800 for a book he can quickly flip for $1200. I have no problem offering 5-10% of value for really common stuff, but will pay 70-85% for prime stuff.  I recently paid $5200 for a book I sold a week later for $5900. Thought I'd get a bit more, but the whole thing was a quick flip.

Yah, that's a good point - the actual $ value is clearly a big factor. In my experience, for keys (that are reasonably easy re-sales), in the $200 - $1000 range, I've found 75% reasonable (ie. dealer can make between $50 - $250 on that book, assuming it sells reasonably quickly for FMV). All things being equal, it makes sense that as $ value goes up, % of FMV paid can go up (as dealer can still make a good $ amount, and be willing to pay more %-wise - ie. a high-grade ASM129 as G.A.tor's example). And as $ value goes down, % of FMV paid goes down (dealers won't go through all the hassle just to make a few bucks, nominal amount of $ has to be worth the time).

52 minutes ago, SteppinRazor said:

Yeah, I would expect no better than 50% for a dealer to buy a book and still make money on it.  if they pay 75% of FMV, it'll be very hard to realize a 25% margin unless he/she already has a request for it from some buyer.

Even for slabbed keys? (Or unslabbed keys)? I agree the 75% only really makes sense for in-demand keys that can be sold at FMV / GPA price with reasonable confidence. 

For those who are reading Redneck regularly, saw on Donny's facebook page that they're coming out with a charity cover (by Nick Derington, who's been doing all of the Mr. Miracle covers) for Redneck #7, with 100% of the proceeds going to the Houston Coalition for the Homeless.

The Charity Variant cover's coming out the same day as regular cover for Redneck 7 (November 20th) - FOC is Oct 30th (Diamond Code JUL178523). It's a cool cover too.

I told my LCS to order me a copy of the charity cover - encourage others to do the same!

https://imagecomics.com/content/view/image-skybound-entertainment-reveals-redneck-variant-for-houston-charity

6 hours ago, revat said:

its a tough one either way, IF she's inclined to look it up after the fact.  Either she'll be mad you offered her so little, or she'll expect 70-80%% of FMV on all the rest of the non-keys she selling too.  If she looks it up, you're probably boned either way.  I'd give her the fair but lower offer up front (as the OP did), just in case she's in the mood to negotiate.  Its already hard enough to get a non-comic person to come BACK to the shop.  Its possible that it backfires, but you'll probably never know either way.  But I expect everyone is a little different on those types of things, and experience will help one develop a methodology.

5 hours ago, ft88 said:

Each deal and person is different.  And you can't win every deal.  Some folks are thrilled to get 50% of value they just want to sell.  Others are trying to sell Wolverine #1......

When it comes to selling keys to a store, I generally think of "fair" as 1) if selling slabs, a store or dealer will typically want 25% below GPA/FMV. 2) if it's raw, whatever they would buy it for slabbed per #1, less grading costs, and if it's unclear what grade it would be, they get the benefit of assuming it grades out lower. 

To me, that's the "cost" of the huge convenience of selling it to the store and letting them do all the work (getting it graded, risk it comes out at lower grade, risk the price / demand decreases in time it gets graded, etc.) If you want to maximize value (and get all the upside potential), then you have to go through the legwork yourself. 

I heard a guy trying to sell a slab to a store/dealer at Ebay prices. The easiest answer I heard back was, if you want Ebay prices, why don't you just sell it on Ebay yourself? If I buy it from you at Ebay price, the only way I'm going to make money is if I sell it for more, and who will buy it? Not much you can say back to that... 

44 minutes ago, 1Cool said:

In that price range - I'd say that would be limited to X-Men 266, Star Wars 1, X-Men 141 & 142, Marvel Graphic Novel 4, Wolverine Limited 1-4 (upper mid grade), SW 8/ASM 252 combo, Fantastic Four 46.  If I was to go on my current inventory I'd probably go with the Star Wars 1 since I have a few copies and it may get some WOW points from casual comic fans.

I agree Star Wars 1 probably hits the widest group of people - even non-hardcore comic collectors will know that book has value.

I saw Baby Driver - she didn't have to do that much acting, as she was basically playing the "bombshell thief" and gf of Jon Hamm, so not sure we can tell much from that performance. That being said, there were some decent action scenes which I think she pulls off well.

1 hour ago, Artboy99 said:

Just need to make a very eye catching sign. And yes the winner may choose a bunch of dollar books, some trades, who knows?

The real question here is will you see an increase in sales because of your offer or will the results be the same as if you didn't offer the give-away?

Agree with this - key question is whether the give-away ends up getting you more sales than the "cost" of the give-away? No way to know for sure of course, but I do think to minimize your risk, best thing is to "minimize the cost" of the give-away to yourself (while still making it interesting / valuable to the buyer). Given that, might make sense to put up something that you have multiple copies of, and you think may not realistically have sold for awhile (given you have multiple copies), but has value to the buyer.

For example, the best "customer freebies" (from store standpoint) are those where value to buyer (ie. what they would pay to buy it) is significantly more than cost (random example: owner of subway gives you a free cookie because you're such a good customer - value to customer is $2, cost to business is basically 0 (especially when you consider they probably wouldn't sell out of that cookie that day and it would go to waste).

Yep, I enjoyed it for what it was. Looks like future issues will feature Harley Quinn quite a bit (I think Sean Murphy tweeted a photo of Joker / Harley naked in bed getting it on) - should be an interesting story. This is really one of those "What if?" type books, with a more room to develop a bigger more in-depth arc (I think this is supposed to be an 8-issue maxi-series?)

I plan to keep reading it and finish.

On 10/14/2017 at 2:04 PM, lou_fine said:

What I find absolutely surprising is how much these 2 books are going for in today's marketplace, especially considering the thousands of copies that have been graded so far.  And with a good portion of them in uber high grade condition to boot. 

Not sure why, but I remember picking up a minty fresh copy of NYX 3 for something like $5 at a local con about 5 or 6 years ago.  Most definitely a borderline purchase at the time which I was going to pass on since the book was on the decline from its initial stage when it was once an ultra hot book.  Only decided to pick it up after the dealer agreed to taking a few dollars off his marked price. 

Also figured that I better go home with something or else my better half would complain that I wasted a few dollars going to a con and coming home with absolutely nothing to show for it. 

Key differences I see between BA12 and NYX3

- BA12 was a comic adaptation of the animated series which was really targeted towards kids. Thus, it wasn't speculated on (or even picked up) by as many in the typical comic collector crowd (so less kept in high-grade)
- BA12 has 2100 books in the census in "high-grade" (636 / 907 / 601) in 9.4/9.6/9.8. NYX3 has 2800 (467/919/1382). NYX3 has a lot more in 9.8+ compared to BA12
- BA12 from 1993. NYX3 from 2004. Both still "modern", but BA12 now approaching 25 years old
- BA12 in 9.6 goes for mid-$700s, whereas NYX3 in 9.6 for for mid-$400s. BA12 in 9.8 goes for around $1500, NYX3 in 9.8 goes for around mid-$800s.
- While I'd say X-23 doesn't have the mainstream popularity of Harley yet (the Suicide Squad movie really helped push Harley to pop culture forefront), a solo X-23 movie could definitely help. Although now that the original Wolverine is coming back in continuity (he showed up in Marvel Legacy), not sure what it means medium-term for X-23 and the continuation of All-New Wolverine title

I personally think both books are in a bit of a lull right now price-wise and good times to buy, and are one of the few modern 1st appearance keys around that have real value (along with NM87 / NM98).
 

Subbed 6 Modern Regular-Track CGC SS Books at Fan Expo Canada on 9/2/2017. I don't remember all the interim steps, except I've been checking the past few days once I saw it go to Grading / Quality Control.
Shipped / Safe 10/16! Pretty good for non-fast track!

I echo all of the points above, that Liefeld has really over-valued his signature, and don't think your book will go up by the cost of getting his signature (especially at a 9.0, which only goes for around $140-150 in blue label). Only additional thing I'd add is that if you're looking for a movie-bump in value for your NM87, I think you'd be better off thinking about it connected to the Deadpool 2 movie (which will heavily feature Cable played by Josh Brolin). The New Mutants movie will have nothing at all to do with Cable. 

I just read this to my wife, and we were both tearing up at your story. My wife is from LA, but we met and lived in the Bay Area for many years. So sad to hear this, and as a fellow comic book enthusiasts, I can really empathize with how tough it must be - especially given you've brought your collection with you across many cities and kept them in tip-top shape, only to lose them in a tragedy like this. 

Kudos to you for keeping things in perspective, that as long as family is safe, that's what matters most. And I guess it's a "blessing" that family is ok, so that you have time to lament the loss of your collection. But I know that's gotta be cold comfort... Definitely wish you and your family all the best in trying to find a new home and move forward with your lives. And really hope insurance treats you and others affected by this fairly.