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I think this was considered the deluxe one. The first one (Coleco maybe, or something even more downscale) was really primitive.

I had the Batman colorforms set.

Nice! Thank you so much!

This and the Star Trek bridge set were my two most wanted but never received toys, the product of much starting at the toy section of the Sears and Penneys catalogs.

Funny enough, a bunch of my childhood toys were mailed to me today. Death Star with box. One Shogun Warrior. Navarone was the best but wouldn't fit in this box. I was happy to hear that my sister found my Fort Apache set. EdgerX told me that the Navarone set is actually the earlier Iwo Jima playset, with Germans subsituted for Japanese. Which makes a lot of sense considering the map has an amphibious landing and that Iwo had a mountain redoubt aspect to it. Seeing this thread, it reminds me that I would often only get one or two of a series of toys. I only had one GI Joe ever, the Atomic guy. Only one Shogun Warrior. Only four Megos (no villains). Only one of those model kits--the glow in the dark Godzilla. I think I had no Big Jim, only his buddy Big Jeff. Star Wars I had them all though.

What a great story. And yeah, I was going to point out that if you had Ghost Rider 11 you'd have known what the deal was with 10. I didn't learn this until a few years ago.

Sorry, I meant they had tons of 6, and 8-10 Pinup. They had what, annuals 3-6, but in much smaller quantities.

Did you get any nice Annual from Bakerstowne? Or any nice Pinup Parade 7s? They had tons of 6, 9, and 10 but seemed to have far fewer 7s.

I'm not surprised it's the only one graded. The teens are the rarest ones, esp. ones like 12-14. Completists need to remember the two early issues of Archie Giant Series devoted to Katy. I should probably get around to looking at my absolute best copies. Some are probably Woggon file copies.

For the travelers, recently featured in the NYT travel section: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/27/travel/berkeley-california-budget.html

FYI, The weather will probably be between 60 and 70 degrees on Nov. 3rd. Our mid-January show will probably be 55 degrees. Not celsius, obviously...

I have never heard of Megabus! Those are intriguing prices, I have to say.

I think those are very savvy comments. I've often wrestled with the fact that in a national mail order marketplace (plus other countries, mainly English-speaking ones, of course) prices and supply can even out but I have to pay Berkeley office rates and CA and local tax rates. It is offset in some cases by having strong local buyers and a big metro area. But imagine if I was back in small town Michigan where I could literally rent a 7500 square foot retail space with 6000 foot basement for like $1500 a month... That could be quite a catalog operation. Being here, it leads to a bit more of a boutique mindset, stocking more vintage and more hard-to-find stuff. Doing more wantlist searching for people. Having oddball specialties like war comics or Katy Keene or whatever. I had someone tell me today this past weekend was his favorite show of the eight we've put on. He said he bought from all but three vendors. So he found books he wanted at prices he could stand (and he works for a nonprofit) from at least ten vendors. I carefully select the vendors and of course we have a huge pct. that are board members, so grading is way better than ebay or even the average comic dealer. If you look at the tales of woe we sometimes get on the boards about horrible prices at shows and terrible grading, I don't think we have that. If terms of the original post, I think it sort of depends if you've already put the time in to find ebay sellers whose grading you like and who provide a lot of books. They might be operating out of their house in a cheaper part of the country and might not have other options for selling books where by definition our vendors have shows, ebay, the boards, plus a growing number using Instagram and Facebook. So it's not screaming deals all the time but I think it's fair Dale Roberts posted something on the boards a few years ago that has stuck with me--something along the lines of the dealers with good books at 50% off don't seem to last long. It's not really that sustainable. For me, i used to sell at 30% off and found that 20% is a better balance that balances customer expectations or desires with the economic reality of restocking books and the cost of carrying inventory until it finds the right person. There are cheaper and more expensive people in the room, every time. In terms of the high grade books we're discussing, the 8.0s to 9.2s, I find they disappear online pretty well because they are uncommon. Look at My Comic Shop and you'll see on most vintage books they can't keep higher grade in stock. That's always smart and we've been having a few people come up from LA lately for the show so there could even be carpool opportunities, who knows. There is one comics bonus to coming up because you can also put in a few shop or warehouse visits. Ie, you can come visit my office the day before or day after (I have boxes of high grade vintage books I don't bring to the show), we've got multiple other vendors that you could probably also visit at their shop or storage or whatever and see an even broader inventory.

Just ordered it. I enjoy Jamie's market reports in Overstreet.

That's the beauty of the hobby. It's always waiting for you if you want to go back to previous quests but you can also change focus or even just enjoy the ones you have and read message boards. It's all good, for sure.

Nice post. Deserves a fuller reply from me later.

I sell them at 80% of guide, if that single data point helps.

Comics historian Jpex next to Bitter Old Man in the pic.

The other thread is still hopping and I hope to do a mini report there by tonight. Also, our next show is Saturday, Nov. 3rd!

Would love to meet you. Always enjoy your posts. I think part of the problem with having CGC or guests for that matter is that we are so constrained for space. With some vendors having to wait a year to get a table, etc. But we'd love to have CGC there. It would be awesome.

Roy, you know you are coming out for the November or January one...

Saturday, November 3rd.

Phil and Harv are serious weightlifters too, no? Our ratio of dealers you don't want to punch you in the face is really high.

Tim kills it running the door and also having the relationship with all the local store owners and the facility. Thank you Tim! So much fun yesterday and I can't wait until Nov. 3rd and then having a great year of shows in 2019. I will try to do a show report in this thread in the next day or two.

Looking forward to jbud's con report like last time...