alexgross.com

all commodities/ collectibles have both collectors and investors, and there's naturally alot of overlap. i have collected coins purely for the investment angle, really don't care about them for any other reason. i wanted to move into comics because i love them and have always loved them. i buy raw comics that i want to enjoy reading, and i buy graded, entombed key comics both to own them and for the investment value. i'm not sure why a pure collector would ever buy a slab, since it prevents reading the comic book. i remember when i got my first slab, how disappointing it was to realize i could never look at that book. but at the end of the day, i can buy any book raw if i want to read it. the keys are mostly all reprinted somewhere, so i can read those without having to get a raw copy, and be happy with my entombed books too as investments. i'm not turned off by investors in comics, because i think most of them, like me, also love comics first and foremost.

since there is now a DARTH VADER comic book, i thought this was relevant. it's a recent painting i did. perhaps in the upcoming han solo film, this scene will actually appear. perhaps not.

i said they dont have to because we are all bidding and buying the books in their auctions. you say you would not bid on a book without a back cover scan, but you're clearly in the minority of comic buyers. if no one bids, then they'll be alot more motivated to make changes. obviously it's double the time spent, so why would they spend money to do it if their business model seems to be working just fine? ( i totally agree with you that they should and find it super annoying)

ebay long ago demonstrated (to me anyway) that they don't give a *&$% about shill bidding. i've written them numerous times when the evidence was as plain as this, and absolutely no response, and the seller/shiller continue. the only accounts they mess with are the ones they fear are costing them their commission, like folks who make deals outside of the bay.

isn't baltimore comic-con supposed to be great for the comic collectors and low on all the other non comic stuff?

because they dont have to. simple as that. that being said, when i have emailed them about a particular book, they have emailed me the scan of the back.

you'd have done even better if you bought bitcoin a year or two ago. up 1000% YTD and way more over two or three years. but it's not as fun as comics. neither is the stock market. although it's fun when you make some money, so you can buy more comics!

i thought bp meant either brittle pages or british petroleum, but neither seems to apply to these books.

sure, this must be true some of the time. but does everyone with an AF15 suddenly need the money now? it's highly unlikely that they all need the money now. collectors saw the price of this book explode awhile back and thought about it for awhile, and then decided to cash in. except now the market is falling. why they would still choose to 'cash in' now that the book seems to be worth less than 3 months ago is the question i have. they can't all suddenly need the money, come on. if this were the case there would have been just as many books on online auctions last year, which there weren't. there isn't a sudden recession that none of us is aware of. i would guess that soon we'll see supply taper off as collectors clue in that the book has been slumping of late. at least i hope so.

a nice hulk 1 4.0 sold for 11k today on heritage, down from the 12.5k two months ago on comiclink for similar books with no MC and good page quality. wish i had more cash in the bank, seems that now is the time to buy.

well, this turned out to be a big nothing i guess. disappointing.

i've been wondering about that strategy. it seems that sometimes having 2 or even 3 copies of a book can be beneficial, in that an interested party might end up bidding on a lower grade copy in case they don't win the higher one. however everyone lately seems to be going WAAAY overboard and having 5, 6 and 7 copies of AF15 that are all close in grades, in the same auction. this can only be interpreted as greed by the auction houses/ sites. it obviously hurts pricing, as we're seeing. i suppose it's all gravy for the auction sites, but when will the consignors realize that the market is oversaturated and stop consigning their books?

love to see better pics of number 4 if possible

congrats! pics please--

nah, they will all plummet. sell them all to me now at 75% discounted price so you don't lose out later. thanks.

good luck and please keep us posted on how it pans out.

love to see that!

i got my first hulk181 three years ago. scored a 9.0WP for $2100 cash. everyone then was saying its a popular book but pricey. ha, now i wish i had got ten of them at that price. just recently got an 8.5WP for a good bit more than i paid for my 9.0 then, and i expect that trend to continue for the foreseeable future!

it would be great to have an update post with what remains. i see several books that don't say sold but later in the thread someone said i'll take it. thanks--

you can't really compare well based on these two scans. the new label is a much better scan with lots of detail in the mid range. the old label scan is extremely contrasty, and many defects will not appear in a scan like this. note how dark the upper background appears and how bright the AMAZING FANTASY text is in this scan. you really can't know whats going on there with this scan.

congrats to both of you!!! awesome book--

waiting for it to get more expensive??

if i were in the market for a 7.0, this book would be high on my list since it presents so well. the notation about the small missing piece wouldn't bother me. i suppose some folks thinking of trying to get a re-grade bump might pass, but it's a gorgeous 7.0 and many collectors would desire it.

yeah, can we stop talking about baseball cards please? i know that on the surface, they seem like similar collectible items. but they are nothing alike. i'm not going to go on a long schpiel about how they're different. suffice it to say that in 1978 i loved both comics and baseball cards. fast forward ten, twenty, thirty years, and i still loved one of those things, and couldn't give a *$#& about the other. there are so many obvious reasons why they're not comparable at all.

well, i'm relatively new and i've only bought so far. and i've shared my annoying opinions all over the place!