ExNihilo

This was my first ever submission so I knew nothing about proper grading.

The thing is, early on in the thread people were sympathetic to the health concerns going so far as to cover some of the costs of shipping. I believe some boardies even inquired where Hero's was located and said if they were closer they'd help pack books for a day. Instead of meeting those offers with appreciation, they were met with jokes and excuses. Frankly, I'm still sympathetic for the ongoing medical conditions, but he burned A LOT of goodwill with his early responses to customers and boardies alike.

More chickens. Why do I get the sense this is one of the few true, factual, non-BS responses in this entire thread?

I believe it was taken down.

As always, market value is determined by the principals of Economics 101: supply and demand. Supply is simply capped at whatever the print run is. Demand is the number of collectors looking to buy it at any given time. Demand fluctuates over time as books rise and fall in popularity. Some books rise in popularity in such a way that their demand is almost forever higher than the available supply. When this happens, you get an increase in price. Note, this is different from speculation where short term hype drives up the demand on a book. Variants are a prime example of this as some variants are hyped up upon release but as that immediate demand fades, prices come back down. It's a bit like buying something at the cash register at the supermarket, you see it, you want it, but you don't NEED it. So you buy it to satisfy a short term craving, but long term realize that may have been unnecessary.

I've been collecting for 30 years. I used standard polypropylene bags and boards because they were cheap but now find myself in a situation where I am overdue for re-bagging those early collected issues. I could either buy more polypropylene bags because they're cheap and have to re-bag again in 20-30 years, or I could buy Mylar and be done with it for the rest of my life. Moral of the story is, if I had to go back and do things all over again, I would have just spend the extra money upfront to bag in proper mylar/fullback and never have to think about re-bagging again. It'll cost you more upfront, but will be cheaper in the long run.

CGC Signature Series | CGC Private Signings | CGC (cgccomics.com) Label Description | CGC (cgccomics.com)

This is so stupid. I work in accounting, people are late to pay, we have a threshold for which we're tolerant of late payments. Beyond that and we start shutting off your services. You can't just not pay your bills and then expect a company to go back to business as usual as soon as you pay a small portion of what you owe. Paying down a reasonable portion of your existing debts is a good faith measure to prove that you're able to pay off the remaining portion. If you owe $100k and you only offer to pay $2k, that's not a serious offer. Seriously, he's lucky AR didn't ask for half.

Send out two more packages with an Apple tracker inside. Honestly, that's despicable by whoever the culprit is.

Not with me at least.

CGC needs to take action against Celestial/Desert Wind in the same way they did with HotShotComics.

New York? Chicago? Traditional? No bake? Vegan?

I was referring to ComicTom's video and then having YouTube recommend more of ComicTom's videos. I'd hope no one would donate to a random GoFundMe.

This is exactly why I never click on certain things: because I don't want the algorithms making stupid recommendations to me.

Is there a minimum filing requirement based on size and/or valuation? Seems like a headache for the SEC to manage anything that might not meet some minimum threshold. GoFundMe holds all funds until the goal is met. Any GoFundMe that does not meet the goal gets refunded back to the donor. GoFundMe takes a cut of all successful goals as well as probably makes money off the interest on cash pending payout.

Some people like content creators enough to go so far as to give money. Like people who give to YouTube/Twitch streamers. For them, it's like "I need to support them so they make more content". With YouTube, those people are already monetizing video plays (granted, the monetization isn't great unless you're getting like 100,000 views per video), so I find it weird when they livestream and people just "donate" $20 here and there.

I heard Uptown Girl on the radio the other day and was reminded just how much I love that song.

I know there have been complaint threads in the past, but this one just keeps on giving.

Uhh, the company manages these boards for one. You pay as soon as your books are entered into their system even though work technically won't begin for 30+ business days. I think each contractor functions differently. When I remodeled my place, I was given a timeline for estimated completion and payment was divided into 4 equal parts. Though, I have seen videos surface on reddit of people who disagree with contractors, don't pay, and the contractor basically comes and rips up all the work they did.

Finally made it out after missing the last few shows. The boxes of dollar books on the stage were DANGEROUS on my wallet. There had to be like 100+ long boxes of just dollar books. Couple that with all the amazing books sellers had on the show floor and I walked out with waaaaay more books than I expected to. Thanks for putting together another great event! Here's some of my best pick-ups I was able to find in dollar bins. West Coast Avengers #7 (1st appearance of Jeff the Land Shark) Michael Turner art on Wizard Magazine Joshua Middleton covers Near complete Batman Knightfall run

I'm nowhere near qualified to argue against this, and I agree it's the right course of action, but the problem goes back to the early pages of this thread where someone said they had been told at multiple points that their book was either being worked on or in the mail for it to ultimately turn out to be a lie. Hero's actions and follow through would go a long way towards repairing the damage to the brand. Until then, it's just a case of the boy who cried wolf. If that's an image of Charles Ponzi, I think that's the incorrect reference. The word is "fraud". A Ponzi scheme would be more like taking Customer A's book and replacing it with Customer B's book, and then replacing Customer B's book with Customer C's, ad infinitum. A Ponzi scheme is a type of fraud, but this just seems like a string of bad luck and bad business decisions. Like I feel with a Ponzi scheme there's no legitimate business activity going on other than cooking the books. Hero was running a business and up to 5 years ago seems to have been doing okay(ish) successfully delivering a product to customers. Where they went wrong was accepting too much work, vastly exceeding expected turnaround times, coupled with a refusal to acknowledge return requests, all during a time of economic recessing. To me refusing refunds is fraud. Ponzi would imply that the customer was owed the fees in addition to a completed product. Businesses are free to do what they wish with revenue earned through fees. An inability to set aside a certain % of money for refunds is poor financial management.

Should also point out that chargeback claims are typically valid 60-90 days from the point of sale. It's no excuse as to why someone's books have been held up for 5 years.

This has been a long time coming, but glad to see there are finally consequences for the scam of a business they've been operating there.

This whole thing has really opened my eyes to just how expensive and time consuming restoration work is.

Yeah, I'm tracking that one, and I can understand why it'll go for cheaper. Bruce/Clark/Lois. Kinda cool, but not exactly spectacular.