Naphtha

Take 337 via PM

9 hours ago, duplicatecomics said:

X-men #44: $40

VF range. Sharp colours. OW-W pages. Slight indentation near spine with no color breaks.

take!

Prize #19: a copy of my latest book, an authorized biography of British actor Ralph Bates, for a prize. I'll personalize and sign it and ship it worldwide on my dime - donated by Cushing Fan 

Will onsite grading still be completed by end of show if the books are submitted Saturday morning? Trying to decide if the drive is worth it but would reconsider if my issues won't be finished in time.

On 9/10/2019 at 11:58 PM, Bearcatcoach said:

Bought a 10 long box collection tonight....all said and done I figure probably averaged around $1.30 each.

Pretty happy with the purchase.....here are some highlights.....

3 hours ago, Lorne Malvo said:

a 9.4 just sold for $4,656 on eBay

Here is what I keep talking about. More and more common. A 10k book is no joke to anyone.

7 hours ago, catch21 said:

John will not sign books he did not write/draw.

RIght, what I'm asking is he willing to take the extra 5 seconds to open the front cover and sign on the splash page rather than just on the front cover.

Question to any board members with experience getting Byrne signatures in the past.

Have you ever requested splash page signatures and if so, what is the general reaction? I'm more partial to them and would likely want to request this.

34 minutes ago, thehumantorch said:

How about a hint?

POOF

1 hour ago, vheflin said:

donate it all to berkbridge foundation!  100% of the proceeds goes to charity

22 minutes ago, blazingbob said:

Do you have the magic Ebay descrambling key?  

Do you have one for sale?

Just now, The Lions Den said:

Yep, the graders often put a note on a 9.9 or 10.0 to make sure the slab room takes extra care when they encapsulate the book. If memory serves, they also like to look it over even after it's slabbed to make sure it meets their standards...

Thank you! This makes sense. Now I know how to avoid quality issues...only submit 9.9+.

Newton rings, hairs, random pieces of plastic...a thing of the past.

10 hours ago, James J Johnson said:

I'm amazed that nobody here can answer the simple question of, "what was Berkbridge's ebay name for their first 16 years on ebay?". Just that answer alone may go a long way towards transparency. Anybody? Anybody? Bueller?

This.

35 minutes ago, bababooey said:

I'm struggling to understand your resentment towards the issue. There are plenty of threads, and digging only stands to benefit everyone in the hobby.

6 hours ago, Foley said:

Has anyone made a written request for their documents yet?

I can do so myself, but it may be a quicker process for someone with a U.S. postal address? 

Yes, we wrote it here a few times in this thread and previous ones as well.

I actually requested to volunteer and help through their registered site about 12 months ago. Number was a dead end and any "link" tried wasn't actually linked to any forward site.

11 hours ago, Sweet Lou 14 said:

There were people tracking their activity and posting screen shots like the above -- I'm sure they didn't like that.  So the most likely explanation is that they just stopped logging in under the Berkbridge account.  I forget if you can lurk on these boards without a login, but if a login is required there is nothing stopping them from lurking under another user name.

Yes, this was me. @kav and I discussed some of these sales with GPA. I have multiple snips of ebay sales.

10 hours ago, The Lions Den said:

If someone could remove that spine bend, it would certainly make it a stronger candidate.

Keep in mind that when pursuing a 9.9 or a 10.0, tiny imperfections will be painstakingly scrutinized by probing eyes. Whatever you decide to do, I do wish you the best of luck...    

Out of curiosity, do books that grade at 9.9 or 10 get encapsulated the same as any other grade? If the tiniest dent ruins >90% of the books value I would think the holder would need to be perfectly fitted.

14 hours ago, NelsonAI said:

If you read the IDW / Byrne announcement carefully .....

you have the OPPORTUNITY to have 5 non-IDW items signed by Byrne.  I interpret this as Byrne will sign his IDW book for free but you have an opportunity to pay him to sign up to 5 non-IDW items for a not yet disclosed fee.  Given his recent show appearances, he won't sign for CGC signature series / witnessed autographs.

 

This upsets me because I just threw my money at them for the artifact without even considering the fine print. This is rude.

Whatever, I'll take it...

28 minutes ago, PunisherPunisherPunisher said:

Sent in 8 books but the grading tier got me, had 3 of the 8 books get the new venom/spiderman marvel label so I'm paying for two lots of shipping 

I know not to do that again

This is crazy!! Are they actually shipping books separately because of a paper slip that is printed in exactly the same way as standard labels? 

1 hour ago, Domo Arigato said:

 

It appears they are no longer even bothering to login to the forums.

 

They likely believe the commotion and apathy of the community will eventually just grow bored and we'll all go back to talking about how sad everyone is that Spiderman's leaving the mcu. What they've truly underestimated is...

6 hours ago, grebal said:

On Wall St. the practice of fraudulently creating artificial stock prices is illegal, and known as "painting the tape," and involves creating fake buy/sell trades to set a false price.  Same kind of things alleged could be happening here.  But would require a bold district attorney to try to bring a case of market manipulation in comic book trading on bitemebay, although avoiding bad data from corrupting GPA price data would still be worth finding out. 

Wouldn't you suspect that there is already some mechanism in place to test the authenticity of charitable organizations by e.g. buggerbay, in addition to potential of IRS audits etc. to confirm things like the 5% disbursement of total assets rule someone mentioned above?  That's not really the question here, right?

I'm going to make an assumption that once registered within ebay, they likely didn't need to worry about resubmitting status. I doubt there are a lot of ebay sellers donating to charities (especially 100% of sales). If there are, I could probably count on one finger the number that were selling the likes of 100K per month. 

On 9/13/2019 at 9:53 AM, Wolverinex said:

Don't buy anything for a few months.  I started getting offers again... but now I'm still not buying anything

Ive always found that they give coupons when youre buying. Purchase a one off or a shirt and generate saved listings. Once they know you're hunting they start throwing them out.

6 minutes ago, @therealsilvermane said:

Except it makes perfect logical sense in a super-hero world that a teenager suddenly gifted with super-powers would look up to someone with super-powers who's older cooler successful and rich and who also has taken an interest in him (Do you expect poor Peter Parker to say, "I don't need no stinking Tony Stark in my life"?)

Except Tony Stark is now dead and Far From Home's ending established Spider-Man as his own hero with no Stark enhancements, just Spidey swinging through New York with the spandex suit.

Except the only benefit of Spider-Man being Sony exclusive is he gets to fight Venom in Tom Hardy's Venomverse, a poor exchange for not being able to see Spider-Man "marvel" team up with Dr Strange or Captain Marvel or the Fantastic Four.

Except Sony sucks.

Everyone needs to calm down. Both parties only lose in this situation. They're just generating hype while they work out a deal. Spiderman isnt going anywhere.

Dang, maybe a reason to go back to scottsdale. I miss seeing those guys at shows.

37 minutes ago, Catwomancomics said:

On the subject of possible price manipulation, all the seller would have to do is mark the book as paid and shipped, even without any real money exchanging hands.  There would be no fees for eBay to collect because of the charity umbrella and then GPA would mark it down once the transaction is completed.

This is what I was explaining in the Mandela thread.

Now imagine someone comes to you, hands you a book and says, "I want it sold at this price." 

You find a couple more in a the same grade and you play it slow....or do it 4 times in a few weeks.