thehumantorch

I'm a sensitive old age guy.

I've been collecting since the mid 1970s and while prices have occasionally dropped the long term trend has been up and more up. Maybe this is the start of a long downward trend or maybe it's just a reset after covid cleared up. None of us really know but I see prices going up for a lot of the books and artists I like and collect. LB Cole is on fire, Baker is on fire - how do I put a little rocket in here like all those cool kids on facebook? - Marvel Mysteries have jumped, the best of the best precode horror has double yet again. And I don't want to sound insensitive but if prices plummeting drives out all the sports card guys and the youtubers and the guys who're strictly in this make a buck and the guys who don't love the medium I'm more than okay with that. Let's push prices down another 50% and get rid of them all.

Or the book has extra bright color or the book has pressable defects or the book presents nicely for the grade or the book appears to be tightly graded. Past sales are helpful but really counts is the buyer and seller agree on a price and make an exchange.

We're all wired differently. While I have some great memories of friends and concerts and vacations and all the rest I also value comics that I've purchased, especially when I was young. I have a strong emotional attachment to them and I love to flip through them and go back in time to the newsstands and second hand bookstores of my youth. I'd just rather plug in a Bee Gees CD and sort my books than pay $200 for a concert and fight the crowds. And of course collecting comics and enjoining other aspects of life aren't mutually exclusive. We can travel and hang with friends and all the rest and collect what we like. Where prices go from here really depends on how many people will continue to collect in the future. As we all know, a collectible is only worth what the next guy will pay us. Strangely enough I believe my collection has actually appreciated since the end of covid because pretty well all of my SA to MA books have dropped in value but my Timelys and Precode Horror and Precode Crime and Romance have jumped. At the end of the day I don't really care what my books are worth monetarily, their value to me is purely emotional. I'll just stay in my lane and continue to pick up books. As an aside, probably the best musical experience I ever enjoyed was going out for supper to a random Mexican restaurant. Inside Billy Cowsill was playing to a crowd of nobody. I was 10 feet away watching a man of extraordinary talent sing his heart out.

Sweet, assimilate me 7 of 9

Nope. I believe Heritage has a 20% buyer and a 20 % seller fee. They're expensive but they do a good job of promotion and have a lot of buyers.

Dirty pool

But it's a very nice mattress

Hopefully this stuff shows up safe and sound

I see a lot of complaints about greedy dealers but there's jerks and good guys on both sides of the table

And as a follow up I had a guy come to my booth on the last day. He's looking for the first appearance of Dazzler. I show him the copy I had bought off dad and offer him a fair price. After years of doing this I had very bad vibes about this customer and knew what was coming, he counters at 50%. Sure it's a common book but it's currently a hot book and I paid more for it. I didn't even counter I just put it away. I treat my customers fairly and when someone lowballs me the discussion is over.

Thought I'd share a story of a customer at the show. His son, who is special needs, told him he wanted to go somewhere but didn't want to tell him where. Dad asks why don't you want to tell me and tells his son you don't have to hide anything from me I love you and won't judge you. Son tells him he wants to go to the Calgary Comiccon. Dad laughs and takes him downstairs and shows him a trunk with his old comic collection which he hasn't looked at in 40 years. So now they're at comiccon and dad comes to my booth looking for Tomb of Dracula 1-4. I had 2-4 so he asked about trade and pulled out a stack of Byrne X-men. Most of his books were in rotted old bags and were generally midgrade. So we did a trade and I bought the rest off him. One of the books he wanted to keep so I tossed it in nice new bag and board. He couldn't believe the difference. He told me he'd be back tomorrow with more books. Next day he's back with more X-men and his plan is to sell them to us and look for a Tomb #1. Artboy goes over to another dealer knows well and buys a lower grade Tomb #1 for half of his sticker price. We bought his books and sold him the Tomb #1 for what Artboy paid for it and he was thrilled. And he told me he took the book I had bagged and boarded home and showed it to his brother and they spent an hour talking about the book and how beautiful it looked and about buying comics when they were kids. Sometimes a 20 cent investment makes the world. I'm pretty sure he'll be back and he'll be collecting comics in the future.

Don't tell @Telegan but darn, that's pretty

rats, I thought that was my bowtie

Ironically, he had it pressed and send it to cgc for a quick flip...

I've always thought Canteen Kate is an undervalued run, especially #3.

And I just got back from selling at the Calgary Comic Expo. Sold a lot of books to a lot of young collectors. And the good news is I think most of them will read the darn things.

Actually, I think they're hurting my knees, every time I lift a long box.

I'm one of them. Was recuperating from Calgary Expo and thought I had more time. My fault.

Wish you had come.

Thanks for this. So frustrating to see him blame everyone else. Mike failed his customers. He failed to deliver the service he promised in a reasonable time. He spent all the customer's money before providing services. He failed to safeguard is customers books. It's just 100% failure on his part. His customers have every reason to be upset and worried and the 90% of us who never sent books to Mike aren't attacking him because we're nasty, we just feel awful for the poor guys who trusted this POS.

I bought a towering oak tree off ebay

Also wanted to say how much fun I had this year hanging out with my buddies kimik, 500club, artboy99, joeypost, fantasticthor and even greggy. The comics are always fun but the people are most important

And a regular buyer who own a video game store told us about his experience with Mcfarlane. Got a call from Mcfarlane’s nephew saying Mcfarlane would like to come to his store for a signing. Didn’t want a lot of advance publicity to limit the crowd. McFarlane showed up at noon and walked down the line and said hello to everyone and then signed from 12:30 pm to 9 pm. Without a break. 1100 people. For free. That’s someone who doesn’t need any more money and just wants to give back and is a pretty good human being.