shadroch

Which other laws do you think we should ignore? Speed limits? Stop signs?

Selling my collection is as much fun as it was putting it together. I logged on to MCS this morning to see $800 worth of sales overnight, and $200 more was bid on my auctions. Then I get an email saying they mailed a check for $2900. Life is good.

I'm not sure when doing the right thing for the sake of it being the right thing went out of style, but I'm glad I'm out of step with the rest of you. Shall we all ignore the laws we find inconvenient? No one likes taxes, but everyone expects someone to be on the other end when you call 911. No one likes taxes, but then they get upset when their kids are using 1970s tech in their classrooms.

I'm sorry but that reminds me of the corner boys lamenting that the cops aren't going after the big fish and picking on them. Defending illegal activity by attacking legal ones certainly is a great argument to make. What is really weird is if people took the time to learn what they can legally deduct, they would end up paying less but it is just easier to go on the web to person_without_enough_empathy instead of using the same tools to educate themselves.

Fear and coercion from the IRS? Wow. I'm not sure how to respond to that.

I'm not sure you could do that. Once the books are distributed to a heir, they are his. There may be a legal way to do what you want but I don't think a simple statement would cover it. One thing I learned from doing two estates is that verbal wishes are almost useless unless everyone involved agrees.

I recently read that about 15% of the economy is untaxed, so it is fair to say that 15 cents of every dollar you pay in taxes is to make up for some people not paying theirs. Instead of getting angry at the government for attempting to collect these taxes, why not get mad at the tax cheats? You have no problem with a person skipping out on the $44 due on your hypothetical sale. Fine, so what happens when a million people do so and now the taxes lost are $44 million? Does that get your ire up a bit? If you make money, you owe taxes. Why is that something that needs to be defended? No one here would think of going in to their boss and asking him to only tax you on 90% of the income he pays you. Why is that?

Why should honest taxpayers subsidize people who don't want to pay taxes? For every person who doesn't pay their fair share, there are a dozen honest people who have to pick up their slack. Taxes suck, but they are necessary in our society. I don't understand why or how some people think they should be able to skate on paying them because it's just a fun hobby and they are just trying to make a little money on the side. Tax evasion is a felony. Tax avoidance is our national dance.

Which means you can lose money two of the five years. From a practical sense, the only thing that changed is paperwork. The IRS has less agents so they demand more paperwork.

A comment on another thread got me to thinking about a conversation I had with an Uncle a decade ago. Uncle Bill was a coin collector who had saved coins for well over 50 years. After he retired, he took a job at Belmont racetrack and was allowed to pull coins and bills as long as he replaced them. Bit by bit, his collection grew and was worth well over $100,000 at the time. While he pushed his collecting on all his nephews, only myself and one other cousin got into collecting. So it surprised me when he said he was going to leave his collection to all his nieces and nephews. I didn't feel it was right that he had two of us who really liked coins but my cousins who had zero interest in them would get the same as I would. He felt the coins were no different than stocks, and it shouldn't matter if someone liked a coin or a stock. That he would leave all of us as equal share as he could. We have people with substantial collections here. Suppose you have a son who sort of collects comics and two that have no interest in them. Are you comfortable leaving one child a half million dollar asset and none to the other kids? Do you lump the comics value in to the estate so one kid gets them all but forfeits their value?

He wasn't a sidekick. He was a companion who helped minor heroes become major ones and lost heroes like Hulk and the time displaced Captain America. Unlike the Watcher, who simply showed up at key moments, Rick Jones was the nexus of many of those key moments. No Rick Jones, No Hulk. No Rick, no Avengers, No Rick Jones, then who stops Thanos? Rick was Bubba Gump before Bubba Gump.

If it doesn't exist on paper, it's not a book.

I've been putting side 10% of my sales to cover taxes and it works well. As people keep reminding everyone, you only pay tax on your profits and your profits are sales minus expenses. You can make a good faith estimate for things you don't have receipts for. If you regularly sell your books, traveling to and from your local comic shop might be a deductible event.

The Defenders briefly overtook The Avengers as my favorite book, but then it got weird. Then it got weirder, and finally it was just strange.

I kept waiting for him to hook up with Misty Knight.

That's a good question as I believe I have found the missing copies and would like to submit them.

While I've manged to get my hands on a few of the comics over the years, I've never seen a record set. Can anyone tell ne what is on the records? Is it narration of the comic itself?

Nice pickup

Sad, but not unexpected. I doubt Blackstone had anything to do with it, beyond upper management trying to justify their continued employment to their new corporate masters. I don't know much about Bad Idea but they seem to be pushing the envelope to see just how stupid the hobby can get.

That is a possibility.

Thank you. I see a group of 8 referred to several times but didn't see the actual list. You've been very helpful, and hopefully you or someone can direct me to it.

I don't think MCS would be the right venue for this.

It will help the book sell, but there isn't a big premium on that pedigree as compared to a Church book.

I promoted two shows and happily left the field behind. A lot of work and you end up getting all the blame and no credit. It's so much easier to set up at a show than to set up a show.

Thanks. I'll check out that thread. I saw the other page you referenced but didn't find it all that useful.