shadroch

Thats the ticket. In the 1990s, I decided to organize my books in a way that would allow me to manipulate the market decades later. While I appreciate you thinking the way I choose to organize has somehow affected the market, I'm not nearly as influential as you seem to believe. Perhaps you'd like to come over and organize my stock correctly.

I love it when people state their opinions as fact.

First book I ever bought at a convention was Marvel Tales 2 for $3. The dealer I bought it from had a shop on Long Island and I was able to get a run of Marvel Collectors Items 1-10 for $10.

My classifications aren't perfect. They are what I established in the 90s and have stuck with them. Back then Valiants were all " modern books" and even though they are pushing thirty, I still keep them in that catagory. I've recently begun to divide my modern section into 1990s and 2000and up, but most of my stuff is from the 80s and older. My X-Men BA is 94-143 although I'm entertaining moving it to 94-150 as those later issues have gotten some traction. Bronze Age books sell for more than Copper, so squeezing as much into the BA as possible might make better business sense.

I never found a conclusive point where Bronze becomes Copper, so for the sake of simplification, I go by prices. My Bronze period begins with Marvels increase to 20 cent covers and ends with the new .60 cent cover. I thought about gouing with .50 cents but that is clearly to early. With DC, it is when they go to 48 pages for .25 cents. The only obvious exception is Millers DD run. I classify his whole run as Bronze because I don't want to break it up, wheres Moores Swampguy run is all Copper, even though they may overlap. That works well enough for me with most titles. When I opened my first shop, comics were .60 cents and I would never claim I operated a shop in the Bronze Age. CA to me is marked by the rise of Independent comics and they really hit their spurt during Marvels .60 cent price period. Back then, they were simply new releases.

Nobody buys Spiderman books any more. They are too popular.

I've lent money on comics, but I get the comics in hand before the person gets the money. My general rule of thumb is 50% of market value. If you want $100,000 loan, you'd better have $200,000 to put up. CGC only

My friends and I didn't watch much television growing up. I'd watch the MMMS cartoons when it was my turn to pick a show after dinner but the only afternoon show we watched was Gigantor, and later 8th Man. I rarely watched Saturday cartoons/ monster movies unless it was raining. My friends older brother had a walkin closet that had thousands of comics, unbagged, in piles on the floor, on the shelves, just everywhere, with piles having been knocked over and having been stepped on. It was a half finished attic so in the summer it was an oven and in winter you'd need a sweater. For some reason, his parents won't let us take the comics out of the closet so we'd occasionally spend an afternoon in it reading them. One big problem was they were completely disorganized so you'd read a book and you might spend hours looking for the next issue. The brother didn't live in the house, and I never met him but one day his parents offered to sell me eveything for $2500. I didn't have $25 dollars at the time.

Did he have a Dead Head sticker on his Cadillac?

See what happens when you are looking back.

Don't look back. You should never look back.

Bat-Mania in 1966. There has not been anything like it since then.

Ned Leeds being killed was kept top secret until it was released.

Marvel publized the mess out of it, changing the company logo and stationary in advance. Store owners had to know about it months in advance so they could order properly. Even then, almost everyone under-ordered.

252 is the first black suit. MSW8 is about the fortieth. #252 starts a months long mystery as to how and where the suit came about. MSW8 answers those questions in the stupidest way possible.

True, but there have been times I bought another book or two just because I didn't want to pay to ship a single book.

I'll take the HTD #3

I had my second highest priced book in limbo for over a month when someone hit the BIN but didn't pay. Several weeks later I got an email they were relisting it as it was unpaid. Bought again the same day but again no follow thru. It seemed like someone was reserving the book in case it popped, or was shopping the book around and would only pay if he could flip it. It was annoying and I thought about mentioning it but then the book sold and got paid for. I'm not sure what the answer is. I like being able to combine several auctions for shipping and wouldn't mind paying weekly and shipping every few auctions but I imagine it would be a logistical nightmare. The system has paid books going directly to shipping. Having paid books sitting around changes the entire process.

It looks like there is some demand for it and the cheapest I've seen it listed for was around $50.

Shame on CGC for grading these fakes. If anything, I'd put them in a different colored slab that screams fake and certainly not give them a high grade. They should get a big F for fake, rather than a grade. Once upon a time, card slabbing companies would not return fake cards.

I was very impressed by some of the prices achieved. Perhaps Conan can post some of the highlights.

Angels.

I usually try to sell the books for a few weeks before I put it in an auction. As a rule, BIN gets better results than the auctions, imo.

I was trying to put together a complete run of Marvel 12 cent books. I had less than fifty to go at one point. I was at a show and a dealer from Florida had a huge run of mid grade Marvel SA. An hour or so of digging had produced about twenty of the books I was missing and I was negotiating a price with him when it dawned on me I was about to spend a weeks salary on a bunch of books I didn't really want, just so I could accomplish something no one else would care about and would mean nothing. Would I be a better man for having 100% of the books instead of having 98% of them? Would it advance my goal of world peace? I returned most of the books in my hand and grabbed a handful of SME 15s he was selling for $10 each. That was the day I became a type collector.