shadroch

I came across the Donatello 1 that looked like it was missing the bottom of the front cover, but then saw it wasn't missing, just folded inward. However, when I opened it, it is actually miscut and has extra paper that caused the fold over. If I cut off the excess paper, I'm afraid it will get a purple label. Anyone familiar with this situation? otherwise, it’s a very nice copy

Just a quick update. I received an offer on my building that didn't make sense to turn down. Someone from California who sold an inherited house in San Francisco and had a hole in her pocket. She didn't buy the contents so I'm packing everything up and moving it to a large ranch house I've leased with an option to buy. I sent 142 books to MCS, perhaps 5% of my premium stock and yesterday I crossed the $15,000 sales mark, with about half the books sold. Getting weekly checks is nice. I've picked out two more short boxes to send, but am in no rush and when I get settled in I think I will do a much more drastic purge. My goal for 2021 is to get rid of half my stuff. Either sell it or give it away. This week, I donated a complete set of the Time Life series on WW2 to my local library and a box of trade paperbacks to the Boys Club. That's two short boxes down, a couple hundred to go.

Didn't most of the war books feature eight page stand alone stories, mostly by hacks who must have worked dirt cheap. Bionic Man cost licensing fees and full issue books are harder to produce than just grabbing stories out of inventory. It seems a lot of their titles in the late 70s/80s were reprinting earlier stories so almost no payroll and no royalities. I think they owned their own presses or shared them, and they also used their own distribution system. They used cheaper paper and seemed content to be an after-thought in the hobby.

I have quite a few issues but don't believe I've ever read one. I think my best #1 might be a 6.0, with most being 4.0-4.5s. Now if Shogun Warriors takes off, I am set.

A trade has to be mutually agreed upon. Other than that, there are no rules. I have a book that you want. Let's say X-Men 109 in 7.0. You might offer me a book that is worth more but because I already have a copy, I turn you down. If you want my X-Men 109, you have to come up with an offer that I want. Offering a book worth more money may not get it done if I either already own the book you offer or if I'm not interested in it. While some people have made trades here, I've tried a few times and never reached a deal. The last trade I tried was with a store owner in Las Vegas. I had a TTA 27 that he was in love with. He offered $2500 cash, which I rejected. I countered with $5,000 trade. He offered me $4,000 in trade and $250 cash. I agreed, but the deal fell apart because he kept excluding stuff. He kept trying to get me to take over-priced modern variants while I wanted things like his Hawkman 1 and Metal Men 1s. After a few hours, it was obvious he valued his stuff way different then I did and we both called off the deal. I'm sure it was a coincidence, but his store is no longer in business.

At a time when magazines were offering 80% or more discounts to subscribers, DC charged more than cover for theirs. The crazy thing is they wasted full and half pages trying to get subscribers. Selling that space for advertising would have brought in more revenue. The Legion had taken over Superboy somewhere around issue 197, after being the back up for three years, but DC couldn't change the title until issue 258, about seven years later, supposedly because of the postal permits.

Many posters here remove books from the slabs and I've been able to buy empty the slabs from them. That seems much easier than making your own.

That makes no sense. If it were a 9.2 and someone touched it up, it would be a 9.2 Restored or higher.

Is that supposed to be Shanna? I wouldn't have signed it, either.

I'd like to stretch it to a 3.5, but can't. 3.0

Or buy 1,000 copies yourself. It seems like a small price to pay to get a book signed by Mr. Keanu Reeves.

Perhaps I'm missing something here so explain to me what you think would be illegal in this? Insider Trading is a crime, I'm not seeing any crime here. I own 200 shares. I agree to sell them for $3 and make a profit I'm happy with. The book sells and the shares would have been worth $500. Where is the crime? Where is the victim? I'm not seeing it, but you are so help me see this from a different perspective.

Just return it if you aren't happy.

The MH2 horde came a magazine distributor whose area was SouthWestern Queens, South Nassau, and Suffolk County west of the William Floyd. I can only imagine how many thousand distributors could have done something similar.

I think as comics got more expensive and comics became a part of much bigger companies that kept better records, this stuff disappeared.

These numbers are nice, but they are far from accurate. The Mile High 2 collection was some million and a half comics, all of which had been claimed as being destroyed and that was from only one mid-level news distributor. There was an entire comic shop in Queens- The Memory Bank that opened with nothing but books that were returned and supposedly destroyed. The brothers that sold Chuck the MH2 collection routinely showed up at shows with a trunk load of books that were supposed to have been destroyd. I picked up hundreds of TOS and TTA books from them 3/$1. I'd imagine the copies printed and copies officially sold would be pretty accurate, but the number of unsold copies they claimed were destroyed is almost certainly way off.

Long before Jonah Hex, titles like Roy Rogers, Cisco kid and Hopalong Cassidy sold insane amounts of books. Marvel published more Westerns than super-heroes in the 50s. Coonskin hats sold millions right after Davey Crockett and Daniel Boone hit the airwaves. I'm pretty sure Dell Comics was the largest selling comic publisher in the 1950s., with Classics being in the top three titles.

Westerns were huge in the 50s/early 60s. It seems like half the shows on tv were westerns, so I'm not surprised western comics sold well. I think kids graduated from Batman to westerns and war comics,

go to MCS and look up Billy The Kid 118. As they were annual reports, I'd guess one would appear around Spiderman 12 and then every 12 issues later. Fantastic four 85 has one, so you can expect to find another in 97, 109, 121, ect, ect, as long as the book was monthly. Going backward, I'd look in 73, 61 and 49. Edit- I see the FF was published monthly except semi-monthly one month for a few years in the 60s. I'm not sure if semi-monthly means twice a month or once every two months

If you look at the annual circulation reports, DC had trouble selling any superhero comics in the late 1970s. Their horror lineup consistently outsold Superman and Batman.

Almost every title has these statements . They were required and are published annually. You can find them on the MCS site, but you have to look under the content tab, and it is kind of hit and miss. If you had a Postal permit to mail subscription copies, you were required to publish these. If the book was monthly, you can find them every 12-13 issues, if bi-monthly you can find them every six months. The Billy the Kid example you used is bi-monthly so the next one would be in issue 118. For some reason, DC used a different form than Marvel and Charlton, as I recall and the numbers were less informative.

One the comics were printed, they were shipped to distributors and the distributors did all the work and book keeping. No books were actually returned to Charlton or any company. In some cases, a distributor would want only the top half of the cover, returned, and sometimes they would want the whole book back. Obviously the half cover was easier as it took up less space and weighed far less. The Distributor would fill out a legally binding statement that X amount were sold and Y amount was destroyed and pay the company for what was sold. As many distributors were mobbed up, they didn't destroy the books as promised and sold them out the back door. These books effectively cost the distributor near nothing so any profit was gravy. Since these extra profits were unreported, it usually meant there were no tax consequences for them. It was a very inefficient system and had the direct market not come along, comics would have withered on the vine.

Marvel and DC had similar dale thru rates. It's the way the magazine and comic industry worked before the direct market. Vendors were offered items that were returnable in return for a small discount. A news stand book that sells for a dollar costs the vendor zero, and if he sells it he makes twenty five cents. If not he returns it. A direct copy that sells for a dollar costs the vendor fifty cents up front and if he sells it, he makes fifty cents. If it doesn't sell, he is stuck with it. Once a company paid for the printing plates and they were set up and the run started, the cost to run off an extra 100,000 copies was a fraction of the cost of the first 100,000 copies so why not?

Nexus features very early work by Mike Baron and Steve Rude and features a heroic assassin.

Nexus Black and White #1. You can find sharp copies for under $50 and I think a movie is inevitable. Same with Epic Illustrated #3 for similar reasons.