shadroch

If the hobby is a Monopoly board, IMSM is its Baltic Avenue. I understand you got into this book in an attempt to corner the market. You admitted that you thought there were many less copies than there are, and by acquiring a few hundred, you could become the markets specialist in that book. Not a bad plan, but the wrong book as not only is there a tremendous supply of the book, but there is also very little demand for it. So why the continued infatuation with the book?

Perhaps he just needs a competent teacher. I'd be curious what qualifications a person has before allowing them to teach anyone. It's nice that you are so eager to teach people, but what are you teaching them?

To be fair, at least a half dozen of his posts made some sense, to someone, somewhere. I'm hoping for a new list and will strive to be featured prominently on it.

Your brother dies and you can't make time to take pictures for random strangers? Get it together, man. Assuming you have access to his financial records, check to see if he made payments to any insurance companies for his collection. They may have a spreadsheet with the books value, or they might just be able to tell you what he valued them at. Was it a sudden death where it's likely he made no arrangements?

I'm big on crossovers. FF 25,26,28. TTA 57,59. Strange Tales 107. Green Lantern 40, World's Finest 199. Most have great covers and appeal to multiple audiences. Someone might not collect Tales of Suspense but will want 49 because it is the first Men crossover, and others will want it for the Angel appearance. Unlike many, I consider my comics as investments and factor many things into what I buy and sell. My buying days are mostly over unless I luck into incredible deals.

That's a trend I think we will soon see across the whole hobby. A few books from each title will grow but the rest won't.

Looking at today's collectors, do you see any reason westerners or funny animal books will gather momentum?

Watchmen Black Dragon I suppose Cerebus doesn't count, even though it was conceived as a 300 issue limited series. There an Alan Moore "Supreme" tradepaperback that is phenomenal. I'm not sure if it was a mini series or published in the series. It's 12 issues long.

Perhaps several would be a better description. Rather than chase runs, I focused on a few key books. With Spidey, any Ditko issue made the cut.

My A list is probably many people here's B list or worst. I do have a nice collection, not a spectacular one. Multiple Avengers 1, a nice Spidey run, but no AF15. Lots of GA Timley, and Schomburg covers.

Pre 1977, I used kitchen storage bags for my comics.

I did. I read the book first. Late in life, my Mother, who was legally blind and a stroke victim decided she was going to do it. I promised her I would do it for her.

I'll be happy to answer any questions you have. It's pretty straight forward. Go to their site, look up the books they buy and consign and ship it to them. They list on ebay and their site, ship the books , pay the ebay fees and cut you a check for 90% of the sale price. There is a minimum of $5 per book so if a book sells for less than $50, its $ 5 per. You pay the shipping cost of sending the books to MCS.

That is my goal. However, everything is on hold while my eleven year old dog is around. It wouldn't be fair to leave him for six weeks or so. I need to look into the bicycle option. Offhand, it feels like cheating.

What I did a few months ago, was go thru my "B" and "C" books, grab the undercopy of anything I have three or more copies of, and I came up with just short of a short box and sent it to MCS. Two months later, half the consignments as sold and I've gotten just under three grand. I also went thru a few boxes of moderns, sold what I could to MCS and sent the rest to auction. So far, I've reduced my collections footprint by about three percent without losing a single book I care for and gotten my walking around money. I got lucky in that I ended up with a few books I never collected but that exploded. I sold the weakest of my three WWBNs for $400., and a beat up TOD 10 for $140. I'm pretty sure they came out of my 3/$1 boxes as I don't usually save 2.0 books. While those were nice surprises, I was shocked by some modern books. Somehow, I had four copies of Young Avengers 1 and two copies of #6. At my local auction, I've committed myself to a short box a week, usually divided into five lots. As they are generally lame moderns or late 80s trash, clearing fifteen cents each works for me. It looks like I'm moving in September so I really need to move some of the multiple boxes of trade paperbacks and hardcover I have. Those suckers are heavy.

Bags were common in the 80s, boards not so much.. Comic collecting changed dramatically that decade. As more and more books were sold in comic shops, bags became much more common. When I opened my first shop, I didn't carry supplies. I'd special order a box or two when requested, and would buy bags a thousand at a time, mostly for myself. Except for my discount bins, all back issues were bagged. By 1988, I had a supply department, with bags, boxes, mylars and the like. Didn't sell a lot of boards at that point. I had these thin boards made that you'd put about eight in a box , every twenty books or so to keep the boxes tight.

It's crossed my mind. You can do it in a week to ten days instead of a month walking.

Because it was marketed to girls and everyone knows they are stupid. Girls don't read comics. Comics cost 25 cents. Lets charge 50 cents and they won't realize its a comic.

So if my sister were the collector, and I inherited the books when she died in 2016, then I'm only responsible for the increase since then. But if I was the one who bought them off the newsstand, I owe on the whole amount. Interesting. Does the gubermint set out to screw people or is it the result of their incompetence?

Maybe he did more convention sketches than published art. One can't use a ghost artist at a show. I regret not paying more attention to artists at those mid 70s shows.

Do you think he only did one sketch that weekend? It's a nice find, one I would love to own, but it's not unique. I have several copies of that program.Time to look through them.

An auction house in Law Vegas will be auctioning what I think is a one of a kind phone booth. It's an old rotary style and is painted brown except a Superman logo is painted on the sides. It's a real phone booth, over seven feet tall and maybe 30 inches wide. For the Man who has everything. If there is any interest, I'll post the information and website.

In the next couple of years I have three traveling goals. An extended road trip crisscrossing the country An extended vacation of six to nine months in Central America The Path of Saint James. Having an extensive collection hinders those things. That's one reason I'm downsizing.

While Superman titles were losing sales, comics as a whole were losing their slots on the stand. Newsstands depend on volume and a.comic selling for 25-30 cents took up the same space as magazines selling for double or more. DC experimented with its line of giant 50 cent books and it's line of 100 pagers. Someone thought combining the various poor selling Superman related titles into one giant book would produce a decent selling one. Their Dollar Comics line was pretty groundbreaking for its time. I bought Action, but not Superman or any of the other Superman books. I bought about 90% of Marvels line,and 100% of the Atlas books, but was.much more selective with DC. Batman, Detective, Action and JLA, Legion and then their new stuff- Freedom Fighters, Justice,.Stalker and their like. Very occasional Charlton if I had extra money. DC at the time, had a lot of comedy books, as well as an extensive horror line, and a war line, with SciFi books as well. Superheroes didn't dominate like today.

I started buying off newsstands and the two stores I went to were clueless as to what was coming in. There was a new comic coming out, and the ad said to ask your newsstand to order it. Not mine. I think distribution was based on prior sales. If a place was selling X amount of comics per week, they'd get 2X, or some formula.