Keys_Collector

True and the last time I bought from there, they charged 3% for credit card transactions and about $20 in shipping per book.

I'm going to go with a no on this one and it's because a number of factors brought more money into comics: 1. Covid finding more people indoors looking for ways to occupy their time...reinvigorated collectors who stopped collecting 2. Crypto and the rise of instant millionaires. I remember reading somewhere that there were tens of thousands of new millionaires because of Bitcoin/Ethereum/Doge coin taking off. 3. Stimulus checks - helped raise books valued in that 500-5000K range. 4. Distrust in government and lack of stock market gains pushing people to look for more tangible investment options such as comics. 5. The Gary Vee effect of social media influencers buying comics/cards and impacting the purchasing decisions of others. I think card collectors joining in the rush to buy comics had little to do with it and more to do with the factors above. Edited to address the comments saying "i'd never hire a millennial" or bashing any particular generation. It's typical and rather foolish to stereotype an entire generation which happens with each generation disparaging the previous one to make themselves feel better. Lazy and self centered people in each generation. Last time I checked, millennials didn't ruin the environment or create a socially unbalanced structure.

Hit the nail on the head. I wouldn't have responded at all if the OP didn't say he "freaked out" which seems like a bit of an overreaction to something he could have done 5 minutes of research to find out information on. BTW, asked OP if this was his first slab purchase and if he had done any research before buying slabs and my comment was removed for some reason.

Oh man, really looking forward to this. People are letting the last season cloud their judgment on how good the rest of the show was. Honestly, I thought the reaction to the last season was completely overblown. Was it rushed and not quite what we expected? Of course! Did HBO still produce amazing episodes full of outstanding acting, cinematography, costumes, etc.? Absolutely!

As my post alluded to, couldn't you do some reading on the boards or a Google search for "marks on CGC case" or something to that effect? I'm all for "newbie" questions but when a new user comes here with 4 posts and says they are "freaking out" it affects sellers like me who are on eBay and get returns because of newton rings and uninformed new buyers who have no clue about much of anything.

You could easily google it or actually do research on the forums by reading what's already here instead of "freaking out" as he stated: https://lmgtfy.app/?q=cgc+slab+marks+on+case Maybe people should be researching more about the things they buy before they actually buy it? A little research before buying and maybe even actively engaging with boards members instead of "freaking out" on a somewhat blind purchase would yield better results.

I don't know man. It's kind of tiresome when people buy slabs with little knowledge and then freak out when it has newton rings. Very common for uninformed buyers to return a book because of newton rings. Someone takes the time and effort to create an account here, upload pictures but could've spent that time doing some research on their own about what's going on in that slab.

What would've been a million dollar book has now been reduced to pennies.

That's wild. I can't believe people are still paying $1200 for the PS5 when it doesn't even have any blockbuster launch titles. Miles is cool but too much like the last Spiderman game. Spiderman PS4 was awesome but after 50 hours of that, not sure I want what is essentially a DLC as a launch title. My wife picked a PS5 up for me through Best Buy. She would continually check every time there was a drop and got lucky so she didn't pay bloated flipper pricing. There's no way i'd pay more than retail as the PS5 to me just isn't worth it right now.

Paying $250 for a no tattoo ASM 238 is definitely an odd purchase.

While I get the sentiment, comparing UF4 to Spawn 1 is a poor comparison for the following reasons: UF4 print run - under 100K Spawn 1 print run - over 2 million Miles Morales - Oscar winning animated film and PS5 launch title....bright, bright future as the Spiderman for todays youth. Wait until he pops into the MCU and then we'll really find out what kind of legs this character has. Al Simmons - poorly made movie from 1997 that not a lot of people from today (especially youth) knows about with a questionable movie potentially up in the air being produced by Todd McFarlane "starring" Jamie Foxx maybe?

Exactly this. Find what interests you regardless of if the value jumps up or drops. It's hard for anyone to say "you should buy THIS comic for $500" without knowing anything about you or your collecting habits. Are you more interested in collecting 1st appearances, 1st issues or complete runs of a title? What age are you looking to collect? Golden/Silver/Bronze/Copper/Modern? I'd suggest doing a lot of reading on this forum to get an idea of how others collect and what you're really interested in. The latter is the most important past of this.

Should've listened to my own advice from 6 months ago. As others mentioned above, the time to strike may have passed. I don't see this lasting as many people saw the ridiculous prices and sent them in to PSA or other grading services. These companies are backlogged and taking months to return. The market will be flooded with grades all over the place and the price will come down to reality once collectors and flippers start receiving them back (just finished watching the YouTube video above and realized he said exactly this). A lot of people seeing high prices for Gem mint cards when only a fraction are actually 10's. Not to mention the cost of grading which some people sending in don't factor in. Still very, very cool to see graded Marvel trading cards.

What's the book? Depends on what it is and the price that you can obtain it at.

I'd go GSX1....has more 1st appearances that haven't quite gotten the attention they deserve; Colossus, Storm, Nightcrawler while having an early appearance of Wolverine. It's also the more important comic in terms of history and making the X-Men relevant once again. At the end of the day, buy what you want most for your collection regardless of what happens to the value. If all the value came tumbling down (which I don't see happening), what would you still rather have in your collection?

This forum is like the same people going back and forth again and again with the same folks being negative over and over again. Glad to have taken a break from this place.

5.5 between the corners, spine, center crease and some other wear. There's a few marks on the cover itself and around the other edges. Not a bad presenting book at all with decent color.

It's silly to invest in any book once it becomes overhyped but those that bought that book prior to the movie announcement did very well on it. I'll let him speak for himself but I don't think he was joking at all. Again, these books like MP15 or UF4 rose exponentially upon some type of hype/spec news and then some fall harder back down to reality. Prior to those announcements, both were fractions of what they go for now. I'm not an invest in comics type of guy but plenty of people have done very well with knowing when to buy and sell.

The boards are a wealth of information that you'll be hard pressed to find anywhere else. I've told countless people on IG about these boards and I don't think any of them have signed up or contributed here. Times are changing and there is so much content to consume that sometimes its difficult for people to add something else to their already packed schedules of consuming content. I've also heard "is there an app for the forum" and a lot of people are not going to log into a website to read and type some comments in especially when they are already used to typing quickly on their phones while on the run. I think most of the reasons stated here are correct and contribute to the lack of participation at times here on these boards. 1. Too many sources of content and mass consumption of social media spreading people too thin. 2. People want the quick access to community rather than logging on and sharing comments on a message board. Having an app is crucial to this. People wouldn't spend as much time on Reddit if there wasn't an app. 3. More constant eyes over on IG, FB that can create a larger network of collectors to talk with or buy/sell/trade with. I'm a fan of the IG community but at times it does feel shallow. I've been an active member here and on IG for about the same amount of time and i've met a few people from IG in person, made some good online relationships with great people and bought and sold more over there. I'm a fan of these boards because of the wealth of knowledge. I've alluded to this multiple times before in other posts but there can be certain elitist attitudes here that can be a turn off from new people checking the board out and the water cooler can get pretty toxic (much worse in the past). I will say that most other boards I've been a member of for some time have seen a drop off in participation so I don't think it is this board or comics in general but more about technology changing the way how people consume their content and communicate with one another.

The top row you mentioned are pretty far away at this point from most collectors to even consider investing in them. I think your statement is rather too broad and anyone who "invested" in copies of Marvel Premiere 15 in the single to double digits especially at high grade are doing pretty well now. That book is still a $375+ book at 9.0+. I don't think investing in comics is a sure fire way to lose money but rather being smart about comic purchases would be the way to go. Ask all the people who hoarded Ultimate Fallout 4 how they did when it peaked.

That's a common misconception I see about only older collectors buying up older books. I sold most of my cheaper GA/PCH stuff last year and it was the younger kids buying it all up. I also see collectors in their 20's starting to put serious money into GA books. We need to pass our love for these older books onto the younger generation to keep the spark of the hobby alive.

My answer would have been Secret Wars as my juvenile brain remembers that as epic storytelling. I re-read it last week and I was completely underwhelmed and it definitely felt very dated. Going to go back and re-read the Wolverine series and any others that are recommended in this thread.

"keys collector" is very generic and not my eBay username. My eBay user id is war_hero with 100% feedback since 2001. Nice troll attempt though.