Conacon

Not so much PGM, but could you weigh in on how much of a penalty these two defects would cost me. One is an odd marker dot on the bottom corner of the front cover and the other is just a corner blemish on the spine of the back cover. 

This. So this guy thinks the one on the left is an X-Men book. And they're still in their plastic covers, guys! I swear, I live in the wilderness. There are two more posts that state, "still in original packaging" bc some guy before him bagged and boarded them!

So they made Lightning Lad black and then got cold feet, or they only made him in black in one of the comics, so they had to scrub the whole idea? Being a huge LSH fan, I don't care what his race is as long as their ongoing title lasts longer that 20-something issues!

Is building a shelf out of the question? I used some old 2x4's and plywood to make a shelf deep enough to hold long boxes, three rows of 5 boxes across with a top shelf for random hobby-related stuff. It still needs some work- the plywood is rough, so the bottom of the boxes are wearing. I'm thinking contact paper over the plywood. 

Before that, I was using two of the basic shelves from Lowes (pictured). I put one in front of the other so that a long box could slide into place, using both to support it's weight. They'll bend in the middle after some time, so I suggest a piece of plywood on each shelf so the weight is distributed evenly on the shelf. I had some older, wider shelves where I was running the long boxes long-ways two to a shelf, but to get to one box, I'd have to move the other box. 

Both my nearest LCS's said they did not receive their copies to destroy in the first place. They hope to have the replacements soon, but they had no word on when they'd be shipped out. I'm a Legion of Super-heroes nerd, so this fiasco has hit me in the feels. I wanna start a new volume of LSH! I can't get enough of a 4th, 5th, 6th reboot with only slight changes from volume to volume! I may have to resort to taking a cover from an old LSH and putting it on a random New Warriors issue from the 90's and just pretending.

I had to turn it into a process for this very reason. If I buy a book for my collection, it goes into the to-be-read box. Once I read it, it goes into the long boxes. Before this, I would let them pile up before boxing them and every once in a while I'd have to spend an hour or two filing. The to-be-read box is a short box, so that if I don't have room to put a book in it, I have to "read it down" a little so I can buy more comics. The only exception is Legion of Super-heroes. It has become it's own collection. I decided a while back I was going to fill all the holes before reading. Those are probably the only comics in my long boxes that haven't been read. There are probably 50 comics unread out of the 3,500+ in my personal collection. You do the math.

On the flipside, any book I buy with the intention of selling generally goes unread. I have about 1,000 grab bag comics and I know that I've only read a handful of them (hence their status as grab bag and not PC). Add in the spec books and gems in the wild and I'd say I have only read 1% of those. There are titles in there I wish I could read, but there's never going to be enough time to go through all of that in addition to what I bring in on the regular.  

On ‎8‎/‎25‎/‎2019 at 11:00 PM, Mercury Man said:

Is it safe to assume color breaks are the bane of pressing, but if you have a white cover with dents, you should be ok?   I have a Thor #337 that I was thinking about getting pressed.  Most issues appear to be on the white section of the cover. 

I had that same thought this past weekend. If you can see the bend/crease, and a press flattens it to where it goes away, then you're golden. If you press and you can still see where the crease was (maybe holding it at a certain angle with respect to the light), then the points will be deducted, I guess?

15 hours ago, valiantman said:

You know what this is, right?  (Definitely worth $1, but not an original.) 

BWAHAHAHA! Thanks, I didn't even bother looking inside. Oh well, it was the most beat up of the lot anyway. 

On 8/21/2019 at 3:29 PM, migmtl76 said:

Thanks Joey (and theCapraAegagrus). The book is probably at worst an 8.0, at best a 9.0.

Another question: When I submit to CGC should I choose Pressing (as opposed to QuickPress) for such a defect?

All the best !!!

 

I don't know... just what we can see in the pic would drop it to a 9.0. if the tics are consistent down the spine, the grade would drop at least another point. Hard to say without seeing the whole book.

Here's a pressing question. Pun intended. When you have a defect like that corner scrunch, which shows up on the front and back, is that counted off twice? For example, I have a spine tic that you can see breaks color on the front cover. That's usually about 0.2 off the grade. Now what if its a particularly nasty spine tic that carries over to the back of cover. Another 0.2 off?

3 hours ago, Cman429 said:

It’s a 4.5/5 now as is. The cleaning might improve the back cover a bit but even if they somehow get that inky looking stain out, the major problem is the gazillion color breaking stress lines and a press ain’t gonna fix those.

That's what I was thinking. The one large crease can be pressed out, but it's still a color-breaker.

3 hours ago, Taneleer Tivan said:

What are the best ways/methods to learn accurate grading, yourself?

I was intimidated at first how to start out and wondered the same thing. I too studied the "Hey Buddy, Can you Spare a Grade?" threads. Invaluable for getting experience. I don't put my guesses out there, but I usually come close to where the "experts" here land. Most of these guys know their stuff and you'll notice the grading is usually consistent from post to post. 

Unless you're getting a crazy good deal, like from an estate sale or well-meaning grandmother at a yard sale, the money you put into a run that size will be hard to recoup. It's been mentioned already, but time and effort are a cost, even if its a hobby.

I know if I bought a run like that, I'd first tell myself that I want to read them before I sell them. Then they'll sit in my to-read long box for a long time. Next thing you know, they've been morphed into part of my personal collection. Right now, if I buy a flip/spec book, I have to intentionally put it in one of a few designated short boxes so I don't get attached.

16 hours ago, shadroch said:

One wonders how many unscrupulous book sellers have bought reprints thinking they were real.

Funny-ish story- There's an Entertainmart in our city. I don't know how big the franchise is, but it's one of those geek stores that sells video games, cards, and movies and comics. When this one first opened, there were actually some good finds in their dollar bins. Basically, they have a dollar section (seven or eight long boxes worth) and a large amount of average-priced back issues as well. On my first trip, the cashier asked if I had found anything big. He then told me how the employees dig through the shipments before putting them out. He said he thought he had something when he found this- and pulled a comic out from under the counter. It was an Action #1 reprint. It was obvious to me it was a reprint, but he said he looked it up wondering if it was real. No one there seems to know anything about comics. I can only imagine his blood pressure when he saw the $$$ before realizing he had a reprint.

Don't listen to these quacks! What you want to do is mail it to PGX through the good old U.S. postal system. Wait a minute, my brother is under a USPS contract, so he's kind of like a postman. Tell you what, let me know where to pick it up and I'll get it over to him. We'll worry about details later. 

Also, please post pics. I now everyone on here is waiting to see it!

11 hours ago, GeeksAreMyPeeps said:

To be fair, Rage was a completely original character (that is, not derivative of an existing Marvel character). This was a period where comic sales were booming, and Marvel was looking to cash in by creating entire families of characters around their tentpoles. That's where the push for these three (and the expansion of Midnight Sons, and Fantastic Force, and Force Works, etc.) came from. They wanted a family of titles around anything successful. Even the relatively new New Warriors spawned Nova, Night Thrasher, and Justice spinoffs. A good number of Spider-man (pardon…Spider-men, since we also had Ben Reilly then) family characters also had their own series or minis (Silver Sable, Venom, Solo, Nightwatch, etc) in this period. Not to mention the dozens of mutant titles. Marvel's problem was they wanted tons of titles, but there was a dearth of quality talent. I have a friend who pencilled some stories at the time, and one of the storylines he was working on was written by one of the assistant editors who had never had written for comics before, and basically wrote the same exact story for a couple of continuous issues of a title before he suggested to the editor that maybe they needed to tweak things so they weren't duplicating the previous issue.

Please don't be fair to Rage. He wouldn't appreciate it. What a Mr. T-with-his-attitude-from-Rocky-III rip off. 

                                                          =                   

"I pity the fool who doesn't eat a balanced breakfast!" 

 

Ok, seriously, though. He's one of those guys who grew on me when he moved over to New Warriors. Nightwatch, though. Ugh. Spawn when everybody wanted to be Spawn. 

 

 

 

On ‎7‎/‎26‎/‎2019 at 5:31 PM, Chaykin Stevens said:

USAgent, War Machine and Thunderswipe appeared together in Avengers: the Terminatrix Objective by Mark Gruenwald and Mike Gustovich.

This reminds me... has there ever been an NBA team with three #1 draft busts together in the same season? These guys were pushed by Marvel, but never really gained respect. The only one missing is Rage. Can someone photoshop him onto this cover?

1 hour ago, 1Cool said:

Is the app now a subscription service?  I think my original comment way back when was in reference to the eventual selling of the service and how he was advertising (or spamming) on the boards.  I believe his response was that the app was just for fun and to help people and would not be for money.  i guess things have changed and he still is spamming the boards with requests for "help or advice".  

I subscribe to the minimum (at least I think there's an upgrade I'm not paying for). It's a decent source of information and a welcome diversion. I like rummaging trough dollar bins, so the app has helped as a quick reference from time to time. If you're a low-key hobby flipper, it's helpful.

Can you post a pic? Sadly, trying to correct a date stamp caused more trouble than the date stamp.

Not so much dollar stores here, but 5 Below carries a very limited amount of  three packs. There's an overstock store a few towns over that has tons of packs and TPBs. Not worth the trip on it's own, but if I'm in the area...

18 hours ago, FineCollector said:

I'm surprised how few people say they're addicts for comics... you have to be, for the amount of time spent on them.

It's sad, really. I don't want to think about the impulse buys I've given in to just because I felt like I had to have it only to have immediate buyers remorse minutes later. I imagine that's what people with real addictions struggle with. Then I remember that this is a hobby and I'm supposed to want to do it as opposed to when a person with a drug addiction suffers from a chemical dependency.

Then again, I do inhale deeply between the pages when I bring home an old comic. That smell ranks up there with new car smell!

If you want it just to have it for your personal collection, and they present relatively the same, go the cheaper route. If you think you may sell it down the road, maybe putting in the extra $50 would be worth the investment. When I'm filling holes and hit a key that is out of my price range, I don't mind buying a cheaper. That way I have the issue and I can always upgrade later.

This isn't new by any means, but I didn't see anything about it in a search. I wasn't aware just how many Archie comic covers are just a little beyond PG-13! So what determines which risque cover takes off? I've noticed Dan DeCarlo did covers for some and ebayers like to point out he did the cover in their pitches, but not all come from him. When Veronica's diving cover hit CBSI's top 10, it seemed like everyone was finding the next bikini cover and there are tons of innuendo covers to be sure! Some of these issues are seeing all-time highs (Betty's Treasure Chest issue, anyone?). Tell you what, I found this one last week.

 

As a kid, this would have went right over my head. I found several with just a quick search. How about you find your favorite and post it here?

 

And... Someone do whatever it is that gets done to make this the next popular cover!  I'd love to make a few bucks off of it! Hype train get to rolling! 

I guess it varies by comic. Some I buy for the story/art/writer (Immortal Hulk and Donny Cates' Venom). Some for nostalgia. For example, the Impact line from DC in the late 80's/early 90's (Shield, Jaguar, Web, etc.). Some for value as it is a target-rich environment in my area. Some to embrace my inner geek- anything steampunk, especially re-imagining established characters. And, of course, out of compulsion. There was a time I could leave my LCS empty-handed. Now I'll buy even if my "still-to-be-read" stack is a mile high. We need a support group. *sniff*

This works- surround your collection with 90's comics. Not even silverfish will come near those. I received a cease and desist order from a roach a while back. He was deeply offended by Nightwatch.