Turnando

I think that downsizing by turning a bunch of books into a few is a nice way to stay in collecting while preparing for passing your collection to your heirs.  A nice thing to do towards the end of your collecting career.

I can't imagine many heirs who would enjoy inheriting thousands of books.  But inheriting half a dozen significant books would be a different thing. 

The very end, where the production of a Superman comic is shown, is my favorite.

Hand lettering, hand coloring with a watercolor brush, laying out the cover with glued on pieces, ...

It it were me I'd provide advice and instruction and then let him do it.  He can board/bag/inventory 3,000 comics after you give him some tips.

If he would like you to take care of it then that is different.  I don't think that would be very fun after about 1/2 day.  After that it is work.  After that you can give him a buddy deal on taking care of it... Maybe 50% of what a stranger would pay someone to deal with it.

This implies that the buyer and the seller are already connected:

On 2/8/2022 at 10:18 AM, littledoom said:

I know both the seller and buyer of a massive 200 longboxes 80s collection of $50k asking.

So it is too late to ask either of them for money.  You don't ask for a fee for something that might reasonably be expected to be free. 

Some deals involve finders fees.  Most do not.  The deals in which a finders fee was not previously discussed do not change into finder's fee deals after the fact.  That would be like setting a trap.  It's unethical... And annoying.

On 2/4/2022 at 7:49 PM, Ozonetv said:

Part of an estate sale find...$1 a book...

Oh well, they are dead.  They will never know you ripped them off.

On 2/4/2022 at 7:42 AM, MultiSig Mike said:

They got their friend with zero feedback and ID created today (2/4) to bid...oh well.

I'd cancel the bid... But I guess that might start a war with the guy that you cannot win.  He sounds like the type who will screw you eventually.

I'd be interested in hearing from experts but my opinion is that kid's names on covers are kind of cool.  I like date stamps and names.

I'd leave it alone if it were my book.  

On 1/27/2022 at 6:29 PM, Sigur Ros said:

Nowadays these goofs online are wanting $12 to ship 1 book.

That's probably not much of a profit.  They might be making a dollar for the hour they spent dealing with shipping.

 I looked at the postage on a 4X6 padded envelope that came in the mail today:  about $4.50 and all it had in it was a few N95 masks that weighed a fraction of an ounce.

By the time a seller packages a book and drops it off at a shipper they are not ripping anyone off at $12.

I think it is amazing how much they all improved later.  Some of those early covers don't even hint at how masterful the artists would become later.

The early Frazetta and Corben... Wow, those are... primitive.  

Meatloaf had cool album covers.  But he was a slob and his music was horrible.

One of my memories of the early 80s is me trying to listen to a Meatloaf album in my friend's room.  It was 'Bat Out of Hell' and that cover was awesome. 

I just stared at the cover and waited for the music to be over.  It is tricky to build a rock album with someone singing like he is in a choir.  Freddie Mercury figured it out.  Meatloaf did not.

I think it depends on the value relative to what you can afford to lose.  If a loss would be devastating then I'd farm it out to auction or the shop.

The boards are probably safer than any other do-it-yourself sale but it's not as safe as paying a pro to assume responsibility for the sale.

On 1/8/2022 at 1:53 PM, VintageComics said:

EITHER price OR grade are both viable options

The WTB rules state you must be specific about what you want to buy but there is no requirement to name your price.

"Stating a specific price range is no longer required."

I think the rules are good. I voted 'no' in the poll because it sounds like the OP is implying that a WTB post is OK if either price or grade is included.  The answer to that is 'No'.

Actually, the more times I read the title of the poll the more confused I get about what is means, logically speaking.

Maybe peek at some page layouts of both.

I don't know about Perramus but I have Mort Cinder and I found the art disappointing.  It's probably the layout more than anything.  It was originally a serial so maybe that explains it but I think it was probably printed on full pages originally so maybe that does not explain it.  Maybe there is no excuse for the unexciting layout. I guess the individual panels were not great either so maybe I'm saying I didn't like the art at all.

I liked the story but I require the whole package.  I'm picky.  I don't see the allure of his work, sorry.

On 12/31/2021 at 8:18 PM, fantastic_four said:

I've bought some of the TMNT stuff for my kids.  Unfortunately their plastic is a bit brittle compared to Hasbro's and they've broken a lot of it, particularly the accessories.

I also liked to give my son cool toys when he was young. 

As a toy collector I couldn't help myself when it came to trying to keep the stuff together. 

I did my best to just let him play with it and break it but I admit I took the back seat out of my car once when he dropped Spider Man's head and it went into a black hole.  Only by removing the seat could I recover it.

If I read it correctly he was living in his storage unit.  Maybe that was his choice but I'm sure that was not an easy life and was especially hard on the ones who loved him.

I hope they find peace.

Yes.  This is a small home grown show.  The revenue service doesn't care.  The tax is not significant to them.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Not a history of comics but a novel set in comic history, written by a lover of comics and it won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction.  You can't really beat that. Must have.

It's a cool book.

I think that buying books in person is going to work best for you.

Maybe your distaste for the defects that are within grade but can only be seen in person is a blessing.  It is going to force you to adopt a more personal method of collecting if you want to be happy with most of your deals. 

The other choice is to keep buying online but you will eventually have some bad experiences... I'd get upset if I sold a graded 6.0 book like that and the buyer complained about those types of defects.

Maybe a paper fragment landed on it for one of the early print passes and fell off in time for the later one?  But then why is the shading on the right side of the letters missing on the "A" but not the "R"?

Maybe those letters are color touched by someone? The yellow tone on those 2 letters is more uneven than on the adjacent "T".  I'm going to guess color touched.

Great attention to detail.  Good luck.

I wouldn't worry about the outlets.  If someone can't manage their phone and laptop battery charge for one day they need a spanking. I wouldn't cater to those types.

I think a scanner will be a good investment if you stick with comic collecting.

A good scan of your book is like a fingerprint.  It uniquely documents your property.

Also, I like to scan some of my favorites so I can do things like print them and laminate the prints to make a display to stick on the front of my fridge or whatever.  A good scan looks amazing and allows you to enjoy your book in a whole new risk-free way.

I have a small stack of laminated scans with me now that I'm using to shop for an artist to use for copying into sign-sized paintings.

I think that determining whether or not a dealer's offer for a collection is good or not has a lot to do with how much your time is worth... and how much their time is worth.

If you have a regular job in a developed country then your time should be worth a lot to you... unless you enjoy selling comic books and don't mind spending hours and hours and hours doing it.

I think that an offer of 50% of value, like the dealer did for the slabbed books, is a good starting point.  That was for a few dozen books. When you show them 1,000 comics I bet they all offer way less than that.

IMO, getting a discount to cover costs of reholdering isn't enough to make up for Newton rings.

There is the risk associated with getting a book graded that needs to be factored in.

I'd probably keep a graded book with mild Newton rings as-is... And I would pass on it if the optics were bad enough to even think about reholdering.