rumrunner71

The only thing I might to the already great advice here is if you are not confident in your storage abilities if you aren't selling soon. Low grade like that, I wonder how the corners, spine, and pages are holding up. A slab might keep it from going from a 1.5 to a .5. Not forever, and Mylar and care can do the same but still. (And poor shipping or packaging could send it to lower grade territory anyway.) I also tend not to buy really low graded slabs because to me, those are reader copies. If I see a slab, I see a lot of money for plastic I'm going to crack out later.

Most definitely, "reasonable" means different things at different times. I didn't mean to imply you were out tossing $$ around

I will add to this a bit and just say that there have been some times on these boards where I still get that thrill. Some of the rarities and obscurities that come up are amazing, and often, the sellers offer really good prices. So the boards offer a bit of that thrill still.

That's a really good point about the hunt. If you are looking for the best copy or a pedigree or something for like a GA book and you have the funds, I imagine the hunt is still there. But for many of us, I imagine, we've been priced out of that hunt

Completely agreed. I'm not going to sit around with the kids and tell them the epic tale of me setting a watch alert on an auction and checking my phone for snipes before I finally got the win notice and invoice.

This 100%. My wife designs clothing for art fairs, and across the board, with some exceptions, sales at those shows are down. I really do hope for the sake of you and other artists that there is a bounceback. A lot of folks left the art fair business after 2021

Some of the slow down for me in intensive collecting is that it feels like the thrill of the hunt is gone. I used to love going to flea markets, antique stores, and comic shops in new towns trying to find that one issue to fill out my run or always looking for the diamond in the rough, that one super valuable, hard-to-find 1st appearance that not everyone knew about that was buried in a stack of drek. With the internet, there isn't that thrill. I need an issue to fill a run? There's 25 copies on MCS. That obscure title? The local flea market guy is trying to sell it for 20x GPA. If I have the wherewithal to overpay, I can just do eBay. I still love seeing a well-stocked wall at a con, but with the net, I have access to almost all of those if I really want them, whenever I want them (with few exceptions.) There's almost no adrenaline rush anymore.

There was a good article on CNN this week about the end of the "YOLO" economy. Consumers just aren't spending on discretionary big ticket items anymore. Maybe there will be a bounce back for collectibles down the road

I'm also trying to picture an artist being thrilled about signing a copy where the printer lopped off a chunk of their art

That's the best approach, buy what you enjoy

There's a thread somewhere in here with those panels. It's how I found out about the book. Glad you offered up your under copy for such a great price and really happy for the purchaser! Are you going to share your upgrade here?

You start to sympathize with the 50s moms who threw their kids' comics away after seeing that one!

JiM was such a great title before they started in with that weird guy with the hammer

So sad I missed the sale of a copy of this ish in the threads last night. Such a delightfully vicious story inside

If youre getting it slabbed in a SS holder, one thing to consider is that it might not be a 9.8 after it is signed. In your post, you seem to value the grade pretty high. Do you want to risk a 9.6 or 9.4 post-signing?

Pretty damn good start, I'd say

I'm sorry you're disappointed. Many of us have been there before, too. But, hey, you got a cool book of one of your favorite characters, signed by one of your "legends" right before he died, and signed by Stan Lee. And it's worth near or more than $1000, which might not be 100k but is still pretty valuable. Treasure the book and the memory of meeting the signers. Gotta look on the positive sometimes.

I took the kids this weekend and hate to admit it, but I was kind of disappointed. There were maybe a handful of comic dealers and not even many cards. I managed to grab a stack of readers and one GA Action. It's just not the same as in years past. I started going back in the 90s and then restarted attending a few years ago when we moved back to MI. I'm glad there's more for everyone, but it's not really a "comic" centric con. Between that and the exorbitant prices for sigs, I don't know that we'll go back. I talked to my LCS owner, and he said the booth prices are crazy high. We might try Cherry Capital in Traverse or Capital City in Lansing instead. Anyone been to those?

I saw a lower grade copy of this at Motor City this weekend and alllmossttt pulled the trigger. Worlds Finest doesn't get the love, but some of those covers are just great.

Sorry for the poor pic quality. Just picked this up from Darren (Fantast) at Motor City. It combines two of my cover-loves: DC's large-format title banner (my first in a superhero book) and WW2

Late to the party here but hopefully helpful. For context, I used to work for a subcontractor for USPS that was responsible for transferring packages from trucks to planes. All of the mail would come to us in large bags, which we unloaded from the truck and shoved into containers to go on the plane. We were paid by weight density per container, so while we didn't smoosh anything, those bags were tossed and crammed in. Few times, we had registered mail. When these trucks came, a postal employee followed in a car behind and had to remove a lock tag from the truck before we could open it. The registered mail was in a heavy, hard plastic locked case. The employee would watch us place it in a container, and then no matter how empty the container was, he would place another lock tag on it after sealing it and then follow the container to the plane, where he would oversee it being put on the plane. So, yeah, there is a reason registered can be a good way to go for security and safety. Not perfect but far more involved than non-registered.

Great stuff! Thanks for sharing all this

Well, there goes any thought of me getting work done this morning I can't remember being so eager to see new posts in a thread. Thanks for sharing this with us!

At this point in comics, it might be more significant if a character lasts a few years NOT getting killed off temporarily

Pretty sure that business is lost already, regardless of the 2k