Nick Furious

True, unpaid accounts receivables is definitely another common way for a seemingly successful small business to run out of money. Along with using the float to finance overhead and expansion.

My best guess on the delays is not that he is a thief but that he's trying to recover books that are missing. Possibly taken by former staff members who were let go. He sounds like a guy who has a skill, but should not be running a business of any significant size. Taking full payment upfront, he likely used the float for cash flow and created a bit of a Ponzi scheme that collapsed. When money runs out, the hole just keeps getting deeper and anything can happen. Insurance payments stop. Books go missing, they get used as collateral for loans, aggrieved employees take or intentionally misplace things...

I would give 10 to 1 odds against an active insurance policy.

They will probably learn pretty quickly to only allow photos for positive feedback. Allowing public photos for negative feedback will open a can of worms and will not be a net benefit to Ebay. They want to encourage transactions, not discourage them.

I call it Sherpa employment. You intentionally make something so complex that it requires the average person to hire a professional "sherpa" in order to navigate it properly. The law is a great example. I think that tax accounting is another one. The thing about the comic grading industry though is that the complexity is driven by the market is demanding it. This is just the grading company responding to the demands of the market. Buyers of slabbed books take comfort in presuming there was a deep level of complexity in certifying the book with a statement of condition. Kind of like an auditor certifying the financials of a publicly traded company.

What did they say about their monstrous star? Did they demand his removal from the film? Clearly they didn't make the personal sacrifice of walking away. This is where we get it wrong as a society. We shouldn't give special consideration to those who tolerated evil because it was in their best interest. We should give special consideration to those who sacrificed personal interest and walked away.

I think there was a time when it was just another way of getting enjoyment out of being a collector. Some people discarded or gave away comics after reading them, some people kept them and continued to tinker with them by trying to make them look nicer. There were a lot of slow TV nights for kids back in the day. Coloring in a crease line and flattening comics with encyclopedias was something to do.

Ebay's TOS theoretically are there to protect both buyers and sellers. It's supposed to be a two-way street. If a buyer goes through Paypal to get a return after 30 days, they should have their Ebay account suspended for violation of TOS.

This cover always captured my imagination in the early 80's but the back-issue price was out of reach for me as a kid. I finally bought a copy a few years ago and read it. It was pretty lame.

The passage of time has made me regret the two times that I did return a book to a dealer after slabbing. The second time was a Hulk 181 5.0 that had small amount of color touch. In retrospect, I would rather have the book than the $200 credit, equal to what I paid for it.

"June is coming"

I can't imagine that Sir Isaac Newton ever considered this as the most common way that his name would be mentioned in the future. Probably rolling over in his grave.

Honestly, I faced a similar situation with a convention dealer that I saw once or twice a year. I bought a decent value book from him as a raw 9.4. It graded at CGC 9.4 but with a green label because the centerfold was detached. 6 months later I brought the book to him at a convention. I didn't want to create a "zero sum" situation where he lost money by reimbursing me, so I asked for a credit. He accepted and took the book back for a credit towards other purchases. I think the difference here is that we had a history together and I offered a solution that didn't have him losing money in the form of cash. I would suggest the same resolution in this situation...ask the dealer for a credit equal to your total costs...be willing to accept a compromise that does not include grading fees. I did not ask for grading fees as part of my credit...it was my choice to get the book slabbed and the dealer had no say in that.

I think the formula is twice your age plus 30. Or any number greater than 60.

Good point. There has to be a point where a seller is free to use the sale proceeds without fear of having to return them to the buyer. Ebay says that point is 30 days. Anyone who feels this is not enough time should find another platform that puts that timeframe out longer. Not sure there is one, as I think most reasonable people agree that 30 days is long enough. Most people I've heard from agree that Ebay's TOS are very generously biased towards buyers. Many sellers have left Ebay because they feel TOS are not fair to sellers. Buyers are free to do the same thing if they really feel that Ebay's TOS are not good enough for them.

If you buy your raw books through MCS they will already come with a grade on them that is highly respected in the industry. It doesn't eliminate all need for slabbing, but it certainly reduces it.

Anyone who didn't get to meet Nick Scotto missed a heck of an experience. I don't know if he was a stereotype...or a prototype. I started stopping by his Carson warehouse around 2009. Not only did his books have no pricing, they also had no bags or boards. Nick was pretty good at getting information from his customers, letting them dig out his treasures from the drek. Then he would look up the prices and realize the books had achieved some recent high 9.8 price and use that as the starting point for pricing. As one dealer told me, much like a Tijuana shop owner, Nick was always going to give you a great deal...until you showed interest in something. Two ways to get good value from Nick were to buy in volume (he wanted to move large stacks of books), and the other was to go there when he was on vacation with his wife and the assistant was running the warehouse.

It's like leaving a negative Yelp review for the IRS.

I think the success of GOTG created a false hope that MCU could transition from A list characters to C and D list characters and audiences would follow. If all the latest movies had been on par with GOTG, maybe that would have been the case. But that's a tough act to follow.

I have a theory that the recent boom in prices brought awareness and interest to many books that most folks had not considered owning before. I suspect some of that increased interest will remain and provide price support well above 2019 levels for many books, even after the pure resellers have abandoned them. Just curious, what books have you significantly increased interest in since 2020 but still not purchased?

If the price of a house dropped by 5%, but higher interest rates mean that the new owner is paying 10% more per month than he would have a year ago...does that count as reduced inflation or increased inflation? Seems to me that the net negative to discretionary spending would be the same whether the higher monthly payment is caused by higher home value or higher interest rates. And certainly nobody is able to increase discretionary spending by refinancing in that scenario?

I would say high inflation yes, high interest rates yes, higher housing costs yes (but that is regularly subsidized, as we saw with the government sanctioned non-payment of rent). I think sustained high unemployment, recession and big stock market drop are unlikely in the US. I think we've seen enough to realize that a fiat currency creates the opportunity for governing policy that allows unlimited deficit spending to avoid economic reality. For the time being the US can deficit spend with a level of impunity that no other country enjoys. I anticipate that the accelerated erosion of the dollar (not against other currencies, but against real goods) is more likely than big drops in the stock market or even in comic books. I think it's more likely that in 5 years a $300 comic book may still be worth $300...but it will only buy $200 worth of today's groceries.

Stan Lee would be proud of his boy, I'm sure.

Saying that the value of a Lichtenstein belongs to the original comic book artists is like saying that Silicon Valley, Hollywood and the much of the Aerospace Industry should be credited to Mexico because it once owned California.

Sounds like that thief is gonna be pissed when he finds out that AF15 is trimmed and color-touched. Seeing as how he stole it fair and square.