bluechip

I remember that film well but in that scene they are talking about financial instruments, loans for homes that were already "underwater" and worth less than the loans. Now you could say that all collectibles have no intrinsic value, in that you cannot live in them or drive them or eat them (well, you could but they wouldn't sustain you). What the best of them do have, however, is emotional value and genuine scarcity. You can't manufacture them the way you can homes in overvalued locations, for example. The order of things on your list of what will maintain value is no different from the list you've always put forth, at any and every turn (or imagined turn) in the market, and it now, as always, mirrors your personal preferences in collecting. Virtually everybody does that, of course, but, just think it's worth saying this was not carefully and uniquely constructed with respect to the current unique market conditions. But like you I have faith in the "best" and rarest, even if we don't always define it exactly the same way. And like you I feel that some perspective is order. This is not a world war. The people who imply that we must let people die so the economy doesn't "die" are either unthinking, or dishonest, caring only about their financial positions and equating a temporary downturn with "death". Rare "GA" will retain value over time and likely increase in numerical value (if not comparative value) due to inflationary effects of the stimulus and resultant deficits, etc. If it doesn't and the floor drops to where they are virtually worthless, that will mean much bigger things are going on with the economy, and the value of your comics will be far from the thing that concerns you most because you'll be living in a whole different world. One where the money you made or didn't make cashing in your comics, or your stocks, or your real estate, may also be meaningless. It always amuses me in apocalyptic movies when they depict humanity collapsing to the point where clearly only a small percentage of people are going to survive, and you see some billionaire buying a seat on an escape vehicle with money -- not even a stockpile of useful goods he'd previously bought with cash but simply bags of actual cash -- as if money mean anything at all at that point. I would find it more believable to see him buy a seat with a bag of GA books. A key comic might be appreciated by somebody as a relic of civilization vanishing before their eyes. At least, more so than a duffle bag full of Benjamins.

They seem to fine with taking money on my behalf but not quite so fine about processing my attempts to withdraw the money. Account shows one payment received but doesn't show the money itself in my account. It shows another payment partially "on hold" but doesn't allow withdrawal of the portion that's not on hold, either. I tried to call and got a message they weren't doing calls because of the coronavirus. Then I sent a message. Tried to log in later to see if they responded and the entire site was inaccessible.

The example they set was out in the open with videos on youtube of people wearings masks, having their temps taken before going into stores, etc. I had a trip to Europe planned and was considering every day whether to cancel it. Ultimately decided to go ahead but first I stocked up with N95 masks, hand sanitizer, gloves, even goggles (in case they discovered it was airborne). Kept a mask on during an entire trans-continental flight because a guy behind me was coughing. Went to events, parties, and the like packed with people from all over the world (except China) and wore no masks but washed my hands constantly. Didn't catch anything, and now that I'm back home everyplace I went is on lockdown, including my home. Wearing masks all the time here when I shop or whatever, and seeing hardly anyone else is wearing them mostly because they're unavailable. If I hadn't obsessed about the virus a month before most people here, I wouldn't have the stash of masks, sanitizer etc. but feeling bad wondering whether some health professionals might have gotten the stuff if I hadn't bought it.

Cap 1 covers front and back acquired separately and neither acquired with any interior, so assume it's possible the back cover could be from a Mystic 5 published same month. Both guaranteed unrestored though you will get a restored label if you marry these to an interior (and if you have an interior you're looking to sell, PM me). Contender for best cover of all time and first appearance of Cap, by Simon and Kirby. On stands in December 1940, a year before the USA entered WW2 and very controversial at the time. First time a comic directly called out Hitler on the cover, back when much of the USA wanted to stay out of the war. Timely's offices received death threats. Even after Pearl Harbor, and our declaration of war on Imperial Japan, we still didn't declare war on Hitler until he declared war on US, because of his pact with Japan. Interesting in that he ignored such pacts all the time (such as the one he had with Russia) and would've had the excuse that Japan wasn't attacked Ship by USPS, UPS or Fedex. Buyer pays only actual shipping. First "I'll take it" gets it. Offers via PM. Payment via check, wire, paypal. Asking 18,500.

FWIW, I've been following how different groups of people I know are reacting to the pandemic and even among the groups that have been discussing it logically, I find the discussion here to be more fact-based than others, on average. The pursuit of comic-related things may be rife with emotional and sometimes illogical views, but the folk within it seem nonetheless able to look at this situation objectively and with relative calm. Not sure why.

Congratulations. You are ahead of the curve on this set.

Very interesting. Much information I never knew before.

Missed an item because it came up while I was with the wife at a dog park and we got distracted by a Corgi puppy. I placed a couple bids on a low end piece I liked and the puppy jumped up at me and dislodged my phone as I was preparing another bid. Then it closed before I picked up the phone. Then I get home and find the piece sold for a third less than I would have bid AND it was a larger drawing than I'd thought... Oh, well. Cute dog, though.

Didn't know there was a FF Annual 2 page in this auction and apparently others were also unaware. That, or maybe Reed's male chauvinist remark to Sue "...only a female..." made some buyers worry that wives or girlfriends might object to seeing it on the wall. Great story but I remember wincing a bit when I first read that line as a kid, which was long before MeToo.

I remember seeing something in which they say they will charge you if you use them to contact somebody and then sell it off ebay. But the potential buyer and I did not exchange any contact into and I had clearly established a time line in which I would make an offer via ebay (sometime this week) Following this up I looked for the unsold item listing so that I could use the link to relist and make a direct offer, only to find it was listed as waiting for payment. I never sent an actual offer that was accepted and never received an offer from the buyer. I used the link to send an invoice to the buyer, but wondering what happens if he simply ignores it. I went looking for my invoices and have found it difficult to do so. Then I thought I'll just look for "completed sales" which I figured would also be easy to do, and still haven't seen where I can easily do that on my profile. Can't help wondering i they've done this before simply because somebody asked me via message "are you on the board?" or volunteered their email, even though no deal was utimately made. And if so, whether tucking the fees for unsold items into monthly invoices might be something they do often and in a manner that sometimes goes undetected.

Sutton's style may have dominated a bit more than the average Kirby fan would like, but I'd always heard that Jack liked doing the Brand Ecch pieces. Especially love the 1st issue FF parody and it appears to be detailed Kirby pencils ,

There were no bids. It was a BIN accepting offers. Potential buyer did not make an offer but asked what I would take and I named a price, specifically saying I would make the offer VIA EBAY in a couple weeks' time when I was back from Europe. But before that I noticed they had invoiced me the Fees. The buyer sent me no money, messaged me no contact information except the country he lives in. He is under zero legal obligation to buy it or even to follow up in any way.

I haven't checked the card charges. Just got an invoice from ebay. I will probably insist they reverse the charge even though I intend to follow through on the sale. Ebay can charge my card THEN, after the sale is made, and not just because they claim to think I made a sale which wasn't made.

I was out of the country for a couple weeks and right as I was leaving I took an item down from ebay when a buyer agreed to a price via message. I knew I couldn't send it while I was gone, so figured I would suss out how to offer it (via ebay, by the way), when I returned. Well I returned last night and as I was gearing up to do business I see that ebay has invoiced me and billed my credit card for final value fees for the transaction which has not yet occurred and which is still uncertain because the buyer is in no way legally obligated to follow through on our messages to an offer which he hasn't yet received. If I had an hour to type them all here I would not be able to list all the uncountable and various ways I find this utterly unacceptable behavior by ebay. Even if they have a squad of spies poring through your emails to root out people who evade their fees by making deals via IM, a reading of our messages made it clear I did not have his contact info and that the deal was planned through ebay when I returned. Ebay sent me no messages inquiring whether this deal was going to occur as planned, and if they thought we spoke in some kind of code (though not a single name, address or number was exchanged aside from the agreed price), then there should have been some sort of passive-aggressive "gotcha" email that informed me they were charging me these fees. I find it not at all fanciful to conclude that this is more than just a way to catch feevaders (my term for "fee evaders" TM) but also a way, an excuse, to stick people with fees who just might have been making a deal with somebody they have reason to know outside of the 'bay. And the lack of notification seems like a deliberate choice made which will, incidentally or intentionally, ensnare and charge many people who did NOT in fact make a deal outside of ebay and also failed to notice the extra charges on their invoices.

I have it on good authority that HA will offer to give each buyer, who spends more than 100K USD, a bottle of hand sanitizer and three N95 masks, which cause a last minute spike in bids.

Timely books got smaller in the later years of the war

I was aware of that. Although I can't say I know whether Kirby changed his name to sound less Jewish or just because it rolled more easily off the tongue. I was commenting on how people use the original name of a person when they want to show disrespect. It seems to be so when a person refers in one sentence to several people who changed their names, and only use the original name of the person to whom they want to show disrepect.

Yes, Stan Lee's birth name was Lieber. He Americanized his name. It's something people were, sadly, encouraged to do not so long ago. And perhaps not living during those times you think less of him for doing so. ... But, wait! So did Kirby (born Jacob Kurtzber I am generally curious when people use the names of Jewish writers/artists. Sometimes it's a fellow Jew wanting to reclaim their heritage. But then I see examples -- often -- where a person's birth name is used in a piece that is largely about how they don't like that person. I can't say that's a certain correlation. But when somebody references two Jewish men who changed their names, and uses the birth name of one, and not the other. And when it's clear that they use the Americanized name of the one they like, and the birth name of the one they don't like... I am not sure where that's coming from.

100 new issues of the Fantastic Four

Full disclosure might mean describing it thusly: "One of a kind at this point in time. No guarantees about tomorrow (or a half hour from now)."

You come from the place of wanting to support Kirby and be extension you see it as part of that support to slam Lee. I do not have the time to engage on every point but you reference ALL the quotes so many times I can't help but notice and reply that there is no way the "stuff said" mag or any magazine or book has ALL the things every person said on these issues. Even if you wanted to amass them all you couldn't. You would see only a portion of the quotes which were chosen and arranged by writers and editors for past articles and books about the issues. Stan didn't and never did OWN any of the characters. At one point he was able to negotiate a percentage but was never paid it. He settled for 10 million (and I imagine lawyers took a third to 40 percent of that). He also got them to agree to a mil a year salary which was apparently worth it to Marvel to have him as a happy figurehead and booster. Kirby did not get anything like that while he was alive but his family sued to claim OWNERSHIP (not just a percentage) and they, like Stan, settled for millions. The exact amount has not been revealed but it's thought by those with reason to know that the amount is likely equal or greater than the 10 mil lump sum Stan got. The testimony in court was never about Lee establishing ownership. He was summoned to testify by Marvel, which was establishing their ownership. If Lee had disputed in court their ownership, in contradiction to the raft of legal papers they had with him, Marvel and Disney's legal armada would have rained helllfire on him. Goodman and his assigns that took over Marvel got people like Jack to sign off on papers that said their work was done for hire. The particulars were sloppy in retrospect and it can easily be argued that all the creatives, including Lee, were pressured (and got screwed) to some extent. Stan died with the kind of money a guy can make by writing and/or directing a single hit TV show or movie. Not like a guy who was integral to a business worth tens or even hundreds of billions.

Your sentence made it sound like you were relying on that one statement. I have heard the "he saids" which I understand make up most of the "stuff said" book you reference. Even exact quotes can be misleading when the writer starts with an agenda and has control over which quotes get in and which do not -- especially when most of the people involved have either contradicted themselves or indulged in accusations and assertions that stretch the limits of logic. I could easily assemble a piece, using only substantiated quotes, that would make Kirby look like an angel and Stan the devil, then use different substantiated quotes to create a piece with just the opposite conclusion. Kirby's most off-the-rails remarks are likely due to the fact he never got over the Herald-Tribune article and I think never believed that Stan hadn't played a part in his portrayal, even though the writer was apparently in the room with both men for the whole session/interview. Ditko asserted that Spider-man didn't truly exist, even as a concept, until he drew the costume (and yet the costume he drew was remarkably similar to a kids' halloween costume that existed for eight years before AF15). Everybody has good points and everybody has stretched their points, sometimes to the breaking point. One thing that people keep forgetting is that the very first person who said "Jack is practically the writer" was Stan himself, and he said it repeatedly and for a long time before anyone else was saying it (including Jack). Stan made more than Kirby or Ditko ever made but he didn't make nearly as much he could have, nor nearly so much as many others who were far more peripheral in the exploitation of Marvel's assets (because they were better businesspeople).

This sequence contains one of Marvel's legendary mistakes. After Cap says "...only one of is gonna walk out of here..." in the next panel he says "And it won't be me!"

I don't think people are jumping on Stan because of "THAT" one statement. If so, then wouldn't the same people jump on Kirby for his most absurd assertions, like the time he was quoted saying Stan didn't even know how to write, had no knowledge of history and didn't even read books. (I don't have the exact quotes handy but that is pretty close to what Kirby said in a totally off-the-rails moment). Kirby even insisted he really created Spider-man, which has put some Stan-haters in the position of embracing the contradiction that both Ditko and Kirby are correct in asserting that Stan stole their credit but innocent in stealing credit from each other. There's similar contradiction in the arguments regarding Kane, Finger and Robinson re the creation of the Joker. Haters will tell you Kane claimed improperly stole credit owed to Finger and that Kane claimed credit due to Robinson, but they don't see the contradiction and won't acknowledge you can't credit both Robinson and Finger with 100% credit, which is not possible. I've seen lots of claims that Kane lied about Finger and lied about Robinson, but as yet I've seen nobody claim that Robinson lied about Finger's role (or vice versa). They're so focused on implicating Kane that they don't even see or acknowledge that Finger and Robinson were not just calling Kane a thief; they were also disputing each other.

They were redoing stories all the time. FF51 is arguably the best of these Marvel did in this period, but the best part of it could easily have come about because somebody said (SPOILER ALERT) "and maybe the guy who takes Ben's body to kill Reed comes to respect Reed and even sacrifices himself to save him". Marvel had done that story before, as well. It meshed with this new story very nicely, but that kind of simple and somewhat vague but still significant sort of suggestion is just the sort of thing Stan did all the time in fleshing out concepts and stories. Doesn't mean Kirby couldn't have thought of it on his own. As for the Surfer, Stan said (and Kirby never disputed) that when he saw the FF48 pages and asked what's with the guy on the surfboard, Kirby famously responded with "I thought Galactus should have a herald." A "herald". Neither Stan nor Jack ever said that Kirby described his character as anything more. Neither Stan nor Jack ever said that Kirby described the character he'd drawn for FF48 as "an alien who works for Galactus; He sacrificed himself to save his home planet by becoming Galactus' herald and helping him destroy other planets instead of his own, but in the next issue he's going to meet Alicia who will touch his heart and convince him to go against Galactus, who will retaliate by imprisoning him on Earth". That's a good bit more than "a herald". Not saying that Jack contributed nothing beyond that as character development. But I think re the Surfer, as in all things Lee and Kirby did together, it is safe and appropriate to use the Lennon-McCartney credits method and bill them all as creations by "Lee and Kirby"