lostboys

On 8/28/2023 at 4:42 PM, dbcn said:

You do you; but honestly my eyes aren't what they used to be and I have a hard time actually reading comics unless the light / contrast is really good, and I mostly collect for the cover art.

That said, if there is a book I want to actually read, I'll find a digital version so I don't have to hold the actual book out at arms length in order to read the tiny print.

I also don't tape the backs of the bags - I'm way too clumsy to not accidentally connect the tape to the actual book & damage it. 

 

(hmm... maybe this isn't the hobby for me...  )

Hey, man, im only 46 and I already use a huge magnifying glass to read my comics.

I dont "really" need it yet but Its so awesome.

On 8/28/2023 at 4:22 PM, LowGradeBronze said:

Ditch the tape. When you're pressed for time and craving a quick hit before bedtime, tape can be enough to put you off. Not sure if I would put them in a pile but removing the tape may be enough to make quick casual access more of a pleasure. Isn't it all about the pleasure?

I know that most folks hate them but I switched to resealable bags a few years back and I really like them.

Well, Ive been thinking about cracking all my slabs because it will be easier for my kids to move my collection when im gone.

Not the same thing, I know, but considering what Ive paid to have them graded/slabbed...still a pretty dumb idea to crack em, especially when you consider that I have reader copies or TPBs for all of em. Maybe ill crack em out when I get older.

In your case, I dont know man...what if you want the book at the bottom of a pile?

What if you accidentally tip a pile over?

I know youre not planning on selling but you should preserve them for the next generation.

Howdy!

Call a few law firms in your area and ask if they have any ceiling high file cabinets they would like to throw out.

If they only have 4 drawer file cabinets, you can stack them.

Most law firms are going paperless and it costs a lot to have those huge file cabinets taken away to the dump.

Do these stories involve Marvel Zombies or is it some other type of outbreak?

Thanks!

On 8/22/2023 at 10:11 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

“If you want the rainbow, you’ve got to part with the rain. Do you know which philosopher said that? Dolly Parton. And people say she’s just a pair of tits.”

 

You can type tits but I cant type id i ot?

On 8/22/2023 at 8:02 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

David Brent 

On 8/22/2023 at 5:08 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

There's nothing wrong with using technology to improve things if it works, I agree. The possibilities are indeed intriguing.

I've just posted elsewhere about CGC's branding and when you look around their various web pages you see the scale of the operation. They have an extremely impressive portfolio of activities and for the most part their presentation of them is slick and professional. You can only imagine the amount of things that are vying for the management's attention on a daily basis and it's easy to forget how impressive CGC are as an overall proposition.

Can you imagine the boss sitting at their desk on any given morning. They have staffing, premises, operations, advertising, web presentations, research, financials, product line development, media relations etc etc. It must be staggering. So it's easy to see how they could take their eye off the ball on one of the basics. Look at all the razzmatazz that surrounds a graded comic. Look at all the things you have to juggle for the proposition to exist. And somehow, in that whirlwind of activity, you find yourself with a slab that generates Newton Rings which, no matter what anyone at CGC says, destroys one of the fundamental selling points of their product - crystal clear presentation. And you find yourself with an operation that struggles with the volume and allows faulty products to go out. As important as all the elements are, none are more important to a grading company than accuracy, competence and clarity. Those are the things I would want the leadership team to focus on. 

Yeah, im imagining the boss... and its Michael Scott.

On 8/8/2023 at 9:14 AM, alecholland said:

Thanks for the replies and the information. I have it as 9.0 in my spreadsheet, but started to think maybe I need to downgrade due to production flaws.

Thanks again! 

Mine had the line by the spine but no wavy pages.

I had it pressed before grading and it came back a 9.8.

Is it actually possible these books are being graded by machines that are tearing them?

What B.S.

I have over 200 CGC graded books and only one has a few light newton rings.

Its a holder defect that I refuse to accept when buying graded books.

I always reach out to sellers and ask if the book im interested in purchasing has them before I make my purchases.

To say that all cases have them is an outright lie.

On 8/15/2023 at 1:59 PM, captainzombie said:

That is awesome that you have the entire first 10 books.

Every single slab that I have for TWD is in a 9.8. I will try to get books 1-5 in a 9.8 if I can, but I do fear that #1 may end up being a 9.6 if the prices do not come down any further. Like you said, these earlier books are just way too expensive.

I am missing about 50 books total from looking at my CLZ app, which is not too bad considering the size of this series.

Every book you have is graded 9.8?

If so...wow, thats very cool.

I have the complete series but only the books I listed before are graded.

All the raw books are around 9.4 - 9.6 ish though.

TWD and ASM are what Ive been focused on the past 3 years but im out of money now.

Time to just sit back and enjoy them until I pass them on to the kids.

On 8/12/2023 at 9:01 PM, captainzombie said:

While many that have been following this thread for as long as it has been active probably already have this book, but yesterday I was able to pickup TWD #19 CGC 9.8 at Fan Expo Chicago. I traded one of my Secret Wars 8 which was a newstand + mark jewelers in a CGC 9.4 along with a small amount of cash to one of the dealers. I could of sold the SW8 myself, but being able to trade for one of my modern day grails was worth it. Now from the big books in this series all I am pretty much missing from the collection is #1-5 which I hope to get over the next few years.

Awesome!

Are you going for all 9.8s?

I really wanted to have all the keys in 9.8 but that trick was just too expensive to pull off so I ended up with:

1 - 9.6

2 - 9.4

3 - 9.6

4 - 9.4

5 - 9.4 signed by Kirkman

6 - 9.6

7 - 9.8

8 - 9.8

9 - 9.8

10 - 9.8

19 - 9.8

27 - 9.8

100 - 9.8 (McFarlane variant signed by McFarlane and Kirkman

Ive cancelled my membership.

Im not a high volume customer but I dont think I'd be comfortable sending books in anytime soon so ...whats the point of being a member?

I hope CGC gets it together.

Good luck guys.

On 8/11/2023 at 12:01 PM, oldbsturgeon said:

there is a youtuber named lunch money comics. he came across a hulk 181 and that owner didn't know its value either. I mean I guess if you bought a long time ago and stopped, you really wouldn't. Prices were so different then.

I could see that happening in the past, but damn...my father is 80 years old and he uses Google all the time.

He had no idea what Hulk 181 was worth?

Maybe its just a fake cover and the inside is real?

On 8/9/2023 at 3:08 PM, Gonzimodo said:

It was very eye-opening to me when my grandmother died and my family went out to a storage unit to go through her stuff.  She had been in a nursing home for a couple years and put almost everything she owned into this unit.  I ended up taking her old folding card table, a small glass vase, and a funny coffee mug.  I don't remember if my siblings took anything at all, and I believe most of her stuff eventually went into the trash.  It was sad to see, because I know those things probably meant a lot to her at some point, and I felt like a vulture going through it, then discarding most of it.

I just don't want my stuff to be a burden to my family when I'm gone.  Assuming I'm still around, I'll be spending my retirement years converting as much as I can into cold, hard cash.

My grandmothers furniture is in my basement because if I didnt take it, it was going to the dump...no one wanted any of it.

Am I ever going to use it? I dont think so but I just couldnt stomach seeing it get trashed. To me, the table she made breakfast for me to eat on so many times was not worthless. Nor was the chair she sat in to watch tv every night.

Quick story. I worked at a law firm that did a lot of estate stuff. They settled a case involving family members squabbling over money and other valuables. When the case was over, I was tasked with shredding the documents. Along with those document were a dozen or so huge photo albums. They held pics going back to the 1940s. I sat there looking through them and it just depressed the chit out of me.

These folks took the time to preserve these memories for future relatives and NO ONE cared. They had zero value to them. They just had them destroyed.

On 8/3/2023 at 6:25 PM, Lightning55 said:

You have a comic that is potentially worth $1,000 more as a 9.8 than a 9.6, and you skip the $15 press? I don't even know what to say about that. 

Maybe he didnt want wavy pages?

On 7/27/2023 at 11:12 PM, MattTheDuck said:

Man, I hope you're talking about the drawers here and not the bags.  Or slabs.

On 7/25/2023 at 2:31 PM, Gonzimodo said:

Actual published numbers for each are apparently not available.  It being 1984, you can guess that more newsstand copies were actually printed, but I really have no idea, personally. 

As I understand it, comic shops (direct market) apparently did not order enough copies to meet demand, so they supplemented their orders by buying up newsstand copies once they hit the stands.  Individual collectors who missed out at the comic shop also sought out newsstand copies, as did the speculators and flippers at the time.  (Two other comics usually mentioned for which this happened are Thor 337 and ASM 361.)

If you assume that newsstand copies generally have a lower "survivability rate" than direct market copies due to being out in the wild, getting thumbed through by snot-nosed kids, bent up, being bought by random non-collectors, etc., and then being returned and destroyed if unsold, then it follows that a higher percentage of newsstand copies of ASM 252 have survived in better condition than any other typical issue has.  That's because a lot more were treated essentially the same as direct edition copies, which were probably more likely to be handled properly, bought by collectors who care about condition, and bagged and boarded.  (Not everyone assumes this, of course, but I'm just trying to explain the logic.)

So if we assume that more newsstand editions of ASM 252 were published than direct market editions (Again, I really don't know.) and they had a much higher "survivability rate" than usual, it's definitely possible that there are more surviving newsstand editions than direct market editions out there.  Without knowing the actual print runs and newsstand return numbers, though, it's really just a guess.  We can state with some certainty that ASM 252 newsstand copies "survived" at a higher percentage than almost all other newsstand editions of comics of the time, and so the ratio of newsstand editions to direct market editions is higher, but that's about it.

Now I sit back and wait for people with a lot more knowledge to come in and tear this post apart...  

People with more knowledge may try and tear your post apart but I see many more newsstand copies for sale on Ebay than direct.