MyNameIsLegion

some don't have the luxury of patience - or the money. Some will simply be dissuaded from participating (CPR). Both scenarios affect prices. You can certainly gamble that it's a temporary dip, and will swing back up.......later. But if you and others like you that are still buying start to get cold feet, and some will- well then this bull market it dead too. It always happens.....eventually. It's a self fulfilling prophecy either way. The effects of the last pandemic were largely masked by WW1 and markets were much less interconnected.

the point I was trying to make in the post above (written from my phone at 3am, so apologies if not completely coherent) is that it's one thing to judge a person's character and intent solely from their words and the words said about them on a message board versus "real life." You will, at best get a two-dimensional impression of a person, an event, a disagreement likely very skewed in one direction or another. I would also caution the boards to not confuse caricature with character. Scouring 128 pages of Probation Discussion and hammering the new boards utterly crappy search capabilities is a futile exercise. It's both good and bad that a person cannot escape their past (whether they are at fault or not) in the digital age - the prevalence of cancel culture is well documented. 12 years in the digital realm is eons, I think @lighthouse has earned the benefit of the doubt at the very least. There are much more famous boardies that have flamed out, tried to sneak back in under new identities, including selling, and generally have been true trolls. Some of them persist to this day always on the verge of a strike and are why the ignore feature exists. A once in a century global pandemic is as good a time as any to hit the reset button. If lighthouse were to slip up again, the fallout would be epic - swift and merciless and so damaging to his reputation it would have a lasting impact on him, because this is his business, not a hobby or secondary retirement income. Right now he's more focused on securing loans via the stimulus package to use for his employees payroll. Running him through the ringer over a $30 transaction he made restitution on12 years ago is straining gnats and swallowing camels.

My friendship with @lighthouse predates the CGC boards, as does @bubbagump,I was also friends with his Ex as we all went to college together - I did indeed buy out his inventory back then. That was 12 years ago. however- in the last couple of years, after a full decade of little interaction and zero transactions ( he had effectively quit comics pretty much entirely, focusing on career and personal stuff) he made it known to me that he was looking to open another store. I had a significant amount of inventory that was better suited for a store and I sold it to him - he paid me in cash my asking price in part because it was his way of acknowledging the times I had helped him out in the past. That made an impression upon me. A year later he offered a rare, expensive, one of a kind item to me at a fair price and mailed it to me promptly and securely. I know him better than most everyone on this message board with the exception of Rick. I know lighthouse’s quirks and foibles first hand, and I never had any illusions about them. He’s an exceptionally bright guy, top 10 I have known, but I think he would be the first to agree that his emotional intelligence took an extra 20 years to catch up. But it has caught up, and he’s trying to make up for lost time, and past mistakes as well. There’s no margin for error here and no time to be wasted except with the past. To deny him that chance now says more about the character of the boards than it does him. He should be removed from the probation list.

This, only it will be more like a 30% long term reduction in the number of young speculators, flippers and boomers that will not have the cash to participate. This will also kill the crack and press trade, as the margins will be too compressed, and re-subs will tank. You won't see the same book sold 3 times in a year from ebay to clink, to HA. 10 million Americans (so far) are newly unemployed. We will have 15% unemployment and under-employment for a significant time. The psychological damage of a global shutdown will dramatically alter people's perception of "value" - collectibles of all stripes will be reexamined, and I think just maybe slabbed books in particular, in their sterile, inaccessible little clear coffins will suffer. Words and pictures will still have "value" to the reader, but the fetish of owning the actual book will be secondary. Those who need cash will sell if they can recoup at least 50% of their cost basis, because it's a sunk cost, and those books will likely not go up so holding them risks them actually going down. Better to sell a GPA $1000 book for $500 when you have $650 in it than to risk waiting for 3 months, and selling the same book that is now a $500 GPA book for $250 and taking a $400 hit. It's just math.

Commuting was ever a complete waste of time for both employer and employee- people in NY and elsewhere that depend on mass transit have some measure of time to themselves they can be at least personally productive, working, reading, etc, but in the south and west where it's all highways and cars- it's a totally non-productive, except for more pollution. People that move out to the suburbs to get away from the dense urban areas always have to trade off the time they waste commuting in- this pandemic will have many people and industries re-thinking what's "normal" and productive going forward.

I second that. The 2 hours or so spent getting ready for work, going to work, getting ready to go home, run an errand on the way to or from home have been transformed into 2-3 hours that I just work. Also, I have back to back zoom meetings- no longer have to consider location and travel between meetings. I'm exhausted. But I'm thankful to still have work, many others around me do not. on the topic of MCS- Buddy and his wife need to be isolated away from everyone. He's the heart and soul of MCS, and he's no spring chicken.

Avengers Annual #10 I believe?

The Sea Devils called, and they want their cover back....

having several months of inventory in the form of completed stories I think could easily be absorbed over time assuming them did not already print them and are continuing to print them even now. They could insert a few months with 2 issues per title, or print some double sized issues and if it's say, 3 months worth of material spread out over a year, it would probably not be very noticeable considering theres probably a decent percentage of publishers that will fold, never print, never ship that will reduce future orders anyway. If I was Marvel or DC I'd being selfishly looking at this as an opportunity to increase market share and squash the indy publishers. Mergers and consolidation are always the result of hard times.

Not that my opinion matters much to the boards at large, but I will sign up as a character witness for lighthouse. I've made a few significant transactions with 2020-Lighthouse in the last couple years, and he is, by subjective and objective measures, nothing like 2007-Lighthouse, or even 2002-Lighthouse, or even1990s -Lighthouse, before lighthouse was lighthouse. He's made every effort to do everything as correctly and thoughtfully as possible with his new brick-n-mortar store, because he's oriented his business around the needs of the customer with an almost single-minded fervor. Those customers now may really need the cash for those consigned books, and I'm sure lighthouse would like to keep his store afloat in the midst of a global pandemic.

so, you're willing to sacrifice yourself, my dad, my grandmother, my in-laws, anyone over 70, all smokers (but what will RJ Reynolds do without all those smokers to sell cancer sticks to? Bail out!) people that are immunocompromised. That's oh, 30-45 million people. Those acceptable losses so you can eat at the buffet and play the slots at the Mirage in Vegas any time you darn well please cuz this is 'Murica and no one dare tread on your precious freedoms?

Ok Boomer, let us know where to send the flowers.

The con is still on True Believers

Howdy, A Kubert Hawkman page from Brave and Bold #36 (1961) ,

Thanks! Maybe I had this one, because I had this issue of Cap as well around that time, and would not have otherwise chosen it.

can any of you fine gentlemen confirm the existence of a Whitman 3-pack that contained" Avengers #156 Marvel Premiere #37 Thor #261 I got the above for Xmas that year, and I've been trying to figure out if it was actually a 3-pack. TIA!

I've traded art with: Burkey (a few times) Anthony (multiple times) Fanfare (multiple times) Moy Levy Giella Peck Kriozere Benaka Wktam PRC Frey and a few others that I can't recall names for off the top of my head. Never had any issues, some were in person, some via mail.

This...rare scarce, pedigree, and most of all....Original Art is where the Auction House flip cycle has artificially raised the perceived "market" value of rare, one of a kind objects of art. Take a run of the mill Sal Buscema Defenders panel page: In the course of a few months, it could: Sell on ebay for for $1000 (net $900 to seller1 after fees, paypal etc) Flipped to Comiclink and sold for $1500 (net say $1250 to seller2 for all his expenses) Flipped to HA and hammers for $2000 (really 2400 with juice) Seller3 nets...maybe $1550? he paid shipping and tax from original purchase, etc) Current Owner: he paid HA $2650 all in. If he in turn sells another Sal Buscema Defenders page on CAF for $3000 to pay for it, using this new perceived market for Sal Buscema Defenders panel pages that seems to think that $1000 page is now a $3000. Yet in the course of 6 months, NOBODY made even a third of that in their pocket, but auction houses, payment services, sales tax and shipping costs account for over $1000 of that perceived market value. Different scenario: Seller 1 sells Sal Buscema Defenders panel page directly to seller 2 for $900 cash Seller 2 sells to seller 3 for $1200 cash Seller 3 sells a similar page to pay for the above for $1300 cash Suddenly, the market for Sal Buscema Defenders panel pages doesn't seem so frothy, and in fact, there's not a lot of visible sales data to support the notion that it should be double what it is. Now Cat's original post was specific to comics, but it's not terribly different, as slabbing services, signature series, Pedigree labels, etc have all tried to de-commoditize comics printed in the 10's or 100's of thousands into more unique and rare brackets of....uh.....rarity. All in an effort to manipulate our lizard collector brains into believing not only do I need to have A copy of Lizard Wizard #1, but I have to have THIS COPY of Lizard Wizard #1 slabbed 9.8 rare newsstand edition sold only at Winn Dixie on Leap Year Day. Conclusion: Auction Houses have an outsized and artificial influence on the perceived market value of many items.

all kidding aside, you make a good point. Perhaps a better description of the Y axis for Price would be: Value-Speculation with the center being "Market" whatever that is given the amount of shilling, price propping, and other market manipulation that seems to occur.

Nailed it!

Heh- you took the bait! I’d say: Quality of inventory pricing ethics operational efficiency this is starting to look more like a weighted score

Alex, i was thinking about this topic yesterday, as I was reading the Spencer thread. For me, Spencer and the D-Bros are the extreme ends of the OA dealer continuum- Spencer: high ethics, horrible communication and website and general sales/inventory management. But- fair pricing Donnelly’s : very responsive, but corrupt AF for all the reasons this thread mentions and ridiculous pricing. Everyone else falls in the middle - Blackline Fever closer to Spencer for example. I would put Anthony in the middle - Mitch? Burkey? Ideally you could scatter plot this into quadrants on an x/y axis - but I can’t decide what each axis represents as I almost need a third axis to capture ethics, pricing, & communication/general business professionalism. but @alxjhnsn this sounds like just the kind of business analysis you were born to do!

And there’s a niche hobby that will die this decade - I’ve been to shows that had postcards in the last 20 years - the demographics of seller and buyer average about 70+ or - 5yrs and Anglo. More than half the dealers and buyers I’ve ever seen are now dead. All the stamp collectors I ever knew are in fact dead.

Masters of the Universe does hold the distinction of having been licensed to DC and then Marvel. and hey, what about Thundercats? I'd say Master of the Universe and Thundercats are 2 glaring omissions to Gene's Hierarchy - much more prominent than Crystar and Sectaurs

Ummm, Micronauts > G. I. Joe a few more obscure ones here: https://comicvine.gamespot.com/profile/rubicon/lists/marvels-licensed-titles/58780/