MyNameIsLegion

@comix4fun Nerd cred restored....

you're high!

so all the boasted sales you've posted are completely hokum?

umm, 1964 was a leap year, so everyone has to re-calculate their positions on this debate (I don't give a flying squirrel myself) And you call yourself NERDS. what a bunch of amateurs....

Sooners will be @Kansas next weekend. The Red River Shoot-out is the following weekend. Thank god, I didn't want to deal with a home game during OAF or have to drive near Dallas if it was the Texas game.

Picked up 7 Marvel Calendars: 1975-1981, including the Doctor Strange that’s usually $$ and hard to come by- all in nice shape

Fixed that for ya!

wow, this actually worked! 50's DC: The Brave and the Bold: Kubert's Viking Prince (3) 60's-70's DC: Detective Comics (5) 60's-70's DC: Misc (13) 60's-70's DC: Phantom Stranger! (5) 60's-70's DC: War Comics (5) 60's-70's DC: Wonder Woman! (6) 60's-70's Marvel: Avengers, Defenders, Champions! (11) 60's-70's Marvel: Conan the Barbarian (4) 60's-70's Marvel: Doctor Strange (4) 60's-70's Marvel: Incredible Hulk (4) 60's-70's Marvel: Iron Man (4) 60's-70's Marvel: Marvel Team-up & Two-in-One! (6) 60's-70's Marvel: Master of Kung-Fu (5) 60's-70's Marvel: Ms. Marvel (3) 60's-70's Marvel: Namor, The Sub-Mariner! (6) 60's-70's Marvel: Thor Annual #7 (Walt Simonson) (8) 60's-80's ( + a few Modern) Marvel: Misc (31) 60's-80's Marvel: Ka-zar (4) 60's-80's Marvel: X-Men & Cameos! (14) 70's Marvel Magazine: Deadly Hands of Kung-Fu, Thor, Apes! (6) 70's Marvel Magazine: Dracula Lives! #8 Complete story (11) 70's Marvel Magazine: Dracula Lives! Misc (5) 70's Marvel Magazine: Haunt of Horror #5-Gabriel, Devil Hunter (6) 70's Marvel Magazine: Marvel Preview #3- Blade! (32) 70's Marvel Magazine: Marvel Preview #7 & #16 Lilith & Satana! (11) 70's Marvel Magazine: Misc: Monsters Unleashed, Satana, ToZ! (4) 70's Marvel Magazine: Monsters Unleashed #11-Gabriel, DH (11) 70's Marvel Magazine: Rampaging Hulk (4) 70's Marvel Magazine: Savage Sword- Conan & Red Sonja! (17) 70's Marvel Magazine: Savage Tales- Ka-zar and Shanna! (8) 70's Marvel Magazine: Tomb of Dracula (6) 70's Marvel Magazine: Vampire Tales #09- Blade! (7) 70's Marvel Magazine: Vampire Tales #10- Morbius! (17) 70's Marvel Magazine: Vampire Tales #11- Morbius! (26) 70's Marvel Magazine: Vampire Tales- Misc- Morbius! (4) 70's-80's DC: Justice League of America! (6) 80's-90's DC Art: Misc (21) 90's DC: Underworld Unleashed: Abyss-Hell's Sentinel #1 (4) Indy Comic Art: Kitchen Sink, Dark Horse, Charlton, etc! (22) Indy Comic Art: Xenozoic Tales #3 (7) My Grail Art (NFS): 60's-70's Avengers (8) My Grail Art (NFS): 60's-70's Misc (looking for more) (12) My Grail Art (NFS): Detective Comics #465 (5) My Grail Art (NFS): G.I. Combat #201 (18) My Grail Art (NFS): Incredible Hulk #228 (3) My Grail Art (NFS): Justice League of America (JLA) #110 (9) My Grail Art (NFS): Marvel Premiere #37: 3-D Man (3) My Grail Art (NFS): Marvel Spotlight #24 (6) My Grail Art (NFS): Marvel Team Up #11 -Almost Complete (16) My Grail Art (NFS): Marvel Team Up #25 (4) My Grail Art (NFS): Marvel Team Up #9 (3) My Grail Art (NFS): Marvel Two-in-One #75 (3) My Grail Art (NFS): Strange Tales #168 (10) My Grail Art (NFS): The Mighty Thor #261 (3) My Grail Art (NFS): Uncanny X-Men annual #5 (1981) (3) My Grail Art (NFS): X-Men #64 1st Sunfire! (12) Other: Published: Covers, Paintings, Pin-ups, Interior Art (18) Other: Unpublished: Paintings, Prelims, Pin-ups, Commissions (22) Painted Art: Bill Sienkiewicz's "Harvey" National Lampoon (9/83) (4) STRIP ART: A X A by Romero (some nudity) (43) STRIP ART: Cannon, Secret Agent Corrigan, Star Trek, Jeff Hawke,.. (12) STRIP ART: Modesty Blaise by Romero (12) The Art of John Picacio (4) Warren Magazine: Blazing Combat, Eerie, Creepy, Vampi (4) Warren Magazine: Vampirella #26-Ramon Torrents Complete Story (9)

Wondering aloud: will the Sony/Disney split over Spider-Man hurt or put a dent in Spidey back issue speculation if future Spidey movies aren’t part of the MCU? MCU movie speculation seems to get a premium over non- MCU.

I collect: specific books (the first dozen comics I ever had, like MTU #11 with the Inhumans, still looking for several pages!) Certain Characters or titles Marvel B&W Magazine Art I also arrange my CAF by publisher and era nothing bores me more than a CAF arranged by artist when CAF already does that. All that really does is give you an exact count by that artist, which is why people do it I guess. i also don’t like a CAF with an excessive # of galleries - my personal rule is there must be 3 or more items in a gallery to merit having one. I will also confess that my CAF is far more organized than the actual art!

They are manufacturing scarcity and rarity by creating the bifurcated market of slabs. You are paying a premium not for a high grade comic that just so happens to reside in a plastic shell with a label and serial number- you are paying for the slabbed edition of the comic in that grade. An identical book in the same grade not in the slab is less desirable and cheaper. Tack on signature series where only specifically vetted signed copies of a book get a yellow label and again the same book signed by Stan not in a slab is worth significantly less. A White Mountain pedigreed labeled book in a slab is again more than the same book out of the slab from the same pedigree. CGC is much more than a grading service - that feature has long since taken a back seat to their impact on the back issue market. You’re naive to think otherwise.

No sane person will crack a key, pedigree or high census copy and risk diminishing its value unless they really don’t give AF. I can think of a few on this board that would, but that’s the exception. The reason CGC exists that you cite above is what CGC marketed themselves to be at the beginning. It is not what the market at large has determined it to be and CGC has readily leaned into it because they collect a hefty fee for their services. That service is generating manufactured rarity and scarcity. If no AF15 and IH181’s were slabbed they would be considerably cheaper in all grades.HA and Comiclink would have considerably less to skim off the top bid.

The total world population of English as a first language is 330 million. 2/3 of that is the US, then UK, Canada, then Australia, which is 15 million (70 of the total population) If you extrapolate out what % of those are comic collectors, the number is insignificant. there's more people in India, Pakistan, Philippines, and Nigeria individually that speak English as a secondary language than all of Australia. Outside of the US, Canada and the UK combined with Oz are only 1/3 to 1/4 of the number of American English speakers. There's no way they can absorb all the concentrated comic interest in the the US. Distance, shipping and exchange rates won't support it.

"Market bifurcation refers to disjointed market movements such as growth and value investments move in different directions or when high-quality and low-quality securities move out of sync whereby one performs much better than another." @october & @delekkerste both referenced the term, and I've been using the same in reference to comic back issues sales for a number of years: Similar to how blue chip stocks artificially buoy the larger indexes by their sheer gravity, discussions about the health of the market are greatly swelled because of the outsides performance of specific examples eiher with certain key books or pedigrees, or grades. My take on bifurcation of the back issue market is that CGC is the culprit. All the money in the hobby is getting sucked into 9.4 grade+ SLABBED comics and pedigrees. The same book out of the magic plastic holder can be worth 1/4 as much or even a 10th. Buyers are driving up the price for the manufactured scarcity of have Booger-Man #1 in 9.8, high census copy. having the 5th highest graded copy may be 1/10 of the price (even though you cracked and pressed it and the 5th is the 1st, and the 6th is the 2nd, and there's only about 5 unique copes of the top 10, but that's a whole different discussion) CGC bifurcated the market the last 10-12 year, making VF copies of non-keys oh so much junk bonds and penny stocks. All the money spent on Registry sets, and collectors replacing their 9.4 set with 9.8 sets, signatures series, etc, more and more manufactured rarity and collectibility. Those guys will be greatly disappointed when their specific slab they paid 10x guide for does half or worse when they go to retire along with the rest of the younger boomers over the next 10 years. You will also kill any interest in the hobby for the younger generation because all those books are now encased in a plastic coffin instead of being read and experienced the way they were intended to be. Does anyone really expect some 25 year old, much less some 12 year old today to scoop up all your slabbed books in the next 20 years for more than you paid when they never once in their life held that raw book in their hands? You're dreaming. The back issue market would have been a lot healthier a lot longer if CGC never existed and the prices of back issues relative to their grade and scarcity followed the normal spread it had pre-2005. Sure, you wouldn't be selling a slabbed copy of MSH#13 for stupid money, only to turn that around to buy some other hot book for stupid money, but that's my point. Dwindling interest in runs and focusing only on keys is a function of CGC driving up prices on a very small % of books in a specific grade. That will be the death of the market. It was enough to have competing hobby's and interests and mediums vying for a person's time and money, but now the most rabid of collectors propping up CGC have hastened their own demise in the future. Those that cash out early with be fine, those that hold on longest will be hosed.

+1 I've spent the last 10 years buying out collections from guys in their 60s-70's that collected runs. Easily over 30k comics. All the major keys sold right away to flippers to press and slab. We slabbed very little because they weren't 9.4 grade-worthy. CGC has sucked up vast amounts of the available money for comics towards a minute % of the total number of back issues in existence. A millennial might fork over a few hundred here and there to build one or 2 boxes of slabbed keys but they are not going take that exact same sum of money (which they have less of) and buy 30 long boxes to lug around for the next 30 years. They don't have the space to store that in their tiny apartments and tiny houses in hip urban areas. If there are REALLY into it, they can read comics on their iPad and show off a couple of keys to their buddy's while drinking their IPAs and "Smart Water" CGC, Convention, and has-been celebs have siphoned off most of the money in the Pop-culture space that used to just be comic conventions. Add ebay fees, paypal fees, shipping fees, pressing fees, insurance, and HA's buyers premiums and sales tax and there went 40% of all the money in the hobby before you even got that hot book in your hand to read, or not read in the case of CGC. And if you forego the genuine article for that digital subscription to the back issues of that collected edition, you just selected against all those dusty back issues. The hobby is is still being buoyed by old Gen-Xers and younger Boomers who still think in that old school collectors mentality of "Hey I can get a short box of comics in VF for $2 bucks apiece? Cool!" Because it's still wired in our brains that it's a bargain considering what new comics cost, with fewer pages and less story, and we remember when comics only cost between 12-50 cents cover. That is not the experience of Millennials and Gen Z. They never HAD boxes of comics they bought off the stands. So why on earth would they suddenly get nostalgic in their 30's-40's when they hit their peak earning years? Not gonna happen. 10 years from now it will be a much different hobby. Gen X is too small to pass on the knowledge, history, and interest in back issues as a whole to our younger siblings or children. Gen X's love for comics has manifested itself in a different medium. Movies and Television, to wider appeal and more money, but the net effect is a much thinner, more superficial level of comic book nerdiness that skips OVER the collector to reach the fans. It's just math and demographics. Debate all you want, but you can't debate facts.

This is like a MAD Spy vs Spy gag!

Gambit’s 1st appearance was in an X-Men annual! (Lights fuse, tip toes away, shuts door behind him)

1. Morbius (40+) 2. Axa (40+) 3. Blade (40) 4. Spidey (20+) 5. Gabriel the Devil Hunter (15+)

Oh- it gets much worse: https://thomaskinkade.com/product-category/limited-edition-art/dc-super-hero-fine-art/ Anyone got $4200 to away on “Limited Edition Art” ? There’s a whole series to choose from. As I said earlier, Kinkade has been dead 7 years but his studio continues to crank this junk out. You can get Mickey and Minnie too. Kinkade never painted people so once he croaked (OD on Booze, Valium) the studio started to branch out into new and more gaudy revenue streams. IMO Kinkade’s Art is about as interesting as a cup of warm cow cud.

This would have been in Wayne O's wheelhouse back in the day for sure. LW is JH.

think that's gonna hold it's value? What's interesting is this was done in 2016. Kinkade died in 2012. There's whole series of this licensed DC .

I think your point is obscured by the fact that said comic artists for the most part are known for drawing properties they don't own and did not create. George Perez Avengers? The OA may be desirable in the future. George Perez Cross-Gen art? No one cares much now or later. To the extent that the comic artist's reputation is defined by the pop-culture subject they drew- they are inextricably linked. Moebius might transcend this (ah but he worked in color!) and he did his own stuff as well. McFarlane Spider-man will hold some attention, as will Larsen's- Spawn and Savage Dragon? Likely not. Look at where defunct comic strip art prices are (or have never been) Those properties that exist today in some pop-future medium endure, and the artist rides that coattail. As they fade, so does the artist. I think theres an argument that artist like Eisner's star will dim and prices dip in the next 20 years- first with non-Spirit material, and even Spirit art. The Spirit isn't part of the MCU or has a theme park or action figure. Wally Wood Thunder Agents anyone? How about some Tuska Dynamo pages? Tusk Iron Man pages? Well now that different, and I think that's about to soften a little with RDJ exiting the MCU. Fine art stands-alone. Comic art is pop-art at best, and really it's commercial art - whether it's told in a sequential format or not is more a technical distinction. Nobody commissions AH! to draw just a random hot chick, or a rocking chair for that matter- they want a hot depiction of a comic character that AH! does not own. Steve Rude has wanted to exist the comic arena for years, he's a frustrated comic artist that wants do just do just fine art- but he can't make a living at it. He's a pretty good painter, but not a great painter and no one cares unless it's Nexus or Supes, or Batman. His art may not age well given the bulk of it is tied to Nexus. If Alex Ross hadn't done Marvels and Kingdom Come and instead had done story boards for GEICO commercials he'd be no one. You couldn't give his art away. Not even in color.

How about a page from the Classic Warren book- Blazing Combat #1? Blazing Combat #1 pg 21. Flying Tigers! as a kid I was always into WW2 history and military aircraft, and read all about the exploits of General Chennault and The First American Volunteer Group (AVG) of the Chinese Air Force in 1941–1942, nicknamed the Flying Tigers, not to mention the classic John Wayne film from 1942. thanks, S.

I’ve been waiting for 40 years for BWS to learn to draw a freaking nose for Christ’s sake. He could stand to spend a little time on the craft part....

Put down the crack pipe, your'e clearly high.