|
Post by Deleted on Oct 25, 2021 18:42:47 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 25, 2021 18:52:35 GMT -5
I also hit some stuff form my other want lists, Some Groo and Uncle Scrooge books, all from $1 bins then a bunch of interesting stuff or stuff from my Indy, Marvel and DC lists. The Charlton Phantom book was the other $2 book, everything else in here was a buck... some Charlton horror-I saw these at one vendor which led to me digging though his boxes and he had a metric ton of books for a buck, a lot of non-Marvel and DC stuff from the 50s-90s, and a lot of 70s and 80s off brand Marvle and DC books. some of that off-brand Marvel was these two issues of Combat Kelly... the JLA issue came form another dealers dollar boxes, but these other two were from the vendor I mentioned... some really surprising stuff in those dollar bins, the Classics Illustrated is an LB Cole cover according to GCD... more to follow... -M
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 25, 2021 19:00:10 GMT -5
He also had all 4 issues of Starstream in those dollar bins, it's a series I was always curious about, but I usually see it priced higher thanI want to pay to sample, for a buck, I got all 4 issues... Two more books I was surprised to find in his dollar bins... a couple of DC first issues in the dollar bins... an issue of Dragonlance off my D&D comics want list and a Dave Stevens cover I didn't have, both a buck... a pair of dollar Ghost Rider issues to mark off my want list... that Charlton Phantom and one of the Marvel Phantom books I needed... the 2 issues of the 90s Shade mini I needed to complete the mini... and that wraps up this haul. I also picked up a copy of the first Image issue of Astor City for a buck out of one of the bins, as I knew one of my dealer acquaintances was looking for a copy for himself but wasn't able to get away from his table, so I passed it along as a very inexpensive A-ok for him. -M
|
|
|
Post by tartanphantom on Oct 25, 2021 22:04:55 GMT -5
I like those Golden Legacy books-- pretty hard to find in good shape, and several issues have Don Perlin artwork. And you're right about Starstream-- it's weird that some places will have them in the dollar bins while others will price them up. They're particularly hard to find in nice condition. Like yourself, I was lucky enough to score a complete set for a buck apiece several years ago.
Nice finds all around, @mrp , looks like you got a lot of bang for your buck!
|
|
|
Post by Icctrombone on Oct 26, 2021 5:23:38 GMT -5
In about 10 years, any title without a movie or show will be 1 dollar. This is a dying hobby.
|
|
|
Post by tartanphantom on Oct 26, 2021 7:23:47 GMT -5
In about 10 years, any title without a movie or show will be 1 dollar. This is a dying hobby.
Oh well... so much for WildC.A.T.S
|
|
|
Post by Icctrombone on Oct 26, 2021 8:14:13 GMT -5
In about 10 years, any title without a movie or show will be 1 dollar. This is a dying hobby.
Oh well... so much for WildC.A.T.S
Hate to be pessimistic but the books that I see bought on this threads at the cheap prices leads me to think this.
|
|
|
Post by Icctrombone on Oct 26, 2021 8:14:41 GMT -5
In about 10 years, any title without a movie or show will be 1 dollar. This is a dying hobby.
Oh well... so much for WildC.A.T.S
Wait, did you hear a rumor about Wildcats ?
|
|
|
Post by tonebone on Oct 26, 2021 9:20:02 GMT -5
He also had all 4 issues of Starstream in those dollar bins, it's a series I was always curious about, but I usually see it priced higher thanI want to pay to sample, for a buck, I got all 4 issues... Those Starstream books are great, and a very unusual example of Western doing something experimental. They feature some early art from Jose Luis Garcia Lopez, and others, along with the standard Western stable of artists. The covers are a heavier stock, and they even collected most of this in a very early TPB collection... (not called Starstream, but Questar, for some reason).
|
|
|
Post by MDG on Oct 26, 2021 9:26:23 GMT -5
Oh well... so much for WildC.A.T.S
Hate to be pessimistic but the books that I see bought on this threads at the cheap prices leads me to think this. The hobby's not dying--it's just being overrun by people for whom condition is more important than content. People who'll spend money on a slabbed "key" but won't pick up a beater that looks interesting so they can read it.
|
|
|
Post by tartanphantom on Oct 26, 2021 10:15:57 GMT -5
Hate to be pessimistic but the books that I see bought on this threads at the cheap prices leads me to think this. The hobby's not dying--it's just being overrun by people for whom condition is more important than content. People who'll spend money on a slabbed "key" but won't pick up a beater that looks interesting so they can read it.
Mr. Hammer, meet Mr. Nailhead.
Spot on, Marty.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 26, 2021 11:11:53 GMT -5
Hate to be pessimistic but the books that I see bought on this threads at the cheap prices leads me to think this. The hobby's not dying--it's just being overrun by people for whom condition is more important than content. People who'll spend money on a slabbed "key" but won't pick up a beater that looks interesting so they can read it. And dealers who are only looking for easy money and don't know anything about comics outside of hot keys, who buy collections to flip the hot keys and high grade books, and don't want to do any work with the other stuff so just dump it dollar bins, which is very much what the dealer whom I bought a lot of that stuff from was about. He and the dealers next to them were talking about flipping trading cards and what was selling for big money at other shows and how much they flip key books for and what a pain in the ass it was to have to lug this other stuff around, but it was the kind of stuff that sold to pay their table fees while the big stuff was where they made their money and had been the last couple years they were "in the business". A lot of times the stuff that collectors look for that isn't "hot keys" but is hard to find is that dealers just can't be bothered to bring it to shows. If it doesn't happen to be in a long box of stuff left over after they vulture the hot keys out of it, they won't have it and won't have any idea what it is. If you ask them about a comic, they have to go to "Key Collector" to see what it is and if they should be o the look out for it. If the most holy "Key Collector" doesn't sanctify it, they don't care about it. In the past, I have often found something in a dealer bin way underpriced and asked them "hey are you sure about this" because I know it's easy to miss stuff as a dealer and it's a lot of work IF, and only IF the dealer seemed to be a genuine type who put the work in and cared about his business. This new breed of dealer though, I am happy to snap up whatever bargains result from their avarice and apathy to non-keys. I commented to another collector who was digging through the same boxes as I was at the time (who ended up taking a long box of stuff out form the dealer and whom we were pointing out stuff of interest to each other after we noticed what the other was grabbing-for example I came across the Steranko covers to the Fly #1 and 2 which I already had and and he was happy to grab them while he pointed out a large batch of G.I. Combat he came across for me) that is is amazing what you can find at shows if you are looking for stuff that isn't super-hero keys, and he nodded enthusiastically, to which the dealer and his neighbors tried to snidely comment to each other thinking they couldn't be heard "but why would you want that stuff?" Which pretty much sums up the position the industry is in right now. What the future brings, I don't know. There are people looking and buying the other stuff (I kept walking past that dealer and heard him talking about how shocked he was that he had moved more than 5 long boxes of that dollar stuff and kept having to bring up books from the boxes on the floor to restock the boxes on the table but hadn't moved one of his (overpriced) slabbed keys. His response wasn't wow I am selling a lot of stuff, but man this show sucks and is filled with cheapskates, to which his neighbors agreed because all they had was overpriced slabbed books and trading cards, and no one was buying from them. The marketplace is changing, it's gone heavy in one direction, but the talk among all the con folks I know that I chatted with that day is that some kind of correction is coming. Some things are slowing down, while other things are heating up, but a lot of stuff that had been flying through the pandemic isn't moving and the feeling is that supply has overcome demand on a lot of stuff, as the high prices served as incentive to a lot of collectors to sell making more available and somewhat flooding the market. But things like Key Collector and the youtube and internet experts who drone on about FMV of hot books, only look at the highest price achieved or average price among those sold, but don't take into consideration the tons of copies of those books languishing unsold at those prices. Looking at sold prices on ebay shows you what people have paid for the book and how many copies moved on ebay, it doesn't give you a sense of how many copies went unsold on ebay or how many sold or didn't sell in the wild. The market is evolving and its comprised of a lot of different types of consumers and dealers right now, but there's one small fraction (faction) that dominates the air time of content on social media and the internet that is coloring the perception of what the whole is and is informing the prices and expectation of a lot of dealers and collectors. But not all. And that small fraction is creating a lot of unrealistic expectations among some dealers and consumers, which is going to lead to a lot of disappointment down the road. But they are not the entirety of the market, and even if they lose interest because the dollars they are chasing have moved on, there will still be a market. -M
|
|
|
Post by tartanphantom on Oct 26, 2021 11:55:17 GMT -5
The hobby's not dying--it's just being overrun by people for whom condition is more important than content. People who'll spend money on a slabbed "key" but won't pick up a beater that looks interesting so they can read it. And dealers who are only looking for easy money and don't know anything about comics outside of hot keys, who buy collections to flip the hot keys and high grade books, and don't want to do any work with the other stuff so just dump it dollar bins, which is very much what the dealer whom I bought a lot of that stuff from was about. He and the dealers next to them were talking about flipping trading cards and what was selling for big money at other shows and how much they flip key books for and what a pain in the ass it was to have to lug this other stuff around, but it was the kind of stuff that sold to pay their table fees while the big stuff was where they made their money and had been the last couple years they were "in the business". A lot of times the stuff that collectors look for that isn't "hot keys" but is hard to find is that dealers just can't be bothered to bring it to shows. If it doesn't happen to be in a long box of stuff left over after they vulture the hot keys out of it, they won't have it and won't have any idea what it is. If you ask them about a comic, they have to go to "Key Collector" to see what it is and if they should be o the look out for it. If the most holy "Key Collector" doesn't sanctify it, they don't care about it. In the past, I have often found something in a dealer bin way underpriced and asked them "hey are you sure about this" because I know it's easy to miss stuff as a dealer and it's a lot of work IF, and only IF the dealer seemed to be a genuine type who put the work in and cared about his business. This new breed of dealer though, I am happy to snap up whatever bargains result from their avarice and apathy to non-keys. I commented to another collector who was digging through the same boxes as I was at the time (who ended up taking a long box of stuff out form the dealer and whom we were pointing out stuff of interest to each other after we noticed what the other was grabbing-for example I came across the Steranko covers to the Fly #1 and 2 which I already had and and he was happy to grab them while he pointed out a large batch of G.I. Combat he came across for me) that is is amazing what you can find at shows if you are looking for stuff that isn't super-hero keys, and he nodded enthusiastically, to which the dealer and his neighbors tried to snidely comment to each other thinking they couldn't be heard "but why would you want that stuff?" Which pretty much sums up the position the industry is in right now. What the future brings, I don't know. There are people looking and buying the other stuff (I kept walking past that dealer and heard him talking about how shocked he was that he had moved more than 5 long boxes of that dollar stuff and kept having to bring up books from the boxes on the floor to restock the boxes on the table but hadn't moved one of his (overpriced) slabbed keys. His response wasn't wow I am selling a lot of stuff, but man this show sucks and is filled with cheapskates, to which his neighbors agreed because all they had was overpriced slabbed books and trading cards, and no one was buying from them. The marketplace is changing, it's gone heavy in one direction, but the talk among all the con folks I know that I chatted with that day is that some kind of correction is coming. Some things are slowing down, while other things are heating up, but a lot of stuff that had been flying through the pandemic isn't moving and the feeling is that supply has overcome demand on a lot of stuff, as the high prices served as incentive to a lot of collectors to sell making more available and somewhat flooding the market. But things like Key Collector and the youtube and internet experts who drone on about FMV of hot books, only look at the highest price achieved or average price among those sold, but don't take into consideration the tons of copies of those books languishing unsold at those prices. Looking at sold prices on ebay shows you what people have paid for the book and how many copies moved on ebay, it doesn't give you a sense of how many copies went unsold on ebay or how many sold or didn't sell in the wild. The market is evolving and its comprised of a lot of different types of consumers and dealers right now, but there's one small fraction (faction) that dominates the air time of content on social media and the internet that is coloring the perception of what the whole is and is informing the prices and expectation of a lot of dealers and collectors. But not all. And that small fraction is creating a lot of unrealistic expectations among some dealers and consumers, which is going to lead to a lot of disappointment down the road. But they are not the entirety of the market, and even if they lose interest because the dollars they are chasing have moved on, there will still be a market. -M
Great observations, @mrp.
Like many, I do watch a lot of the "influencer" Youtube channels-- not to buy into what they are pushing, because as you pointed out, their datapoints are cherry-picked and very incomplete. However, channels like ComicTom101, MintHunter, Comic Book Investments, Economics in Comics and so forth ad nauseum are almost all based on market reaction instead of market prediction. Because of this, for the vast majority of speculators who buy into this, it is already too late if they are looking to flip books for big bucks, and it only fuels FOMO, at least for a period of time until the demand for a book is saturated. On top of that, it is clearly aimed at the speculator section of the market, because the focus is almost always on graded books, of which I couldn't give two $%!#$ about.
Nevertheless, I do keep an eye on this sector of the Youtube community in order to mentally track collecting trends and market direction. I've never bought into the Key Collector "wonder app" though... because like yourself, I collect what I like, not what someone else tells me is "hot".
|
|
|
Post by tonebone on Oct 26, 2021 12:32:18 GMT -5
I am way outside of any of the collector mentalities... More than "collect", I ... "accumulate".
I am in it solely for what I enjoy reading and what possessions bring me joy.
|
|
|
Post by Icctrombone on Oct 28, 2021 17:46:35 GMT -5
I've been looking for this issue ( at the right price) for over 15 years. It completes the 6 issue series.
|
|