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Taskmaster wrote:

rustyauger wrote:

I think if Taskmaster should be mad at anyone it should be Adam Smith

And that's relevant how??

Because you are continually irritated by the fundamental laws of capitalism as if they shouldn't apply to your precious comic collecting hobby.

Well I am going to my local comic store right now to hopefully make a trade.

I buy comics from lots of places besides Ebay but the rules of the free market exist there as well

I know Ron has written about Star Wars and other series seriously heating up. I am on eBay daily and I can see these books are skyrocketing based on sales out data. If demand far exceeds supply, that will continue to drive costs up.

Taskmaster wrote:

OK here me out how come ALOT of the "Hot" books that NO ONE KNEW about and were like $3-4 etc. are now $25 or more???

WTF?? Where are you guys getting your info??? It would be nice to know ahead of time instead of paying thru the ass for a books that was $3-4 a couple days earlier....WTF??

Taskmaster, we are reporting sales data not predicting what book will be hot. So people buy a book and we report on it. Someone knew. For the Loki book, a Disney trailer showed Hiddleston with a "vote Loki" button, looking identical to the cover of issue 1. That sparked a buying frenzy.
R

Taskmaster wrote:

BasementComics wrote:

I don't get it a little heads up BEFORE it goes up thru the roof would be nice.

When they update the Value Changes they are giving you a heads-up

In the past the same book that is/was $3-4 was a "watch it book" it didn't go up to $25 or more before anything happened that happens alot now "Heresay"

Does Spectacular Spider-Man #176 ring a bell?? "Speculation" and "Heresay" what's that book worth now?? Okay....
edited by Taskmaster on 12/30/2020

Taskmaster wrote:

Really??? Where here or in the real world??

I seen some decent prices on E-Bay NOT what your reporting which is way too high...

Spend the time figuring all the NM values not VF or other conditions then tell me what you think the price for Vote Loki #1 should be. We have $22 based on finished auctions.
The range for NM books is $30 down to $19.
R
edited by ronbatman on 12/30/2020

Not quite sure why you are so upset. Do you feel obligated to buy a comic because this site says its one to look for? Because there are a whole lot of other ones out there. Speculators have always been a part of this industry, And most of the time, if I don't already own a certain comic, I just go "oh well, guess I will wait until the price drops" if its something I actually want. Just not quite understanding your rage because certain books are selling for higher prices because of a tv show, or movie, or character reintroduction, or whatever.

Taskmaster you or someone deleted your comments before I had a chance to reply but what I understand is that this sight offers each member the opportunity to suggest a change in the value of a comic. In order for them (the moderators) to legitimately make the change on an assumed informed opinion is for the member to provide proof via a link to the website that validates their suggestion. At that point they will review the request and if deemed valid ( a reputable source), the adjustment up or down will be made. You had commented about having proof in your statement that was deleted... well provide it in your suggestion to make the price change. Everyone here is treated fairly and equal. Your opinion counts just like everyone else's, which makes the site invaluable to so many.

Directly from their suggested price change: YOU ARE SUGGESTING RAW VALUES
You do not need to suggest each value. Please have a link to prove data.
Only changed values will be submitted. Unchanged values are ignored, but factored in with enough data
Your data will be stored in queue for review, along with your username and IP
Please use the best possible data and link for the data, for us to follow up on your claim to get it worked on ASAP.
DO NOT USE other price guide resources for your claim, real completed market data is needed for us to verify
Submitting data does not mean guaranteed or immediate approval of new values. Please do not submit the same one twice.

Sure you can complain that you don't understand why certain books go up while others don't. No one person can predict the future, just hope they're making the right decision when they make that next purchase. Accusing the moderators that they're increasing prices for no reason makes no logical sense for having this site. No one could trust them and they would lose paying members. Do your due diligence, research these sites that have proof that you deem more valid than here and compare it to others like eBay (most recent sold items, not items for sale).

Let's say you run a comics business. Collectors come in the door and they want some new hot book. Let's say you ordered extra and had a few copies on the shelf. The first one, you sell for cover price. The collector smiles. He buys it and walks out of the store. A second collector shows up and wants it. You sell it for cover price. You call the distributor and discover it's not available for reorder. Now there is a dilemma.


If you sell out, you are going to send your customers to the competitor down the street or to online retailers. It's a hot book. If you want to restock it and make money on the sale, you have to buy it from someone who charges more than your distributor. If you are lucky and can buy it back from a customer at the same price he paid. If you do, you just negated all profits you made on the previous two comics you sold. In order to make any money, a retailer has to mark it up. They are going to mark it up to what the market will bear. If the retailer likes the cycle of buying comics back at the same price he paid for them, he might only mark it up only 20%. That would be 20% over the escalated price he had to pay to restock it and make it available. Normally it will be higher than 20%. It's not unreasonable for a hot book to double in price after stores start selling out. Restocking that comic usually costs them more.


They have two choices at that point. They either buy it back at the "going price" and charge double or just sell out and watch their customers go to their competitor to get what they want.


Technically, they are in business to sell comics that their customers want. It's a lot smarter to restock and increase the price than it is to sell out and watch your customers start shopping elsewhere.

I found out he was selling comics I preordered to other customers. He'd tell me the delivery was shorted. Sometimes he'd reorder the books I want, but sometimes the distributor was sold out and I wouldn't get what I ordered. When I found out what he was doing, I quit buying new comics.

Taskmaster wrote:

Defiant1 wrote:

I found out he was selling comics I preordered to other customers. He'd tell me the delivery was shorted. Sometimes he'd reorder the books I want, but sometimes the distributor was sold out and I wouldn't get what I ordered. When I found out what he was doing, I quit buying new comics.

See this is what I have a problem with I guess I look at it different as a "hobby" not a business It's amazing how people don't care about anything and think it's "Foolish" until they sell them $$$$ signs.

Pathetic I live in world where I do get deals and I come across NORMAL dealers who don't have to make $$$$$ or $2-5 books they have $1 boxes for that...

I've sold part of my double collection for a fair price I didn't need to get $3 for a COMMON $2 book.

I don't see the real reason why people do that? Just to be greedy?? maybe but I've gotten online and in two stores by me that have been around for over 25 years and they sell those books for a $1 or less.

One of the owners said they buy a collection pick thru the good stuff then sell books like that for $1 or less guess what he say's if we was to charge full price for those he'd still have books that he bought 10 years ago in his store...


In a world where people want to get good deals and not get taken thru the ringer it makes me laugh that there is alot of people that charge full price or more for their collections which is a joke...But who am I or they sell the books for full price and the grade is not a 9.4 (People REALLY need to understand that system) but I digress I didn't do that when I sold but some people do..

I knew exactly why he was screwing me over. I sifted
through Previews and picked out comics I thought were interesting. A
lazy customer saw the comic I ordered and the retailer figured he could
get a new customer interested in a comic by selling him the one I
ordered. He wasn't getting rich off of comics. He was hoping to squeeze
out a few extra sales and he hoped I wouldn't find out what he was
doing. He also made more money off of selling it to someone else because
he offered me a stupid high discount on what I ordered. That exactly
why I didn't take the offer. I didn't want him to resent the offer he'd
made me.


You bring up a different issue. The retailer will still get stuck with those $2-$5 books that he's trying to sell for a dollar. Not all of them, but he'll still get stuck with many.
In the grand scheme of things, selling books valued at $5 for $1 negatively affects the perceived value of comics as a hole.

I will digress and tell a story from my youth when I worked in retail. I was really good at what i did, so one day I get assigned to manage a dairy department. I'd never ordered perishables. The previous guy was training me.

He rattled off numbers about what sells and what doesn't. When he got to Half-and-Half he said... "This is inconsistent. Sometimes it sells out, sometimes people don't buy any of it." He told me that if it didn't start selling the day he stocked it, he would mark it down to half price with orange stickers the day BEFORE it went out of date. When he moved on and i took over, I used his advice. What i discovered was that I might sell one uunit at half price and still end up throwing out the rest of the product in the shelf. I was trying to cut losses and it bothered me that selling one at a discount guaranteed a loss on everything. I realized that I would have been better off not discounting the one. The person who needed would have paid full price since it was still good and at least the loss wouldn't be as bad. I decided to see how many I could sell at full price up until the last date of sale. What I discovered is that the shelf sold out if i didn't mark them down the day before they went out of date. The orange "half price" stickers were scaring the customers away because they thought something was wrong with it.


You know a good deal when you see one evidently, but many people (myself included) see dollar boxes and think it's not worth their time. To some degree, my snobbish preconception is completely valid because the retailer has already devalued the product and said it's not worth his time to price them out at a fair market value. He's already telling the customer that the inventory isn't worth what the price guides say it is. In the larger scale of things, customers are deciding that comics don't hold value. Anytime a comic is sold for less than cover price, it sends out a non-verbal message that comics are not worth what the retail price shows on the cover. It doesn't matter that they lost money on what they sold, it still tells the customer that the product is overpriced. Psychologically, that runs off customers and deters them from spending money that would make the overall hobby more successful. If a $5 comic on the new comics shelf was still going to be worth $5 in 6 months, don't you think more customers would be interested in buying the product. We saw that in the 90's. Price increases spur confidence in the product and sales increased geometrically.


The behavior of poor business decisions at all levels of the hobby.... from publisher down to retailer.... are one of the main reason sales have dropped so low. DC is on the verge of ceasing all publications. I don't keep up with the state of current comics anymore, but I recently ran into Ethan Van Sciver (sp?) on a social media site and read some of the things he's been saying and watched a video or two he's made. He really paints a bad picture for DC.


If those dealers quit selling $5 comics for a dollar, it would instill more confidence in the consumer and those $5 books might legitimately be worth $10. If you had bought a $5 comic and saw it increase in value and saw that you could easily sell it for a profit, wouldn't you be more willing to buy more comics?


As I stated previously, when comics go up in value it is due to a self-fulfilling prophecy among collectors that the comics should be worth more and are worthy of owning at a higher price. Dollar boxes inspire people on a budget, but it also keeps their collections having a low market value and it guarantees that they will be harder to sell 5 years from now if you have unplanned financial catastrophe.


Defiant1

Taskmaster:

You need to get to the bottom of this problem of yours. Then, get the help you need. You are the Comic Collector version of an Incel, but we can't tell if you are bitching because you sold stuff too soon or too late, or if you missed a spike , etc. All we know, is that you lost big or lost consistently, and bitch about it. You take this too far, being in the Home of CPG and ranting about them, while still expecting someone to fetch you a drink.

Look - I bought Lady Death 1 and sold it like 2 weeks later for $100 - are you going to threaten to fight me over this? Or are you the guy that thinks having 37 variant covers of any comic book issue is a good thing?

"I don't see"
"I don't get"
"Why"
"How come"

You may be in the wrong business or hobby, if there is more in it that baffles you or enrages you, than makes you happy. Just read your flarkin comics, sell what you can and if you can't sell your comics maybe you have crap comics. If you don't get how {Insert whatever item/thing} Market works, stay away. Complaining that you don't get it only serves to remind us all that you keep talking about it but don't get it.

Stop bitching that you missed a trend and those comics you banked on aren't hot any more. Stop bitching because you missed buying a hot comic, or one that became hot later. Stop being that guy PISSED at "The Industry" because his 137 copies of Superman #75 just aren't considered collateral for a home loan.

It's A Market - things that are new have a specific value when sold, after that it's completely up to good old supply/demand. Guess what? It's not going to be what you think or expect. As long as you keep reminding everyone that you are surprised and don't get it, you are going to keep being told NO CRAP

oh and let me get this out of the way- eBay is not a price guide - so as long as you keep bitching about what people at eBay will pay for a comic book, you don't understand anything and forfeit any arguments concerning comic books and Economics


Let me know if I missed anything...

I think you are being a little hard on the guy. The publishers are using every trick in their short play book to make comics seem collectible AND sabotage the back issue market at the same time. The odds are completely against profitable speculation on new comics. I would not even consider it.

Taskmaster wrote:

Not threatening you but letting you know you seriously do need your ass kicked, man

See your the one that doesn't "Get It" who's hostile about this? Not me...

Another trend I've noticed is a lot of folks aren't updating the condition from our default of 9.4 to their Titles prior to sales. More then once I have purchased a title that was listed as a 9.4 only to receive a 7.0. Now on the other hand I know most of us are not professional graders, as I myself am not. However when I have a number of 9.4's and 7.0's from CGC I have learned a lot through the notes. Also i understand we have many folks with thousands of titles and its a lot to track, but at least verify when you receive an offer that the title is with in range of your posted grade.

Same. Not sure if she'll be as big a hit as Punchline. Not really feeling the 80's look, but to each their own.

Are you talking about the price guide on here?
Do you have any examples?
I've been collecting the Future State books and ASM and those all appear to show at cover price...