So you want sellers on e-Bay to always take a hit?

TRUE THAT!! ALL OF IT

Problem with collectibles is there is no real "market value" it's all in what you're comfortable paying. Sellers can set a price, but if no buyers, price will come down. For me, ST #180 is $100 max. The whole MCU driving prices is pretty stupid.

SUPERMAN 199 THE FLASH

#1 Definitely resonates with me. I didn't start collecting comics until, believe it or not, a year ago!

I attended the first 2 Heroes con back in 82 and 83. Missed a few but have gone every year since 1997. Your comment about the convention center people is accurate. The ones that are nice are very nice. The ones that arent.... Well.... Anyway, my experience with Heroes con has always been positive. I see what you are saying about the lanyards but you have go keep in mind they have only done the lanyards now for 5(?) Years. They have only issued those to VIP attendees and 3 day pass buyers. Maybe lanyards for all is coming but I have a drawer full of wristbands from past her does one because that's what they issued. I have never bought food there. Too many complaints about the very thing you mentioned. I bring snacks in my backpack and refill my water bottle at the fountain next to the restrooms on the convention floor. Glad you had a good time. You want go pick up trails on Sunday. Dealers dont want to carry them back so they are more flexible on pricing. Just a tidbit for you to think about.

So now the fair market went up ?

Hard pass on this guy.

Great pic ups😎

Thanks for the great video! AMAZING collection! I'm curating mine, making tough choices along the way. Happy to have ASM 3, 50, and 68. Next aiming for 39 and 78. Would love to add #1 or AF 15 someday. On another note, I appreciate your wonder woman display! I'm a proud owner of a nice copy of WW 12 and Sensation comics 73 from the promise collection. Looking forward to checking out more videos

Hope everything’s ok not seen you post for a while 🇬🇧

Dumb. I don't invest in comics. If you invest, buy gold and silver. And don't buy coins that are slabbed, slabbed collectables are a rip of if you are investing.

I had a 9.6 that I sent in for SS. After dropping it off in the mail, realized I forgot to add cleaning and pressing with CCS. So I called customer service and was told sorry can’t add it. Fine, get my signed book back, and resent it for CCS and regrading (book was perfect, only graders notes were finger print on the back, and a small indentation) Took me a while to even find it. I put sticky notes all over indicating what I needed out, attached a copy of the graders notes. Book came back same exact grade and same exact graders notes. I’m 100% certain they didn’t regrade the book and slabbed it with the same grade and grader’s notes. Called customer service and was told sorry you aren’t satisfied. Will never have any restoration work, clean and press with them ever again. Those graders are lazy. CCS passes them the label.

Great video. Batman next please. Or Superman.

Grading comics is a lot like religion 😂

Shut up nerd. Go outside. Comics are awesome. I’m not addicted at all. I’m also not broke. At all.

Hey just stumbled onto your channel really neat video, thanks for the in-depth insight of heroes con and the cool books displayed! Also cool Disney pickups, thanks for sharing and looking forward to more great content!

I have limited experience with submitting books for grading, and only did that through CBCS. I suspect that my experience was in the "norm" for them, but was pleased with the outcome and customer service and would submit to them again. That said, early in your video the synopsis of the grading notes seemed to suggest that CGC has different grades for the different tiers of books (restored, conserved, etc). Am I off the mark? While it doesn't excuse the poor customer service experience you had, it may explain the grading outcome for your book. If that was the case, CGC would do well to be transparent about such things. Candidly, with the controversies CGC has had over the past year, I'm not planning on taking business to them. Thanks for sharing your experience!

Thanks for sharing! Certainly, all collectors have made these mistakes! Reflecting on "not starting sooner," I think there is a nuance that applies to collectors that have started already: working on a title/run before it becomes the next hot item. This is about "reading the tea leaves" and getting in on a title that has potential to be big. Regardless, you've shared solid wisdom. Thanks for the video!

Disagree about ebay for the most part. Yes, there are crazy priced BIN's that never sell, and a low percentage that sell at twice what they should. But if you check the solds and not what's available, most of what sells averages out to the fair market value...and in some ways even defines the market value, since so many comics are sold there. I sell on ebay at average market value or below, NOT market value + fees. I factor in the fees I'll have to pay before originally buying a book, not when I'm selling it, which only limits how much I'm willing to buy it for originally. Those fees are now quite high as a seller, often 20% or more depending on the price (13% or whatever officially, but that number gives a false impression. It often ends up 20% or more of your BIN for lower-priced books, especially if you use promoted listings), but they are not passed on to the buyer. The buyer has no "transaction fees" as you call them. Shipping, yes. But I wouldn't call taxes and shipping transaction fees. You pay shipping for anything bought online (even if its hidden on Amazon by Prime's other fees), and you're "supposed" to pay taxes anywhere you buy (buying at shows or with cash, you can often avoid it, yes)...That being said, I know the bigger places that sell on ebay do pass some fees on. For instance, mycomicshop has comics cheaper on their website than on ebay, even though its the same comic.

As you stated, hold all your books for the next 20-30 years, look at their values then, and then try to tell yourself that comics are still not a good investment. I bought a Batman 121 (4.0 purple) for $40 in 1994. I bought a Batman 181 (4.0 blue) for $30 in 1993. I bought a Hulk 181 (6.0 blue) for $200 in 2000. I bought a GSX 1 (6.5 blue) for $200 in 2004. All of those, plus too many more to list, have outperformed both the S&P 500 and gold since those times, and I still own them. If you're looking to flip in the short term, yes, comics can be a bad investment; if you're looking to hold long term, comics can be an exceptional (and fun) investment.

Flights, tickets, food, hotels - as far as the cost of a book at a con, those are what are referred to as "sunk costs." They are expenses that you are going to incur just in the attendance of the con, regardless if you actually buy anything at the con. If you attended a con but bought no book, you'd still be out all that money. Therefore, the real cost of the book is only the price that you paid directly for the book. Put another way: if you try to say that any of those other costs are associated with the cost of the book, you'd basically be saying that your food was free, your con pass was free, your hotel was free, ... etc.

While I have nothing against ComicLink (having spent over $25K with them), I find their refusal to share sales info with other formats to be a big negative. While you MIGHT nab a book for a bargain, you are FAR more likely to pay Market Value or higher. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but I WANT that information shared with sites compiling sales data. Why subscribe to a GoCollect or CovrPrice if their sales data is incomplete/ I recently bought a ComicLink Golden Age Key for $4200, and I feel it wasn't a terrible deal because I've seen equal and lesser copies going well above the current FMV. If this information were shared, the FMV of this book would clearly go up. With no recent sales in the census, there has been no movement. I'm old enough to remember the days when the Big dealers all knew which books were undervalued in Overstreet and -more importantly - which books were overvalued. It was near impossible for a collector like myself to negotiate a fair price, because sellers were more than willing to offer you 20% off Guide prices on books they knew were overvalued. They routinely UNDERreported sales in order to able to buy collections at a better price. When it came time to sell however, they simply would ask for 50-100% over guide, and justify it by saying you could throw the guide out the window for this particular book. With the rise in popularity of data-sharing websites, the end-consumer could avoid getting ripped off by doing his homework and knowing what comparable books were selling for. ComicLink's refusal to share this information makes me VERY much NOT want to do future business with them. The buyer will continue to get ripped off until there is transparency in the marketplace. I have spoken to ComicLink about this, and they have no plans to change their policies. I am amazed that you could consider ComicLink's policy of auction results secrecy as a good thing by any definition. It is a blatant excuse to keep the buyer in the dark, and stoke the profits of the auction house.

Well? Is this smug mofo 'adding value' to the books he's pressing? Or, is he disguising flaws and defrauding the people he's selling to? What happens if he presses books up to 9.9's would you care? Would anyone in the comic community care? kzbin.info/www/bejne/Z3_OiphppdyIhrs&pp=ygULY29taWMgYm9va3M%3D

Cool books, especially in newsstand.

Top notch information and I agree with your choices, particularly the top 2. I find my Con purchases are limited to raw, run fillers, etc. and stuff I want to read. Not a good idea to look for higher value keys, etc. Plus I just enjoy the experience, talking with people, etc. It's been 25 years or so since I bought a big ticket comic at a larger Con. Smaller/local Cons, on the other hand, are great places to get books but the selection is drastically limited. Never got a graded book off Whatnot and the two times I've bought raw comics I was disappointed with condition when I received the books with, like you said, no remedy. No more Whatnot for me. Great video!

I love buying comics from comic con’s. I take large wads of cash and get. Great deals since I pay with cash

Check the tape? What year is this?

Oh dear, I don't know when you brought that ASM 3, but it seems you're about $2000 down in that grade..🫣 Also, you spent $6000 on mystery boxes on the off chance you would win a book... 😳 I think you may have a gambling problem. 😕 Anyway, I've just subscribed, so there's a positive for you. 🫡

Yeah I agree with your entire list. Short box is incredibly frustrating as you can’t contact the seller directly and even the slabs that are marked green for good price I find are still over priced from current eBay sells.

So basically dont buy them anywhere got it

Can’t really complain about tax and shipping if buying online…😂

I, too, want the underpriced graded comic grail fairy to drive to my house in a van... There are fantastic deals to be had in all of these, but you have to love "the hunt" and not just be out to make a quick purchase.

Instagram is prob the best place next to mycomicshop

Great video, just subbed up!

When I have alil money too spend I buy from brys he’s usually priced fair but ya I sell on eBay and the fees are high and sometimes not worth selling

Oh I can't stand that annoying old pricing tactic. "I overpaid for the comic so I have to price it higher". Dear dealer, that's not our fault! At some point you have to accept you will take a loss, and better to sell and get the additional cash flow in then wait forever to sell, assuming it ever goes back up.

What about pressing? Very skilled pressers do it, so they can disguise flaws and get higher grades. Would you like to be the owner of a graded book like that? That you know 'needed' to be pressed in order to get that grade? Or would you want to own a book that was actually flawless? There's a 'master presser' on youtube who got a 9.8 out of a book that got smashed in the mail. Everyone uses pressers too, even CGC has its own. So, what percentage of the 9.8 census for every book, is actually a lower grade book that has disguised a flaw through pressing? This inflates the census numbers, and brings down the prices of books. What's more, it shows an overvaluing of goods across the board, which is very much like what happened with the coin bubble (see Karl Jobst's 'Video game grading fraud' video...which shows that the current owners of Heritage were the ones who actually started the coin bubble).

I have got my best deals at Comic-Con’s. Hands down the best place to buy graded comic books. Now that being said you can also find the most expensive over priced books at comic con as well.

Gotta be careful on those GRRs. They have some value but only at high grade. And don't forget GRRs dont have the 12 cent price tag on the cover...😎

Whatnot is trash. Instagram and eBay are the best.

Last strange tales 180 in a 9.6 sold for $450. I would say you bought it under fmv.

I agree that Heroes was a reasonably-priced convention. I saw a lot of deals go down there, and I myself found some big books and paid fairly for them. By contrast, I just attended FanBoy Knoxville, and other than a few notable sellers, the prices were head-scratchers to say the least. In one instance, there was a seller that had some quality books, but the pricing was "boom prices" all the way. Books were 30-40% higher than even a seller right across the aisle that had the same books, and I wish I was exaggerating on the percentages. My wife asked the guy how the show was going and he indicated "not well", but I didn't know a polite way to tell him that he's WAY too high. Side note: Speaking of Heroes, it was good to meet you and have a short conversation (we met in front of Buzzard Bros.' booth if you recall). Keep up the good content!

I completely agree with your logic on opportunity costs and hidden costs. The same logic applies when it comes to selling. Time is money. Great video!

I grabbed a nice asm on Shortbox auction !! But I do agree u paying tax and shipping 😮

Love your work! Awesome!

9:12 I did find a nice Zombie Tramp CGC 9.8 at my antique store not too long ago for $50. Just a random issue, but still I felt like it was a decent price idk...

Agree 100% about ComiCons. I feel you on your list. I do like Shortboxed though. It’s a grind but I’ve gotten some good purchases on Shortboxed.

Love the vid! The sellers I watch on whatnot take their time to show the books before they start the auction. I also prefer going through sellers bins & making an offer on stuff I want or working out deals in the dms. I think in general WN is full of sussy baka sellers, but does have enough good ones to curate a nice front page. A good tip to not overspend during auctions on there is to only use the max bid amount button & enter a custom amount.

Thank you - interesting video; good advice especially about ancillary costs and being cautious for new collectors. I would like to suggest that at any Con or collectible gathering (art, guns, antiques): go last day, bring a bunch of cash and be brutal on your offer because dealers have to cover costs. Otherwise just walk away, be patient and buy CGC graded books at auction. Thanks again keep up the videos.