Hammers
It’s February in Canada and that means it’s really cold: luckily I’ve had some hot and heavy books come through to take the edge off. It was only a couple of weeks ago I got to handle a coverless copy…
Comic Book Daily
Discussing the minutiae of comic book collecting.
Comic Book Daily
Discussing the minutiae of comic book collecting.
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Read MoreHammers
Do You Have A Moment?
It’s been a busy week: we added a couple of new consignors to our weekly eBay auctions. I prefer to buy collections; more money upfront but generally there is more ‘meat on the bone’ for us as in better margins.…
Winter Spice
They say that variety is the spice of life and I can confirm it’s true when it comes to prepping comic books for eBay auctions. This week I had a real smorgasbord of items come across my desk; every other…
A week full of Wow
Wow, what an eventful week! I’ll start with the big Original Art sale on Heritage Auctions. The original art page where Spider-Man first appears in the black costume (as was meant to be as canon) sold last week for $3.36…
Chasing Geese
A few years ago I made a mistake, in hindsight, when I started my Covered 365 posts. I picked only one cover for the matching day. As the year went on I modified it to pick a “cover of the…
Looking Ahead
Happy New Year everyone. I wish you all health and happiness and some great comic book finds (which go a long way to making the first two wishes realized). I tried to crystal ball this upcoming year when it comes…
2021, Who Knew`1`
It was quite the year, 2021. This stubborn pandemic did not go away, not at all. We fought on though, finding things that helped us push through. One of those things apparently was collecting comic books as the year 2021…
It Looks Like a Tight, Solid Copy
We’ve sold a lot of raw ungraded books this past year through our eBay auctions and as the year went on demand just kept going up, the prices we realized kept going up too. We were consistently bringing quality run…
Blame Old Saint Nic
Today was my Slava for Sveti Nikola, (Saint Nicholas), my family’s patron saint. With all that is going on, we played it cautiously and held a very small family gathering with my side on Saturday and entertained only my wife’s…
Trailblazers Done and RAID Gallery Show On
Just a quick note to announce that I just picked up the 300-copy print run of my comic book tribute to Canadian wartime comic book artists called Trailblazers. This floppy comic has turned out to be a 56-pager containing 26…
Edward Scissorhands
A couple of weeks ago the gentleman listing his incomplete books on our eBay auctions dropped a bombshell on me when he said “I think I still have the clippings”. Amazing! I asked him if he could bring them in…
Kirby and Ditko Splashing Around
Yesterday I was counting pages and noting defects on books for next week’s eBay auctions. It was tough slogging but I perked up when I came across what I’ll describe as a three-issue set of dueling splash pages. I did…
Reprints
Last week I sold a guy some early 1980s Marvel Tales reprints. I got $20 for a nice crisp copy of Marvel Tales #152 from June 1983; the book features the reprint of Amazing Spider-Man (ASM) #14 which famously features…
Econ 101
I was talking comics with a pal last week and we were both marvelling at what seems to be the endless demand generating record prices for items we both thought were forever doomed because of their bottomless supply. Books like…
I’m Missing Page 12
There were some strong responses to last week’s post, I’ve even received a few emails and had guys bring up the subject when chatting with me at the shop. Our eBay auction results this week only reinforce the growing demand…
Am I Missing Something?
Lately, we’ve been selling a lot of raw incomplete comic books through our eBay auctions. Over the past two weeks, we sold copies of Amazing Spider-Man #2 and #3 both missing ad pages and both around the 3.0 Qualified grade.…
The King of Kings
This is going to be one of those observational posts, I’m not going to be backing up my words with hard numbers, though I’ve glanced quickly at some data just to make sure I’m not delusional and it seems to…
Developments
Our virtual two-day symposium on Canadian comics: “80 Years and Beyond” seems to have been a proper success—especially for an inaugural effort. We had over 160 people register, and all the sessions were eclectic, engaging, and informative. The sessions brought…
Where Do You Fit In?
Fan Expo happened this weekend and I talked to a few guys that went, they all said it was a good show, not too many people but they were there to buy. I was actually thinking about how the hell…
Ups and Downs
I’ve been dealing in a lot of books lately, both CGC and raw copies and so I’ve been jumping onto GPA quite a bit to read the tea leaves. One big trend I have noticed is the lack of a…