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tth2

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Everything posted by tth2

  1. If I'd read your post before the rise of the internet, I would've wholeheartedly agreed. Back in the day, dealers would sell at Guide or multiples thereof and buy at half of Guide (or less), to the extent they'd buy your comics at all, and price rises were incremental except for the hottest books. But post-internet, eBay, auction houses, CGC and GPA, transaction costs are around 10-20% at most and prices can move up very fast.
  2. I'd be willing to bet the 145 9.8 copies, 369 9.6 copies, 567 9.4 copies, 758 9.2 copies and 1033 9.0 copies of Incredible Hulk 181 in the census that comics are fungible and there is a deep market.
  3. Given that we've got a booming economy, full employment, wages rising faster than inflation, US and global stock markets at record highs, gold (the metal, not the age) at record highs, crypto at record highs, and real estate prices that remain very high, wouldn't that indicate that comic prices should be rising?
  4. I'm suddenly getting this image of a bunch of workers on a Friday at the printing factory, after having had "a few" beers at lunch, saying "Let's do something that'll have all these nerds tearing their hair out in 80 years!"
  5. It's no different than all those sports card guys breaking boxes. They were paying thousands of dollars to risk finding out publicly (because most of these guys were doing them live on Youtube) that there were no valuable cards in there. But if they did find some super valuable card in there, then they more than made up for their losses. So I guess the willingness of people to reholder their Superman #1s and take the gamble will really depend on the difference in value between the prints.
  6. I always assumed it was long time friends, people who aren't that active in the hobby, and the increasingly high number of people turned away by heritage. That might be the case, but regardless of their motivation for consigning to Clink, I'm not sympathetic if they achieve lower prices than expected.
  7. People willing to take the “Oops, I’ve now got 2 Actions 1s” risk They're investors, not collectors. Acquiring another Action 1 for purposes of controlling the market is perfectly fine.
  8. But anyone who chose to consign to Clink should've been aware of its limitations but decided to consign to them anyways. So they need to accept the consequences of their decision.
  9. There are many comic collections that are significantly less noteworthy than the Church collection, but they're still given pedigree status. So I don't think pulp collections should be denied pedigree status just because they don't meet the Church threshold. Yakima sounds like it already has market acceptance as a pedigree, so CGC should recognize it, just like they recognized a number of pedigrees that had long been accepted by the market before CGC came around, even though some might not have received pedigree status if they'd been assessed under more recent tighter criteria.
  10. I find bidding if that strong that early to be.. curious. On the one hand you'd better be pretty darn careful trying to shill something with a 840,000 BP. On the other hand WTF is anyone thinking bidding 5m two weeks before the auction deadline. Doesn't seem to be a reserve on the lot. Curious as to other people's thoughts on that. I already posted my thoughts on it. It is no doubt OA-like defensive/price-support bidding by other Action 1 investors.
  11. I've read through the passionate debate in this thread and decided... I don't care.
  12. That’s really not fair. More like the Walmart business model, or perhaps some store which shows its stock in the shipping cartons it comes in. Walmart invests a lot in its business. Its superiority in supply chain management is what allowed it to dominate retail. I should clarify that I did not intend to intimate in any way that Comiclink are slumlords or anything of the like. I was just noticing the similarity in business models. Obviously, letting other human beings live in squalor due to underinvestment is not the same as letting a comic platform become technologically primitive due to underinvestment.
  13. ok, and what about the last 15-18 years of the sites stagnation? Did Cheapskate Supreme Josh say to himself in in 2006 "you know I'm going to retire around 2030 or thereabouts, no need to spend more money on my website. BTW they've been beached more than once since then and it's matter of when not if it happens again. It could very well be. One could call it the slumlord business model, which is where someone spends money to acquire the building and then milks it for every dollar they can extract out of it after that, with as little additional investment as they can get away with. It's clearly a business model that works, given the number of wealthy slumlords out there.
  14. It's got a LOOOONG way to go to turn a profit or break even! Sold privately on ComicLink back in September for $2mm: https://www.comiclink.com/service_text.asp?3673 One simple post can evoke so many reactions in me all at once!
  15. Sort of makes you wonder how real the Action #1 market really is.
  16. So long as some people continue to consign to Clink for whatever reason (e.g., lower fees), then bidders will have no choice but to continue to monitor auctions there if they're after those pieces. As we've seen with much smaller comic/OA auction sites like Hake's or Goldin, consignments might never completely dry up, but they might start falling short of the critical mass necessary to be a really attractive auction venue. In the case of Hake's or Goldin, without their sugar daddies making or coercing their buddies to make (relatively) big ticket consignments, maybe their comic/OA auction business really would be dead. As a longtime player in the comic hobby, Clink will probably always have a presence and can do well within its segment of the market. There's nothing wrong with occupying the lower end segments of an industry so long as you understand that that's your segment and run your business accordingly. Being Motel 8 or Best Western and occupying the lower end of the hospitality market is fine so long as you understand your clientele and set your opex/capex accordingly. It's when you're Motel 8 but think you're Hyatt that you get into trouble. So I would say that Clink's lack of investment in its infrastructure indicates that they understand their segment very well, are happy to operate in it and don't aspire to be something more than they are.
  17. I would imagine that someone who can pay $5m for a book is able to arrange to take delivery in a state (or country) that doesn't have sales tax.
  18. Very good, you immediately spotted what this catalog was for! You'll have to get in line behind me for the books, but you can have the car.
  19. A thread to complain about Clink? I'd say that it hasn't even scratched the surface yet!