Conacon

How did this question go unrecognized?!? Broke, do you have an example in mind? The heroes were always established (Captain America), but the villains were usually totally random, from street thugs to c-list-looking villains. How cool would it be to read an old back issue and find... Holy cow, it's Liam HEMSworth! I need to go to bed.

The original staples are intact and doing well considering the condition of the book. Other than the one that almost got the Hulk-in-the-box, you can see from the inside that there were two more added to the spine, but have since disappeared, leaving the holes as evidence.

Interested to see what they'll do because of the stains. Without them, I'd go at least 9.0 because of the spine and other noted defects. I hope the stains drop it no lower than 7.0!

Late to the party, but I was going to guess 9.4 as well. Soft at the corners. I don't see the finger bends at all.

So I picked up this Incredible Hulk 108 from a shop. It's beat up, so I don't have high expectations, but... what the heck is up with these staples? There are two normal staples along the spine, and then three small staples on the cover. You can see mini-Hulk dodging on that almost got his bum! So... was this a thing? I know Marvel stapled extra-thick comics on the inside if they used the glued spine (for example: Giant Size Dracula). Was this factory or after-market?

You Tube channel: Comics Road Trip! They've covered a great deal of the Midwest, South and North East. I think they have about 70 videos, each with a different store from their trips. Sure miss those guys...

I used to think I was in a black hole. We're an hour and a half from a real "city". It's taken me years to get the lay of the land here as far as comics spots go: My LCS focuses on gaming more than comics, but has a decent selection of back issues. He also operates on a narrow profit margin (don't we all) so he rarely orders more than a few of each title. I've learned the hard way to add to my pull list if it's something I know I'll want. We have a Half-Price and an Entertainmart. Both stores are combed over regularly, but I've found some gems now and then. There's an antique town nearby with a few stores that carry hit or miss comics, and there's also a HUGE monthly flea market where I get most of my flip books. It's mostly made up of garage sale hunters that dump their finds in volume. I can usually count on a handful of steals each trip. A new comic/gaming store opened in a small town (pop: 2,000) 45 minutes away. Definitely worth the trip. He doesn't keep his own back issues, but instead takes on consignment partners. I've flipped hundreds of dollars of profit from that place. He's a gamer and knows/cares next to nothing about comics. Apparently the guys he sells back issues for also don't know/care about comics. Last time I was in, I found Hulk 108 (reader copy) in a $2 box. He said, "hey grab that one, I looked it up and it's worth about $15.00 in the condition it's in." My first trip there, I picked up Avengers Annual 10 and Avengers 181 and 196. All three had grease pencil marks on the covers, but were in otherwise FN/FN+. All in the $2 box. My jaw hit the floor when he told me two guys came in before me and cleaned out the real valuable ones. Also because of the size of the town, I can count on him usually having an issue that my LCS sold out of. If I miss it at my LCS, I'll call him and he'll pull it off the shelf for me. Really wish that place was closer.

True that, but it seems like once these have sold, they aren't being replaced. I know it's been mentioned before, but I'm still seeing ebay sellers touting, "just two per store", but my local store had four Black Cat packs.

Oh my... Why would someone do that??? A. Their young child wanted just the Hulk title logo. He cut it out, but then chickened out and put it back for daddy to sell without any knowledge of the cutting. B. This guy frankensteined two comics together. Picture this: he had two copies, but one had a huge tear in the upper right hand corner and the other was just jacked all over except the upper right hand corner. BlowUpTheMoon, did the seller mention the "defect"?

I frequent an antique store that deals mostly in salvage, but the owner buys random garage sale junk for his store as well. With a working Coke vending machine, an old lady (not that one) threw in some old comics. He knew he had something, but knows nothing about comics. One was a high-midgrade Life With Archie #1! Instead of buying a stack for a few bucks like I normally do from him, I just sat at his counter and said, "do you know what you have here?" Then I explained comic 101. A few months later, I popped in to see what he had. Right up front he said we wanted to get out of comics and asked if I could sell them for him for a cut. I guess in this case honesty has its rewards.

Buyer beware, right? I was happy to pick up the Adventure Comics issue where the Legion of Substitute Heroes 1st appeared. $5 bucks, but a really beat up copy. I didn't care though because I've never seen it out in the wild. Get home to read and rebag and find that the centerfold is gone! Even worse, the centerfold is where the story starts! Oh well! I'm sure the guy at the flea market had no idea. He didn't strike me as a reader.

Is there anyone out there who has bought all of the recent Walmart packs? I'd like to know what's in them before buying. I picked up the Guardians pack and two Spider-man books with it.

Friday is my favorite day to read TwoPiece replies.

I can't look away from the ears!

And last weekend... I got wind that a new gaming/comic store opened recently a few towns over, so I popped over to see what they had. The guy is a gamer and sells new comics because reasons. He wasn't going to carry back issues, but he knew a lady who knew a guy who bought a whole pawn shop and only wanted the guns and jewelry (because Texas). Well the pawn shop guy had boxes of old comics, so he made a deal with the comic store owner to pay him if he would sell his old comics for him. $2 bucks each. Flat. No tax. No craps given. I know the Batman Beyond is a reprint. Six Flags had a promotion and normally there would be a Six Flags logo in the blank space. Not sure why there isn't one. The Batman is a very low grade, but c'mon, THE SHADOW KNOWS! The Avengers Annual #10 has a bad spine roll and a (grease pencil?) mark, but how cool is the sun-faded #167!?! $2 bucks each. The NM #1 is perfect, but the NM #87 has ticks up and down the spine. Again with the grease pencil! Otherwise, both of these are in decent shape. The kicker is that the owner said a pair of guys came in and "cleaned out the boxes" using their phones to see what was what. I don't even want to think about what they picked up if this was the left overs. There were alot of Conan Magazines, and rough-looking Green Lantern and Green Arrow comics. It took the better part of an hour to get through the boxes. Also lots of Silver Age stuff like this. I'm framing this one.

Okay, so this should probably be in the $ bin thread, but I did add these to my collection, so... Two weeks ago at a local flea market, I ran across an outdoor stall where a guy had 50 or so comics in a metal cage (he said the box they came in fell apart). These comics were $2 each. There was alot of Infinity/Silver Surfer stuff, but this stood out. I know next to nothing about Moon Knight, but I thought these two might be good picks. I knew to grab these! Spawn was the last one from that guy. Not pictured: a handful of Vampirella comics that ended up not being worth anything. The 2099 I picked up for ONE DOLLAR an hour later at another booth.

Or maybe both- I'm of the age, and started collecting so early in life, that all of my original comics were not bagged. Then I bagged them. Then I boarded them. I only recently took the 30+ year old comics out and re-bagged and re-boarded them. You can tell in my collection when I realized I needed to start boarding them (1991). Almost everything pre-1991 has soft corners. Oh, but the memories!

Spoilers! The past few issues for sure! When Hulk is trying to talk to the scientist, but can't since he's only a head and when he broke free and his body parts came together and swallowed the scientist... yeah. Horror came to mind.

Epic. I never noticed that ad! Of course I had to come home and see what the talk was about. WOOF!

I spent two hours at an antique mall a few weekends ago going through unsorted longs, about 20 of them. Not organized in the least bit, but at least they were bagged and boarded. The guy used to have a shop and he just threw everything in long boxes. They were $3 bucks each, but it was worth it. Nothing I would call dollar bin material. The owner of the mall apologized that they were not in alpha order. She said the guy told her collectors wouldn't care. I laughed and told her he was right. The guy eventually came in and we had a good talk. My tastes are so varied, I think I spent way more having to go through each box. Had it been alpha ordered, I would have hit my main titles and not spent as much.

Just checked the ad- each Defender wil get a one-shot call "The Best Defense". Hulk's has the Immortal tag on it, so hopefully it's not a flashback/untold story. Back to Avengers, yes, issues 1-6 are in TPB.

Good point, Ex. I don't know, but Hulk sure looks like Immortal Hulk on the ads. I'd like to see a current rendition given where these characters are right now.

I'm digging Avengers right now. Bringing in the 1,000,000 BC Avengers without totally messing up continuity has been fun (though how Odin has kept from talking about his time with Phoenix all these years...). My only gripe, and it's probably only a product of today where we know what's coming down the pipe much sooner than we did pre-internet, but the current Namor storyline in Avengers will go away and he'll be an anti-hero again shortly for the new Defenders title. Knowing he's about to be pushed back into a hero team (classic Defenders line-up) kinda takes the steam out of his current story. For a hot minute, it looked like he was going down a road you can't come back from. Then they walked back killing Stingray. I'm sorry, how did he survive? I missed the first seven issues of this run b/c my LCS doesn't order in large numbers and I only recently started a pull list. I was lucky enough to hit Austin Books and Comics on a business trip a while back and was able to pick up the whole run. Whew!

Good job, guys. Army of Darkness for sure. I've seen discolored backing boards before, but never so extensive and certainly not to the point you could see the comic "ghost" so prominently. The bag the comic came in also had an indention from the title, "Justice League of America" if you held the bag just right.

I found this backing board at a flea market. The comic it was protecting is not the comic that gave it this acid burn. This is the "dull" side of the board. Can anyone guess what the add was? I knew right away, but I was a fan way back when.