Jesse-Lee

Ooh, I love this one!

This looks cool! What's the story behind it?

I already got one from the mini-con sale, so I'm sitting this one out, but that's pretty cool!

I totally get that, it's not for everyone and it's not the smartest of financial moves, but I do it sometimes for the fun of it, like popping into a casino or placing a sports bet. But the fun of these is when the sellers are being honest - most of the time, if a seller says the packs have a value of "x," it's true, and they run a fair game. So I might drop $20 on a pack where they say the value is $20 minimum for example; at worst you might get some interesting new books, and you take your shot at a gamble on a prize. But the packs last night were ridiculous - they came no where near the stated value. And the fact that they ended the sale early completely screwed the buyers who threw their money down chasing the "buyer prize" that never materialized. I do agree with you that there are some buyers who go nuts (at least it seems nuts to me) and find themselves unable to keep buying pack after pack for the chase - that is definitely a bad side to these types of games, fair or not.

Love that book and still looking to pick it up - here's my copy of 11 (first Jonah Hex full cover):

Since there are "blocked eBay users" threads and the like, and with the prevalence of WhatNot, I thought it might be good to start a "positive/negative experiences" thread on WhatNot sellers - especially because I just had a pretty negative experience. I've been buying on WhatNot now for about a year and a half (I've never applied to sell there), and until tonight, it's been all positive experiences. I've bought books from the following sellers with fair prices, excellent shipping and packing, and fast turnaround times: verygary_comics triforcebreaks davisrider gemmintcollectibles elreycomics mutantcitycomics All of these transactions have been outstanding, and based on my experiences with these WhatNot sellers, I'd recommend each of them. Tonight, I bought two mystery packs from a "mystery bundle" show by thebluechipcomic. The bundles were advertised as a "floor" value of $24, an "average" value of somewhere around $70, and a "ceiling" value of $550, based on two slabs they claimed to be giving away in the bundles. They also claimed that the "biggest stack of purchases" wins a secondary "high value slab" prize. They were selling the mystery bundles auction-style, with a typical base starting price of $25, but they'd run a lower starting price now and again. I won two bundles for $45 total. I have no issue with mystery bundles and slab raffles - I understand there's a gambling aspect to it. But people (including myself) were bidding in good faith based on what we were told were the rules of the game and the values of the bundles, and that wasn't the case. The way it worked was the buyers buy bundles (the seller said they had 50) and they're stacked up next to each other - the bundles had the "opportunity" to hit an indeterminate CGC slab. The seller said continuously throughout the stream that the biggest stack wins the secondary prize. They said at the end they'd open the bundles and see what people won, kind of like a sports card break if you're familiar. Surprisingly though, before all the bundles were even sold, they ended sales because they said "not enough people were bidding, and that's three strikes" and they ended sales and started opening the bundles. I was shocked at the fact that these were the drekkiest of drek books - calling them $1 bin books is insulting to the $1 bins. There were probably 4-6 of these 50-cent - $1 books per bundle - and they claimed the "floor" of these bundles were $24. They even had bundles with a red sticker on them that were supposed to be "high-value," containing books totaling in excess of $70-100. I won one of these, and the "high-value" book in it goes for $5 on eBay. The poor guy who amassed the largest stack - which cost him somewhere around $300+ - was told that the secondary prize was void because the sale ended early due to lack of interest. I didn't stick around to see the junk he "won." Normally I'd just eat the money since I took the gamble - but normally honest sellers actually do have a floor somewhere relatively close to the FMV they're touting, and they play a fair game on their end. In this case, I reported the account and immediately requested a refund for my two purchases - which I was thankfully granted (and immediately blocked by the seller... oh no!). Long story short - there are a lot of fun and reputable sellers on WhatNot, but steer clear of thebluechipcomic. Please share yours, both good and bad!

Just a follow-up - I got a response from the Portland hub, and they said they were having issues with the system updating tracking, and that the package I was asking about was delivered. An hour or two later, the tracking number updated to show the package was delivered. I still have one more package there that was supposed to be delivered today (well, yesterday now I guess - May 7) which would have been roughly about right for a Ground Advantage package, but it has not yet updated as delivered. But at least one of the two is resolved - I'll have to wait to open a new inquiry on this one if it doesn't resolve soon.

CGC didn't start recognizing newsstand editions with a separate notation until fairly recently (Sept. 26, 2022), so it's often not noted on the slab anywhere and also not differentiated in the census and/or registry for a lot of books. This is a newsstand based on both the barcode in the price box, and the "Curtis Code" next to the price (the little "cc" followed by the numbers 03463). The Curtis Circulation Company was the newsstand distributor for Marvel comics.

Got some Dave goodness today: '

Sorry for the back-to-back posts, but had a nice little mail day - found some deals!

Two of the packages I'm having issues with were shipped to Portland...

But unless I'm reading this wrong, that's how eBay is supposed to work. If the current winning bid was $856, that bidder could have bid all the way up to $866 - eBay will only reflect the max winning bid. So unless some one comes in and bids higher than $856, the current high bidder wins at the current leading bid (even though their max could be higher). So the $856 bidder likely set a max bid higher, but your snipe bid was just enough to outbid their max...

I've had this before, and recently too. I don't use sniping services, but I do often wait until about 2- seconds left and I have pretty fast internet. I was bidding on something that didn't seem to be heavily watched, and it didn't have the typical 20-second/10-second pattern I usually see on a last-minute auction. It was a small-money item, but it went from $27ish at 3 seconds to me winning with my max bid of $42ish just a second later. But it happens sometimes. For what it's worth, I bid on a couple of other similar items from the same seller and came out on the losing end. Usually I find it's someone bidding at a mark, like 1-minute/30-seconds/20-seconds, and they just put in a higher max bid than I did (or when I win, they just put in a slightly lower max bid than mine).

Moved up from a 3rd print #2 to a (very low grade) 2nd print today at a show. Had a lot of TMNT luck lately!

Couple of pickups at the Madison MightyCon today (also, nice to meet you @manetteska, thanks again!)