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Have we Lost our Way???
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34 posts in this topic

20 minutes ago, path4play said:

Geez Robot look what I started? 

You can probably find another Mickey Finn to smell<3.  I like the whiff too, don't get me wrong.  But without the slab, how would it retain the historic connection to Edgar Church?

Life in general isn't the same.  I'm not heading down to the convention center to convert my paper route money into silver, riding my Honda express moped or watching my flair cuff jeans wave in the wind while I run to school. 

Nothing is the same.  I just cling to the books to evoke something of the memory.

 

Which I why I'm launching my new line of cologne:

"odeur du papier"

Two squirts into the air before you grip your slab.  Comes with a free subscription to comicbookplus.com.  Choose from the monthly subscription for delivery of an odeur du papier for each decade, or buy single the bottles (pre-order for x-mas for that collector you love).

Joking aside, I hear you Robot.  It ain't the same, and it ain't ever gonna' be.

 

Edited by path4play
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1 hour ago, Sqeggs said:

It may be that when the undisclosed resto on some key books--particularly Church copies--came to light, the backlash led to a turning away from resto in most instances. 

Anderson’s specialty, obtaining touched-up Church books on the cheap then turning around and selling them at multiples to unsuspecting buyers (he got me several times).

What a swell guy! :p

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22 minutes ago, sacentaur said:

Anderson’s specialty, obtaining touched-up Church books on the cheap then turning around and selling them at multiples to unsuspecting buyers (he got me several times).

What a swell guy! :p

Okay, well I guess there are some things that don't change!  Thankfully, still the minority.

Which is a whole different subject.  I tried to dabble into Sups, Caps, Bats etc., and it seemed like nearly everything (affordable) had been messed with in some way or another with over time.

Good thing about Captain Marvel and Police Comics, you can still find nice copies no one in the day bothered with.

Edited by path4play
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Never bought a slabbed comic and never will and never will understand why anyone would keep anything slabbed if they do buy one. The thrill that's almost gone for me is going to junk shops, antique shops, flea markets, garage sales and coming out with stacks of 40s and 50s comics I got for a quarter or 50 cents a piece. I love buying comics online, but there's no thrill at all for me unless I found it out in the wild digging through stacks in a junk shop and just randomly finding it. I am just an old school collector I guess. I never paid more than 50 bucks for a comic ever in the 30 or so years I have been into old comics and really wont pay over ten for anything hardly ever.

Though I did get a thrill buying a huge stack of coverless comics off ebay awhile ago. Having that big pile of falling apart and stinky newsprint sorta made me feel like digging through stacks of comics and magazines in junk shops and randomly finding something that looked cool. I guess that was the thrill of it, I had no idea what I bought and found out when I got them. It was exciting.

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21 minutes ago, catman76 said:

Never bought a slabbed comic and never will and never will understand why anyone would keep anything slabbed if they do buy one. The thrill that's almost gone for me is going to junk shops, antique shops, flea markets, garage sales and coming out with stacks of 40s and 50s comics I got for a quarter or 50 cents a piece. I love buying comics online, but there's no thrill at all for me unless I found it out in the wild digging through stacks in a junk shop and just randomly finding it. I am just an old school collector I guess. I never paid more than 50 bucks for a comic ever in the 30 or so years I have been into old comics and really wont pay over ten for anything hardly ever. 

Though I did get a thrill buying a huge stack of coverless comics off ebay awhile ago. Having that big pile of falling apart and stinky newsprint sorta made me feel like digging through stacks of comics and magazines in junk shops and randomly finding something that looked cool. I guess that was the thrill of it, I had no idea what I bought and found out when I got them. It was exciting.

In the last few years, I tried to locate estate sales and do the search and find thing.  I wound up fighting shoulder to shoulder to be first to the pile for stuff some poor passed away guy's family was letting go of.  The people that make a living on it don't take that kindly to weekend newbies. I felt like a buzzard on a corpse.

In the last few years I've visited a couple of Cons. In the day I recall weekly or monthly conventions in my small Midwestern town with long boxes as far as the eye could see to finger through.  A good day's entertainment (and no doubt out of my mom's hair).  That experience also doesn't exactly exist today.

There is no doubt, the hunt for discovery is still alluring. Perhaps its the field of play that has changed.

Edited by path4play
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The thrill never goes away - but it's definitely different than it was "back in the day"

I buy very few comics these days, mostly vintage paperbacks & digests because you can still get a relatively cheap old paper thrill in those arenas. I recently bought a pulp for the first time in a long time - which I know you collect for the same reason - vintage thrills at more reasonable prices and un-slabbed enjoyment.

I've been selling off the modest comic collection I gathered in the 70's and 80's bit by bit over the last 20 years - and you bet I slabbed every Golden Age book that was worth more than a few hundred dollars. I've gotten top dollar for those books by slabbing them (and no grading hassles) and learned a fair bit about CGC grading in the process.

The few comics i've bought have been undervalued but cool (to me) things like old Crime Does Not Pay, just to leaf through them and look at the ads - and of course... smell the paper :)

 

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After a bit of meditation, I'd say (personally) that humankind has NOT lost its way....it has always been “lost.”

Consider the following three parables:

  • 1.      Conquistador - Pizzaro et all traipsed up and down the America’s in the hunt for personal gold and wealth.

  • 2.      Archaeologist – intellectual bureaucrats removed gold and valuables back to museums for special and limited view in the name of cultural preservation.

  • 3.      Inca/Mayan/Aztec – gold and silver used as spiritual connection to the heavens, limited to the ruling and religious class.

Slabs or no, we can still own an Edgar Church and he could fill a basement.  We are extremely fortunate.

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Thanks for all your posts and opinions. Interesting to see a lot of your thoughts. I guess we haven’t lost our way, we just all travel different roads. It doesn’t seem to make a difference if we like our books entombed or raw we all still love the “thrill of the hunt”. 

This wasn’t ment to be anti CGC or grading. I understand the need and reason behind it. Myself, it just diminishes the enjoyment when in hand. 

You can bet on the fact that when I cut loose my better books they will be “processed and slabbed”. But probably not until that happens...

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I crack all of my books. I get some confused messages, on Instagram especially, when people see that. 

I get why people like having all of their books slabbed (kinda) it's just not for me. Not saying I read everything I buy, I absolutely don't, but at least the option is there when I want it. It's also nice to take them out to admire the gloss or pages or interior art or even the smell. It's awesome. Slabbing my books would deprive me of all of that, and from a liquidity standpoint I really don't think it matters that they are raw. One of the nice things about gold is that people just want a copy....which means they sell just as easily (and for the same amount) raw with a label as they do entombed. If I collected silver/bronze/modern it would be a different story. I wouldn't crack those. 

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The thrill is still there for me. I absolutely love finding new books on my wants list. I'm probably the only fool in the world collecting beaten up pence Charltons and I love it. I found some hitherto unknown pence Gold Keys recently and nearly pooped my pants.

The issue for me is that all the places where I might find these things sadly no longer exist. If it wasn't for ebay, one shop and the London Fair, I'd be in trouble. 

I have ups and downs but, by and large, the thrill of comics - the look, smell, touch, fragility, nostalgia element - and all those things associated with finding and cataloguing them - still very much exists for me. And I doubt it will ever cease until I croak. 

And I couldn't give a monkeys uncle for slabs, 9.9's, pressing, blah blah blah. 

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1 hour ago, october said:

I crack all of my books. I get some confused messages, on Instagram especially, when people see that. 

I get why people like having all of their books slabbed (kinda) it's just not for me. Not saying I read everything I buy, I absolutely don't, but at least the option is there when I want it. It's also nice to take them out to admire the gloss or pages or interior art or even the smell. It's awesome. Slabbing my books would deprive me of all of that, and from a liquidity standpoint I really don't think it matters that they are raw. One of the nice things about gold is that people just want a copy....which means they sell just as easily (and for the same amount) raw with a label as they do entombed. If I collected silver/bronze/modern it would be a different story. I wouldn't crack those. 

Whew.... glad I'm not alone. A lot of books I have bought on these boards slabbed,  I have freed and read. I mean a Baker girl on the entombed cover needs to be freed. She just does. 

A lot I have kept in the plastic tomb because I either have a raw copy or dont fancy reading yet. 

I found my way back to comics after years of absence, mostly because my kids started to like the Marvel movies in 2008. I remember trying to tell them I have more of those stories, they didnt care, but because of nostalgia I dug them out, reread them and got lost in that world again. 

The golden age stuff came later on, reading romance or jungle girls in shoddy danger wasn't high on my list as a teenager, but I got most from my grandfather, so I kept them. When I realized how prized they were I decided I better read some of this stuff and then encase them.

I have sold some stuff on here, some I bought slabbed and some raw stuff. A couple I just couldn't because of nostalgia..call me weak.

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