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How deep do you consider slabbing a set?
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74 posts in this topic

That's wonderful to hear. I am glad to hear it was a collection of passion. I hope to one day have something like it at least in number and grade of issue if not in signatures. I just bought some raw books and it looks like at least one will be a 9.8 and possibly two more on top of that.

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When Todd father does his next signing I plan on having him tag every issue of his spider man run.   I have all the 1's (green, silver gold, platinum) 2-14, 16

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I have to say I’ve been having fun trying to build a complete Swamp Thing set, but I’ve had to send in a number of issues that have crappy covers, art, and stories.  The downside of being obsessive compulsive I guess.  Anyway, maybe we should share our most horribly embarrassing 9.8’s.   I felt sick spending money on this one.  It’s absolutely awful.

Swamp Thing vol. 2 #116 a.jpg

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I've slabbed a few storylines but never a series that was more than five issues.  X-Men 129-137 comes to mind since I still have a couple of those books to submit.  Other than that, the only full run I have would be Punisher 1-5 of the limited series, and slabbed runs of retailer incentives from some of IDW's Transformers series, but I wouldn't consider those especially impressive.  I have recently thought about doing it with Canadian price variant runs of X-Factor (seven issues) and Punisher (5 issues).  If I do that, I'd like them all in 9.6 at least.  I have thought about doing it with a cheap, fun series.  Something like Thing or Dazzler would easier from a cost perspective (cheap raw prices).  I haven't found a full on series I would want to slab though.  I did see pictures of a person's CGC 9.8 run of Transformers #1-80 and about crapped my Optimus Prime underwear.  It was pretty cool to see.  

Edited by mec3437
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Just some words of advice if you decide to go down this road.  I’ve found that I’ve had to buy runs from private collectors on eBay in order to get high grade copies of issues that no one in their right mind would send into CGC.  As a result I’ve started to amass multiple copies of issues that suck and they’re eating up space.  Also at one point I wasn’t paying attention to how many $15 to $50 sets I was buying and the costs ballooned to the point where I had to sell some cool, rare, desirable stuff from my collection to offset the expense.  This path may make you do some dumb investment moves to procure comics that no one but you wants graded.

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1 hour ago, Jasonmorris1000000 said:

Just some words of advice if you decide to go down this road.  I’ve found that I’ve had to buy runs from private collectors on eBay in order to get high grade copies of issues that no one in their right mind would send into CGC.  As a result I’ve started to amass multiple copies of issues that suck and they’re eating up space.  Also at one point I wasn’t paying attention to how many $15 to $50 sets I was buying and the costs ballooned to the point where I had to sell some cool, rare, desirable stuff from my collection to offset the expense.  This path may make you do some dumb investment moves to procure comics that no one but you wants graded.

This is probably why I wouldn't do it.  While I have plenty of shops in my region that carry high quality back issues in terms of grade and selection, I don't know how I could justify trying to find X amount issues of a title to in order to slab 40+ issues of something.  It could be personally rewarding, but unless they're all 9.8, I feel like I'd be carrying a lot of extra weight around knowing I couldn't get rid of slabbed comics that people wouldn't even want raw.  The bold part it true.  I swear I'm one of the few people who slabs IDW Transformers books.  It was a goal to slab the retailer incentives from the various mini series they published, but it's a train wreck to always find the right copy to send in.  If I try to get rid of it, no one else wants it.

 

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I have a few titles that I would like to have as complete runs of slabbed 9.8s despite absolutely no economic value in doing so. Not everything is about the investment value -- or at least, it's not supposed to be. And besides, slabbing a 25 comic run of "drek"? Sure, that's not cheap, but I've bought, sold, and currently own individual books worth more than that aggregate cost.

But it's absolutely a challenge to find 9.8 (or sometimes even 9.6, or...) copies of really cold comics. Sure, they printed however many zillion of some of these books (although by the early 2000s, I start to question how big some of the runs really were), but that doesn't mean there are high grade copies easily available. If anything, it's worse, because quite a few dealers just don't care about the quality of stuff that arguably belongs in a dollar box (and definitely don't care about the condition of books literally in a dollar box). Even this year, I've had a major player in the comic marketplace (who I won't call out here specifically) ship me books without boards because, after all, if the book is worthless in NM, who cares about the condition?

 

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33 minutes ago, Qalyar said:

I have a few titles that I would like to have as complete runs of slabbed 9.8s despite absolutely no economic value in doing so. Not everything is about the investment value -- or at least, it's not supposed to be. And besides, slabbing a 25 comic run of "drek"? Sure, that's not cheap, but I've bought, sold, and currently own individual books worth more than that aggregate cost.

But it's absolutely a challenge to find 9.8 (or sometimes even 9.6, or...) copies of really cold comics. Sure, they printed however many zillion of some of these books (although by the early 2000s, I start to question how big some of the runs really were), but that doesn't mean there are high grade copies easily available. If anything, it's worse, because quite a few dealers just don't care about the quality of stuff that arguably belongs in a dollar box (and definitely don't care about the condition of books literally in a dollar box). Even this year, I've had a major player in the comic marketplace (who I won't call out here specifically) ship me books without boards because, after all, if the book is worthless in NM, who cares about the condition?

 

You are absolutely correct about dealers not caring about random copper age. I have a boarder who’s staying with me during the pandemic.  He’s 70 and owns the local comic book store.  He’s been around forever and knows a lot of the comic shop owners in the Bay Area where I live.  I constantly harangue him for high grade copies of crud which might take him hours to find in all of his unorganized hoarding.   If he does eventually find something in high grade that I want, it’s only worth about 5 bucks.  It’s not a good way to make a living.  Lucky for him he has a bunch of stuff that is rare and collectible to sell during this time.  Anyway, he does not give a (bleep) about making sure that sucky Swamp Thing comics from the early 90’s are properly conserved.

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On 5/20/2020 at 5:55 PM, FlyingDonut said:

I have given some thought to running this out to 416, the last "original" series issue. Some of them are just terrible:

 

ff369.jpg

I love the FF though.  The first 416 issues graded is enviable in my opinion. I hate to say it, but I think you should go for it.  I just sold my #17 9.4 to try and get money for a high grade House of Secrets #92.  It didn’t sell for enough though.  I could have used you in the bidding.

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Can anyone out there In Internet land help me fill in the gaps with this one?  These are screenshots of my competitive Swamp Thing (Complete) set in the registry.  Swamp Thing turns 50 in 2021 and I want to finish it during that year, provided I don’t die hooked up to a ventilator first.

E4EDC174-92BE-4233-AA5E-A97FE3A6F23D.png

F38BAC6F-2ECC-4E8C-99EA-CFA175A61FB4.png

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