• When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Would anyone like to hear a ridiculously long "Lighthouse" story?

Started by lighthouse,

175 posts in this topic

lighthouse

lighthouse

Posted
Posted

I have a new one to tell...

 

If there is interest I will bang the keyboard for a while... 893scratchchin-thumb.gif

 

And just so everyone knows... this story DOES have a happy ending... thumbsup2.gif

Link to comment
Share on other sites
mica

mica

Posted
Posted
I have a new one to tell...

 

If there is interest I will bang the keyboard for a while... 893scratchchin-thumb.gif

It'll probably beat anything else on the boards these last few days. Please continue. 893applaud-thumb.gif
Link to comment
Share on other sites
lighthouse

lighthouse

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Chapter One: Before The Best of Times

 

Our story begins with a humble comic shop owner. Okay, so he really wasn't humble in the slightest. The guy kept telling everyone how much taller he was and how his ponytail was so soft from all the strippers who would brush it for him while they worked their day jobs at his shop. "Yeah, mom. I've been working at this comic book store. Oh, the pay is great. I make $300 a night, I mean day. No, he's not creepy at all!"

 

Our comic shop owner was a recent transplant from Texas, returning to the state of Oregon, the land of his youth (though not his birth, he fled California in 2nd grade, not long after swapping a comic book for a memorable kiss). He brought his store with him, driving a 26-foot U-Haul truck through the desert in November 2001. His store re-opened, he settled in to the day-to-day operations of convincing elderly woman that their husbands funnybooks were only a slight burden to dispose of, and perhaps they might like a cookie in exchange. The operation was a success, though not a great one. But there were Ducks and occasionally Beavers, and even Crossgen looked like a possible success.

 

Then one day, while selling assorted drek on eBay in the summer of 2002, our fine store owner stumbled upon a message board. This board was full of strange people. Some guy named Murph and some guy name Greggy were in a battle over who could post faster. A guy named Hammer was talking about how the *spoon* at CGC could never spot trimming in a million years. A guy named Fantastic_Four was overanalyzing the specialized criteria of grade definitions in a non-linear regression utilizing LaPlace transforms and fractals.

 

The Board seemed cool, if overpopulated by people asking the same questions over and over and over and over and over and over and over. So our comic shop owner joined. And our odyssey began.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
lighthouse

lighthouse

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Chapter Two: The Best of Times

 

We fast forward a year and a half. Our comic shop owner has closed his shop, though no one on the Boards is yet aware. The shop owner's spouse is part of a secret government task force studying the effects of voice mail on sea otters and cannot afford to have her cover blown.

 

The board is active and lively. Greggy has long since dispatched Murph. A scribe named Joanna, formerly known for her stunningly pornographic Xena fanfic has taken it upon herself to create an alternate universe populated by board members as superheroes. Hammer has been exiled to the STLForums, and a colostemy bag salesman calling himself Bugaboo publishes the now-legendary timeline of the CGC crash, with the infamous "You Are Here" scribbled in red.

 

Our shop owner has sold his soul to the CGC gods, manufacturing CGC 9.8s of modern drek as fast as the plastic will harden. And he has expanded into the reprint game as well. Serving both the speculative collector and the reader alike. Carrying two eBay id's he simultaneously sells to both ends of the spectrum, burying himself in trades to such a depth that he is crowned the "tpbking". At one point he completes deals with 265 different board members in the same month, a record that has not been challenged before or since.

 

Somewhere in the distance a computer in the eBay server room is ticking away...

Link to comment
Share on other sites
lighthouse

lighthouse

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Chapter 3: Lighthouse, The Nail

 

Returning from the San Diego Comicon in July of 2004, our shop owner finds nearly 600lbs of trade paperbacks waiting for him. It's just another week at the house of 'House. He has single-handedly doubled the outbound volume of the local post office and has earned a special lane reserved for his use on Tuesday afternoons.

 

The message board is churning away, with light-hearted jabs at CGG/PGA/PGX/CPRQ/BODA/LDPATTBM (Little Danny Patterson and the Three Blind Mice). Life is good. A set of 35c variants has been completed. New records are set every week. A board member is hired as a new CGC grader, then another. Turn times get back to normal, no longer are Economies taking 6 months to return...

 

And then a little computer at eBay turns its last tumbler. It seems that one of our shop owner's eBay id's has an expired credit card. It's due for billing. This is a problem. The computer must suspend the eBay account. It seems there is another eBay account with the same contact information. That one has a store with 1700 items, and 200 active auctions. No matter. It will be suspended as well...

 

And the worst of times had begun...

Link to comment
Share on other sites
lighthouse

lighthouse

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Chapter 4: The Worst of Times Begins

 

What started as such a tiny problem became so much more. In order to reinstate the eBay accounts, policy requires that all outstanding complaints are resolved. Even if those complaints were not a factor in the suspension itself. While the credit card issue was resolved in less than 3 minutes, our shop owner was suddenly made aware that he would be obligated to locate five previous customers and convince them to withdraw their complaints. The first two were simple. They had already been satisfied, the files were just out of date. The third would take two days before a PayPal payment was correctly assigned. But neither of the other two customers had participated in an eBay auction in nearly two years. How to find them?

 

Meanwhile, the imperfect storm was brewing. The sea otter program had devastated the immune system of our shop owner's wife. The kidney infection that followed took months of recovery. And the wife's father had taken ill back in Texas, requiring that some member of the family return to assist. And the piles of trades in the garage was growing. The Earth X trades and the Nuff Said trades had formed a symbiotic relationship. They began devouring the Miller Daredevils and would soon wreak havoc throughout the Vertigo titles. Worse yet, their unholy union was producing offspring. Littered in the damage path were copies of Peter Parker: One Small Break. Hundreds of them. Like the chickens of Key West they were simply everywhere.

 

With no eBay access, the storm of incoming trades was becoming overwhelming. The shop owner contacted Diamond to slow the tide, but there were seven weeks of shipments in the pipeline that were not to be denied.

 

Our shop owner exchanged no less than 53 emails with eBay attempting to resolve the two outstanding transactions. But Powerseller status or no, once the NARU tag is applied, customer service is simply too busy to be bothered. With family health issues bearing down like William Perry on a buffet, our shop owner made the only choice available. He packed a car with some clothes, and abandoned the state of his youth for Texas...

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Go to topic listing