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Post by codystarbuck on Jun 12, 2021 13:12:05 GMT -5
When I started collecting back issues, in college (after entering my first comic shop), I got most for about 50 cents, or less; plus, For every 3, I got a 4th of equal or lesser value, free! That was regular backstock. Sure, more valuable stuff was higher (I bought a replacement copy of New Teen Titans #1, for $5; $7 for #2). obviously, they didn't have a huge stock; but it was a decent starting point. For most of my college years, I paid a buck or less for back issues, with a few exceptions. Now, I wasn't buying X-Men or key Silver Age material; but, that still left most of Bronze Age DC & Marvel, plus the odd Atlas and Archie Red Circle (and a couple of Americomics issues, which were recent vintage).
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Post by brutalis on Jun 12, 2021 13:19:00 GMT -5
Early 80's NONE of the LCS here carried a so called Dollar Bin. They needed buyers to spend every penny on their stock. It wasn't until the late 80's after LCS being around for 7-20 years and they accumulated back stock from new stuff not sold and buying up any hobbyists collections in total for the few "rare" big resales that the idea of getting rid of non selling issues sitting around collecting dust and taking up space became an idea. I know when "THE" local LCS closed up 2 years ago he had an entire small store devoted to $1-5 deals. Few folks but us regulars ever bought there. As they closed EVERYONE that never went in there was "digging for gold" to make money off. He only ended up selling maybe a 3rd of it all before closing the door.
Likely there will always be some type of discount markdown stuff to be found but bulk boxes or weekend sales of a buck or 2 for a dollar will go away.
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Post by Icctrombone on Jun 12, 2021 14:54:01 GMT -5
In comic shows, dollar bins are all over the place. In local cs, they exist in some of them because people are selling their collections. Maybe in a month or so I will sell a few hundred books and I expect most of them will end up in dollar bins.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 12, 2021 15:54:05 GMT -5
In comic shows, dollar bins are all over the place. In local cs, they exist in some of them because people are selling their collections. Maybe in a month or so I will sell a few hundred books and I expect most of them will end up in dollar bins. And you are in a major metropolitan area (NYC), where there are probably dozens of shops and lots of people willing to sell their collections for pennies on the dollar. But go someplace like rural Kansas and try to find a dollar bin or even a comic shop or show (and hasn't been for decades or ever). No one's ordering comics there and probably very few people have collections to sell or anyone local to buy them if they did. Your immediate situation in NYC is more the exception than the norm because of the high population density there. The supply of comics elsewhere is much more limited, and eventually you (and other collectors like you) will run out of comics you are willing to sell to dealers for pennies on the dollar to make them viable dollar bin fodder. What's going in the bins after that happens? What happens if people refuse to take pennies on the dollar for those books and decide to sell them elsewhere or themselves on the many online platforms available to sell comics? Like I said, dollar bins won't disappear immediately, but there is a finite supply of books to fill those bins and the market conditions that made it possible for dealers to buy for pennies on the dollar are changing. These are not consequenceless occurrences. -M
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Post by Deleted on Jun 12, 2021 16:06:50 GMT -5
And as an addendum, just to be clear, I don't think dollar bins are going to disappear tomorrow, or even 5 years from now. T
I think they'll exist as long as dealers have tonnes of 'junk' to dispose that they got at 5c-10c each in bulk buys, and include books that haven't suddenly become grails.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jun 12, 2021 17:11:49 GMT -5
In comic shows, dollar bins are all over the place. In local cs, they exist in some of them because people are selling their collections. Maybe in a month or so I will sell a few hundred books and I expect most of them will end up in dollar bins. And you are in a major metropolitan area (NYC), where there are probably dozens of shops and lots of people willing to sell their collections for pennies on the dollar. But go someplace like rural Kansas and try to find a dollar bin or even a comic shop or show (and hasn't been for decades or ever). No one's ordering comics there and probably very few people have collections to sell or anyone local to buy them if they did. Your immediate situation in NYC is more the exception than the norm because of the high population density there. The supply of comics elsewhere is much more limited, and eventually you (and other collectors like you) will run out of comics you are willing to sell to dealers for pennies on the dollar to make them viable dollar bin fodder. What's going in the bins after that happens? What happens if people refuse to take pennies on the dollar for those books and decide to sell them elsewhere or themselves on the many online platforms available to sell comics? Like I said, dollar bins won't disappear immediately, but there is a finite supply of books to fill those bins and the market conditions that made it possible for dealers to buy for pennies on the dollar are changing. These are not consequenceless occurrences. -M Just as an aside... I don't think being in NYC means more comic shops... based on your posting, there's definitely more shops with back issues in your area that we have here in the Boston area. I really don't think comics from the last 10-20 years are going to hold any value at all to be honest. Based on the market right now, TV is the only thing that drives the market, and comic book properties have been popular for enough time that the market will turn on it soon.... Jupiter's Legacy just failed (which doesn't bode well for the Millarworld deal).. Wonder Woman 1984 was far from a smash hit... and while the DIsney Plus MCU stuff has bene pretty strong, will the new movies with less recognizable characters really going to catch with viewers? Regardless of how much the cover price is, if there's no demand, they'll be bargain bins. Might that be more than a dollar at some point? Maybe. But not for a while. Heck, I still remember a QUARTER bin as late as 2006 on one of my first work trips back in the day.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 12, 2021 22:47:19 GMT -5
And you are in a major metropolitan area (NYC), where there are probably dozens of shops and lots of people willing to sell their collections for pennies on the dollar. But go someplace like rural Kansas and try to find a dollar bin or even a comic shop or show (and hasn't been for decades or ever). No one's ordering comics there and probably very few people have collections to sell or anyone local to buy them if they did. Your immediate situation in NYC is more the exception than the norm because of the high population density there. The supply of comics elsewhere is much more limited, and eventually you (and other collectors like you) will run out of comics you are willing to sell to dealers for pennies on the dollar to make them viable dollar bin fodder. What's going in the bins after that happens? What happens if people refuse to take pennies on the dollar for those books and decide to sell them elsewhere or themselves on the many online platforms available to sell comics? Like I said, dollar bins won't disappear immediately, but there is a finite supply of books to fill those bins and the market conditions that made it possible for dealers to buy for pennies on the dollar are changing. These are not consequenceless occurrences. -M Just as an aside... I don't think being in NYC means more comic shops... based on your posting, there's definitely more shops with back issues in your area that we have here in the Boston area. I really don't think comics from the last 10-20 years are going to hold any value at all to be honest. Based on the market right now, TV is the only thing that drives the market, and comic book properties have been popular for enough time that the market will turn on it soon.... Jupiter's Legacy just failed (which doesn't bode well for the Millarworld deal).. Wonder Woman 1984 was far from a smash hit... and while the DIsney Plus MCU stuff has bene pretty strong, will the new movies with less recognizable characters really going to catch with viewers? Regardless of how much the cover price is, if there's no demand, they'll be bargain bins. Might that be more than a dollar at some point? Maybe. But not for a while. Heck, I still remember a QUARTER bin as late as 2006 on one of my first work trips back in the day. Jus as an aside, it's hard to call Jupiter's Legacy a failure-it's non-renewal had nothing to do with performance or ratings, it was actually one of the most-viewed shows on Netflix and had very positive critical and fan reactions. It was the victim of executive in-fighting, power-plays and backroom boardroom deals to oust members of the board and what know and the potential renewal was used as a pawn in those dealings because of it's high cost to make. That's not so much a failure as a victimization and scapegoating of the show. Had it been measured purely on ratings and critical reaction like most other shows, it was a shoo-in for renewal, but Netlix's overall revenue shortcomings vs. projections and the high price tag to produce Jupiter's Legacy made it the hot potato in all those dealings that got dropped. It had nothing to do with viewer reactions or reception of the show, so isn't any kind of measure of lack of interest by audiences or super-hero fatigue. -M
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Post by Deleted on Jun 12, 2021 22:53:19 GMT -5
As for selling for a dollar to make money back, an alternative for a savvy dealer would be to donate the books to a hospital, NPO or some such and be able to write off their full cost of the book on their taxes rather than selling it at a 50% loss by putting it in a dollar bin and hoping it sells. Might not provide a quick fix for cash flow and liquidity, but would provide much more relief come tax time lessening their tax bill. If more dealers glommed on t that practice it would alleviate the number of junk books they had to move/store/deal with. As for comic shops in the Boston area, you should check out Crimebuster's youtube channel when he does store visits and the map of locations he puts up in those videos. There are 2-3 times the number of comic shops on that map than in all of Ohio based on the Comic Shop Locator results for Ohio. So I don't think there is the dearth of comic shops in the Boston area you think there is unless Crimebuster's map is off or out of date. -M
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jun 13, 2021 19:09:22 GMT -5
I haven't looked at Crimebuster's map (I definitely should, just not a big Youtube guy), but for my personal travels, a good percentage of the shops I've found don't really do back issues... they may have a few wall books (mostly recent variants) but mostly they just have current books and trades. There are definitely a couple, but not nearly as many as you seem to find. I'm often jealous of your trips . The stuff I read about Jupiter's Legacy was that the ratings were decent, but didn't justify the high cost... I also feel like it didn't get a great reaction based on both the swapping back and forth in time, and the non-sensical ending point.
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Post by Batflunkie on Jun 15, 2021 18:02:48 GMT -5
I think I mentioned this before, but I think this bears repeating with a re-release of it on the horizon: Cap's Bicentennial Battles was the only part of Kirby's return to Cap that I liked. The rest just felt like a carry over from OMAC (which I do love) and really didn't mesh well
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Post by codystarbuck on Jun 16, 2021 10:57:47 GMT -5
I think I mentioned this before, but I think this bears repeating with a re-release of it on the horizon: Cap's Bicentennial Battles was the only part of Kirby's return to Cap that I liked. The rest just felt like a carry over from OMAC (which I do love) and really didn't mesh well I don't know; I used to think it was weird and goofy, then re-read it and Madbomb has a lot going on in it that is really very good, but is very metaphorical. It was an abrupt shift; but, I do think it was still within keeping of Cap, as a character and reflects a lot of Kirby's view of the world, after the war he fought.
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Post by Batflunkie on Jun 20, 2021 12:46:03 GMT -5
Was thinking about this today: It's kind of depressing that we don't have a proper collection of Captain Marvel/Shazam and company stories in omnibus form. Pieces of old Fawcett stuff gets reprinted here and there, but nothing truly substantial. You'd think that with the recent movie, they'd have done that, but nope. Just a repackaged collection of Geoff Johns' interpretation from New 52
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Post by Deleted on Jun 20, 2021 13:33:06 GMT -5
As for selling for a dollar to make money back, an alternative for a savvy dealer would be to donate the books to a hospital, NPO or some such and be able to right off their full cost of the book on their taxes rather than selling it at a 50% loss by putting it in a dollar bin and hoping it sells. -M
Now that's an idea
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Post by brutalis on Jun 27, 2021 14:29:35 GMT -5
Ron Wilson on Marvel/Star Comics Masters of the Universe should have been awesome. But instead was such a letdown. Wilson was only doing breakdowns and given poor finishes. I also believe (based upon the art in the comic) he was instructed to have everything resemble the toys themselves. So with poor stories it seems to me they were just out to sell the newest toy figures.
Really sad. With better plots and Wilson doing full pencils while paired with a stronger inker MTOU could have been as much fun as MTIO. There I said it...
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Post by tarkintino on Jun 27, 2021 18:52:34 GMT -5
Ron Wilson on Marvel/Star Comics Masters of the Universe should have been awesome. But instead was such a letdown. Wilson was only doing breakdowns and given poor finishes. I also believe (based upon the art in the comic) he was instructed to have everything resemble the toys themselves. So with poor stories it seems to me they were just out to sell the newest toy figures. Really sad. With better plots and Wilson doing full pencils while paired with a stronger inker MTOU could have been as much fun as MTIO. There I said it... I've found that it was not uncommon for titles based on toys not exactly treated like the publishers' top shelf titles, which was evident in DC's Captain Action (1968-69) and Marvel's Team America (1982-83) despite some all-time great talents working on both.
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