>paying 4 times as much for a comic in the same condition just for the privilege of not being able to actually read it

mental illness

>>149243670 (OP)
They look good on your wall, that's it.

>>149243670 (OP)
Yeah, it's retarded.

>>149243670 (OP)
The packaging is the most valuable part of the purchase, yes.

>>149243670 (OP)
cause you already read it by now dumbass

>>149243670 (OP)
On the other hand
>Get people to seal bad books from the last two decades so that no one can read them

>>149243670 (OP)
Look how white Wolverine's eyes and teeth are, that shit is pristine. Nothing gets me harder than a well preserved comic book.

>>149243670 (OP)
RETURN THE SLAB

Stupid.

>>149246396
What's that from?

>>149243670 (OP)
Slabbing IS a mental illness. I can understand that you slap a golden age comic to preserve it, but people are hoarding stacks of these McFarlane era comics and drop them out when they need a bit of money.

I also hate the fact that every current YouTuber basically showed up during the covid book, and all these guys would do is buy 9.8 collections and slab them. Not read them. Not keep them. Just slab and sell. Now most of them are in a rut, not making the thousands of dollars from covid bechaee they thought the prices would stay the same and collections would keep coming in. Pro tip: you've fucking run out of comics to slab and comic books as a business barely makes any fucking money.

Also. I want to point out, as someone who has been working at a comic shop for almost 2 years, there are warehouses out there around the country filled with vintage comics waiting to hit eBay/auction sites. I mean stacks upon stacks of comics that you would think are rare, are just sitting on shelves in boxes. The accumulation of decades of hoarding by investors/speculators who gave up during the 90s crash. And the people the own the warehouses trickle out the comics. It's why a book like The Overstreet Price Guide is written by a committee of these hoarders. They price what they own high and everything else gets a value of $3.00-$5.00. Then once in a while you'll see certain series or runs enter the market or comic shops.

>>149243670 (OP)
I didn't get people collecting comics. Take the comic you want to read out of the box, take it out of the protective sleeve/cover, spend the few minutes it take to read it, spend time carefully putting it back in the cover. Repeat with the next issue. Or keep them perfectly sealed and never touch them. What's the point? Trades or online is the only efficient way to read them.

>>149248331
Isn't that all the "collecting" industry is though? It's just a scam. Like when some guy made up a video game appraisal "authority" when he was the one running the auction house selling the damn things he'd graded.

>>149248332
Trades have fake digital color when it comes to vintage comics.

The point of protecting vintage comics is that the paper and ink were not meant to be archival. Different publishers used different methods so paper quality can degrade faster than others. Like a lot of classic DC uses expensive mineral inks that ended up dulling over time if exposed to sunlight. Modern comics don't have this problem but now the pages come all wrinkled because of how thin the paper is covered in ink. Noticed how wlmost every fucking comic today doesn't have white on the outside of panels anymore?

I pick up a trade once in a while but I prefer reading issue by issue because I get access to the cover and everything the creators wrote at the time. Like in Marshall Law the guy is talking about just coming back from some comic convention and how great it was to meet everybody.

>>149248402
Its not all a scam because comics are volatile that they are degrading. The only thing degrading from a retro game would be the battery. If you want to go full retard it's the people trying to make VHS tapes collectible graded shit when a sealed tape just needs one very hot summer to fuck the magnetic data on the tape. Meaning your minty 9.8 casette could essentially be useless if you ever unwrapped it.

>>149245763

>>149243670 (OP)
I recently paid more money for a raw copy of 1st app of War Machine. I could have had the same book in a high grade slab for less money but slabs are stupid and worthless and I didn't feel like cracking it open.

>>149243670 (OP)
these plastic slab things are just jewish scam. same thing in baseball, magic and pokemon cards, video games and other grading shit.

>>149248224
18+ website, stupid tourist.

>>149249159
Slabs are no different from Funko Pops.

>>149249160
I'm 45 and I've on this site since 2004...

>>149243670 (OP)
Comics are dead. These are the fossils.

>>149250033
Based Founder.

>>149250759
Pro tip: slabs have actually been dropping in value because people found out there's a company that gives incentives to the CGC to slab. Like they send hundreds of comics a month just to hoard slabs in the event that one of those issues ends up being a key issue down the line.

Also many comic stores are now ignoring slabs because even they know they're entirely worthless as anything but a decoration piece. The only real slabs worth anything are pristine golden age comics and that's because they are being preserved at a registered grade.

Slabbing is fine, its just knowing what to slab and how to display

>>149243670 (OP)
This, collectors are fucking stupid

>>149251123
Correct.

>>149243794
They don't even that. The actual box they seal them in is ugly.

>>149243670 (OP)
Collectors need to be hanged

>>149248224
King Ramses from Courage the Cowardly Dog

>>149243670 (OP)
Many such cases

>>149243670 (OP)
Comic collectors are the biggest copers ever

These days they insist that they collect comics just for the hobby, not for money.
Despite this claim, they continue to collect only comics that traditionally rose in value, ie keys.
Every now and then they stumble into the manga industry and try applying their collector logic there, only to be frustrated when nobody cares about the first appearance of generic cute girl manga from the 70s that only got 15 chapters before getting cancelled

Comics in the beginning were not collectible at all. They were treated the same as newspapers, you'd read it and then toss it. Maybe you'd hold onto it to use as scrap paper to write shopping lists on, or to tape up a broken window.
When the war came about, all manner of scrap metal, wood, etc was gathered for the war effort, amongst these were comics, for the scrap paper value.
After the war was over, the comics printed in the 30's and 40's suddenly became extremely rare since they were not valued to begin with, and were aggressively destroyed for the war.
However they were still not valuable, just rare. Comics were low brow, disposable stories for kids.

By the 70's, comics became an appreciated art form and people began to value those old rare comics.
By the 80's, collector culture was in full swing, there were comic fans, and those fans held onto their comics, keeping them in good condition.
But when the 90's hit, Marvel and DC had noticed this collector culture and began catering to it. They started releasing all kinds of glittery variants, limited runs, etc. artificial scarcity, and the collectors sucked it up. This lasted for a few years before the entire industry collapsed as people realised the collectibles were fake.

Most sane collectors left the hobby at this point but a few brainrotted retards have stuck around right up to this day, and of course the companies are more than happy to squeeze them dry.

>>149253579
pic related, variant covers for a single issue of Batman (you have to buy them all)

In short, comics were only ever valuable precisely because they were not valued at all. This led to them being rare therefore valuable. But now everyone and their grandma are carefully slabbing and preserving absolutely every comic, and the companies are pushing for it.
They will never be valuable, perhaps in 300 years when the paper has rotted and the only comics that survive and ones kept in climate controlled vaults, they will be valuable.

300 years to make a profit of perhaps $20

>>149253599
If you want to see the future of comics collecting you need only look to the Japanese woodblock print industry.

Like comics, it was a cheap disposable medium. Most prints were just front pages for magazines, designs for disposable fans, advertisements for books and plays.
There were high-art prints such as the works of Hokusai.

Being much older than comics, they have greatly deteriorated. Comics will deteriorate much faster.
The only prints that are valuable are the exceptionally rare, the exceptionally old, and the exceptionally beautiful. And in all cases, they must be in good condition.
Many prints were also destroyed for the war effort just like comics.

>>149253625
Basically, if you want to make money, buy real estate, gold, stocks, etc, not comic books.
If you want to collect things, collect what you personally like, not what you think is going to make you money.

If some kid opened up his uncle's coveted slabbed comic and read it, and then the uncle got mad that his investment has been ruined, I would instead be mad at the uncle for being a retard.
The comic was designed to be read and enjoyed by children.
If the comic could speak, it would tell us that its purpose in life is to be read and thrown away, not preserved in a slab.

>>149253599
One of many reasons why I do not buy new comics. I own over 10,000 comics and 95% of it is 70s-90s books that are probably worth less than a dollar each. They aren't in shit shape but they're not "gem mint" either. Probably. I don't care about the value, the value to me is in the art and the story inside the book.

>>149253599
I hate variants.

>>149254750
Everyone does.