Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvelito
Cool, thanks for answering.  I agree about digital, only way I buy and read comics these days. I'm even thinking of just subscribing to the services like Marvel's or Comixology's and just reading books there without owning them. I'll just buy what I love and feel I need to own. |
Yeah, thats a really smart idea and thats likely what I am going to do as well. Buy the digital versions and if it winds up being a series that has amazing art and an amazing story, I might go and buy the hard cover TPB's or the complete omnibus somewhere down the line. Hard cover TPB's usually cost between $8 and like $15 depending on the title and when you buy it. And considering TPB's usually contain like 6-8+ issues, its still a fraction of the cost of buying the individual comics especially when your talking about variants.
For the cost of those 2 Vampirella variants that Dynamite just released, I could buy 2 Omnibus's, like 10+ hard cover TPB's or even 1 or 2 Artist Editions by IDW depending on the price. That to me is INSANE and it really does make me feel bad for the people that are falling for these ridiculously high prices on variants. The comic companies are making an absolute KILLING on variants and you have comic dealers ording more of the regular copies so they can get the variants so its just a win win win all the way around for the comic companies. Meanwhile 5+ years later when those people who bought those variants happen to try and sell them....well, thier going to learn real quick just how screwed they got by spending a lot of money on modern variants.
And again, its a bubble that is only getting bigger and bigger, just based on the sheer number of variants that are being released. It reminds me a lot of the baseball card market when companies started producing so many sets that it became hard even keeping up with all of them knowledge wise, let alone actually keeping up with them purchasing wise. Each year that passes your literaly seeing TONS of new variants enter the market, likely approaching 1000a year at this point especially when you have some titles that are seeing as many as 10-15 variants on a single issue. Star Wars #1 had like 150 different variants. Its so beyond absurd that I honesty don't have the proper words for it. When the market crashes and the comic companies profits plummet, at least on the comic side, they will have nobody to blame but themselves.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ReplicantSavior
Sorry to hear about that fire. How did that happen?
I wait for the sales for modern comics and go to places like Midtown during the holidays where they have something like 40% off. They do it on occasion for variants too. But it usually is a bubble when you have a lot of people speculating about values and buying just to flip for profit. Eventually people will say enough or that's too much. You don't want to play hot potato and be stuck.
I do agree that the variants are crazy prices. I'm sure I posted about it before or there is a thread around here about it. I remember that Adam Hughes Harley Quinn and other issues going for a lot around the time of Suicide Squad. There is a thread on the CGC forum about hot modern comics that I check monthly or so out of curiosity. It's basically a flippers game for 9.8 grades on many modern variants. Many aren't even good covers but just rare in the ratio made. Which we can assume that small local comic shops aren't ordering hundreds of many titles. I would be surprised if the shops I used to go to receive more than 2 or 3 of the better variants.
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The fire was electrical and as terrible as it was, the most important thing is that we weren't at home when it happened so my wife and son, and myself, were not injured by the fire. Had it occured like 4 hours later, we would have all been in bed and asleep at the time and god knows what would have happened then. We were actually just driving back from being out of town. When we got to our sub division, all we saw was flashing lights and fire trucks everywhere. I will never forget the feeling I got the moment I realized it was our house that was up in flames. I still get a sick feeling in my stomach when I think about it even to this day. I was literally in a state of shock for like 2 months afterwards, but again the most important thing is that nobody was hurt and I still think about that all the time, even to this day. I don't know what I would have done had anything happened to my wife or son.
Still, it was by FAR one of the most devastating events of my life. I had been a serious collecor since I was roughly 12 years old and I lost everything except my fathers coin collection and railroad and stock certificate collection, which he passed on to me when he passed away. Luckily I had those stored in multiple safety deposit boxes at the time as I hadn't had them properly appraised yet thus couldn't add them to my insurance policy so I decided to store them in safety deposit boxes until I could get them properly appraised. Those are literally the only things we have that survived.
As for my collectibles, I lost my statue collection, my stamp collection, my antique camera and lens collection, my antique telescopes, my unopened original series Wacky Packages collection, my limited edition print collection (which numbered over 3000 prints at the time), my 1st edition book collection, my art book and sketchbook collections, my comic collection, my Vampirella and Heavy Metal magazine collections, my original comic art collection, my vintage post office leather bag collection, my vintage Barbour and Belstaff jacket collections, my vintage Orange Crush memorbillia, my Bonsai tree collection (most of which I grew myself from seedlings), and the list goes on and on. Collecting has played a HUGE part in my life for as long as I can remember and I was constantly picking up new collecting hobbies as the years passed.
My wife was also a collector, just not as big of a collector as I was. She mostly collected art prints and various antiques. We used to go to auctions and estate sales all the time. Her antique collection was substantial to say the least and included most of the furniture we had in the house. Honestly, the sheer amount of collectibles/antiques that we both lost in that fire literally makes me sick to think about even to this day.
And if all that wasn't bad enough, I'm a professional photographer and I lost every picture and negative I had ever taken up to that point. I estimate that included roughly 10,000 - 4x5 negatives and transparancies, roughly 750 - 8x10 negatives, roughly 750 rolls of 35mm film, and roughly 500 rolls of medium format film (120 & 220). Not to mention all of my portfolios and prints, which included 8 - 4x5 transparency portfolios that I used to send out to clients, roughly 15 - 4" print boxes that were filled with my matted prints and about 10 - 8x10 print boxes, 10 - 11x14 print boxes, 8 - 16x20 print boxes, and 5 - 20x24 print boxes that were filled with unmatted prints. 2 print boxes I had were completely filled with platinum and palladium prints and those are not only ridiculously expensive prints to produce given the cost of platinum and palladium, but each print is unique due to the process and can never be fully replicated ever again.
I had literally travelled all over the world and shot pictures. Just to name a few of the places I lost all my pictures from, there was Rome, Florence, Venice, and Milan in Italy. Sydney, Melbourne, and the Gold Coast in Austrailia. Pretty much every major city and site of interest in Costa Rica. Vancouver, Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton, and Montreal in Canada. Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, and Hiroshima in Japan. London, Manchester, and Oxford in Great Britain. Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. And the list goes on and on.
And the list of sites I visited in the US is 10 times bigger than the places I visited outside of the US, both in regards to cities and things like national parks, state parks, etc. The loss was simply beyond measure. We were fully insured on everything we lost so that was at least one positive aspect about the fire, but no amount of money could ever replace what was lost that night. All I could do is replace my camera equipment, get back on the horse and start shooting again. I VIVIDLY rememeber the very first picture I took after replacing all of my equipment. I stood there for like 5 minutes staring at my 4x5 film holder thinking this was all I had to show for all the years I had spent shooting pictures all over the world. It was one of the most depressing feelings I have ever felt in my life, but you do what you have to do. One picture quickly turned into 100 pictures and 100 pictures quickly turned into 500 pictures and as the years passed I slowely but surely started accumulating a solid body of work again.
Its now been roughly 8 years since the fire and we have replaced some of the things we lost and have accepted that some of the things we lost will never be replaced. Basically we have both learned that you never really get over something like that. You really learn to live with it more than you learn to get over it. And if there is one lesson that everyone learns, its that life goes on. No matter what happens in one's life, it goes on. And while time doesn't necessaily heal all wounds, it does make them easier to live with.
