General Marvel Legends

I find those guys hilarious because I'm usually accused by my friends not on this board of being some kind of drug dealer for action figures. "BRO I JUST SAW XYZ AT ABC STORE GO GET ONE BEFORE THEY ARE SOLD OUT"
I'm the bad influence friend. "You know you want this figure."
Mostly because I don't want to be alone, I need other addicts to hang out with. Hell, I've mailed friends figures overseas if they can't get them in their home country. Though I do that less now because... America.

But this reissue concept? Brilliant and overdue. Why not make popular characters available again? I mean sure it might lower the resale value but do any of us actually think we'll get our full money back if we sell ten years down the line?
 
I knew a comic guy who was deep into grading slabs. To the point that at some point he just ceased to recognize that they exist in readable formats.

Friend of mine mentioned he wanted to read some key Wolverine issues that he never had. The grading guy was telling him it's not affordable. There's no way, they're too many major keystones.

I passed the keys to my comixology, because all this other guy wanted to do was simply read them. The collector guy was really irate that we had access to this stuff.

???
 
docsilence said:
But this reissue concept? Brilliant and overdue. Why not make popular characters available again? I mean sure it might lower the resale value but do any of us actually think we'll get our full money back if we sell ten years down the line?
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Exactly where I'm at. Reissues seem great because other folks (and me) can get stuff they missed for whatever reason. And most likely the second run of income funds some new sculpts down the line. Win win as far as I'm concerned.
altcunningham said:
I knew a comic guy who was deep into grading slabs. To the point that at some point he just ceased to recognize that they exist in readable formats.

Friend of mine mentioned he wanted to read some key Wolverine issues that he never had. The grading guy was telling him it's not affordable. There's no way, they're too many major keystones.

I passed the keys to my comixology, because all this other guy wanted to do was simply read them. The collector guy was really irate that we had access to this stuff.

???
Click to expand...
So, some deep Jake lore is that my first job out of college was working for a comic book restoration company. Restoration here is doing some heavy lifting, the boss did actual full restoration and the rest of us (like three people) did "pressing" if you've heard of that. At one point when things at that shop had sort of gone south and I was close to the end of my tenure (the only job I've ever been fired from, but only because they did it before I quit) the boss was like "well I just figured you'd like what we do here because it's around comics" and I had to explain to him that slabbing a comic was sort of like buying the fastest Lamborghini you could and then encasing it in amber. It is now incapable of doing the one thing it was actually made for. He seemed to not quite get this.

Funny story, he runs all of CGC now. I have some funny stories about my time there, our "gentleman's arrangement" with CGC and the whole pressing/restoration side of comics.
 
I think many collectors believe that their collection has (or will have) monetary value above what they paid for it and is therefore something of an investment (or at least that is what they tell themselves to justify their purchases - to both themselves and their significant others).

Now that isn't necessarily wrong, but I think those are the collectors who are most bothered by re-releases - and they have been very vocal about protecting their collections value and view changing the exclusivity by having things go back into production as a threat. And the toy companies have catered to that subset for a long time (in part due to being vocal, in part because the companies know a sense of scarcity/FOMO does more product), by ensuring a re-release is slightly different from the original - either in terms of packaging or they change the paint apps or whatever.

I don't much care either way (I don't think of my collection as an investment but am not unhappy it retains some resale value) - but I think about lines I missed out on the first or second wave of, and how that often was a barrier to entry to start collecting the line, as trying get the core figures released early in the main looks was not possible at retail. Back in my day (as an old man I suppose) the fact that I could wander into any toy store and get a new Kenner Darth Vader for about 8 years straight (with package changes) didn't seem to hurt the success of that line, and by the end of the line that Darth Vader sculpt and mold must have been amortized to like 0.001 a figure. It makes me wonder how many more unique sculpts we would have and what retail costs would be if nearly every basic Cap, Spidey, Wolverine, etc. was in an evergreen production and re-released as needed.
 
I finally opened my Gladiator and Deathbird this morning. Deathbird just looks so good. Another one for the shelves where it's a classic villain who looks just stellar simply standing there vamping (which is good since a lot of the costume hinders extreme posing). Her portrait is just fantastic.

I'm not the biggest Gladiator fan, and frankly when I was seeing reviews of this set I was not into him much at all, especially that screaming portrait. I have to admit in hand I like him a lot more, and that screaming portrait, once I got him to hit a sort of defiant, raging at whatever pissed him off pose, that head actually rocks. I don't know what it is but the photos and video I was seeing just didn't do it justice.
 
fac said:
I think many collectors believe that their collection has (or will have) monetary value above what they paid for it and is therefore something of an investment (or at least that is what they tell themselves to justify their purchases - to both themselves and their significant others).
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If I'm honest, that job I mentioned? It broke the back of me ever entertaining this idea. It also ruined my view of what constitutes "rare". Like, first appearance of Punisher? Not a rare comic. I've seen so many of that fucking issue I could wipe my ass with copies and wouldn't worry I was putting a dent in the market. I cannot tell you how sick I am of seeing that comic. I worked on at least 50 of them every week for years. Actually rare? Alan Moore Miracle Man issues.

I've had individual figures that retain or grow in value, sure (my early 4H stuff sold quite well when I moved on), but the amount of effort and extra money it takes to make a collection worth anything on the whole is absurd as far as I can tell. We used to get lots of hundreds of comics from single collectors and dealers. At least for comics storage is a little better, but action figures take up stupendous amounts of space if they're still in box.
 
My collection is worth exactly as much as its personal value to me. When/if I sell stuff, it's almost always to get rid of it, not to make a profit (though of course it feels nice if it does - when I used to do auctions, I always started them at 99 cents and let it go from there). But I will say that even as a life-long comic guy, I just don't personally get any satisfaction from collecting single issues and cannot relate to the market-price mentality at all. Every comic I own now is collected in a trade or hardcover of some kind. The stories are the whole and entire point for me.
 
I've only recently decided to get some old single issues that I no longer have. And like a lot of my collecting it's all just emotion and nostalgia. I don't need first appearances or key issues, I'm just getting covers or issues that I remember from middle school through high school. Formative year stuff. And since most of it is '90s stuff, it's dirt cheap.
 
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