The Flipside Of The Coin: Stuff You Can Barely Give Away On Ebay

:(

I used to convince people to buy records they didn't need with money they couldn't afford to spend for a partial living. The sell is the important part. Once you condense the record down to the actual content of it, people just aren't that interested. Being a record dealer is a lot like any other kind of dealer. People come to you for records you think are important, and will give you cash money to buy into the inflated importance of so-and-so 7".

I'm not particularly proud of having done that, but DJing in clubs is kind of the same thing and way more satisfying.

Yes! ENJOY all those shitty Foxy Brown CDs!

so, dig this. i really needed the first divine styler album for something i'm gonna write. i had it on tape for years, but i lost it. i've been following this cd copy on ebay for a few days. it's up to 20 bucks. i started to frown. and then, like santa, some cd dude puts it up today with a buy it now price of 8 bucks! Score! high fives all around. meanwhile, those other suckers are still waiting around to see who gets to pay 20+ for it.

http://search-completed.ebay.com/krautrock_Records_W0QQcatrefZC12QQcatrefZC6QQcoactionZcompareQQcoentrypageZsearchQQcopagenumZ1QQfisZ2QQfromZR32QQfsooZ2QQfsopZ3QQsacatZ306QQsojsZ1

faust rekkerds for 20 bucks!! what is this world coming to?

anyway, this phenomenon killed me with comic books. I had all this stuff, like the early Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and orig. pressings of Dark Knight Returns that were, at some point, worth over a hundred bucks each. By the time I got around to "cashing in", (i.e., I needed the money and didn't care anymore) they weren't worth shit.

i'm often surprised by what sells for $$$ and what doesn't. i guess all you really need are a few interested parties and an item they can't expect to find elsewhere. there doesn't need to be all that much demand, really.

my mother, whenever i tell her about ebay, rattles off this list of old junk she has that she wants me to post on ebay, and i have a hard time explaining to her why no one would bother to buy it.

fwiw, as a comics fan I always resented "collectors" who were obsessed with speculation - buying things just because they thought it would be worth something. these people were (and are, if any of them are stupid enough to still be around) bad bad BAD for the industry.

anyone want the full run of the 1990s version of justice league of america???

I've found that Amazon typically gets higher sales prices than eBay. I had a dozen or so things that wouldn't sell on eBay for a penny, yet went for a few dollars on Amazon. Weird.

My comics are all stacked and piled haphazardly - occasionally I'll dig out the 80s stuff (Teen Titans! what was I thinking....) for a nostalgia trip, but I would never think of triple-mylar bagging and checklisting everything or whatever... ugh

And because the buyers *knew* they were going to be valuable some day, they kept them pristine ("bagged and backed" as my friend used to say), so not only are they common, most are in good condition, unlike old vinyl.

Hah! I never missed an issue back then ! I went to the grand-opening of the big Forbidden Planet store in NYC when i was a kid (Free Outland souvenirs!) and george perez was there selling drawings for ten bucks a pop. I sat down and was trying to think of a good teen titan for him to draw for me. and then i thought, screw it, this dude used to draw the x-men, and i said, "One Nightcrawler please!" Even then, i kinda knew that my titan-love wasn't gonna last.

It goes so much deeper then all that. I sold that stuff before the speculation craze. During that period of multiple covers, foil stamped this and that, I still read a few titles (fantagraphics, the usual pretensious crap) and also kept up with Comics Journal. If you read enough about the history of the industry around then, about what happened with Heroes World distribution and various exclusive deals you see that that period almost completely destroyed the entire industry AND art-form. I reckon if it wasn't for the success of DC's animated series and Marvel finally learning how to get decent movies made (X-Men and Spiderman at least) comic books might be a lost and (even more) obscure art form then they are now.

I remember my brother paying about £40 for Miracleman #15 a few years back...there's one on ebay going for £5.50 at the moment.

(x-post)

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6190356839&category=60235&rd=1

HIL-air-E-us

I can't imagine there ever being VHS purists like there are for vinyl, either. It was always a shitty, low-quality medium.

(I kept their 1st 3 albums, and I'm not ashamed)

there was some good stuff on there...boogiemonsters (some record i'd never heard). avalon, no means no...tom petty