Comics UK

Adam Eterno wrote:I missed out on Commando 2 (£278), 3 (£254) and 4 (£135) which all went for very healthy amounts as well as missing out on Whoopee #2 (£78) with it's free gift intact as well as #10 (£39) and a first year complete run of Scorcher which went for £130.

There's always this week!

Wow. I watched them and did not have the money to go for even the least of those prices for Commando. However if I did have the money, I would have gone for issue 4 as I know that was Gordon Livingstone's first one.

Believe me, Col, even when one has the money, there's always a tendency to clench the buttocks and think: "Nah! Not today." There's always a feeling that a certain item may come around again at a cheaper price. Many a time, I've been outbid on something less than a tenner and then i'll go and bid something ridiculous on another. If anyone had an app. on my bids, they would be left seriously baffled and unable to second guess my next move. Perhaps, that's an advantage. It's more a case of when the mood takes me.

Adam Eterno wrote:Was that Ebay George? I didn't see that at all if it was. Looks a great comic, how much did it go for?

No, it was an auction site here in NZ. Sold for $15 in the end, so roughly £7.

geoff42 wrote:Believe me, Col, even when one has the money, there's always a tendency to clench the buttocks and think: "Nah! Not today." There's always a feeling that a certain item may come around again at a cheaper price. Many a time, I've been outbid on something less than a tenner and then i'll go and bid something ridiculous on another. If anyone had an app. on my bids, they would be left seriously baffled and unable to second guess my next move. Perhaps, that's an advantage. It's more a case of when the mood takes me.

Geoff, I know what you mean. I have been watching Commando prices for the early issues recently and have been completely baffled by some of the prices achieved. A copy of 137 Silver Bugle in good to very good condition went for £1.50 whereas a copy of 81 Phantom Sergeant in fair to good went for almost £80. There is just no rhyme or reason to the prices for each issue at the moment.

More often than not I get the feeling I'm bidding against the same handful of people with relatively unlimited means on Ebay. As long as one or more of those people need the comic in question then the price is likely to go through the roof - but after they've all acquired their own copies the same item can suddenly be had for next to nothing. All things come to those who wait!

philcom55 wrote:More often than not I get the feeling I'm bidding against the same handful of people with relatively unlimited means on Ebay. As long as one or more of those people need the comic in question then the price is likely to go through the roof - but after they've all acquired their own copies the same item can suddenly be had for next to nothing. All things come to those who wait!

I used to think the same when 8 years or so ago I was trying to get my Marvel UK collection up to scratch and I kept losing out to one guy all the time as he seemed to always bid really high. I still won many items, thank goodness, usually the ones he hadn't noticed but I reckon he won 3 out of 4 that I was bidding on. His name was Zubair and he lived in London. His collection must be worth a fortune now as prices have shot up since then. I would guess he won well over 300 items that I knew of in a 2 year period. I lost track when Ebay stopped allowing you to see the ids of the other bidders. Well done to him but I kept saying to myself that he must have all the sets by now.......

Luckily I only tend to bid on obscure stuff, but the trouble with more popular items is that the same dealers will regularly hoover them up whenever they appear.

philcom55 wrote:Luckily I only tend to bid on obscure stuff, but the trouble with more popular items is that the same dealers will regularly hoover them up whenever they appear.

That really helps. I am trying to get a really nice conditioned set of Crunch together and I can't believe how cheap I manage to buy copies for (between 30 and 40p a copy on average). I suppose it's the advantage of buying a big lot at a time. You can't buy many 70s comics for that price anymore and I've really enjoyed reading them.

My philosophy is that there is no unique comic; it will come around again. The only comic I've come across that could be classed as (almost unobtainable) is the unpublished Action comic. I got lucky with inside info on that one but only because I was cheeky enough to bid an amount that I thought would be easily eclipsed. It was eclipsed, not by much though, as expected and then I was confronted with stark reality that my bid was enough to attract another seller who was prepared to sell what I had originally bid. After offloading my bowels, I thought: what the hell - this one won't come back around in a hurry. Almost a year later, it's yet to show its face.

well, obviously, it was published but never released I may add.

geoff42 wrote:Believe me, Col, even when one has the money, there's always a tendency to clench the buttocks and think: "Nah! Not today."

And there was me thinking that where buying a comic is concerned the decision-making process was cerebral not anal.

colcool007 wrote:I have been watching Commando prices for the early issues recently and have been completely baffled by some of the prices achieved. A copy of 137 Silver Bugle in good to very good condition went for £1.50 whereas a copy of 81 Phantom Sergeant in fair to good went for almost £80. There is just no rhyme or reason to the prices for each issue at the moment.

It is of course possible that only one person wanted 137 Silver Bugle in G/VG condition whereas a few fancied 81 Phantom Sergeant, even in that condition, to fill a gaping hole in their collection. There are always reasons, although not many rhymes.

It could be down to the popularity of individual artists as well. I know there are later issues of the Thriller and Super Detective Libraries that are worth a lot more to me than some of the earliest ones.

Missed out on the Children's Fairy #1 from 1919 still with it's free gift. I had a good run at it but it went for more than I was happy to pay sadly. Shame as it looks a really interesting acquisition for someone: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/371625622867? ... 1435.l2649

Decided not to buy some nice job lots of Jinty comics on Ebay - the seller has priced it quite reasonably (works out at just over £2 a copy in the job lots she has on) but I would end up with a lot of duplicates myself. So then I was going to console myself by buying a much smaller job lot of Jintys - 7 issues for £8 - only to find they'd just gone as I was dithering! Oh well, what goes around will come around...