I Just Bought Absolute Batman #1 for $4

Welcome back to Cards and Comics, guys. Today I have a really fun, exciting video for me because I found a bunch of awesome comic books in the wild that are, you know, books that I've been wanted in my personal collection for a while. um books that are the hottest books right now and all the comic dumm um and I got everything pretty much either at cover price or slightly above which is unheard of in today's age where everyone has such access to information on pricing to walk into a retail store and to get things basically at you know cost or at the you know cover price today is almost unheard of. So I'll explain what happened. So, I was at a card show in a mall and as I was walking in, I saw a toy store. And hanging in the toy store was this Batman Poison Ivy Arkham Asylum toy. I collect Poison Ivy. I've got a whole little uh section in my uh collection that for Poison Ivy toys, cards, um figures, and so I don't have this one. I went in and looked at it. So, right before I went to the actual show, I saw this in there. I didn't know the price, but it's expensive. It's an expensive little toy. It's a h 100red bucks. So, I was like, "Oo, it's expensive." Um when you when I came back, but I went to the show, did my thing, had a great time. I came back out and um and it's the show I got the Griffy card that I went on my first huge Griffy of the Year. So, I was I was riding high. I I got like one of my favorite Griffy cards that I don't have. um a numbered Honda Griffy card. It's in the video there. So, I was walking out of that show and I'm like, "Oh, what about that toy?" I had a great show. Let's go look at that toy. I saw it was $100. I'm like, "Ah, you know, maybe, maybe not." You know, it's I had a good show, but you know, toys are not my thing I collect first, but I'm like, "Okay, maybe maybe you know, maybe I talk about he's like, "Hey, everything's you know, 20% off in the store. I'll work with you." I'm like, "Okay." Now, the first time I went in the in the store, I saw he had comics. And there was one table with about 10 short boxes on it with comics. I kind of flipped through them. Some Marvel books, didn't see anything really cool. I didn't see anything really um that was, you know, rare or just something that I was really interested in on the Marvel side. I'm like, "Okay, I'll come back. Look at the Poison Ivy." Before I left, just as the last thing, I noticed he had a bunch of DC books. And right now DC's hot. I flipped through some DC books, found a huge grail for me, a book I've been looking for for a while. I actually have a foil variant of it. And then I'm like, I'm in. I'm gonna look through this. So, I spent the next three hours at the store going through those boxes. He said, "Hey, by the way, I've got boxes in the back if you want to go, you know, look through those." So, I looked through like five boxes in the back. There's like 30 boxes in the back. I looked at those. I came back again another time. Spent another four hours after work. I I took off work on a Friday a little early. Went in and did spend another four hours in a store. So I almost, you know, seven or eight hours I spent looking through all those boxes and these are the books I found. So I'm going to start off here with the crazy book that a lot of people, you know, that's probably in the thumb when I make this video, but I found Absolute Batman number one for cover price or 20% off. Hottest book in the land. You know, hottest book right now. This book just sold for 170 $168 on auction. Um, I have it for 150. It, you know, obviously if you took the last 10 sales, it's going to vary quite a bit. But, you know, $15 shipping, $168. Someone paid $183 for this book uh recently in auction just just like today as of me making this video. So, I found this in the wild at $5 at 20% off. So, $4 I paid for this book. So, that's where we're going to start with the craziness right there. Uh, it doesn't stop there because um I put this book to the side for a second. Um, I walk through the that I not only found Batman uh actually Batman number one, but I found Oops, sorry. I didn't mean to hit it. Uh, I found number two. I found number three. Oh, man. I'm just hitting the Found number three. And I don't have a spacer. and found number four. So I found 1 2 3 and four. So two goes for 35, three goes for 25, and four goes for 35. So um so you're talking like $245 worth of Absolute Batman books than I paid uh $12 for. So crazy, right? paying cover price for these books. And so that's not all I found. The same in the back, going through box after box, I found G.I. Joe number one. Uh, and again, if it didn't have a sticker on it, he charged me $4 for it. So, $4 for GI Joe number one. So, we'll go through here. Um, so the reason really why I came back was because of the variants. I had no clue. These were all found on the second day. I had no clue that those were still in the back, but I found a bunch of cool variants. Tim Drake Robin number nine. Uh, this is Sergeuna. And I I'll talk kind of what I think happened. Uh, Robin Tim Drake Robin number six. So this is Dan Moore. All the Dan Moore variants are crazy expensive. Um, so this Robin here is like $20. Again, you can see this is this is tagged. That's $5. Uh, this is tag $5. So it's a $30 book. Um, here is number five or sorry, four. This is Dan Moa cover. Uh, this is $40. Again, these are all marked $5. And then Tim Drake number three. Uh, this is $40. And the big one is Tim Drake number two. And this is $60. So these are all Dan Moira covers. So what what do I think happened here? So I was talking to the guy and he's like, "Yeah, the comics were from a business partner. Um you know, he marked some of them priced he priced some of them out. Um some of them he didn't. Uh they've been sitting back there quite a while. We don't really know what to do with them. They've been sitting. if you want to go through them because I went through the first boxes. So I spent, you know, three hours going through boxes and he's like, "Hey, if you want to go to the back of the store and go through those boxes, be go right ahead." You know, the price on the back. They're not priced $3.99. So like it was like, you know, hey, you know, go do this. So I went and did it. And you know, again, spent like 8 hours, but I think what happened was some books that were priced like this, $499. You can see uh I think this is TFA's sticker. You'll see Midtown stickers on some of these books. So, I think some of these books are personal collection books. They got mixed in with books like this. I think this is a this was a book that was put out. There was books like that GI Joe that were probably maybe part of a personal collection. they always got mixed in together and they were just in the bag. Um, but you know, he had books like, you know, this Spectre here, Spectre number 62, uh, final issue. Um, it's about a $30 book. You know, he had a price at $3.99. So, the quantity is going to be here. Um, I went through some of these books. I'll go through the rest. But, you know, this leads up to the issue of like, well, should I have said something like, hey, these books a lot more expensive, you know? So my thought is this is like this is a retail establishment. He's priced books out. He has established a price and I'm going to pay it. Um we all have access access to the same technology, the same information and he could have very easily spent the time to go back which again eight hours just to go through every box. That's not pricing. if I had to price every book out that he had because I know comic books to a certain extent. I can kind of flip through boxes, you know, again, eight hours to go through or seven to eight hours to go through all those boxes um to find what I found. Um but if you were to price it all out, you're talking like, you know, two or three weeks of probably work for somebody to do and they just didn't have time to do it, you know. Um, and so he was just like happy to sell what they were priced already or at a standard price point cover, you know, cuz again, he had a ton of books that would not be worth $4, you know, a ton of books that were like 50 cent books that he would have charged $4 for that was his flat price point. Um, I'll show you some more. Here's some more Spectre. These are late run specters. Not worth the time. That's like a $10 book. This is like a $10 Spectre book. But I just love the covers. And again, I just want to say this is like I am a huge variant collector. Um, so some of these books I'm going to show you in the variant uh books are going into my personal collection and I just love the fact I'm able to pick up a lot of these uh Dan Moore Robbins. I'll be showing you some Night Wings here in a minute that I love. I already had a couple of these books, well, one of them specifically um and a foil version. So, I was very happy to pick up the non-foil. Um, but just not having to pay the eBay price and be able to save some money on those books, put up my collection and take that money and buy something else for my collection makes me very happy. I don't have to uh, you know, because that's the thing is like, you know, if I can save money somewhere, I'm going to spend it somewhere else. Um, and I did come back and buy that $100 uh, you know, uh, Poison Ivy toy at that store. So, I was trying to to to, you know, be fair in the in the fact that I I was paying whatever he asked and bought other things in the store. And I feel like that is what you do as a customer. Tell me if I'm wrong in the comments, guys, if if I should have, you know, told him, you know, or showed him the price for everything and said, "Hey, here's here's what the fair market value is." Uh, Teen Titans Go number one, a $25 book. Again, this would have been $3.99. There's no sticker. Um, here's another cool um variant. This is Robins number six, I believe. Um, so this is like a $20. This is like a workout variant. Um, there are some really cool workout variants that are pretty expensive. Uh, here's a Batman and Robins, uh, I believe. Uh, yeah, Batman Robin number one, Archerm, um, cover. This is $20. Again, this at $9, so I, you know, that's what I got charged. Um, 20% off that. So again, you know, this book was at one point probably exactly that and it went up a little bit. That that does happen. It's hard to keep your pricing current when you have thousands of thousands of comic books. Um I I can sympathize, but you know, it's it's one of those things. It's like whatever you have it marked at to sell, that's what you generally charge. Um and and again, you know, that's what he he quoted me pricing. And so that's what I went off of. Um, Jenny Fuzzan, $10, $5 book. Same way for this. Cool. John Boy Meers, Power Girl. I already had this one, but you know, loved it. Grabbed it. Here's a good example of a book. I think why I think it's some personal books were in there because this is this is sketched by the artist. This isn't a huge book. It's number one, but I collect Native American comics. I just thought it was cool that it had an artist sketch on the front. So, that's like a Yeah. five or$10 dollar book. So, I picked up for again from a personal collection uh swimsuit issue for Teen Titans uh for Titans number two. This is like a $10 book. You know, he had it $6. So, you know, again, that was priced a little under. Same way for this book, Poison Ivy 13. This is um a Kai Carpenter book. So, it was like $6 uh price and then I got it for 10. So some of these aren't really I mean they're just a little bit under. Uh this is Teen Titans the Trickor Treat issue. So this is like about a $15 book. Um again he had it I think uh yeah $6 which again that's a little overpriced point. So it was $4.99 was issued so he had $5.99. Um and now it's worth 15. Uh here's a arterm starirl or sorry star girl. Uh uh this is Tales of Teen Titans Art Germ. It's a Starfire foil. Again, this is like about a $15 book. Uh he had it for $6. Uh here's where we get into some cool Nightwing books. So, here is uh Jamal Campbell. And this is sort of when I ran into these Nightwing books, this is when I knew things were getting kind of crazy. So, this one is um about a $20 Nightwing. Um, here is um, yeah, Nick. So, this is this is a Robas. Yeah, Nick Robelus. So, this is about a $20 Nightwing book. Oops, sorry. Um, then here's some Supergirl Woman tomorrow. Uh, number three of eight. So that's about a this is a $15 book. Here's number four. So I think probably had the whole run of this and someone's already went in and got number one, which kind of sad. Uh but here's number four. Uh this runs about $25. I have the really cool variant to number eight. Uh was in there and this runs about 50 bucks. So number eight and again it goes for about $50. So, love those Supergirl books and that movie looks really awesome. So, here's some of the really uh higherend variants here coming up. Uh again, another workout uh Robin number three. So, um this one's about $25. But this book here that I'm going to show you uh was the book that I found that I'm like, "Okay, I got to really look through here because this is uh number 105, Nightwing, Dan Mora. There's a foil version that I have. Foil is about 150 to20 and this is about a $90 to $100 book. And when I saw this, I knew, okay, well, there's some really cool books in here. Maybe, you know, maybe there's some cool books in here. I got to I got to I got to investigate this a little bit more. Um, you know, I'm like, okay, we've got possibility of some really awesome variants in here. And I found a few more. So, Nightwing, uh, number, uh, 106, Dan Mora. This goes for about 100 bucks. And then the cool one that's a kind of a meme book now. You know, it's posted a lot of places. Robins number two. It's kind of like the the pumpkin latte nightwing cover that's been popular recently. Again, these workout uh covers are really popular. And again, this goes for about 110 bucks. So, all in all, there was three books uh in the the Robins Nightwing that were worth about 100 bucks. There was the G.I. Joe number one, about 150 bucks for GI Joe number one. Um there's $150 book um for Absolutely Batman number one, and I just said one just sold for like 170 and a bunch of 30 to $60 books in here. I'll all in add um the books themselves um total value for uh all the stuff I picked day one and day two uh comes up to about $1,230 and I paid about $143. So that is to me like I when I say things that don't happen very often in collecting um when you can run into some books like that where you can get some really amazing uh cool variants that you've been looking for books that you know um you missed out on the first time pretty much and had a second chance to get them. And again, um the two I was really excited about besides the ro the Nightwing books u was the you know um getting this um Absolute one and the G.I. Joe one because you know again I think you know things are turning into kind of iconic um you know that Absolute Batman right now is the hottest book in the world but this book I have one but it's a lot worse condition so this upgrades my collection a little bit. Um but yeah it you know it does raise the whole spectre like you know do you um you know how much do you owe someone to share information with if they have things underpriced? Um it's like finding a $50 card in a in a in a 50 cent box. Do you tell someone like oh this is you know some people would say yes and people say hey it's price it's you know whatever is whatever. Um, I don't view it like some people view it kind of like if an old lady came in to sell their collection and then the dealer lowballed them. That's not what's going on here. These books were put into boxes, they were priced at one point and the prices have gone up. Um, they don't want to spend time to go back and and and and dig through and repric everything. He quoted me a price of what was in the boxes and said, "Hey, if it's unmarked, it's basically four bucks and 20% off of that." and then if it's priced then it's 20% off that price. So there was no arm drag, no no arm twisting. Um there was no high pressure, you know, hey, you know, these books aren't worth anything, whatever. I didn't say a word. I just went back, spent eight hours, you know, uh picking books in the back, um going through those 30 to 40 long box or short boxes. There were a few long boxes, but most of them were short boxes to to find what I found. And so that's eight hours of my time because it's really because I you know driving there and back and everything just like yeah and it takes time to to do that but to me it was worth it. I obviously there's a lot of value there but it took a lot of effort to dig those bucks out books out. They weren't just sitting out you know only about 10 of these books maybe maybe not even 10 maybe seven or eight of these books were actually in the front of the store. the rest were in the back just sitting in those 30 boxes that weren't even out front for anyone to dig through. Um, so I had to, you know, go back there and go through them. And he invited me back. I didn't ask one thing about going to the back. He just said, he offered, he's like, "Look, I got a ton more in the back. If you want to dig through them and get them out of there, if you find stuff you like, just grab it and this is the price." And so I did. Uh, so I don't feel like I did anything wrong, but hey, you know, we're living in a world where, you know, people find fault for anything. Um, I feel like I get a great deal. I can save some money, spend that money in the hobby. You tell me what you think. Um, you know, was this just a good deal or did I do something wrong? Let me know in the comments. I'll see you next time on Cards of Comics. Bye.