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Rant: I spent $85 on 'hot' silver age keys at a flea market in Tulsa and they were all reprints
I hit the flea market off Admiral last month and this guy had a long box marked 'original owner collection' with what looked like early Fantastic Four and X-Men issues. I paid $85 for three of them because he said he just needed gas money to get back to Kansas City. Got home, looked up the cover dates, and two of them had the wrong price font on the cover and the third one had a barcode on the back page. Turns out they were reprints from those Marvel Milestone books you can grab for like $5 each. Has anyone else run into guys running this scam at flea markets, and is there a quick way to spot reprints without pulling out your phone?
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rileyb611d ago
Why does this kind of thing keep happening at flea markets and not just with comics? I see the same play at gun shows with "original" military rifles that turn out to be rebuilt mixmasters, and at estate sales with "antique" furniture that's actually from a catalog in the 90s. The setup is always the same, a guy with a sob story about gas money or a sick kid, a price that's just low enough to feel like a steal but high enough that you don't walk away. It works because we want to believe we found something rare, and once that hope kicks in we stop checking the small stuff like price fonts and barcodes. The quickest tell without your phone is the paper itself, old newsprint feels dry and turns yellow brown, while reprints feel slick and white, plus real silver age books almost never sit flat because the staples have pulled after 60 years. If a "1962" book has a glossy cover and lays perfectly flat, walk away.
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