Gregory Hecht

Just received my wireless barcode scanner in the mail today! Looks slick! I seem to be misunderstanding something in the set-up process. I scanned the following codes in succession: Enter setup mode (from the manufacturer's pamphlet) all three codes (in order) listed under the "Easy Setup" portion of the sheet from Human Computing that came with the scanner Exit setup mode (from the manufacturer's pamphlet) When using CNTRL-J to jump to specific issues, the scanner has no trouble recognizing comic book barcodes without supplementals. The scanner is unable to properly read any barcodes with supplementals... I get the proper beep when I scan, but the result in ComicBase is that it takes me to the next alphabetized title in the database. What am I doing incorrectly in my setup? EDITED TO ADD: The scanner appears to read the barcodes just fine when using CNTRL-I to add inventory. It seems to be only CNTRL-J that isn't working properly.

I think that the issue is that you have two titles in your database that differ only by punctuation. It's been a longstanding rule that titles in CB have to differ by at least one non-punctuation character or some database functions will get a little glitchy (as you have observed). If you delete the incorrect title, this problem won't be observed.

I have the tpb. It is definitely a prose novel. The tpb came out in 1997, was published by Dark Horse, and had a cover price of $14.95. That is the book that matches the scan that Douglas posted in this thread. The MMPB edition came out in 2004. The cover had the same illustration as the 1997 tpb, but with different trade dress (as Steven described). The cover price was $6.99 (I think... I don't own the MMPB so I am not positive) and was definitely published by Pocket Star.

The original TPB was published by Dark Horse Comics.

New scanners are here, folks! See today's Livestream for details.

This week's update added the title Marvel Novel Series. This is a duplication of the Marvel Comics Novel (Pocket) title that has been in the database for a very long time. Note also that the pre-existing title has some additional entries (later printings, Canadian printings) that are not included in the new title. I suggest deleting the new title.

DC has cancelled all orders for Danger Street. They say that it will be solicited again in the future, but for now the title should be removed from the database.

This week's update added the title Aaron Lopresti Sketches to the Comic Book category. Based on the title, I assume that this is an art book and should therefore be moved to the Books category.

I think that your example here is a good one. However, I suspect that the market may be working a little bit differently for slabbed high grade issues vs. slabbed low grade issues. If you were to graph out the raw copy price of what would be a 9.8 comic vs. the slabbed price of a 9.8 comic, you would get a curve of a particular shape based on the % premiums that you list in your example. But I think that a complicating factor is that the % premiums may be different for lower grade comics (e.g, a 3.0 raw comic vs. the same 3.0 comic in a slab). In other words, the unslabbed price might not be sufficient information to know what the slab premium should be. I suspect that you need to know both the condition *and* the value of the unslabbed comic. If you were to graph out the raw copy price of what would be a 3.0 comic vs. the slabbed price of a 3.0 comic, I don't know that the curve would necessarily have the same shape as for your condition 9.8 example. In other words, would the slabbing premium for a $5,000.00 to $9,999.00 comic in 3.0 be twice that of a $50,000.00 to $99,999.99 comic in 3.0? My prediction* is that slabbing low value comics in low grade gives a lot less "% juice" than slabbing a more valuable comic in exactly the same low grade. *(from a gut sense only... I have no data to back up my prediction, I admit that I could be completely wrong)

Yes, I agree with you on this point. The slabbing premium doesn't get multiplied more than once because an issue is a key issue *and* valuable in its raw form. The fact that it is valuable in its raw state is already reflective of the fact that it is a key issue.

Yes.

The premium for slabbing is probably not a linear relationship. CGC 9.8 books from one price range in their "raw" state won't necessarily get the same % bump as CGC 9.8 books from a different price range for their raw state. And, of course, the slabbing premium also depends on the grade. So the "premium curve" for CGC 5.0 books might not have the same slope and/or shape as the premium curve for CGC 9.0 books. That means you may be looking at two variables when trying to determine the CGC premium: what is the expected price for the corresponding raw copy and what is the graded condition for that copy.

I will likely not make it to Livestream today (family member doing surgery today) but I did alert Pete to this thread on Slack a day or so ago.

Instead of creating a new title, porting over a user's existing stock, and then deleting the old title, I think that there might possibly be another way to accomplish the same thing. CB could issue a program update that (for example) looks to see if the user has the title Star Wars (1st series) in their database(s). If they do, the update says something like: "This update will rename your existing title Star Wars (1st series) to Star Wars (1977 series). All of your inventory and issue data will be preserved, only the title will be changed to match to master database. Click "yes" to continue. If you click "no", this update will keep your existing title and create a new, separate Star Wars (1977 series)." For the users that click "yes", the updater will execute the "Modify Title" function to change the series title to Star Wars (1977 series). I imagine that something analogous could be done to change the Media Category for titles as well. I believe that the weekly content updates only import data into your database, so this kind of solution would almost certainly have to be done via a program update.

I'm pretty sure that Legends of the Dark Knight: Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez was never published. Unless somebody has direct evidence to the contrary, this title should be deleted from the database.

DC has cancelled all orders for Flash, The: The Fastest Man Alive series. In theory, this will be resolicited somewhere down the road since this is meant to be a prequel to the Ezra Miller movie. (The movie was delayed to 2023 b/c Ezra Miller is problematical right now.) But for now, the comic title should be removed from the database. IMPORTANT NOTE: This title should not be confused with Flash: The Fastest Man Alive. That title was published starting in 2006 and should of course remain in the database.

And, as an additional follow-up to your post: The present arrangement for shifting a title from one media type to another works, but IMO it isn't something that works as seamlessly as you suggest. There are plenty of users who don't check their "Unrecognized Items" list often enough to see that they need to do the work of shifting their inventory from an obsolete title to a replacement title that is in a different media category. Or, if they do check the list, they don't necessarily realize that something on their unrecognized list is in fact in the database but is merely moved to a new media category. Exhibit 1A, Exhibit 1B Exhibit 2 The current arrangement asks users to manually curate their database(s). Ideally, users should only have to spend time curating their collections and entering them into their database(s), not curating their database contents and structure. IMO this should be something that gets attention for the next version of ComicBase. EDITED TO ADD: In fact, a wise man once said: 🙂

I *think* that in current practice the difference is that there is a function in the ComicBase program that allows you to change the media type of a title that you are viewing. This has the effect of allowing the user to shift their existing inventory for the old title that was in the incorrect media category to the new title that is in the correct media category. I suspect that this is relatively easy to program because the title name doesn't change at all, just the media category in which that title resides. For titles that get renamed, it's a little more complicated b/c you'd need to have a simple way for the user to point their inventory in the old version of the title to the new version since there are thousands of titles in the database... this is why I suggested that it might be easiest to do the inventory shift during the content update that actually adds the new version of the title. This isn't to say that the problem can't be solved, only that I am guessing that this is the reason why changing a title's name is more complicated than changing a title's format. (If I'm way off base on that, I am sure that @Peter R. Bickford can set the record straight!)

Randall is correct, changing longstanding titles now makes things problematic b/c existing users' inventory data would be turned into a mess. It's a legacy of a nomenclature decision that was made many many years ago when the re-re-re-relaunching of titles didn't happen and nobody could have predicted that it would become such a commonplace thing. I agree that designating repeated titles by volume # is much more cumbersome as compared to designating them by the year that they launched, and several sites already do this. (Marvel also does this when describing the contents of their trade paperback and hardcover collections.) Long ago (i.e., on the old CB msg boards) I suggested that this problem could be overcome if CB's content updates would (with the user's permission) move existing inventory to newly corrected titles... for example, if CB changed the existing Star Wars (1st series) to Star Wars (1977 series), then the update would give a pop-up window for the user to give permission for their old SW 1st series inventory to all be moved to the new SW 1977 series title. Nothing ever came of it, and my knowledge of programming is insignificant enough for me to have no clue as to whether my suggestion could actually be implemented. But if it could, it would allow CB to do a lot of clean-up that would make the program much more accessible to brand new users.

Does Pro come with any custom checkboxes or fields? Would that allow a way of “tagging” the entries you want to export regardless of stock quantity?

Depending on your definition of "serious", the answer is yes for specific issues. Not sure that I would personally put that kind of value on those issues, but apparently there is a segment of the market that does. And not a lot of people save their preview magazines, so there are likely to be some scarcity issues for those kinds of things, I think.

Looks like Superman: The Man of Steel (Compilations) Book #3 is the same thing as #3/HC. To be consistent with the listings for volumes 1 and 2 of the recent hardcover compilations from DC, #3 should be deleted (the scan for that item can be moved to #3/HC). For similar reasons, the listing for Book #4/HC should be changed to #4/HC.

Fantagraphics recently published a book reprinting Tops #1 and #2 (from 1949) in an oversize hardcover format. I'm not finding that book in the database (not too surprising, the HC offices don't tend to get these kinds of books in the comic shipments that they use for generating the weekly updates), but I'm also not finding the original series in the database. Am I overlooking it somewhere? For reference, here is the listing for the original 1949 comics title on mycomicshop.com. Also, note that Tops is not the same thing as Tops Comics (from 1944, which *is* in the database).

Not missing, see Superboy (1st series)... both the first print and second print are included in the database. For the major publishers (especially Marvel and DC), it is highly unlikely that periodical comics from the 60's to the present aren't included in the database, although some items are occasionally cataloged in idiosyncratic places.

Supposedly there are some issues from Marvel that are forthcoming in the next few weeks that will have this “feature”. I think that Marvel has indicated that they have heard the negative reaction esp since it results in more damages when shipping to retailers. So with a little luck Marvel will go back to the previous cover stock (which, as I said before, isn’t much different than the interior page stock anyway).