CHANCER, CROOK, CON-MAN, OR FOOL... WHAT SAY YE ALL...?

SUPERMAN copyright DC COMICS

Just what is it about eBay that attracts so many chancers, crooks, and con-men?  (Or maybe just idiots.)  Take a look at the above comic by a seller called mrskear.  Hardly pristine, is it?  Yet he or she was asking £50 for it the other day.  No, I didn't mistype.  Picked yourself up off the floor yet?  The original US comic that this UK issue is reprinted from isn't even worth anywhere near that.  (MAN Of STEEL #1, currently selling on ebay for as little as £3.21.)

I messaged the seller to say so in an attempt to be helpful, in case they were simply uninformed and just assumed that any SUPERMAN comic with #1 on it must be worth a bundle.  I thought they'd appreciate knowing that they were risking their credibility by asking a price like that.   They didn't respond to my message, but upped their price to £70 - and removed the option to message them.  That's right - £70 for a tatty, creased, and worn comic.

Someone else is currently selling a better condition copy for £14.99, so I can only assume that the first seller is simply chancing their arm in the hope that someone is stupid enough to pay that kind of crazy price.  What a cheeky chancer, eh?  And eBay has far too many dodgy sellers like this.  Sure, no one is being forced to buy it, but this mercenary impertinence offends me.  How about you?

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Oops!  I originally typed that the seller's original asking price was £55, but having just checked, I see it was actually £50.  I've therefore amended it above.  However, that means it jumped up £20, not £15.  Perhaps the seller interpreted my message as revealing an interest, eh?  However, I've already got two copies of this comic, purchased back in 1988.

PERPETUATING The PAST...

When you have a blog, you need things to write about, and such a requirement sometimes leads to writing things about yourself that you otherwise wouldn't reveal to other people.  That's what I'm about to do now, but fear not, it's not something I could ever be blackmailed over.  (Besides, I bought and burned the negatives of that little escapade with the hamster, so I should be safe - unless duplicates exist.)

No, I'm going to let you into a little secret about an odd compulsion I have.  You see, when I re-acquire an item I had in childhood, I often feel compelled to 'reconnect' it to the area where I lived at the time.  For example, when I revisited a former house of mine 19 years after flitting, I took along various replacements of items I'd originally owned when I lived there.

On that occasion I was accompanied by a Corgi Batmobile and Aston Martin DB5, the glow-in-the-dark head from the Aurora Frankenstein model kit, the owl from the Aurora Batman model kit, a Marx Dalek, Fantastic #1, Terrific #1, and a couple of books.  They were ensconced in my original black leather schoolbag, purchased while living in that very house around 1970 or '71.  What's more, it was on that very day (in 1991) that I recovered my Tonibell Miniball from the attic, where I'd inadvertently left it all those years before.

I did the same thing when I obtained a replacement for my Tomy wind-up Robot several years back.  On that occasion, I didn't have access to my former abode, but I walked across a stretch of grass (with robot in pocket) where a pal of mine had found the front half of the same type of robot, and which is where I first became aware that the toy existed.  (It wouldn't have been too long after that I bought the first of my two or three robots of the same make, but not all at the same time.)

More recently, I took a walk along to that same neighbourhood with my Kellogg's Thunderbirds 2 & 4 toys, the originals of which I owned in the '60s.  Just having them in the same place where I played with their twins as a lad holds an odd significance for me and it's difficult to resist indulging myself.  It's like revisiting the past in a way that's almost tangible, and there's quite a number of items I've taken with me on such sojourns over the years, something which I'll probably continue doing for some time to come.

The photo that kicks of this post was taken around 31 years ago, and most of the trees you see in the middle of the picture survive only as stumps these days.  (As I saw on my recent visit.)  On the right (from our point of view), there's a tree that grows into a sort of 'Y' shape, and where it separates, there was a little flat circular area which some mud had settled into.  Back in the 60s, when playing with my Marx Twistable Batman, I stood him on that area and imprinted the soles and heels of his boots into the surface.

You're way ahead of me, aren't you?  Yes, when I obtained a replacement for that Batman figure back around the early or mid-'90s, I took it along to my old neighbourhood and stood it in the very same spot - just to reconnect to that moment all those years before, and to 're-establish' the connection in my mind between Batman and that tree.  So the tree is now gone, but the Batman figure in my collection once occupied the same spot as his predecessor, thereby perpetuating that moment from long-ago beyond its own time.

Anyway, I could give you example after example, but I doubt that you need any more convincing that I'm utterly bonkers.  In a sweet and loveable, harmless way of course.  Anyone else ever done this who isn't embarrassed to admit it?  Then it's therapy session time - reveal all in our comments section.  You'll feel better for it, honestly.  Oops, gotta go - here comes the nurse with my medication.