Forum - View topicHey, Answerman! [2010-06-05]
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DuelLadyS
 Posts: 1705 Location: WA state |
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I typically avoid OOP issues, becuase I look into the prices on the whole series before I jump on any random volumes... I'll skip the whole series if one volume or another is too expensive for my tastes.
As for the folks complaining that 'how dare they charge these prices'... well, if you're paying that much, why should they change? The anime collector's market is a fickle, twitchy thing, but it does exist, and that means some things cost more. A lot of those prices are wildcards- I doubt the guy with the $2500 listing really expects it to sell- but Amazon listings are cheap & easy, and all he needs is 1 deep-pocketed idiot to turn up someday to get one check of a profit. Always remember, you're not obligated to buy those overpriced items- it's up to you to decide just how much that complete collection is worth. |
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vashfanatic
 Posts: 3489 Location: Back stateside |
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Wow! Okay, thanks for all the hints, everyone. It's great to see forums being a useful and happy place rather than an arena for us all to argue with each other.
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rabrek
 Posts: 188 |
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HERETIC! Where's my torch! Oh, wait... just a sec. [/lock sardonic mode] There we go. I'm a bookworm, and often find myself looking for obscure/OOP titles. Count me in as a fan of the AddALL and Bookfinder sites. When I find a listing I'm interested in, I generally Google up the seller (lots of them have their own sites) and email them directly to verify availability/price and reserve the item. They might even have their own payment system online, though I've phoned in my credit card when I'm feeling cautious. I haven't heard good things about Alibris, so I have no personal experience with them. Ratings may have improved, but I wrote them off long ago and haven't felt a need to reevaluate. Also worth checking: half.com (now a division of eBay - if you're already an eBayer, no need to enter your information again). I've gotten some nice deals there. Barnes and Noble also lists used copies in a setup similar to Amazon. I've used that a few times with good results. You'll find a lot of overlap in the listings, but it's definitely worth cruising ALL of the book search sites, as well as your local used bookshops. Good luck! |
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Zade
Posts: 79 |
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I HATE your answerfan part of the column, why does every single answer have to be so damn long? Do you even read them? Why can't you just do it like toplessrobot contests? http://www.toplessrobot.com/2010/06/tr_contest_your_nerd_epitaph.php
Those are actually FUN. |
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Megsee
 Posts: 17 |
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I managed to get a legit copy of Akira volume 6 last weekend for $13 at a convention. Totally surprised me since I paid much more when I was ordering some of the other volumes online (the reason I didn't have 6 was because it was WAY too bloody expensive).
Though I know what you mean, I hate when a critical book is super expensive, luckily I've managed to avoid that for the most part... |
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PingSoni
 Subscriber Posts: 195 Location: Lansing MI |
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It wouldn't work for series where the copyright holder has gone out of business, but companies like Viz or Tokyopop could easily set up print-on-demand servers for "out of print" volumes. (Using technology such as one finds at Lulu.com.)
POD volumes would not have color interior pages, but they could easily have better paper and print quality than a traditional press run. At about twice the original price, they'd make money off it, and could make a lot of people happy. |
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Ryo Hazuki
Posts: 363 Location: Finland |
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I think LOTR trilogy was pretty good but it still could have looked better and at least they had actual sets. In Avatar the jungle scenes were mostly all CGI so that comparison doesn't work and in Nausicaä you would have to have real actors interacting with giant insects in ruined cities and deserts and fantastic looking forests that don't have real life counter part. Most of the nature in both Avatar and LOTR is based on already existing nature whereas the nature in Nausicaä looks much more alien and savage. |
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Sailor S
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I didn't realize that certain volumes of Excel Saga were so hard to find. I guess I got extremely lucky then since I only got into the manga itself a couple years ago when I bought volumes 1-15 all in one felled swoop at the dealers room at Anime Boston. Maybe they weren't at the OOP stage at that point, this was back in 2008 after all so perhaps there were still enough copies floating around that it wasn't considered a rarity. Because if it was, I doubt they'd have been selling them for the same cheap price that the others were going for. From what I've seen, there are usually very few "deals" to be had at the dealer's room.
The worst I ever had to do was spend $50 on eBay for a legitimate Tenchi Muyo OAV 3. It also was still factory packaged, which made me feel a bit better since I hate buying second hand stuff. Wading through all the bootlegs was a rather tiresome task too. Why eBay isn't held responsible for the merchandise listed on their site is beyond me. Now if you really want to see price gouging, try tracking down a specific figurine that's been out of production for a few years. I got soaked pretty hardcore when I got the last Aria figurine in the series of them that I was collecting. I got started on them when I was in Japan, and they cost around $80. In order to get my hands on the Athena figurine, I had to drop nearly $400. I kept going back and forth on whether to do it for a long time, going to conventions and hoping to see her, scouring every corner of the internet trying to find something cheaper. Wasn't happening, so I finally broke down and paid for it. But, while that makes me part of the problem, she was worth it
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Moomintroll
 Posts: 1600 Location: Nottingham (UK) |
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Alternatively, you could import it, brand new, from the UK for about $20.00, including shipping. It was distributed by Titan Books over here and they had plenty still in stock when Dark Horse lost its license. |
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LordByronius
ANN Columnist
 Posts: 861 Location: Philippe for America! He is five. |
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that's.... a totally different concept than answerfans, there. in answerfans i ask my readers to really dig in to a topic and to start a discussion; topless robot is just looking to have some fun and make jokes. and yes, i do read them. answerfans emails are probably the bulk of my inbox, aside from spam. sorry you hate them. jeez
good grief. on a scale of one to ten in the grand pantheon of tasteless rape jokes, my "wallet rape" comment probably rates around a two. maybe. also, reading that blog entry made me emotionally upset. there's nothing more annoying to read on the internet than uptight people whose "sensibilities" are "offended." |
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Peroxid
 Posts: 210 |
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hmm... are you sure answer man? Because I just ordered a brand new (I hope) Akira vol. 6, from the http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/ for 20€. Maybe it's been reedited recently, but really there is way more stuff hard to find (i.e. Planetes). |
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doc-watson42
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 1708 |
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The last I read (a couple months ago or more, in the Icarus Publishing blog), POD was (mostly) not geared toward comics yet, but it is getting there.
eBay is geared toward making money, and they make lots of money off of bootleg sealers, so they have an incentive not to care. |
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Cabal17
 Posts: 63 Location: Texas |
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Wow, I didn't realize that Volume 5 of Excel Saga was so rare, I just picked it up for $5 at a Half-Price Bookstore a few months ago.
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Hotaru99
Posts: 40 |
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On the whole "Live action" Thing, I'm just the opposite: There are a lot of US live action and even novels that I would flip over if they were made into big budget anime series. Stargate for one. And the Sword of Truth novels. I bet Gonzo would do a lot more justice to those novels than Legend of the Seeker did.
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Inkreader13
Posts: 2 |
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I must say that personally knowing that it's hard to buy some volumes of a series actually makes me not want to buy it. Also considering that the series is still ongoing, this makes it harder for new readers to get caught up.
And at Anime North last weekend I bought volume 6 of Akira for $12. This was on Sunday and they still had about 8 or 9 copies left. I really had no idea how hard it was to get. |
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