 Hi, this is Chichu. Now what I mentioned in the introductory video to this series on comic books was the, you know, one of the reasons that we started this series is because we're going to do an introductory course on economics for math and real life and the language of mathematics. So I figured that one of the best ways to do that is to look at the economics of comics, something that, you know, it's been a part of my life. I've been a collector publisher. I've gone to trade shows, sold comics and whatnot, right? So we're going to take a look at the economics of collecting comic books, of publishing comic books, if you plan on publishing comic books, and investing in comic books, right? And just to show you the beauty of comic books and why I do this and why this is an aspect of my life, right? And how the mathematics has played into it. You know, we did some readings of comics. So I put together six videos on reading comic books. I showed you, you know, how I frame comic books, right? And we did a pretty long video on just taking a look at some of the books in my collection, right? And I mentioned that, you know, I, through the years, I've been collecting for about 25 years, over the years, you know, I've delved into the realm and I've pulled back, you know, I've had hiatuses, I've gone sabbaticals, not buying any comic books. So, you know, for about 25 years, sort of been a wave of getting into the comic book realm and coming out of it and coming back in again and taking a look and seeing what's going on, right? And as to why I love comic books, it's, you know, it's multifaceted, right? I love the investing part of it, the collecting part of it. I love reading comic books, right? I love, I love the imagination, that lack of inhibition, right? There's, for a lot of comic books, for a lot of creators, there are things you can do in the comic book realm that you cannot do in other media. And I've heard to say, there's two things that have come across over the last few years that sort of made me go, wow, regarding comic books is one of the reasons that I heard that comic books are such a powerful medium to communicate information was because they're both written text and imagery. So they affect both the right and left hemispheres of the brain at the same time. It's one of the few things that does that and that was one of the reasons given as to why comic books are so powerful and such a beautiful medium to communicate ideas, to communicate imagination, share imagination, really, right? And one of the other reasons that I've heard the comic books or I meet the connection why comic books are so powerful in my world anyway was because I heard that when we watch movies, when we watch shows, we don't, when we remember something, we don't remember motion. I'm not 100% if this is true or not, but it was during a lecture that I watched was that we don't remember motion. We remember still images and we piece together the motion in our minds, right? So as soon as I heard that, you know, that was really immersed in reading comic books a few years ago again, I was going through a phase of collecting a lot and reading a lot and all of a sudden I connected it to comic books where you're reading, reading a story, reading, reading words coming at you, either first person, third person, second person, whatever it is and you're looking at the imagery and it reminded me that there have been times in my life where where I remember a story, they're sci-fi or superhero or whatever it is, right? And I have a hard time remembering if it was a movie or a comic book that I've read, right? So that really connected it. That sort of put it in a missing piece. I'm not sure if it's 100% true or not that we don't remember motion, that we remember still images and we put together motion in our minds, but it was interesting for me and that made me love comic books that much more and that's basically two of the reasons that I've that I think anyway, if you analyze it, why comic books I believe are such a powerful medium to communicate information, to share imagination, right? And since I'm going through sort of a collecting phase right now, you know, I do have a list that I need to fill in gaps and I always keep my eyes on the lookout for certain books that I want to get into, certain stories that I want to read and the different ways that I end up buying comic books, there's a few different ways that I do it. I do have a box at a comic shop at a local comic shop, a pull list, right? Where I get comics, you know, every week sometimes sometimes, you know, I mean, there's nothing coming in during that week for the comics I have on my list, so I don't get any new comic books to read. So I do actively buy comics from a local comic shop. I go to comic book shows. I've gone as a someone who displays comic books, who sells comic books and as a buyer a lot. So they both have their plus and minuses as someone who sets up a table and sells comic books. You have the opportunity where people come up to you, collectors that are, you know, they want to sell their comic books. So you have an opportunity to buy some comics that shows as well as trade with other people who are there who have a table set up, right? So you get a really good chance to trade with other collectors and buyers, right? And one of the other ways I buy a lot of comic books is I buy them offline, online, I buy them from eBay and I've been doing this off and on for last, well since 2002, both selling and buying. And sometimes I go on a spree and if I find a buyer that I like, if I find a buyer that I like their collection and I like, you know, like or love their prices, I end up buying a fair bit of comic books from them. And I usually only buy from sellers that have a high ranking, right? They have to basically have a hundred percent clean slate. That means everybody that's bought from them or or everybody that they sold to or they bought from you know has been happy with the transaction, right? So if I find a buyer like that with this collection that I like, that I want to get and with, you know, really good prices, I end up spending a lot of time on their page and buying a fair bit of comics. You know, I buy some new stuff. I fill in some missing, you know, fill in some missing spots that I have and sometimes I buy things that I wanted to buy or I load up on certain comics as a collector, right, as someone who's investing in comic books. And that's exactly what I did with this one seller that I found online a few weeks ago. And I ended up buying a whole bunch of comic books off this person, a couple of short boxes actually, and they arrived a couple of days ago. And I started going through, you know, they came in separate days. So when the first box arrived, I cracked it open. Looked at a couple of, he's beautifully packaged up. Looked at a couple of lots that I bought and I sort of went, you know what, I think you guys would really like to take a look at this and I'm just gonna go through the books and share these books with you guys and just to let you know, I put together a little spreadsheet, just some preliminary numbers, some of the stuff that we might look at for math and real life and the language of mathematics. I sort of put a spreadsheet together in Excel and just looked at the numbers. I just wanted to get an estimate of, you know, how many comics I bought or get an exact value of how many comics I bought and what I paid for them. And as far as collecting or investing comic books goes, when I buy lots like this, I look for for certain books. I look to see what I paid per unit, right, per comic and for these two short boxes, I ended up, it ends up being 275 comics and it includes comics that I've wanted to collect. It includes comics that basically just buying as an investment and I might take a read through them because I love reading comic books and it includes a batch of comics that I really wanted to start reading. So it was a nice mix of all three, all three. So it came out to 275 comics, two short boxes, all of them back then boarded and I basically ended up paying for different things, for the investment ones, I ended up paying they cost me, you know, about less than two dollars per unit including shipping. The shipping was pretty expensive. So the shipping kicked it up about 20 to 30 cents per unit, which is pretty heavy, right? And for the comics that I wanted to read, which was included a pretty big lot of valiant comics, the new the restart of valiant comics that happened, I think three years ago or something and during that time three years ago, I wasn't buying any comic books. I was going through a long period. So I didn't get a chance to pick up these books and I've been a huge valiant fan from Get Go from the 1990s. So I was really excited to find out that, you know, there was a relaunch and there was a whole bunch of books out there and I hadn't had the opportunity to go back and read a lot out of back issues. So I was able to pick up a couple of lots where it starts off with the number ones or number zeros, I guess, and, you know, it's a few, it's a nice little run. So I'm going to do some readings of those, right? So all in all, 275 books we're going to take a look at right now and they cost about, you know, a little bit less than two bucks per unit including shipping, which is, for me, it was a great deal, right? And the way these things were listed on eBay was they were buy it now option with make me an offer option put in there as well. So I basically went through and just to make, you know, let this guy know that I was serious about buying these books. I didn't make an offer one at a time. I, you know, took a look at his collection and took a look at exactly what I wanted to buy and went through and sent in the offers one after another and he ended up basically accepting all of my offers except one and he made a counter offer, but he did end up accepting all the offers and there's a huge chunk of money for me. So I didn't accept this counter offer, right? And, you know, you can't get everything that you want. I actually ended up getting more than what I thought I was going to get. So, you know, I've hit my budget for the next few weeks, right, with this collection or the next few months with this collection, which I'm really happy with and what I'm going to do right now is go through the collection and I do need to go through the collection so that I can leave a, you know, feedback for this person and I took a quick look, you know, cracked open the first box when I arrived and I took a really quick look at it and it looks like a beautiful, beautiful bunch of comics exactly as the person described and I sort of realized that maybe it'd be nice to share this with you. So what we're going to do right now is go through both these boxes and take a look at them and we're not going to look at everyone individually. We're not going to open them up, but what I am going to do is crack open just a handful at random just to make sure it's as they were described and, you know, if five or 10 out of 275 are as the books were described in the auction that, you know, the odds are the rest of them are perfect as well. So after that, we can, you know, go back and leave a positive comment for this guy because I'm pretty sure he's, you know, if you're selling on eBay, you do wait to get a positive feedback because it's important to get positive feedbacks, right? So what we're going to do right now is go through these two boxes, okay?