Hot take: my comic shop guy in Portland talked me out of buying a slabbed ASM #300
He handed me a raw copy for $180 instead and told me to actually read it, which felt weird since I only collect graded books. Now I keep cracking open that issue on my lunch break instead of staring at a plastic case. Anyone else flip from slab hunting to reader copies after a shop talk like that?
That line about "told me to actually read it" hits home. My buddy Dave had almost the same thing happen at a shop in Chicago last year, guy talked him down from a CGC 9.4 copy of Batman #251 and sold him a beat up raw one for like sixty bucks. He was mad about it for a week, then he started keeping it in his backpack and pulling it out at bars to show people the Joker cover. Now he says reading it on the train is better than any grade on a label.