More of the same as yesterday

To follow up on my posting yesterday I?ve had similar experiences with inflated prices with golden and silver age ?All Star Wastern? comics. It is dang near impossible to find high grade issues and I found myself haggling over a non CGC graded 6.5 copy of issue 108. It finally occurred to me that if the seller wanted to quibble over an already overpriced medium grade issue of a series few people care about then he could bloody well keep it. I need to remind myself that when I overpay for a comic I only regret it in the end. I found almost no CGC graded issues but I did find two on Comic Link. Issue 109 CGC 5.0 has an asking price of $100, price guide listed at $36.00 and issue 111 CGC graded 6.0 has an asking price of $100, price guide listed at $19.20.

Someone responded to my posting yesterday mentioning that the sellers generally expect at the very least to get the price of the comic plus the cost of getting the issue slabbed which sorta makes it silly to slab a comic priced at less than 20 bucks. In fact the price guide for a slabbed and unslabbed copy of issue 111 graded 6.0 is precisely the same. The funny thing is that ?Fine? is the highest graded CGC in existence so is it really possible that that is the finest copy of that issue on the planet? Unlikely. I have seen other slabbed issue of ?All Star Western? at some of the more obscure sites but they?re all way inflated. I?m a really frugal buyer so no deal.

So now I have a real challenge. Try and get a collection of higher graded ?All Star Western? without paying dramatically inflated prices. I guess what I?ll do is buy the best non-CGC graded issues I can find and any reasonable CGC graded comics I come across (non so far) and maybe if CGC ever comes to Cleveland I?ll bring in a stack for slabbing. There were a few ?All Star Western? issues on Comic Connect that I offered prices on but the dealer never responded so oh well.

I must confess that I do take some perverse pleasure in rejecting overpriced comics. There was an issue of ?All American Men of War? that was listed as NM- at a very reasonable price? if the comic really was NM- but looking at the image it just did not look NM- so I offered a price well below the asking price. The dealer responded with a price not that far off my offer and then quickly sent an email saying he/she would accept my next offer. At this point I was regretting even considering buying the comic and never responded. I can only imagine the dealer must have been kicking themselves for not accepting my initial offer. Likewise I have to wonder if the owner of ?All-Star Western? 108 is not now regretting rejecting my offer. I would put it another offer but it would be $10 less than my last offer and I don?t think Comic Connect allows that.