lou_fine

I guess no real surprise here with all of the bidding action at the end for this classic L.B. Cole si-fi cover, as it finished up at $3,360 or pretty much 10X condition guide value by the time it was all said and done.

I think you will do just fine on your books Looks like @comicjack was correct and you did just fine as these 6 Blue Bolts finished up at $9,300 which probably meant no real deals to be had today, except possibly for the BB 106 which finished up at only $600. I thought that one with the si-fi cover would have ridden in on the coattails of the BB 105 with the classic si-fi cover which finished up at $3,360, but then maybe the bidders who had missed out on the 105 was keeping their powder dry for the later L.B. Cole horror cover issues.

Those figures will be left in the dust come auction close... check GPA for BB #105. A *1.0* would most likely sell for more than that. Looks like you was pretty much bang on as the Blue Bolt 105 finished up at $3,360 which is pretty much touching on 10X condition guide value.

Well, looks like it's currently going for $1,100 or $1,320 with the Heritage BP juice in there, as I had just posted on the Heritage thread here. Certainly best of luck to you on these L.B. Cole Blue Bolt books and will definitely be watching to see where they finish up at by the time it's all said and done.

Well, for the L.B. Cole enthusiasts and collectors out there, it looks like today's Heritage Auction has a good sampling of some of his classic cover artwork with 6 issues running from the classic Blue Bolt 105 cover through to Blue Bolt 115. Of course, I imagine there's absolutely no surprise here that the one leading the pack as of now would be this one here at a currrent hammer price of only $1,100: https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/blue-bolt-105-star-publications-1950-cgc-gd-vg-30-off-white-pages/a/122209-17244.s?ic4=ListView-ShortDescription-071515

Yup, looks like this books moved up quite a bit from when I was looking at it last night and probably still has a bit more to go before it's done. Definitely one of the tougher pre-Bat 'Tec books to track down, but if I remember correct, didn't former long time board member Win in his Windex Scarcity Index come up with 'Tec 9 as being the rarest of these pre-Bat 'Tec books for what it's worth. Can't remember where 'Tec 24 finished up at, but it appears that the CGC Census Population Report would confirm your opinion that 'Tec 24 is indeed the rarest of the lot with 'Tec 3 being very close behind.

After watching this video in its entirety, all I can say is these Pawn Stars guys really need to cough up some money to at least get a copy of the Overstreet Guide to get even a basic valuation on some of these books here, as they seem to know absolutely zippo when it comes to comic book valuations.

Boy, that's taking me all the way back to my first Overstreet Guide that I ever brought and the most ragtag copy I have. Especially since being the first copy and never knowing that comic books had any value prior to that time, I must have gone through that guide over and over again like a fine tooth comb. Anyways, looks like Overstreet was still using the long time 1:2:3 price spread for his Good/Fine/Mint condition levels back then, as he had his guide valuations set at $800/$1,600/$2,400 in OPG 7 before bumping them up to $1,000/$2,000/$3,000 for his OPG 8. Interesting to see that he had his "Prices Vary Widely on This Book" notation for Supes 1 back then, which I believe he also had in place for all of the other high doillar value key GA books at the time.

Definitely an understatement when it comes to trying to find a copy of this truly HTF book in the marketplace in any condition at all, let alone in decent shape. Looks like the highest graded Universal copy after all these years is still the Jon Berk Church copy which came in at a CGC 8.0 VF grade with the next highest graded copy being a mere CGC 4.0 VG copy. If you include the Restored or Conserved copies in your case here, it looks like your copy here would be the second highest non-Universal copy out there since there's also one other Restored copy listed in the CGC census at a grade of 8.0 with MP restoration. Personally, I feel this issue of Mystery Men is still a bit undervalued relative to some of the other early surrounding Mystery Men issues, especially since it festures the first Blue Beetle cover appearance. Not sure if we will ever see another copy of this issue surpass the Church 8.0 graded copy, especially since the Larson copy is listed as NM, but has a clipped coupon missing from the back cover.

Definitely best of the best with the next highest graded Universal copy coming in at only a mere CGC Fine 6.0 grade. With this Church copy coming in at a highest grade by a long shot at CGC 9.4, it almost makes me wonder if Fishler gave any thought to buying this copy for himself, especially since he was seemingly so intent on cornering the market on this book back in the day.

Which were both restored, I believe, which is probably why people were able to open it up and read it. Totally get your POV here, but just glad that Jon had a change of heart and decided to retrieve both of these crapola POS books from the recycle bin after they had finished thrashing their way through them. Especially since he was still able to sell them both for over $700K by the time it was all said and done.

Yes, except that from all of their ads in Overstreet, news reports like Scoop, Bleeding Cool,etc. and along with their own sales hype, they all like to point out their record breaking sales in order to encourage potential sellers to consign their books with them, as opposed to the competition. You certainly don't see Heritage trying to hide the stunning results from their Promise Collection or Black Cat auctions or CL from their record setting sales for the latest CGC highest graded copy of whatever book it is.

Then again, what's the fun in collecting comics if you can't get together with your fellow collector buddies and pass them around for perusing through: No Supes 1 in those pictures there, but you do have an Action 1, 'Tec 27, and also a Church copy of Fantastic 3 which ended up being graded as a CGC 9.4 graded copy that sold for some $243K a few years ago.

Yeah, but the strange thing is that many of the CC sales that are not being picked up by either GPA or GoCollect are their record setting stunning sales which would normally be ones that other dealers would most certainly like to see reported.

Well, let;s not forget about the CGC 9.8 graded copies of both TMNT 1 and the Hulk 181 which sold for what I believe are new record amounts. Looks like the TMNT 1 sold for $264K which was a bit higher than the $245K, $250K, and $230.56K which CC was able to get for their last 3 copies in September, October, and December respectively. The Hulk 181 for $98,400 was a big jump from the $84K that Heritage was able to get for their copy back in September and pretty much double what the book was selling for back about a year ago.

Now you've done it. He's probably on his way back to the Boards. Yeah, @Glassman10 is probably on his way back to the boards to let you know that his son's house which was paid in part with the AF 15 funds, has now gone up in value by $200K in the interim.

Unlike the Heritage customer based when it comes to their comic book auctions, I get the feeling that the Goldin customer base is much more likely to be your non-traditional long time comic book collectors. I was having dinner with my nephew-in-law who is a partner in an online line beauty products company with warehouses in the SF Bay area, Philly for the east coast, and HK for the Asian market. When he started talking about buying NFT's, he said that although he personally was rather tentative before buying some for himself at first, he was aware of friends who had spent millions on them. He mentioned that they were really part of what he called the Instagram and TikTok generation who were really more into acquiring digital assets, as opposed to old school physical assets. When I mentioned vintage collectible comic books to him and some of what we think are insane prices, he commented that would really be nothing more than pocket change to some of these guys as they pretty much live in a completely different world now from the "regular" people like you and me. Especially since many of them made millions being the first to enter the etherum marketplace and basically brought in for what would today be mere pennies on the dollar. He went on to comment that if any of these "new generation" multi-millionaires ever got a fancy to comic books if they ever come across their digital radar screen, he would not be surprised at all if they would simply throw record amounts of dollars in order to snap up some of these top end high dollar value books, which we as long time collectors see as being well beyond our pocketbooks.

It would have got you AlL of them ! I remember the good old days when a million dollars would pretty much buy you a mansion in the expensive West side of the city here. Nowadays, a million dollars wouldn't even allow you to buy a derelict teardown shack in the East side slums of the city here.

The story about the buyers fighting is way more interesting than the OO. Isn't the sordid and rather notorious back-story to the Green River pedigree books a lot more "interesting", although I imagine the Green River story would tend to paint a rather negative picture onto the books?

Well, from this cover image here, I guess old sly Recil was more of a "leg man" than anything else. To each their own, but I imagine this means that when Recil saunters up to the counter at the local KFC or Church's, he's much more into ordering a dark juicy thigh, as opposed to a dry white breast. On a more serious note though, from my own personal point of view, PL 16 is the all-time classic lingerie cover of the GA and should be on every GGA collector's list of books to acquire for their personal collection. I still remember Mark Wilson having a pristine copy of this book back in the day and he was asking something like $500 or $600 for it which was still over top of guide for the book at the time. Even though Mark swore to me up and down that he had not done anything at all to the book, I was still skeptical because of how nice the book was combined with Mark's well known reputation for "wet cleaning" all of his books no matter how nice they were to start off with. Ended up taking a hard pass on the book, but by the time I had changed my mind a couple of weeks later, he had already sold it to another collector by then.

Most definitely as both of the results for these 2 key books appears to be record setters here from what I am aware of. Metro was able to auction and/or private sale off 3 copies of the TMNT book in equivalent CGC 9.8 grade recently at price points of $245K, $250K, and then $230.56K in September, October, and December respectively. So, this Goldin copy at a price point of $264K is definitely continuing the trend upwards. Same with their copy of Hulk 181 being able to hit $98.4K which is a substantial bump up from the $84K that Heritage was able to received for their equivalent 9.8 graded copy back in September of 2021, and also pretty much double what the book was going for about a year.

I would certainly not expect any deductions to be taken off for either the Mile High codes or for the Larson name or numeric recall codes as they are generally not only unobtrusive, but books with these codes are actually preferred by most collectors as they serve to verify the pedigree authenticity of the book in question. But based upon both your extensive prior and current working experience with the 2 biggest grading companies, would this also apply for other pedigree books such as the Recil Macon's and the Cosmic Aeroplane's due to the much more extensive and rather obtrusive writing or notation done throughout these particular pedigree books? Just wondering since you do not see the books from these 2 pedigrees ever grade into the 9's and I was wondering if the writing/notation was once of the reasons for this, besides just the technical defects thst might be showing up on these books here. After all, like you just said, at some point you have to deduct for the writing. I guess the same thing with the so-called "camp copies" of the Okajima pedigree books because although these copies have so much more large and quite obtrusive writing on the covers as compared to just the regular non-camp Okajima books, yet they always sell for a lot more money than the regular Okajima books due to their much greater desirability. Just wondering how the writing on these "camp copies" would be treated from a certified grading point of view.

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Well, at times like these with the bear mauling its way through the equity stock markets, although we often hear the phrase that comic books are not real investments in the true sense of the word, all I can say is that most comic book collectors are probably pretty happy right about now that they are a bit diversified and do indeed have a portion of their retirement portfolio invested into the comic books. That is, unless they've got it all invested in the likes of recent hot to trot books like Eternals, MSH 13, SME 15, Spidey 361, etc. and other movie related hyped books brought at the top of market which have all taken a huge drop, similar in vein to some of the profitless former high flying tech stocks on the Nasdaq which have already cratered by some 60% to 80% from their recent all-time highs.

So, are you implying that the restored copy of 'Tec 27 will finish up miles ahead of the Bat 1 by the time it's all said and done?