lou_fine

Better not let my better half hear you saying that since she's a big fan of Anita Mui. Isn't Anita more famous for being a singer than being a movie/TV star, and if so, I much prefer Teresa Teng who rose from poverty to Asian fame with her magical angelic singing voice before her untimely death.

CCG now employs more than 500 people at its Sarasota headquarters and over 600 people globally. With many new openings at the start of 2022, CCG is once again offering a sign-on bonus: $1,500 for all new employees who start by June 30, 2022. Clearly this is NOT the answer to the question which was asked, as they were asking about just CGC by itself, not the entire CCG parent conglomerate. The job posting is for CCG which is the Certified Collectibles Group and the parent company which has something like 8 or 9 subsidary companies under its umbrella, of which the CGC comics operations side is just one of them and clearly only a small portion at that. As has been stated before, the coin side of their operations is the largest and most significant part of their business and as we have been told here, the comics side was really nothing more than a passing afterthought to the previous owners. Of course, we as comic book collectors think that CGC and CCS is everything, but that is clearly NOT the reality here. This is why I find it rather funny when so many boardies here keep saying that Blackstone had paid $500M to acquire CGC, when that was clearly not the case as CGC was not even brought up in any of the official announcements.

Unfortunately, I would have to agree with you 110% that taking countless months to put some of our books through CCS is indeed like horsie or doggie poop in terms of the TAT's they are providing to their customers, although it is clearly an invaluable service which they are providing to us.

Well, if you think that way then it must be a double or triple ugh nowadays, because I believe that was done around the time when restoration was seen as adding value to a book, similar to how almost everybody nowdays see the current artifical manipulation being done to books are seen as adding value to them. Just a more subtle form of old school hidden and undisclosed restoration that has now been fully institutionalized into the hobby, and as Matt Nelson has stated, allows everybody to play on the same level playing field. And to top it off, change the undisclosed grading standards ever so slightly to target and punish books more heavily if they don't pay up to participate in this manipulative practice here. Clearly evident through the now apparent 10+ months to get a MA book through CCS, and no doubt a business model that was already laid out when the CCG ownership first came into hobby and then solidified with their associated partners.

Well, at least that writing on the Pay Copy has a whole lot more significant historical value than this eyesore of a shopping list that's on the cover of whatever this book is that I can hardly even make out, although it does have a CGC 8.5 label on the slab:

No idea at all, but probably some astute submittor who found an ingenious way to cover up color touch on a book and increase its value by avoiding the much dreaded PLOD label.

Don't you miss the good old days when he used to sign all of his books for free with his classic McFarlance signature using his silver sprinkly pen? I remember getting one of my Spidey 300's signed by him as he used to live here when he was doing his Spidey books and would show up at the local cons. With the Signature Series in place though, I guess CGC would consider this to be a defect or Qualified book and downgrade it accordingly, because they didn't end up making any money from the book. And yet, if they are there to verify it and make their money, it's all good even though the signature might end up looking more like a shopping list as opposed to a true signature:

Yes indeed, as I have always loved the colors on the cover of Science 1, especially when it comes to this particular shade of blue.

Isn't this the copy that Parrino ended up taking a big bath on after completely overpaying for it when he picked it up from Geppi through a deal negotiated on Geppi's behalf by John Snyder who was head of Diamond Int'l Galleries at the time?

I would tend to agree with you on this point here as the results of an auction, especially for something like this which really has no prior history, often depends on luck and timing in terms of getting the right set of eyeballs on the lot when it comes to auction. Not sure who the bidder(s) were in the end, but who's to say that it's not possible that if this piece of OA did not come to market in this particular auction here, the same bidder(s) might not be participating and it just might have sold for only around the $270K private offer. Especially in this case here where there is really nothing particularly outstanding about the rather pedistrian artwork or any real significance to the page since it's nowhere close to being the first appearance of Spidey's black costume.

Same here..........................did Heritage let you know when the books would be scheduled for auction?

Yes, I've always loved the pre-hero DC books since that was my first foray into vintage collectible comic books when I decided to expand my collecting horizons beyond buying books off the shelves of the LCS's back in the latter part of the 80's. Unfortunately, I was never able to get more than a very small handful of them because they were just so tough to find, and with my limited budget allocated for vintage comic books at the time, as most others probably also have done, shifted over to the regular GA which were a lot easier to acquire. From your post here, I assume you must be referring to both of these New Adventures which sold in the Heritage Auction last week: Yes, looks like both of these copies here sold at pretty strong prices of $4,800 and $4,560 respectively, although they both do present nicely relative to their assigned grades. Very tough to beat these outstanding Flessel pre-hero covers and the reason why I just couldn't resist picking up a low-grade raw copy of the New Adventure 30 for about $500 when I came across one at a local comic con a few years ago, especially since I've always loved this partocular cover.

There's not a snowball's chance in hell that they would be able to sell the book at this price, as didn't we see the same listing back about a year ago? Now, if they took one of the zero's out from the right hand side, they would stand a much better chance of selling this book. I guess I must be showing my age here, but I know exactly how Clark feels here as I would have felt like putting a fork in my eye before I'd pay this amount for the book, even if there had been two zero's taken out from the right hand side of this amount at the time.

Not sure if I am remembering this correctly or not, but didn't Bechara already benefited from it decades ago by having it successfully unrestored?

Never mind as it look like I got the answer to my above question right here: https://www.ebay.com/itm/324596257762?hash=item4b9371d3e2:g:ZrkAAOSwG8dgofbf Love the high res quality of the photo here, especially since he's asking a piddly $105K for this copy of Famous Funnies 214 here.

I was thinking that it might have had something to do with how well the equity stock markets had performed since that short but very steep steep drop the markets had taken when they first heard about the Coronavirus back in February and March of 2020. Since that initial scare until the past few months it was relatively easy to make fast money in the equity markets and also in the crypto currencies, and I figured some of the money going into collectibles were coming from speculators and day traders who were able to cash in on some of this rapid rise in the markets and deploy it into collectibles. Of course, as we all know, the equity markets have taken a severe spanking over the past few months even though this might not be that evident with the indicies still near record highs as they were being buoyed by mostly the big boys who have fallen to a much lesser extent. Especially when you take a look at some of the biggest growth winners during the pandemic and many of their stock prices are actually down anywhere from 50% to 80% from their recent highs. Hence, my thinking is that with substantially less easy money out there (and in fact a whole ton of losses) there would be less money to put into the comic books and other collectibles going forward. On the other hand, for the investors who were wise enough to see this big drop coming as all of the talking heads on CNBC had been blowing off about it endlessly during the past few months, and had cashed out in time they just might have a lot of excess cash on hand. In this case then, some of them might just want to deploy their money into vintage collectible comic books or other collectibles instead of back into the equity markets which seems to be embarking into a very volatile and relatively risky time period in the short term.

Haven't we had enough talk to last a lifetime about the grading of the Promise Collection pedigree books here already?

If it is and as we all know it's only going to be a matter of time before this happens, then does this mean that all of the Marvel zombies and Spidey fanatics like @Jaydogrules will have a coronary on the spot.

Well, if that's the case, then I guess the lot with the Cap's must have come to $30K once you add in the 25% BP juice. I certainly hope the bidders took a close look at the books because that works out to $5K for each one of them.

Clearly the auction probably knew exactly what they was doing. Give the same lowball estimate on only $50 - $300 for all of the lots in order to draw in the so-called know-it-all bidders who will then go on to bid $24K for a lot of these 6 Cap books: Capt. America No.27,33,11,42,39,37 Note damage on 37 and 39 all are as is Raw to the point of even clearly stating that 2 of the booksare damaged and all SOLD AS IS, which basically means all of the risk is on you then.

Well, I was working on the assumption that he would be able to transfer some of his stellar grading skills over to the comic books side even though vintage comic books is a slightly different animal as compared to comic book magazines. Of course, on a much more selfish note, since I was thinking of finally having a few of my vintage collectible comic graded and slabbed, I would feel a lot more confident if there was somebody over there that was fully competent and consistent in terms of grading books. From some of the graded books which I have seen here and from speaking privately to some of the regular submittors who now seem to be backing away from grading their books due to the seeming increased inconsistency, I guess it's going to continue to be nada for me. Especially when some of them are saying it's getting to be almost like a dartboard with CGC right now. Then again, since the quality, accurate, and consistent grading might just be on the comic magazine side right now, maybe I should consider sending in some of my mags, especially with recent results like this one here: https://comics.ha.com/itm/magazines/savage-tales-1-marvel-1971-cgc-nm-mt-98-white-pages/a/7248-95131.s?ic4=ListView-ShortDescription-071515 Sold for a rather stunning $37,200 which means that my HG copy should finally be worth slabbing even though I certainly wouldn't expect it to grade this high. Unlike the seeming dumpster fire in terms of grading inconsistency with the comic books, it sounds as though the chances of getting an more accurate and consistent grade is with the mags right now which is really all you can ask for when you pay good money to have a book graded.

as someone who recently picked one up to pair with my AF15, I'm hoping immediately ..But in all seriousness, if $40k at the moment barely gets you in the door for a low grade AF15, but it can still get you a really clean 6-7.0 ASM 1, I can see more and more people jumping to an ASM 1 instead. The way that I see it is that everything tends to move in cycles when it comes to comic book valuations. We've clearly seen this played out recently in terms of this book here with AF 15 taking off like a into the stratosphere from late 2016 through to somewhere in 2018 or thereabouts. After that, it sat pretty much quiet that a lot of Spidey collectors were worried that it was falling behind all of the other Marvel SA keys, and take a look at what it's done in the past year or so with a further ride pushing it even further up into the stratosphere.

Yep, that's the way that I keep it simple in my head...................70's is BA and 80's is the CA and the 90's onwards is pretty much worthless drek (with the odd exception) from a vintage collecting point of view.

Sounds as though you are saying that prices for vintage collectible comic books will either be plateauing or falling from current levels going forward, and if so, what is your rationale for this?

Oh heck, I wish I was living in the U.S.A. when it comes to step-up capital gains and estate taxes with an exemption of almost $12M per person, as it's nothing but a huge huge loophole for not only the wealthy, but also the regular common people. Instead, I live in a country where our great leader boasts that unlike America where the poor unfortunate citizens are subject to estate taxes upon death, we have zero estate taxes when we die. Of course, what he forgets to tell everybody is that the reason why we don't have any estate taxes is that upon your death, you probably have nothing left because you are deemed to have disposed of every single thing that you owned and hence you are fully liable to pay the capital gains taxes owing on your deemed dispositions, without a single dollar of exemption being allowed.