lou_fine

Reminds me a bit of the stock market whereby even at these near record highs, the supposedly high growth, but no profit and issue more stock to fund further growth types of companies have dropped back by anywhere from 50% to 80% off their recent all-time highs. And yet the older more established companies with huge profits and excess monies to buy back their own company stocks have clearly not experienced this same decline in their share price.

So other than the two most important facts, it was a great bit of reporting! Was just watching the news on TV and it's now been confirmed.......it was actually a sale of a raw copy of Jim Lee's X-Men 1 for 45 cents.

You can certainly say that again, as that's my book which you are looking at there. This copy here is worth much more than the other 10,600+ CGC 9.8 graded copies of this book that's already out there as it is the only known inverted cover production variant since CGC correctly slabbed it according to the interior pages of the book, but forgot to identify the variant cover on their label.

I guess it really depends on the books that you have in your Heritage watchlist. I somehow get the feeling that the 2 consignors of the CGC 9.8 graded copies of GSXM 1 are not sitting too happy right now with their books sitting at only bids of $18K and $19.5K respectively: https://comics.ha.com/itm/bronze-age-1970-1979-/giant-size-x-men-1-marvel-1975-cgc-nm-mt-98-white-pages/a/7266-91040.s?ic4=OtherResults-SampleItem-071515&tab=ArchiveSearchResults-012417 Especially even with Heritage hyping in their listing description the fact that they had sold an equivalent graded copy fof this book or over $70K back in the summer. Not surprising though that they did not bothered to mention the fact that subsequent equivalent CGC 9.8 graded copies of this book have sold on a declining trend line of $66K, $49.2K, $43.2K, and then just for $38.4K on their own auction platform since that record $72K sale.

This was the most important part of that whole thing. Because yes, yes I would. Now, now, now............I am sure your better half would not want you having to perform the onerous task and suffering through the humuliation and sheer indiginity of having to tuck Reese into bed every night and also having to serve her breakfast in bed every morning.

Wouldn't this pretty much account for the majority of the MA books from the past 20 years that have been sent into CGC for grading and also pretty much their bread and butter as they need submittors to continue sending in worthless books for grading in order for their business model to work.

I would think that there is a CGC desk at Blackstone that is in at least daily contact with a counterpoint at CGC. These guys don't lay out hundreds of millions to acquire companies and then sit back and wait for the company's quarterly reports. You really can't be serious here if you think the financial behemoth that is Blackstone is concerned one little iota about the daily ongoings that's taking place at the financial gnat that is CGC. Although comic book collectors like you, me, and more in particular, the speculators and some of the boardies here may think that CGC is the end all and be all in the comic book marketplace, I don't believe for a second that the powers that be at Blackstone like the whale it is wouldn't have much bigger fish to fry than to worry about the fish that is CCG, let along the minnow that is CGC. Especially when you consider the fact that the Blackstone Group did not pay $500M for CGC, but rather for the parent CCG corporation with its umbrella of 8 or 9 companies, of which CGC and CCS makes up only two of them. Even more to the point, as @Timely himself has stated here in the past before, even the prior original ownership group at CCG barely gave a passing thought to CGC since the overwhelming business and personal interests that they had was much more with the coin side of their operations. So, if the prior ownership group paid little attention to the small, but probably noticeable CGC slice of the overall CCG pie, I very much highly doubt that the Blackstone powers that be would pay much attention to the probably insignificant CGC portion of the barely noticeable CCG slice of the overall Blackstone pie. After all, even if CGC accounted for $100M out of the $500M price tag which Blackstone had paid for the acquisition, this still amounts to a barely imperceptible 0.07 of 1% of the market cap value of $150B (i.e. Billion) for the Blackstone Group. CGC is probably like the tiny little crumb that flaked off the other 99.93% remaining portion of the big Blackstone pie. Now personally speaking, if I was Blackstone, I would much rather be in daily contact with Reese Witherspoon herself every morning to check out how the acquisition of her Hello Sunshine production company for almost a full $1B (or pretty much double the value of the CCG acquisition) was doing.

Well, I just started to take a look at this upcoming auction and didn't get very far at all as this little beauty here is right after the Rocket copy: https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/adventure-comics-73-rockford-pedigree-dc-1942-cgc-nm-92-off-white-pages/a/7266-91031.s?ic4=ListView-ShortDescription-071515 Never could understand why this book has not fared as well in the marketplace as the other four books (i.e. 'Tec 31, Punch 12, All-American 61, & Supes 14) which I had listed in my Top 5 GA covers back in the 90's for a CBM survey have all shot up in valuation like there's no tomorrow. Definitely not so much and seemingly nada for the Adventure 73 as even the other classic Manhunter cover from Adventure 79 has fared much better from a relative valuation increase point of view. Have always loved this cover ever since I saw a stunning HG copy of this book during the Diamond Int'l Galleries grand opening as the artistic perspective just makes it appear 3-D with the Manhunter seemingly stepping right out from the cover to grab you. Haven't gotten to the Batman 'Tec's yet, but the current bidding on this highest graded copy here sure looks enticing at less than 25% of top of guide. Especially since this book here seems to be rather tough to find in grade with this copy here along with only one other being able to achieve this highest CGC 9.2 grade after all these years, with all other graded copies much further down the condition scale at CGC 8.0 or lower. Makes me wonder if in this current hotter than hot GA classic cover marketplace, whether this copy here will finally be able to top the roughly $26K price point that the other copy managed to fetched way back in 2006, only to see subsequent sales fall far far below this price point? I guess it's only a matter of a short few more days and we'll find out the answer to this question here.

Unless they made a mistake and thought the book had come from the Promise Collection when they was grading it.

Yikes, because if the centerfold is indeed missing, then this book should have received either the Green Qualified 4.0 label or the Blue 0.5 Incomplete label for the missing centerfold.

Sadly, I guess this goes to confirm the old saying that nice guys don't finish on top. Then again, I don't also think the the Fish ended up like Jay Maybruck, especially since Jay ended up more like Jordan Belfort of the comic book world minus the rather vivacious Margot Robbie.

I WAS indeed referring to Avengers 55 with the first full appearance of Ultron (of Avengers movie speculation hype) which even as a late SA book has pretty much dropped in half from its peak of some $5K in CGC 9.8 graded condition and hasn't yet seem to have found a bottom to consolidate on to this current point in time.

Hey Mike; So, what's the lowdown or latest on what you was able to find out from the powers that be on this little matter of interest here? Of course, since it's a Friday ight does this mean we now will have to wait until Monday when their offices are opened back up again? Or are their TAT's on responses to questions even slower than their TAT's on grading books and we should expect an answer from them some time in the New Year of 2023?

No surprise here, but have you checked with the boys across the street as rumours have it that their computer server and submission systems have been crashing and going down ever since this price increase announcement from CGC came out? Actually, looks like the price increases were much more muted this time (i.e. < 10%) and for once, they did not ask the serious vintage comic book collector to bend over and take it up their back end where the sun doesn't shine as they have done on the last two go rounds with their WalkThrough tier. If I remember correctly, on the increase a few years ago, didn't they raised the maximum cap price for grading a book from something like only $3,000 up to a rather egregious $5,000 and on the last increase from just several months ago, they went all out and removed this $5K max cap entirely. Especially since they could have done worse by raising their fee to 5% of Fair Market Value, but we better not give them any bright ideas here.

The problem that you have here is that you picked 4 books that have all had pretty big recent run ups in prices and which actually all have a pretty good chance of being down by 30% or even a whole lot more before the year is out. Based upon your purchasing criteria, like others have already stated here, Hulk 340 is clearly your safest bet here and I wouldn't even touch the other 3 books if you are truly worried about the bottom falling out of your books here.

Extremely sorry to hear about your loss and definitely not a fun way to go through the holidays or a happy start to the New Year. Hopefully, you also have some unique HTF books in there which would help to make it a whole lot easier to identify once the culprits attempt to sell them. Hopefully, you'll end up being as lucky as Randy Lawrence who was abe to get his Alfred Pennyworth Collection of Batman books back after they were stolen from his storage shed.

Yes, I still remember crouching next to Joe V. and watching him as he was going through his box of early Fox Allentown books. Then he notices me watching him and asks if I was a collector or a dealer. When I told him that I was a long term collector, he told me to go through the two piles and pull out one each of the Allentown Mystery Men and Wonderworld books of my own choosing and to simply take it and put them in my own pile of books to buy. I then also noticed him allowing another collector there to do the same thing after I had already selected my two books. Now, if it had been Fishler that had gotten hold of that box, I am quite sure that the conversation would have gone slightly differently. It probably would have gone something like this: Well, since we are all here together and being the nice dealer that I am, why don't you grab one of each of those Allentown Mystery Men and Wonderworld books and I'll forego my usual markup and you can have them for the discounted price of only $2K each (even though he had just gotten them for only $800 each from Geppi and Overstreet).

How sure are you about this because how are the prices doing now for former once red hot movie related hyped speculative books like Avengers 55 and more recently, books like Eternals 1 which have dropped by anywhere from 60% to 80% from its recent highs just a few months ago or even Marvel Super Heroes 13 as per a post which I had posted in another thread the other night:

Does it really even matter much on books that's gone sky high due to movie hype and speculation? Especially in many cases, by the time you send your copies in and get them back from the boys at CGC, the movie will be long gone and done by then, with the books having already done the almost full round trip back down in valuation to almost where it started from.

Blackstone owns the company and these books remain on the census. They own this. Unfortunate, because that squashes the hope a new owner would fix CGC's bad rep, not enable it. I very much highly doubt that the Blackstone Group is even much aware of the daily goings on with CGC, less alone its intricate business details. Especially since the company is valued at something approaching $150B while the enntire CCG deal was worth only a tiny miniscule fraction of that at only $500M, with the overwhelming majority of that value apparently coming from the coin side of the business.

Until I can find some real lucky buyer who's happy and willing to pay even more than that for one of my CA common as dirt drek books.

Sad to say, but really nothing more than incestuous conflict of interest in play here for all to see which was what we all expected anyways when CCG first brought out Classics Incorporated and took it under their umbrella in the form of CCS. So much for Borock's original contention back in the day that books with defects caused by improper pressing would be downgraded accordingly. Looks like we've now reached the other side of the pendulum that books are now being downgraded if they don't show any signs of additional revenue pressing work being done on them. This is regardless if it's in the form of post-production pressing damage such as this copy of Avengers 8 here, with badly spinal damaged books like this which are now pretty much being given a free pass in fear of losing future revenues going forward.

There's a reason for his nickname. I know you won't get that, but I'm sure others are laughing reading this. Are you referring to The Forgotten One who all of us here had forgotten about a long long time ago.

I had absolutely NO idea that there were so few Allentown books. Indeed, the smallest pedigree with a grand total of only 135 books in there, but ohhhh my my.............what a set of books in terms of both the book titles within the collection and their condition quality. Definitely more serious GA collectors out there than the actual number of books within the collection itself, and not enough to go around even with a limit of only one per collector. I still remember being at the Diamond Int'l Galleries grand opening back in '95, with the boxes of books being carted out from the Diamond vault on a Saturday morning. Joe Verenault was the lucky and generous dealer who got the box with the early Fox books which had all the Allentown copies of the early Mystery Men and Wonderworld run. All I can say is that if it was Fishler and his East Coast triumvirate that had gotten a hold of that box, they would have kept all of the books for themselves and charged collectors multiples of what they would have just paid for them. If I remember correctly, for the Allentown copies of these early Fox Mystery Man and Wonderworld books which have come back into the marketplace, virtually all of them save for only two or three of them have come back in either higher or at least equivalent grade when compared to the same Church issues that have come into the marketplace over the years.

Not necessarily always the case, with the perfect example being this one time drekiest of drek books: the money that is, as I would certainly take $44K over that all-time classic drek of a book there.