lou_fine

Make sure you judiciously color over and cover up all of the parts that have color touch on the books when you do this.

I strongly believe that neither Bezos nor Musk would like the fact that you are calling each of them "suckers".

Yes, isn't it simply amazing how fast the thrill bidders are hitting that big BID button nowadays.

I believe that's also exactly what the doll collectors were saying about the comic book nerds until they found the Heritage, CC, & CL auction websites.

It was a good 8 min waste of my life If you had watched his longer video, you could have heard the part where he said that the Batman 1 in CGC 9.4 would now be worth $6.4M since Heritage had sold one last year for $2.2M? Well okay, I do believe he was reading the CGC 9.4 valuation amount of $6.4M from the GoCollect website for this one here.

You’re rich Most definitely as it sounds like somebody's got over $100K right there and well on your way to a cool million if you count some of your other 90's drek books which are now also apparently worth an absolute fortune if in grade and you can time the market exactly right.

Most certainly don't depending on the price point you are hoping for. But if you are hoping to sell a copy of Jim Lee's X-men 1 for $100 which was what we were talking about, then it most likely would have to be graded and possibly somewhere in the CGC 9.6 to 9.8 grade range, if you are even lucky enough to find an uber HG copy in the $1 BIN fodder box after all these years.

What's the odds of you being able to pick out a 9.8 condition quality book from the $1 BIN fodder that's been sitting in those boxes for years (if not decades), as opposed to getting it in your typical money losing condition quality? You must have a LOT of free time on your hands if you have the time to ship overprinted drek books to CGC for grading 1,000 times hoping against hope for a CGC 9.8 grade so that you can list them 1,000 times hoping to make say $10 or $20 on average for each book by the time you factor in your money losing books.

Well, since it sounds like you really enjoyed his little talk on the sale of the Church copy of Action Comics 1 for a mere $4.5M, $4.6M, $4.5M, then it's your lucky day as you can enjoy this extended 26+ minute version of his talk on the Top 10 GA comic books:

This is the same as saying you'll take Spidey 300, Hulk 181, TMNT 1, or whatever since it's always easy to invest retroactively. Yet, in reality, you could just as simply say how many shares of Nortel, Enron, or Bre-X for the big loss.

Although I would agree with you that condition collectors back in the 90's would have the winners which you listed in HG condition, but for the hoarder collectors back then, how many worthless losers in multiple bulk would you have spent your money on, with virtually no chance of getting your money back after factoring in all of the necessary expense to hopefully be able to sell them.

You most certainly can and I would agree with you 110% that you can certainly make $20 or possibly even more on one of these books if you luck out and the grade comes in at the necessary CGC 9.8 condition level. The only problem is what happens when it comes to the copies that don't make the grade and are actually in CGC 9.4 or lower grades. I believe it's also easier to make money on a true vintage collectible comic book where the book has underlying value in all grades across the entire condition spectrum, as opposed to trying to make money on relatively "common as dirt" early 90's drek related books where the only value is in certified uber HG copies and anything below that is veirtually worthless. To each their own.............but as I have said here before in the past: In today's hyper red hot marketplace, it's a whole lot easier to sell one $10,000 book, as opposed to trying to sell a thousand $10 books.

Just a quick question here.................are you giving us a theoretical mathematical example here only or did you ACTUALLY sell all of your 51 copies of X-Men 1 with every single one of them grading out at CGC 9.8 and actually banked a profit of $3,500 on your X-Men 1? Just looking at your stated profit of $70 per book makes it kind of hard to believe when I look at your numbers here. Especially since it looks like the minimal grading fee would be $22 per book and at least another $13 to pay for both eBay and PayPal fees if you managed to sell the book for $100, even before taxes and all of your other ancillary slabbing and selling fees. As mentioned already, the other critical key is that I find it rather hard to believe that every single one of your 51 copies of X-Men 1 came back in CGC 9.8 graded condition or is this only a theoretical assumption on your part, especially given the following: Because if this is just a theoretical assumption on your part only, you would also have to add in another $15 at a minimum for pressing in the hopes that you just might be able to get it into shooting range of a CGC 9.8 graded copy, if you are lucky.

Now, this is exactly what I meant by additional ancillary costs involved to get a book slabbed and sold that most tend to forget to include, but was too lazy to list out myself:

As another boardie had posted on the other thread here in Comics General, this move not surprisingly looks to be another huge cash grab by CGC: Especially since you have to have a PAID MEMBERSHIP in order to access these free Graders Notes which will no longer be for sale on an individual basis. If I remember correctly, I believe I've paid no more than $20 so far after some 20 odd years for Graders Notes and now they want me to pay $25 per year to access these so-called free notes. I wonder how many other boardies and collectors in general are in this same situation. Any bets that this $25 initial membership offer is just to draw you into the big hungry jaws of this money beast and before you know it, the annual fees will be rising up substantially.

You should note that "rusty staples" have very negative connotations for a comic book and hence tends to drive down the price quite a bit. Like the positive term "maximization of potential" is being used for the negative sounding "pressing", the term "wear staple" is now being used in place of the nasty sounding "rusty staple".

To tell you the honest truth here, I am actually kind of shock that you made enough moolah to pay for a couple years of college tuition fees (even if prior to inflation) from these early 90's way overprinted comic book titles. Especially after factoring in the cost for grading and selling fees along with all of the other ancillary costs to sell a book. Now, if it was from an earlier time period like GA, SA, or even a couple of the HG keys from the BA, then I could definitely see that happening.

Being in an over-sized magazine holder I assume would also be the reason why this pedigree book does not come with one of those new gold pedigree labels?

That’s what I meant to refer to. Besides the anonymity part on the buyers end, we literally got no details regarding a sales price. But as you said, we at least have a price that this Action #1 supposedly sold for. Not sure what the two of you are talking about here with respect to no details being provided for this monster of a sale. Especially when this misinformed bozo informed dealer in his excitement is providing us with a full 9 minutes and 38 seconds of his pearls of wisdom on this particular sale here:

Here are the grader notes for the Slab, does note "Wear Staple" like you mention, but no rust. Sounds as though you guys aren't up-to-date with respect to the CGC lingo or positive spin on negative defects. Just like "maximization of potential" was and still is CGC's terminology for pressing, "wear staple" is now their new terminology for rusty staple.

GSX1 is a very common book that just happened to get caught up in the craziness of those could not afford an X-MEN 1 - .. yes the top tier graded copies remain solid but with so-so-so many copies in lower grades available this book like a lot of common bronze keys is highly influenced by even the slightest downward trends. Totally agree with both points highlighted here as absolutely no argument that even at these "lowered prices from the peak, they are still substantially higher than what they were selling for back in 2019. The only question is when does such a common book like GSXM 1 (even in CGC 9.8 uber HG) stop falling and start to consolidate because this latest continuing downward sale at $37K still represents a percentage drop of over 48% from its peak of $72K back in June of this year?

I guess another perfect example right now would be the so-called variant edition of Ultimate Fallout 4 in CGC 9.8 where it's apparently going for over $30K. Just imagine 2 years from now when the current Spidey movie is long gone and CGC digs themselves out of the dump of books they have stored up to the rafters for grading in their new expanded 100,000+ square foot facility. How many more copies of this readily available and easily found variant will they have over and above the current 275 CGC 9.8 graded copies which they already have slabbed in CGC 9.8?

Really nothing to see here and totally expected, as isn't this the usual pricing scenario for highly hyped and readily availalble movie or TV related comic books. Take a look at the Captain Marvel movie which was a big success relative to its initial expectations, and yet MSH 13 which used to sell for multiples of guide during the speculative driven hype now can be picked up at a discount to OPG condition guide. Still should be alright for the Eternals buyers who brought early as hopefully they won't fall all the way back into the quarter box or dollar box by the time it's all said and done.

Well, don't seem to see the same price increases on Adventure 48 or 61 with the first appearances of Hourman and Starman respectively, although I guess the prices on those two books are already pretty much in nosebleed territory relative to the popularity of their characters.

I actually didn't mind the Billy Zane Phantom movie as much as it was panned and laughed at by most other moviegoers, but then maybe that's just me.