lou_fine

Congrats on your Police Comics pickup, but I thought you already had the "in" with Pat to acquire some of the Chinatown pedigree Police Comics from him? Then again, I guess the more, the merrier and you can never get quite enough when it comes to picking up copies of pedigree comic books.

Although the market selloff from last Friday could be directly attributable to the Omicron variant, it would appear that the severe downdraft in the markets for this past week also had some other economic and geo-politcal factors in play, along with the overbearing pervasiveness of computer algos to accentuate the wild swings in the markets. Perfect case in point being Wednesday when the markets and the Dow was riding a big +500 high during morning session before both Jay Powell and Janet Yellen started to talk about retiring the word "transitory" when it came to inflation and alluded to the possibility of speeding things up when it came to the tapering process and raising of interest rates. Needless to say, this resulted in an almost immeditate 1,000 point swing in the Dow to a big -500 low along with a similar hit to the other associated markets. Fast forward to today where the markets was on the plus side in the pre-market and at the opening before coming to an immediate stop and a jump over the edge of the cliff once the rather somewhat pathetic jobs number came out for the month of November. No doubt the last push came as they cryto markets also collasped and Didi finally announced that they would be delisting from the NYSE which took down every single stock that had even a hint of China to them. As for how any new variant might affect the funny books going forward, haven't we already seen this played out during the past year and a half in terms of rather insane scorching red hot record setting prices in all of the various collectibles marketplaces, including the one in which our very own funny books reside in.

Actually, on days like last Friday and pretty much all of this week, I guess comic book collectors can thank their lucky stars they can still have a big smile when looking at their private collection, as opposed to crying when looking at their stock equities portfolio. Especially in the case of those long term collectors on the boards here who were lucky enough to have brought into these books as part of their collecting hobby and not as a speculative purchase way back in the day, and now decades later, their collections can now hopefully add up to a nice small but steady secured portion of their retirement portfolio, as opposed to the sometimes much more volatile stock equities portion of their retirement nest egg.

On this TMNT 1 thread here, you've most likely got more potential sellers than potential buyers when it come to this particular book here.

Well, I would most certainly hope so and I guess one of the main reasons besides sheer lazyness and procrastination that I still haven't even bothered to tried to look for my copies of the book yet.

Not necessary and more like congrats if the seller had paid only cover price less the usual discount for the book at the time it first came out. Especially if they were like most other collectors at the time of the book's release, and picking up mulitple copies of the book.

That's Bronze not Copper, but your point still stands. I was in the market for that book myself and, looking back, could have had much better timing in my purchase. I clearly underestimated the supply of 9.6 copies of this book, because the market was flooded with them right after I bought mine. I guess the point to note here is that when it comes to relatively easy to find books in grade, the supply is actually much greater than the demand from a true collector's point of view. With these media related movie and TV speculated hyped books, it is only for a short transitory period of time (usually during the movie announcement and the release of the trailers) that the speculative demand is greater than the supply of books out there. Of course, we all know what happens once the speculative demand time period is over because there was never any real intention by these speculators to hold onto these books for any length of time. Of course it's always a case of to each their own, but as a long term comic book collector, I would much rather be interested in buying books which is more about spending time in the market, as opposed to books which are really geared more towards trying to time the market.

Have you checked the prices for Marvel Super-Heroes 13 with the first appearance of Carol Danvers, with their prices dropping by well more than half from their peak at huge premiums or even multiples of condition guide prior to the release of the Captain Marvel movie. In the recent Heritage Auction this past Monday, it looks like they sold a CGC 7.0 graded copy at something like only 40% to condition guide.

Simply amazing that you guys are able to keep track of these books here. Slightly different from his MO with the Jon Berk books where virtually all of the ones they had listed on the WW website were encased in higher graded slabs.

I seem to remember that being part of the story, but I only read a bit of it here... haven't heard a first hand telling of whether that was reasonably true or not. If it is and he's held on to the books all these years with no intent to sell ever, I don't think he'd have had any reasons to have resto work done on any of them. Sure hope not anyway. Well, if the part about garbage cans in an alley are indeed true, then the books probably went through a good scrubbing and cleaning job.

If I remember correctly, wasn't there something about garbage cans and an alley. Needless to say, I've walked down enough alleys in my city and never ever once found anything of value worth taking back home with me.

Yes, according to the CGCdata.com website, it would appear that the first Bonanza FC 1110 to be graded as a CGC 9.0 copy was back in the first half of 2003 and the second copy was graded in the first half of 2011, with no other equivalent or higher graded copy slabbed after that time period. To each their own, but personally I would much rather have the first Bonanza over the first Rawhide since it ran for a much longer time period, both in terms of its TV series (which can still be seen in reruns to this day) and also its comic book run. I can clearly remember the Bonanza TV series which is something that I certainly cannot say about the Rawhide TV series. And to top it off, the CGC Census Population Report shows that the first Bonanza issue is a much tougher book to find, especially in grade. From a dollar valuation point of view, don't think it really means that much, but Overstreet has the top of guide for the first Bonanza set at $750 while his top of guide for the first Rawhide is slighty lower at only $550. So, I guess we will simply have to wait and see what a true HG copy of FC 1110 would fetch in today's hyper inflated marketplace, if we are lucky enough to have one come into the marketplace after all these long years.

Based upon posts on these very boards here, I can think of only 2 or possibly 3 of these Promise Collection books trying to make their way back into the marketplace. And needless to say and not surprisingly, not with any kind of profit once you factor in the fees involved. BTW: Is anybody here aware of any that has come back with higher grades than the original grades which were assigned to them when auctioned off by Heritage? This is so very much unlike the Jon Berk Collection whereby you saw so many books being encased in new slabs with higher grades and being resold in the marketplace, mere weeks after they were auctioned off through the CC auction platform. Definitely food for thought as it certainly makes you wonder what's actually going on behind the scenes with the overlapping ownership, especially in light of what we are reading with regards to the current Wata and Heritage controversy.

Yeah, tell me about it as doesn't it absolutely peeve you right off when bidders like Halperin get right in there and takes the books from reasonable dollar bid amounts right up to nutso crypto like bids. Perfect case in point being that raw silly goofy run of Desperado westerns from the Promise Collection that came up in this past Sunday's HA auction. When I saw this run of so-called raw NM Desperado's 2 - 7 on Saturday with all of them sitting at a reasonable bid point of $0 (except for 1 of them at something like $26), I thought there would be a reasonable chance for me to finally win one of these much ballyhooed Promise Collection books. Figured they wouldn't actually go for much more than that, considering the rather egregious $29 minimum BP juice along with another $100+ to get the living daylights squish squash out of the books so that they could hopefully come back from CGC in a HG slab. Figured that I would give it a shot, especially with the Desperado 3 and 8 since both of these were absent from Chuck's Mile High Catalog, with the others in the run being graded by Chuck as either VG or F. Got my hopes up as the Desperado 3 was sitting at $26 and the Desperado 8 was sitting at a still respectable and reasonable hammer price of $0 as their turn came up on the final bell. Go figure as those 2 books ended up at a totally insane $960 and $1,020 respectively, with the rest of the seemingly worthless run finishing up in the same ball park at price points somewhere between $840 and $1,050:

Speaking about Bonanza, rather kind of shocked that after some 20+ plus years of certification and the seemingly pervasiness when it comes to Dell File Copies, that the highest graded copy for Four Color 1110 or the first Bonanza would only be 2 CGC 9.0 graded copies, with both of these copies being graded more than 10 years ago: Especially since Bonanza was such a long running and popular TV western which stil shows up on reruns, that you figure collectors would have latched onto this book and kept it in nice condition right from the get go. After seeing how much the more readily available Rawhide books have gone for in terms of thousands of dollars, makes me kind of wonder what a HG copy of Bonanza 1 would be able to fetch in today's hyper inflated marketplace.

I remember my two bothers and I used to love watching Bonanza on Sunday nights and there were always fights with our two older sisters because they always wanted to watch that old boring Ben Casey show on the other channel instead. Definitely the good old fun days back then. I remember my father bringing home our first TV back in the early 60's and turing on the TV and the first show that popped up was an episode of Hopalong Cassidy. Clearly a ton of Westerns on the old boob tube back then and still loved to watch all of the old rerun epsiodes of the Rifeman a few years ago, as I definitely got a lot more out of the storylines on the second go round.

Any idea why these 2 rather sharp looking Files Copies (at least from the front cover scans) of yours graded out as only CGC 8.5 copies because they would certainly appear to have less visual defects than what we have been seeing with some of the clearly visual defect laden CGC 8.5 graded books coming out from the Promise Collection set of books?

Since you are speaking about the 1st issue of Rawhide, it should be noted that this copy here sold in the same auction for a more reasonable $4,080 (if you can call it that), as compared to the Rawhide FC 1269 for $6K: https://comics.ha.com/itm/silver-age-1956-1969-/western/four-color-1028-rawhide-dell-1959-cgc-nm-96-off-white-to-white-pages/a/122148-19459.s I guess that since it's not as HTF as the supposedly rarer (but actually not so rare ) FC 1269 probably tempered prices a bit, with 1 higher graded copy out there along with a total of 11 slabbed copies already out there graded in CGC 9.0 and higher.

Well, all I can say is that I certainly hope the winner of this Rawhide FC 1269 for $6K wasn't bidding on Heritage's incorrect description that it was the single highest graded copy at CGC 9.4 and a total of only 4 graded copies to date, with the next highest graded being a sole CGC 8.5 copy. Especially when in actual fact, the CGC Census Popualtion Report states there are actually 4 copies in CGC 9.4, with a total of 13 copies graded to date and 8 of them in CGC 8.5 and above. WTF!!! https://www.cgccomics.com/census/grades_standard.asp?title=Four+Color&issue=1269&publisher=Dell+Publishing&year=1962&issuedate=3-5/62

Yeah, nothing but a couple of old farts out there thinking back to the good old old days and battling it out by boasting about the size of their Depends. Now, come on...............they really need to get with it and be there with the younger in crowd and chase after bargain basement books like Transformers 1 for $44K or Ultimate Fallout 4 for $28.8K.

Well, based upon this past Sunday's Heritage Auction, I would have to say that either Westerns are starting to finally see their day in the sun which there is some evidence of, or there's at least a couple of big Clint Eastwwod collectors out there: https://comics.ha.com/itm/silver-age-1956-1969-/western/four-color-1269-rawhide-file-copy-dell-1962-cgc-nm-94-off-white-to-white-pages/a/122148-19471.s Sold for what I thought was a rather staggering $6,000 at least from my point of view, along with other almost similar 4-figure results for all of the other later Rawhide books in this past weekend's auction.

Nothing to see here..................just Halperin doing his thing and moving the book back into inventory storage for future use. , well, at least I hope it is, but then again, you just never ever know with these things sometimes.

Well, I was hoping with the current crypto-like sky high prices that we are seemingly seeing in today's marketplace, this would unlock some of these classic cover books from their long held private collections. Then again, I guess we won't really find out until well in to next year because that's apparently how long books are taking to be get back now that they have finally caught up. Seemingly caught up enough to the point that they've even issued a news release that they've now managed to open up all of their submitted books for storage in their expanded 100,000+ square foot holding cell facility with all books now stacked, ready, and awaiting grading and slabbing, hopefully without being damaged in the process.

To each their own, but I would much rather prefer the Suspense 8 myself because I think the dark black cover sets a much more mysterious and moodier image as compared to the bright red cover on the Startling Terror Tales 11. In addition, I also believe the Startling Terror Tales is based in part upon the Suspense 8 since it came out some 7 years later. But most important of all, I also believe that the Suspense 8 is a much tougher book to find as compared to the Startling Terror Tales 11, especially in grade.

Although I certainly do remember the copy of Mask 1 that @LearnedHand was referring to that sold at back in 2019, it indeed was really more the sheer number of low to mid-grade copies of Mask 1 that ended up on the CC and CL auction sites during the past few years that rather kind of suprised me. Especially when I had always thought Mask 1 was supposedly a book that simply didn't come to market that often. Seems like it was not only me, but also a couple of other esteemed boardies here that also had this same impression, as evident through their earlier posts as noted below: