lou_fine

Yeah, notice how much less traffic there are on the boards here in months like this when there are no major auctions on the go. The thing I can't quite figure out is why the 3 major auction houses all run there big auctions on the same month and then there seems to a long 2-month down period where not much is happening in terms of the big auctions. Would it actually be beet if they spread themselves out a bit and fill out some of these down times instead of trying to beat each other down in the same monthly time slots?

Yes. I bought his highest grade remaining silver age Marvel: raw graded 9.6 white pages that I would grade 9.2 white pages. Well, if it's his remaining ones, then hopefully he was astute enough to leave the best for the end (e.g. AF 15 and the other early keys or at least the later Silver Surfer issues from '68), especially in a rising market like what the SA Marvels have experienced during the past 3 decades. Hope you didn't missed the part that I have now highlighted in bold for you.

Not so much into the jungle girls since there are just so many of them and after awhile, they all tend to look pretty much the same to me. Now as for the retirement collection, that does pique my interest a bit. Did you see anything nice and priced reasonable enough that you decided to take a shot at them for your own collection or for future resale?

Isn't that the one where the non-comics dealer booths outnumbers the comic dealer booths by a ration of 20 to 1 or something like that. If that's the one, and since I am not interested in picking up any T-shirts, souvenir cups, or the likes, I guess that one there is also a no show for me then.

My copy, though mid-grade, has an identical defect - placement, length and severity. I wonder if it's an uncommonproduction flaw on some copies. 🤔 That's a definite production flaw as I noticed the exact same flaw in the exact same place, albeit it a tiny bit larger on my HG copy of Hulk 181. What's clearly more annoying though is the tiny crease which I noticed at the bottom right corner of the book upon closer inspection which I don't remember seeing before and one which is clearly NOT production related. Although everything else looks good to go, it still kind of me off now since I clearly must have over paid for the book at the time then.

It should be pointed out that nowhere in my post did I say that the standards were more lenient or softer back when CGC first started up in 2000. What I am saying is that their undisclosed standards have shifted or shall we say "devolved" over the years, and in my own personal POV, not necessarily in a good way. Clearly, their focus has shifted more towards money and tweaking their undisclosed grading standards to facilitate making money on the exact same book multiple times through various forms of resubmissions (i.e. CPR, resto removal, resto definition changes, new pedigrees and new labels, reholders, etc.) as opposed to be just being one and done. As copied from a post which I had made in another thread here on the GA boards earlier this morning: BTW: If given the choice, I would definitely prefer graded books with original labels over the ones with the more recent labels due to the simple fact that there was clearly a lot less manipulation of the books back then, whereas it's pretty much almost a necessaity for the submittor to at least do a pre-screen for pressing at a minumum in order to avoid their books getting hammered upon grading.

Now, a big thumbs up to you as this was the exact comic book panel that I was trying to find and I knew someone here would be able to do it. Makes me wonder if Lichtenstein had to pay anything to the original artist for "lifting" this artwork to create his own $165M Masterpiece. If I was the original artist for this comic strip panel, I would definitely be looking for some kind of adequate compensation here because like musicians and their music, this one would look pretty much undisputable in a court of law even to a person with absolutely no appreciation of art at all.

This isn't really true. A grade is simply a way to give a ballpark description of a book, while also giving it a rank relative to other books in terms of condition. Not everyone has the same preference of attributes or defects, so you try and take everything as a whole and put a grade on it. If I'm on the phone with you and tell you a book is NM or VF, you should be able to have a pretty good idea of what it looks like. And that's the whole point of a grade, not to assign different values to each technical flaw. Looks like you are clearly dating yourself here as I believe your definition of grading here is much more in line with what it was prior to CGC. Not that I disagree with it since I am also an old long time collector from the days of yore prior to CGC coming into place. I actually prefer it much more so than having a grading company decide that near invisible tiny NCB ticks and bends that can only be seen by holding the book up at a certain angle to the light should be moved to the top of their grading defect hit chart, while clearly visible pressing defects such as impacted or indented staples and the likes are now pretty much treated like production defects and to be discounted or minimized for grading purposes. Of course, we all know the reason for this and it only makes business sense not to have your undisclosed grading standards impede the insatiable hunger of your mother Corp. I remember sending in about a dozen GA books to be graded back when CGC first opened their doors as a sample test of their grading system and also just in time for the big Greg Manning Auction. The books looked nice and clearly they were graded much more in line with the traditional grading standards that were already in place prior to CGC as they all came in between CGC 9.2 and CGC 9.6. My bet is that if those exact same books were sent in today without any "maximizatioin of potential" being perfomed on them, and with Heritage arriving on the scene in 2002 and CGC's ever increasing focus on additional revenue generating defects, they would probably come back anywhere from grades ranging from CGC 8.0 through to CGC 9.2, if I am lucky. Especially since the "pancaked look", even those with the CCS generated visible defects, appears to be new visual repsentation of what a HG book should look like in today's grading environment.

Well, I simply just Googled up Chaz George Batman and this is what I got here: https://dccollectors.com/2018/10/20/spotlight-the-collection-of-chaz-george/ Also links to a few YouTube videos which I didn't bothered to click onto.

lol. That's one bridge too far! Now, now you guys...............................what's wrong with Roy's Masterprice artwork: Somebody must have really liked it enough to fork over $165M for it a few years ago, when they could have brought the OA for the comic book panel which it was copied from for a whole lot cheaper if it still existed.

Any idea how much that "trash bag" sculpture in the middle is worth? Thinking of going up and down my ally in the back and hoping to gather up tens of millions of dollars worth of these sculptures on garbage day. Hopefully, they worth a lot more if they have the authentic garbage smell to them and the ususal bugs and worms crawling out of them.

Oh, come on you guys...................isn't it more stylistic and colorful than this one here that sold for a whopping $43.8M back in 2013: After all these years and with Covid now firmly in place, makes me wonder how much more this one here would be worth now with the crazed crypto-like money out there nowadays.

To each their own, but I wouldn't pay even $60 to $80 for this piece of so-called artwork, let alone their estimate of $60M to $80M: Then again, I guess collectors in the fine art and abstract art world probably thinks we are just as crazy to pay the kind of prices that we do for our funny books like that Supes 1 which Vinnie is holding.

Hey Clark; Now, that's definitely a name that's a blast from the past in terms of Robert Rotor of the Pacific Coast pedigree fame. I remember his PCE ads in the CBG whereby he came up with his own grading and PQ scales for his books. Hope you were there early enough to have snapped up some of the beauties from his Pacific Coast Collection before the rest of the marketplace discovered what he really had there in terms of the pedigree designation that would eventually be attached to these books. Any idea whatever became of Rotor as I am quite sure he's no longer active in the comics marketplace anymore? I remember first talking to Rotor when I was down at one of the SD Con's back in the early to mid-90's. Asked him if I could look at one of his books and to my wife's astonishment, that was when he pulled out a pair of what looked like white surgical gloves to wear and then he very slowly and very carefully (almost like a live bomb that was ready to go off ) took the book out of the mylar to show me while still holding it in his gloved hands. After that, I remember walking over to Metro's table and asked Fishler if I could look at one of his books. Without missing a beat, Fishler simply picked up the book from his table and reached in to yank the book out of the mylar and then handed it to me to look at, all while he was still talking to me. Needless to say, my wife was totally shocked and couldn't stop laughing when I told her that Fishler's book was actually worth many times more than the book that Rotor had so carefully shown to me. As for the New Book of Comics 2, I guess that must have been during the heydays of CBG and long before they had the internet as even I had a subscription to their weekly newspaper back then in the 80's. If I remember correctly, it was something like 1987 and as I was flipping through the latest copy of the CBG which I had received in the mail, saw an ad by somebody named John Snyder with some apparently pretty good references (i.e Overstreet, Geppi, etc.) in there. Gave him a call and asked him about the HG copy of the first issue of Playboy which he had advertised for $1K only to find out that it was already gone. Moved further down and asked him about the NM/M set of Hawkman 1 - 10 that he had listed for $150, only to get the same response. Yep, snail mail like always and by the time I got my newspaper, anything worth buying would already be gone. It was then that I moved further down and saw the New Book of Comics 2 and remembered the article, "DC Before Superman", authored by Gary Carter in an earlier edition of the Overstreet Guide and one which I had read multiple times as I was fascinated and totally intrigued by these early and supposedly rare pre-hero books at the time. John told me that he would give me a break on the $850 price (or somewhere around there) that he had the book listed for and this would be a good deal since he was sure that Overstreet was going to bump the price up in his next edition of the guide due out the following month. I remember checking the next edition of the guide and it looks like John was good with his forecast as it was bumped up to over $1K in the next guide. The funny thing is that John had also told me the book was worth more than guide because top of guide at that time for that book was listed only in VF condition and he was sure this copy was nicer than that with blinding snow white pages and possibly even nicer than the Church copy. Sad to say, that meant nothing to me at the time because coming straight in from the new Modern books, I knew pretty much zippo about Church or any of the other GA pedigrees at the time. Like Rotor who was sort of your mentor at the time, this would change as over many late night telephone conversations during the next few years, John would regaled me with stories about the Church books and some of his many dealings with Chuck, Geppi, Overstreet, Anderson, Carter boys, etc. Being a small-time collector with a budget unlike those other big time collectors, he was always mindful of that and guided me on how to collect high end vintage books while still on a small budget. Kind of ironic and sad though that the New Book of Comics 2 along with the rest of the pre-hero GA books seems to have been forgotten by today's generation of collectors as they have fallen, relatively speaking, so far behind the rest of the marketplace. Nevertheless, I still remember receiving the book in the mail and was absolutely stunned not only by the fact that it was a squarebound 100-pager with cardboard covers which you don't often see, but also by how a book from the '30's could have survived in such superb condition over the years. Even moreso, although the book definitely has not done as well as the books with the guys who wear their unides on the outside, I will always remember it with fond memories and treasure those late night conversations which would eventually lead me to other contacts and other vintage GA books over the ensuring several years. BTW: You are definitely 110% right about the Pep 34 and Punch 12.

CGC sends you birthday greetings: 5/27/22 scheduled for shipping.

Any idea if Heritage was also the submittor of the Pinnacle Hill books or were they submitted by the actual consignor themself? As far as I know, that's not how grading is supposed to work as they are supposed to be graded much more according to the so-called technical factors, whatever they are. If they give bonus points for colors and gloss, wouldn't we then be seeing some grades for perfectly technical books grading higher than 10.0? When it comes to colors and gloss, this is much more what the CVA and QES stickers were designed for in terms of books that presented nicer than their assigned CGC grades.

I don't think it has anything at all to do directly with Covid. If anything, it's more of an indirect impact as Covid has forced most people to stay locked in their homes and hence have a lot more time and money to spend on their collectables like vintage comic books. No doubt, this rather crazed crypto like increase in prices is resulting in a ton of books headed CGC's way as submittor's are also hoping to cash in on this huige jackpot before it disappears. Not helped at all with their recent price increase which resulted in so many submissions coming in prior to the deadline that even their online submission system kept crashing that week as it was unable to handle all of the incoming sufmission orders. So most likely nothing more lower quality inconsisent grading due to the overwhelming backlog along with not having the qualified staff to handle it as they are still advertising to fill vacant job positions, including ones for vintage comic grader(s).

Ummmm.............................since May 25th of what year?

Of course, the key factor here being the price point and would it be in line with the auction houses as you would now have the hassle of dealing directly with the customer, instead of them having the responsibility for direct customer service.

Since it's only a CGC 6.5 graded copy, I am not too sure which one of the auction sites would be the best. If it was a HG copy though, my thinking is that CC would be your best shot at getting the highest price for your copy. Seems that they appear to be the market maker for HG copies of TMNT 1 this year as they sold a CGC 9.6 graded copy for something like $88K only 2 weeks after Heritage was only able to fetch $66K for their copy back in April. They also just sold a CGC 9.8 copy for the stunning and totally unexpected record price of $245K. So, my leaning would be towards CC although I am not sure if this magic touch of theirs that they seem to have with this book would stretch down as far as a CGC 6.5 graded copy. Then again, probably as good a chance with them, as opposed to anybody else though.

Well, I guess we must be pretty small potatoes here because when Facebook and all of its associated apps are down for a few hours, it's top of the hour headline news around the entire world and gets immediate attention. Especially in comparison to this outage which has gone on for months on end in a haphazard fashion.

Hey Clark; Never realized that you were like the rest of us old-timers here who have seemingly been into this hobby for the longest time. Yeah, don't we all wish that we could have a time machine and go back to make all of the right purchasing decisions, and in your case here, the right selling decision. Interesting to note that you had the Church copy of New Book of Comics 2 listed in your ad here. A bit surprised to see that one there as that's definitely not a book that's high on most GA collector's buy list. Just wondering why you would purchase this book in the first place and do you remember who you got it from? Basically asking since New Book of Comics 2 was actually the first GA book that I had purchased way back in the late 80's as I decided to finally expand my collecting horizons and skipped right past the SA and straight into the pre-hero GA time period for my first stop on my journey towards GA collecting. The reason for my interest in those pre-hero DC books came from an article by Gary Carter (i.e. DC Before Superman) which he had written for the 1983 or '84 Overstreet Price Guide which kind of ignited my interest in seeking out some of these supposedly super rare early pre-hero GA books like New Comics 2 and New Fun 2. Kind of sad though to see that these early pre-hero books seems to have been forgotten by most collectors, and as such, haven't really gone up much in value relative to their much more common super hero brethern who would make their appearance a few years later.

Here are pics of the only bends I could find. Absolutely not visible unless you look at the right angle using decent lighting. First one is under the 9. Second one is just above Wolverine's shoulder. From some of the posts that I read here, it sounds as though some of you think that grading is an exact science, whereas I tend to think that it's really nothing more than just a subjective opinion (albeit supposedly an "expert" one) at a particular point in time when a book crosses a grader's table, and as such, can be influenced by many different factors. For those of you here who think that grading is pretty much an exact science, with these clearly visible cover defects alone which can easily be seen through the case, what would your absolute maximum grade be on a book like this one here with the defects running down the entire spine:

Not a chance but the 9.9 would surpass a million in the right venue Are you talking about a million U.S. Lincoln pennies because I certainly hope you are not talking about a million U.S. Washington greenbacks? You do realize that the CGC 9.9 copy was graded way back in their first year of operations when grading standards were much more in line with traditional grading standards prior to CGC and hence most likely not yet been fine-tuned to line up with CCG's business model. As others have already stated here, it is highly doubtful this CGC 9.9 graded copy would come back with the same grade if ever resubmitted with today's grading standards focused so much on fixable bends and pressable NCB's. Even more so, if the rumours are indeed true and there is now clearly visible SCS damage on the book to the point that it might even fall below the 9.0 condition level if ever regraded, I highly doubt it would be able to fetch its original 6-figure purchase price, let alone a million dollars.

Oh, come on you guys..............he was talking about what he had told his wife. When it's your better half that's involved, if you really want a book you need to drop a zero and if you are trying to justified how good of a deal you had made on a book that you purchased a few years ago, you need to add a zero back in there so that she'll continue to let you buy more books going forward.