lou_fine

Wasn't this back in the days from the late 70's and very early 80's when restoration was seen as adding value to an unrestored book to some point above its oringinal unrestored grade but lower than its new higher grade if it was unrestored? I guess this kind of shows how much we've learned over the decades as I believe there's an almost countless number of months now for books just waiting to go through the so-called undisclosed "maximization of potential" process at CCS before they get forwarded over to CGC for grading and slabbing.

IMHO that book has all the earmarks of a book that's been macro-trimmed by Danny Dupchak with his tried and trusted machete and not a book that's been micro-trimmed by Jason Ewert using his next gen laser surgical pair of scissors.

Why, dear Sir.........................it would appear that you've got the equation only half right. You need the guide values as the base to determine the discount to guide you are willing to pay when buying a book and then as the base to determine the multiple to guide that you are willing to take when selling a book.

Are you trying to bring back memories of the good old days when mid-grades like this Fine+ (i.e. CGC 6.5 copy) would be stuck in No Man's land because they would not be nice enough for the HG collectors and yet not cheap enough for the low grade collectors? Not sure if that scenario applies any more, especially when like you said, NM books sells for multiples of guide and yet nowadays even low grade raw restored beaters can sometimes also go for even much bigger multiples to condition guide value: https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/adventure/adventure-comics-38-dc-1939-condition-apparent-gd/a/122207-13010.s?ic4=ListView-ShortDescription-071515 A raw restored Good graded copy that sold for $4,320 back in February of 2022 or for some almost 12X unrestored condition guide value.

Well, I imagine that Joker covers and first appearances/origins always tend to bring a premium in the comic book marketplace as compared to surrounding regular issues without these demand driven characeteristics. Especially when the 'Tec 40 is considered by most in the hobby to be the first Joker cover plus the storyline also features the first full appearance and origin of Clayface.

Although not technically a pre-Robin 'Tec book which it clearly is not, I have always considered issues up to 'Tec 40 as part of the same grouping: https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/superhero/detective-comics-40-dc-1940-cgc-fr-gd-15-cream-to-off-white-pages/a/122341-13070.s Not sure if it's just me, but what is everybody else's thoughts here on this copy selling for $8,400 in yeaterday's HA Sunday auction as I thought it was a relatively strong result from my own personal POV, given the assigned grade of only CGC 1.5?

Well, sad to say but I guess not surprisingly, this group of 5 Promise Collection Lone Ranger comics didnt fare much better in yesterday's auction with a combined loss of $2,452 or some 45.5% from their first round auction results of $5,430 now able to garnered only $2,958 on their second go round: https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/western/lone-ranger-3-the-promise-collection-pedigree-dell-1948-cgc-nm-92-off-white-to-white-pages/a/122341-13175.s?ic16=ViewItem-BrowseTabs-Inventory-BuyNowFromOwner-ThisAuction-120115 With this Promise Collection copy of Lone Ranger 3 selling for only $840 as compared to $1,320 back in June of 2022; https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/western/lone-ranger-4-the-promise-collection-pedigree-dell-1948-cgc-nm-92-off-white-to-white-pages/a/122341-13176.s?ic16=ViewItem-Inventory-BuyNowFromOwner-JumpLot-NextLot-050318 With this Promise Collection copy of Lone Ranger 4 selling for only $600 as compared to $900 back in June of 2022; https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/western/lone-ranger-5-the-promise-collection-pedigree-dell-1948-cgc-nm-92-off-white-to-white-pages/a/122341-13177.s?ic16=ViewItem-Inventory-BuyNowFromOwner-JumpLot-NextLot-050318 With this Promise Collection copy of Lone Ranger 5 also selling for only $600 as compared to $900 back in June of 2022; https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/western/lone-ranger-10-the-promise-collection-pedigree-dell-1949-cgc-nm-94-off-white-to-white-pages/a/122341-13179.s?ic16=ViewItem-Inventory-BuyNowFromOwner-JumpLot-NextLot-050318 With this Promise copy of Lone Ranger 10 selling for $606 vs. $1,320 in June of 2022, and a 9.6 File Copy selling for $840 yesterday; and https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/western/lone-ranger-13-the-promise-collection-pedigree-dell-1949-cgc-nm-92-off-white-to-white-pages/a/122341-13181.s?ic16=ViewItem-BrowseTabs-Inventory-BuyNowFromOwner-ThisAuction-120115 With this Promise Collection copy of Lone Ranger 13 selling for only $312 as compared to $990 back in June of 2022.

I can definitely understand that sentiment with a "trimmed" book, but how about a properly done "micro-trimmed" book where the work has been done so perfectly well that nobody can really tell with 100% confidence whether it had been trimmed or not?

You just cost me money, lol... Then again, there seem to be quite a few of them that dn't get even a single bid at all after I had made my post, with this being one of them: https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/superhero/bulletman-5-fawcett-publications-1942-cgc-fn-65-cream-to-off-white-pages/a/122341-13027.s I still remember back in the day when this issue here was considered to a classic Raboy cover and command more money than its surrounding issues. Clearly not so much the case anymore as this copy here sold for just $564 or for only a piddly $7.50 above condition guide value.

For a Sunday Heritage Auction on a long weekend in North America, there actually seems to be an abnormally large quantity of half decent GA books in today's auction scheduled to start up in less than a hour from now that bears watching.

I imagine the opposite scenario to this is bidders willing to pay more for raw restored low grade beaters as opposed to paying more for them when they are graded and slabbed.

I don’t think they tried to convince everybody. It’s seems more like low information people saw slabs selling higher than their raw books and assumed getting something grading increased the value - not figuring the why the value was increased. Have you forgotten those side by side ads they used to place in the trade publications when they first started up whereby they would show how much a raw copy of a particlular book sold for and then how much a graded copy of the exact same book sold for? I remember one particular example being a nice raw copy of Shadow Comics 1 which they listed as selling for something like $10 and then right next to it, a graded copy selling for $2,500. All I can say is I wonder how the buyer is feeeling today about his $2,500 purchase now that there are something like 184 copies in CGC 9.8 with another 280 copies in CGC 9.6 knocking right on its door and still counting.

Sorry that you had read my post as being offensive to you or any other boardie because it was certainly not meant that way. The only point that I was trying to make is that the overall comic book market is made up of many components, with the CGC 9.8 market being one of these subsets and one that seems to get a lot of the "headlines". Unfortunately for collectors in this particular subset of the market, this is where the overwhelming majority of the speculators or traders tend to play in. As such, if you are a collector in this part of the marketplace, you are more likely to be subject to the more volatile price movements of the comic book marketplace, both positive and negative. It's really a case of to each their own, and if you are in the comic book marketplace whether it be as a long term collector, speculator, trader, or what have you, it's all good to me as long as you enjoy and have fun with what you are doing.

Yes, but sadly, istn't that CGC's bread and butter to try to convince you to submit books in for grading (and for pressing if you are overdosing on their juice) that are otherwise basically worthless?

Definitely safe for you from a comic book purchasing point of view, but might NOT be that safe for your wallet and definitely VERY VERY DANGEROUS for you when your better half finds out the amount of money you are throwing away on your funny books.

This would not be enntirely accurate although I imagine it would depend on your definition of delayed submission.

Yes, athough the $4,990 result would appear to be an bit of an outlier, your September results still inidcates a significant drop of some 60% from the 2021 average of $3,500. Then again,although it's really a case of to each their own, but why would anybody pay almost $5K for a book that already in 2021 had an average of some 350 graded copies in CGC 9.8 with another 700 graded copies in CGC 9.6 knocking right on its door. No doubt that fact that the census had exploded to 460 copies in CGC 9.8 by September 2023 with another now almost a thousand copies in CGC 9.6 might have also had an impact on the drop in prices. Let alone that all movie related hyped books as history has shown us time and time again without any real exceptions, that prices will always ten d to drop after the event has occurred.

The problem I see with your examples here is that every single one of them is for a book in CGC 9.8 grade which is not where the true collector's real marketplace for comic books is. Personally, I believe this top end condition niche of the marketplace is really where the speculators and flippers hang out, and as such is a much more volatile subset of the overall comic book marketplace and tend to overshoot on both extremes. A better measure of the health of the overall comic book marketplace is to probably compare prices a few condition grades lower than your nosebleed 9.8 grades.

Any idea if that $4,990 peak figure was nothing more than just an outlier or were there also another 4 or 5 sales in that same price range like the 5 sales which you show in the $1K to $1.5K range during the past month?

As per my previous post here, I would definitely tend to agree with jimbo here as I believe there are still many 8.5's or better waiting to be graded. As a sample test of this, I took a look at the number of unique Allentown books (i.e. excludes multiple sales of the same book) that have shown up for auction on Heritage and CC over the years. Took the Allentown collection as this is the GA pedigree with the samllest number of books in it making it a lot easier and manageable to track. So, out of the total of 135 extant books within the Allentown pedigree collection, it looks like only 32 copies have gone through Heritage and CC combined for a percentage total of under 24%. If you toss in the 2 or 3 copies that were auctioned off in the Greg Manning Auctions and have not gone through HA or CC, you are still left with only about 25% of the total collection. Of course, there might have been other auction sites which had Allentown books go through without making an appearance on either HA or CC, but I highly doubt it would have been very many. So if the other top GA pedigrees mirror the Allentown Collection in terms of the percentage graded and slabbed, I believe there are still very many 8.5's or better yet to be added into the census.

I would tend to agree with you that there are probably not that many more Original Owner GA collections out there just waiting to be unearthed, like the Promise Collection and the likes. What I am referring to are more in terms of the 2nd owner collections which were built up by long time comic collectors who went out and purchased many of the high grade top end pedigree books back some 30 to 50 years ago.

Yes, with the perfect example being how many or what percentage of the key Allentown, Church, or Larson books have been graded and slabbed? My thinking is that many of these books are still being held by the old time collectors and if they aren't yet planning to sell them, having them graded, slabbed, and added into a ballooning census count would serve only to hurt their value going forward. In addition, being old time collectors, having them slabbed means that they wouldn't be able to enjoy them the way they were meant to be enjoyed.

My own personal opinion is that the best top end GA books are still being held raw in personal collections by long time collectors from back in the days long before CGC was even a thought in anybody's mind. Especially since there's absolutley no real reason (save for rising grading fees) at all to have a book graded and slabbed until it comes time to sell it.

Although I would tend to agree with your assessment here, the only problem with this scenario is that according to the CGC Census Population Report, there are NO certified mid-grade copies to this point in time there is only the Church CGC 8.0 graded copy and then the next highest graded copy drops all the way down to CGC 4.0 with no true mid-grade copies in between. Of course, there's the Larson copy which is probably still raw, but according to Joe Tricarichi in his Larson List, the MM 7 has a clipped coupon out of the back cover measueing 4" by 3" along with a 3/4" tear at the spine which combined would take it out of mid-grade range. Then there's the Allentown copy which was graded only as a Fine+ copy by Payette, but Payette's reputation for tight grading is well known. This is clearly evident by his Allentown VF Tec 38 being graded as a CGC 9.4 and his Allentown VF+ MM 13 being graded as CGC 9.6, so it would not surprise me if the Allentown F+ copy of MM 7 got much closer to the VF condition range whenever it gets graded and slabbed. Yes, a complete contrast to MM 3 with its cover artwork which is talked about quite often by some boardies here as to its artsistic merit. I would tend to say that the cover image for MM 3 is "artistic motion" in full display while the cover image for MM 7 is more like "artistic stillness" in full display.