lou_fine

My thought is whether you still really see this as a possibilty in terms of the current scandal being talked about in the various social media platforms and also apparently in the NY Times on the current scandal with what's taking place between WATA and Heritage? Especially in the case of Halperin who kind of always seems to have his fingers clinging right onto the edge of the ledge when it comes to these kinds of scandals involving possible market manipulation.

Are you referring to the fact that the NY Times might come back and correct the title of your thread here since you might just have it in reverse order here?

I remember seeing this movie along with another so-called adapted historical movie, The Imitation Game with Benedict Cumberbatch in the lead, while on a flight to Shanghai and thought both of them were pretty good and worth watching.

Yes, needless to say the real Charles Moulton didn't looked like the lead actor here and the two women definitely didn't looked like the two actresses in the movie here. Loved the tagline for the movie though: "The Story of the Women behind the Man Behind the Woman".

My sentiments - exactly Well, from my own personal POV, out of all of the millions of comic books that have been published since Funnies on Parade way back in 1933, I would have to say that TMNT 1 is by far the top book out there that would be the easiest for either a power dealer(s) or auction house to manipulate its price upwards. Especially if you consider the rather late time period that it came out relative not only to comic book collecting as a hobby, but even moreso comic book speculating. Now combined this with the impact of the TMNT movies which were to follow a few short years later and you have the setup for the perfect storm that would eventually take place in terms of the initial supply and subsequent demand factors. No need to explain the demand factors as that is pretty evident for all to see. What's interesting though is the supply side with a initial run of only 3,000 copies which is large enough to ensure an adequate supply of high grade copies (ie. almost 200 slabbed copies in CGC 9.4 and above, with almost 100 of these in CGC 9.6 and above to date so far) to fuel the market upwards. You definitely can't do this with a GA book or even an early SA book since it's far too late to attempt something like this. And yet at the same time, the supply is also low enough that you don't have thousands of HG copies (e.g. Spidey 300) out there whereby it's really the marketplace that sets the price and beyond the control of any one dealer. So, if a power dealer(s) (or a market maker in this case here) was astute and patient enough to have read these tea leaves and ended up acquiring a small quantity of TMNT 1's back in the day when it was still available at a more reasonable price, they just might be able to deftly place HG copies of TMNT 1 into the marketplace at the right price points along the way to drive the valuations for this book up quite substantially. Just food for thought and if this scenario actually has any truth to it, a definite windfall for the holders of this book who has gone along for the ride.

Which Transformers 1? Why, thank you, kind Sir....................this book here, but only the super super rare CGC 1.5 graded copy which is the single lowest graded copy by a long shot out of almost 4,000 graded and slabbed copies out there already: None of that common as dirt CGC 9.4 to CGC 9.9 graded copies of this book where there are already well over 2,000 copies in those easy to find overcrowded nosebleed grades.

Well, I guess it really depends upon your definition of "restoration" which seems to be ever shrinking as time goes on with CGC around to safeguard us from the comic book doctors and scammers. If you go with the generally and widely accepted definition of restoration which was in place prior to CGC, I guess we would have to say that there is now an overwhelmingly huge proportion of books now changing hands as "100% original" when in fact they should have been classified as "restored" using the pre-CGC definition.

Yes, although I believe some of these would appear to be measured against outlier one-time sales like that CGC 9.8 copy of Spidey 129. In addition to the 90-day average, would be good to see how prices are against a 1-year time frame to get a better picture for the collectors.

Yeah, not sure why, but it's also not listed as part of CC's historical acution archives? I guess because it's was a non-auction formatted sale and appears that some of these types of sales probably does not automatically get posted to their auction archives or to external databases like GPA and GoCollect as a result.

Are you referring to Mark Haspel who was the former President of CGC and now still on board as a consultant to CGC: https://www.cgccomics.com/news/article/2066/

Ummm......................it's a simple click away and jus a case of just checking their CC auction archives: https://www.comicconnect.com/item/901540?tzf=1 Looks like this copy here sold for $32,001 or at almost double Overstreet top of guide.

Are you saying it's really nothing more than "hush money" to keep the real story from coming out?

Well, maybe he's gone from the strategy of trying to "time the market" to "spending time in the market". If so and if he's willing to hold on long term, you just never know. Remember that economics professor (i.e. Boston Corbett) who came onto these boards here about a decade ago and proceeded to lectured all of us on why his purchase of New Mutants 98 in CGC 9.9 for $12K was a sure fire winner just before the value dropped in half. Well, if he had onky held on until now, then he surely would have gotten the last laugh on all of us and his classic departing line would have been much more appropriate: "Thus Endeth The Lesson"

A question here for you................have you been sleeping in a cave for the past 20 years and just got up to take a look outside? Think back to a few years ago when the big Jon Berk Auction took place at CC and we saw many of the books come back out on dealer's website with the same books now residing in higher graded slabs and being resold for substantially higher prices, and this was within a few weeks of the auction ending on CC. No surprise though when the CGC acolytes on these boards here came on and said that it only made business sense for CGC to have undergraded the Jon Berk Collection. Fast forward to today and guess what...............the Promise Collection is being auctioned off through a different auction house and unlike the Jon Berk Collection where I don't remember any talk at all about overgraded books while the auction was taking place, the boards seem to be quite active with various threads showing scans and having chatter on books that appear to be overgraded. BTW: Have we seen even a single one of the Promise books sold so far coming back into the marketplace encased in higher graded slabs and being resold for a higher price yet?

wow ! Have they updated their website for this current auction to now include the 15% BP in their Sold Price that's being displayed? If I remember correctly, in the last Event Auction, didn't they only displayed the "hammer price" and you had to manually add in the 15% to get to the actual Sold Price?

Well, since Chuckles only paid about 10 cents for each one of the Church books, let me be the first, but definitely not the only one that I would have gladly paid double digit multiples more that what Chuck had paid for his Church books.

You can't be serious here. I bet you that 100% of the comic book dealers would have stepped right up and paid more than the 10 cents cover price that Chuck ended up paying if they had seen the books beforehand. Are you really saying that bidders wouldn't have bid more than 10 cents per copy on those books if it was in a live auction format sale, even back then. Of course, the Church family probably thought their prayers had been answered because they managed to find some hippie kid who was foolish enough to pay full brand new cover prices (i.e $2,000 for an estimated 20,000 books) for what they probably thought were nothing more than old used smelly comic books.

Not only from a condition grading point of view, but most definitely from a "quality of book" point of view. Especially since the Edgar Church Mile High collection goes all the way back to the late 1930's, and as a result, have pretty much all of the big GA keys within its collection. This is clearly not the case with the Promise Collection set of books as we are already starting to find out with it seeming to be populated by so many titles that collectors have not heard of or normally have much interest in and also mostly non-key mid-run issues since the collection comes almost entirely from the later 1943 time period going forward. From a condition grading point of view, I would have to say the CGC grades as given are right up there with even more than what we have come to expect from a quality pedigree collection. Unfortunately, the only issue here is the seeming inconsistency in the assigned CGC grades as compared to some of the scans which board members have been posting here. Based upon this seeming and possible overgrading in enough of the books to raise the question of inconsistent grading, I feel that CGC has done a disservice and possibly have tarnished its reputation from a grading POV longer term. Needless to say, this has not been an impediment to the prices shorter term as bidders seem to have brought into all of the overblown hype by Heritage and the nosebleed numbers at the top of the slab even though the appearance on some of the underlying books might not correspond to the assigned CGC grade on a consistent basis. Especially when it seems that some collectors or boardies here are even questioning the validity of the story as presented by Heritage in their videos and media releases. Not sure why, but I guess it has to do with the complete lack of information or confirmation from the family itself.

Or maybe it's the CGC 8.0 copy selling for a staggering $560K that's the game changer and pushed the 9.6 copy right up to the $3M mark for now?

Don't you love the opposing viewpoints that we seem to have on the boards here, although I suspect both of these viewpoints might actually be correct depeninding upon how you look at it.

Ummmm.....................................I guess you haven't wander over to Comics General in the past week or so because they've had a couple of threads going on this topic for quite awhile now: For the long time comic book boardies here, really nothing that new as we've all heard these stories and suspected similar nefarious shenanigans for the longest while anyways from what we've seen in the other collectibles marketplace which then sadly materialized in the comic book marketplace when certification and auction houses showed up on the scene. Then again, haven't read the lastest on this topic, but like always it seems like it's all circumstantial evidence with no concrete proof which has always been pretty much the case with these things here.

Oh, come on now, Tim.....................have you forgotten all about the Church copy of All-American 16? After all, isn't AA 16 right up there in the #4 spot on Overstreet's Top 100 behind just Acton 1, 'Tec 27, and Supes 1?

Come to think of it.........you are 100% exactly right. I guess it's hard to keep track of all of these uber HG books here because there's relatively speaking, so many of these out there although this one here actually qualifies as a SA book and not a MA book: The earlier Orgeon Coast copy is the one that sold at Heritage back in June for $90K, while the above one with the CVA sticker is the one that sold on CL for $67K just a couple of days ago. Needless to say, both very strong prices from my own personal POV, especially considering that all prior Universal sales in the prior 2 years for CGC 9.8 graded copies were only in the mid to upper teens.

As time goes on and everthing becomes more sophisticated, I guess it's also harder to tell the real roses from the fake roses sometimes. Greatly appreciate your inside knowledge and sharing your prior experience working at CGC with here and just another question for you...................what's the scoop on dust shadows and sun shadows anyways, as I've heard conflicting information on this defect here. It seems that half the boardies think they've gotten tougher on this visual defect while the other half thinks they've gotten softer on this visual defect over time? Or is it just dependent on your luck of time since I've got a GA book with a clear visual dust shadow and I was hoping whenever it goes through, CGC would be applying this grading whip to the book: as opposed to this much more harsher and nastier grading whip here:

Although this might be a possibility in this particular case, would the graders be able to determine this for sure even if they had the book in hand? Either way, it clearly doesn't explain that messed up top left corner unless that's the absolute worst bindery chip on a comic book that I've ever seen. Without having any of these Promise Collection books in hand, the issue which I have from some of these scans being posted by other boardies here is that some of these grades would only make sense if all of these pictured defects were production related. As others besides me have also stated here, it would appear that there seems to almost be a built-in assumption of production defect first and formost and then it's up to the graders to show otherwise. And yet if it was just you or me submitting this book at random, the built-in assumption would be these are all regular wear and time induced defects first and foremost and then up to the graders to see otherwise, which is highy unlikely to happen. I definitely agree with you on your last sentence 110%.