lou_fine

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news here, but they will need to average their grades out in order to look like a grading company that knows what they are doing when it comes to grading. As a result, your 6.0 grade worthy books will now need to come back as CGC 2.0 graded copies in order to make everything look copacetic for CGC as a whole.

Well, based upon that rip-off extortionist price which I had to pay for that initial first copy, I assume it must have been approaching the late 70's. Especially when I paid that first seller more than triple what I ended up paying for an equivalent condition copy from the second seller.

Same old, same old................nothing new to see here...................rinse and repeat!!!

Not sure what you mean by "overly enthusiatic" grading here, as I guess in my rapidly old age, I simply can't see much visual difference between these two CGC 8.5 equivalent graded books here: Why, if I was Heritage, I would demand a full refund on my grading fees for this pisss poor job they did since this beauty of a book is at least a CGC 9.8 if the graders had done their job properly and had not taken all of the PRODUCTION related defects along the spine into account. Just take a look at this equivalent CGC 8.5 graded File Copy book from the 1930's with that horrid looking POST PRODUCTION "File" notation scrawled across the front of the book here and they have the nerve to give this book with that fugly looking defect the exact same CGC 8.5 grade:

After much speculation and enquiry, the Blackstone Group in conjunction with both CCG and Heritage Auctions are proud to introduce the exclusive new Head of CGC Grading for the Promise Collection of pedigee books: And now for a short word from our new Head of CGC Grading: "Why, these blind young'un whippersnappers need to be whipped into shape like there's no tomorrow: CGC 8.5 my foot eagle sharp eyes....................that's no less than a CGC 9.8 which my trusty old eyes can easily attest to!!!"

Hate to say it, but from your scanned image here, the only thing more surprising is that this book here did not receive a grade of CGC 5.5, as opposed to this seemingly and hugely overgraded CGC 8.5 which it managed to scored here. Then again, I assume that must be another production bindery chip at the the top of the spine, along with production stress lines running down the entire spine of the book here, and as such, to be ignored for grading purposes.

Hard to say when entry level prices (similar to CGC 9.8's or CGC highest graded copies) are not really that relevant when it comes to trying to extrapolate prices for other condition graded copies. Although this HA copy here should have no problem cracking $60K, not sure if its less than appealing visual appearance will keep the bids down: Especially since this much more nicely presenting CGC 2.5 graded copy managed to achieved only $56K on CC a few short months ago which was a bit of a surprise to me, but then again I am quite sure that the Slightly Brittle PQ is what kept the bidding on this copy down below expectations: https://www.comicconnect.com/item/905969

Well, looks like this entry level copy here did it's expected run up at the end and finished up at a record high of $48K for this condition grade.

Although I would probably agree with your assessment here, but without having the actual book in hand, is there also a tiny bit of post production flaking at the top portion of that bindery chip there? The thing that concerns me here is that the graders seems to have gone out of their way with giving the benefit of doubt in terms of production defects wherever possible when it comes to the Promise Collection books. Any bets that if this was not a Promise book or a book consigned by Heritage themselves, that there's a good chance they might notice the tiny flake more and have it take precedence over the bindery chip, thereby resulting in a slightly lower grade for the book.

I fixed that for you. You said "shares", but you meant "grades" and your quote is from 2001 about CGC. Not exactly sure what you are trying to say here? Are you trying to imply that Subby is going to end up going 2 for 2 here, considering how the whole CGC grading game has "evolved" or shall we say played out over the past 2 decades ever since CGC first opened their doors way back in 2000? Especially since one of the clear stated objectives of CGC at the time of its inception was to ensure a "safer" marketplace for all collectors, by moving away from the days of what Borock called the Wild Wild West whereby the comic book doctors and scammers would be "working their craft" on books in their darkened dungeons and then foisting them into an unsuspecting marketplace as HG unrestored books. Fast forward some 20 odd years and we are now in a marketplace where certain aspects of this once disdained craftwork have become institutionalized and so ingrained in the certification process that many submitters would not even comtemplate having a book graded without first having it shall we say "prepped up" for grading. Not sure why then that there's still the same lack of disclosure on the work done, with some boardie dealers here even calling this really nothing more than proprietary information and as such, a business advantage which any good business person (which they must be ) need not and should not be disclosing.

Yeah, and in the worst case scenario I'm likely to break even, and have had the pleasure of owning them. Yeah, it's important to think about your breakeven point and that's the exact and only reason why I initially ended up with 2 copies of XM 94. I remember picking up my minty fresh copy of XM 94 back at a local con and on my way out the door, noticed an equally nice copy at a substantially lower price point. Needless to say, I was totally pissed off at myself for getting ripped off, especially knowing that there was no way in heck that I would be able to return that copy for a refund in order to purchase the lower price copy. After leaving the con and giving it some thought, I ended up going back in and decided to double down on the book in order to lower my breakeven cost, on the basis that this would then make it easier for me to find an even bigger fool than myself to sell the book to one day going forward, without me having to lose any money on the darned thing. Not sure what the marketplace will be like for the New XM books when it comes time for me to sell my one remaining copy as I either misplaced or lost my other copy, but hopefully the market won't hit rock bottom to the point that I can't cover the original cost for both copies.

Like you, I also don't have a personal stake in any of these Promise Collection books to this current point in time at least. As I have stated in another thread here, I haven't actually bothered to take a close look at these books myself to say with confidence that there's a consistent strong pattern of overgrading. It's just that I've seen enough scans of some of these books from other boardies in the other threads along with PM's which I've received from boardies to make me question the apparent inconsistency in terms of grading for these books here. Don't really want to have ANOTHER thread here on the Promise Collection books questioning some of the grades since we've already seen a litany of these scans to date, but a perfect example would be this copy of Subby 23 here, along with a few comments from other boardies here: https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/sub-mariner-comics-23-the-promise-collection-pedigree-timely-1947-cgc-vf-85-off-white-to-white-pages/a/7244-96085.s?ic4=ListView-ShortDescription-071515 Actually, this book here doesn't really bothered me that much as it wasn't graded into the 9's at least, even though if this book was not part of the Promise Collection and not submitted in by Heritage, it probably would not come back with this high of a grade considering the clear visual defect. Any bets that if it had been simply submitted in on a random basis by a no-name collector like me, it would not surprising to see it down into the 6's or possibly into the 7's at best. Then again, I am sure that they probably attributed this to a production related defect from a mouse found at the printing plant.

Yeah, sitting at only $29K or something like $34,800 with the BP juice in there right now. Wait be interesting to see if this copy will be able to get itself into the mid $40K's which CC was able to sell their CGC 1.0 graded entry copies for a few years ago.

Well, let's not forget about mid-90's back around 1994 and '95 after the implosion of the new book coic market and after the explosive run that SA took in the early 90's. I still remember some dealers offering big multiples to top of guide for pedigree books sight unseen and Overstreet himself jacking up up GA valuations in his Top 100 chart by an average of something like the high 20% to mid 30% which is definitely very un-Overstreet like when it comes to old slow Bob.

Yes, being a long time comic book collector, it's really much more about spending time in the market, as opposed to trying to time the market. With a X-Men 1, I am sure you are going to do a lot better than the recent buyers who paid $44K for a copy of Transformers 1 or $63K for a copy of XM 94.

Theres one already on the bay Promise book Yes, exactly..........now you can see and understand what I am saying here. Buyer purchased this book from Heritage for $9,600 plus whatever state taxes and shipping charges they would have to incurred putting the full cost at something which is most likely over $10K. Now trying to resell it on eBay for $9,600 (good luck here ) meaning they will probably have to take a best offer at a lower price. After taking off the eBay and PayPal fees, the buyer will probably be lucky to take home $8K from this $10K+ purchase they made just a short month ago. This Promise Collection is completely unlike the big Jon Berk auction which took place a few years ago on CC, where you saw many of the same books being flipped back out on dealer sites within weeks of the auction, with the books encased in higher graded slabs and being resold with substantially higher prices on them. Of course, some of the CGC boardies here at the time stated that it only made business sense for CGC to have graded those books much tougher as they were going through CC which is an external auction house to them. With the Promise Collection, I guess what we are seeing here as others have stated, is just a classic case of vertical integration and the realization of business synergies in full play here with their linked ownership. That's the beauty of undisclosed grading standards as it allows grading to be done to the current business agenda of the day. Personally, I don't have much problems with this anymore as everybody here should know by now how the grading game is played and be placing their bids accordingly.

Well, I hope you are super patient and don't mind waiting 5 or 10 years since this collection was so overhyped and some so overgraded that it resulted in hugely overpriced books whereby the purchasers will most likely not be able to get out of them for a few years, unless they don't mind taking a huge loss on most of these books here.

I've always thought that the CGC green Qualified label was normally given at the discretion of CGC, as opposed to being elected by the submitter. Especially in the case of HG books with just something like a missing coupon where a blue universal grade of CGC 0.5 would be virtually useless in terms of providing any useful information as to the actual condition of the underlying book. I would definitely find a Qualified grade of 8.0 for a nicely presenting GA book with a missing coupon to allow me to make a much more informed bidding decision, as opposed to a CGC 0.5 grade for this so-called "Incomplete" book which is also the same grade that would be given to a totally beaten to death POS condition graded book that you could barely read.

So, let me qualify my response. I’m playing Devil’s Advocate to some degree. I also don’t know you, so you may be doing the same. And I’m not the expert. I don’t know what I don’t know. But no, or not remotely to the same degree in my opinion. ptain America or Wonder Woman, the Joker, or even say the Destroyer. There’s no lore, except for hardcore hobbyists. Nic Cage scooped up Action 1 to Wayne Gretzky’s T206 Wagner, not New Fun 2. Rarity matters, but demand matters more is my main thought. Well, I would most definitely agree with your point here, although strange to say, it was really the extreme rarity of some of these pre-hero DC books that first got me intertested in the GA market.

$3.2 million for old newsprint or old pulp paper?

Yeah that is unusual. I can't explain. This is the part that I don't understand with this particular book here, as it already has a detached centerfold as clearly stated on the label, and that alone is enough to bring the grade down to a CGC 7.0 range for virtually all other slabs that I have seen with this designation. So, was this an error or did they simply decide not to bother to take the impact of the trimming into account when it came time to assign the final grade for this particular book here?

Well, if I remember correctly, weren't most of the books offered up by Rally Road, including the CGC 9.8 TMNT 1, sourced from Metro/CC with Vinnie's name as one of the signatories on the sales/purchase agreements?

It’s all good I also wasn’t pushing the info I said I to was unconfirmed but OTIS is a site where you buy shares of grail books . That’s what they value 9.8 at they purchased as a team of investors whenever they bought it . Asking price is what’s listed but to sell the investor group votes on wether to dump their “ stock “ Yes, first I have heard of this OTIS. Sounds very similar to Rally Road which we had a few threads back last year or so. I remember a CGC 9.8 graded cpy of TMNT 1 was one of the books that had sold out rather quickly through Rally Road. Makes me wonder whatever happened to that copy in the end?

Well, didn't we have a thread here awhile ago about collectors going after parachute covers, and for niche collectors like these, I imagine it's pretty tough to beat a double parachute cover like this HTF beauty here.

Yeah, it’s not really a great comparison. The Wagner is super rare due to the extremely low number being manufactured. And it’s much older than the cards that came later for a Ruth or Gehrig. Now if Green Lantern’s 1st appearance had been in 1915, and there were only 10 known copies, perhaps. Well, if this is true, then shouldn't books like New Fun 2 and New Comics 2 be worth a lot closer to both Action 1 and 'Tec 27 then?