lou_fine

We should make a list of defects that are magically not defects on golden age comics. I had a PM with Masterchief the other night who's one of the acknowledged experts when it comes to these types of things. He said from the rounded spines and the visible pressable defects that's evident on these books here, it appears that the collection is fresh and hasn't been worked on as far as he could tell from the yet to be slabbed books. Maybe our problem is that we are now just so conditioned to looking at pressed books that have already been maxizmized to their full potential that we can no longer recognized true "virgin" quality books anymore. The one thing that I will say is that it would appear that the graders do not seem to be taking these pressable defects into account for this collection of books because their consistency indicates they might have come from the printers like that. Then again, if it was just you or me submitting the odd high grade book with these similar types of bends and such, I am 100% sure the CGC grading hammer would be bludgeoning down hard on us like there was no tomorrow. For this collection of books though, not so much and probably more like the CGC grading feather coming down in a soft and gentle fashion.

I strongly believe that what you are looking at is a bindery corner which is rather a common production flaw when it comes to the GA books, and hence since it is a result of the production process, is not really factored into the grading of the book. If you are concerned about bindery corners, how about all of that much more horrid and egregious Marvel chipping that you tend to see on some of the early SA Marvel books.

Most definitely not, as a collection like this will tend to pump up the values in the entire GA market as investors, speculators, and possibly even some long time collectors will move in to acquire pieces of this collection. Seems like the owner is probably right on top of the game and is bringing this collection to market right when there is a lot of wild and crazy money out there being spent on collectibles in general with prices eemingly spiralling out of control. At the same time, with the sheer volume of books in this collection, although the owner will certainly be set for life with this sale, I believe the collection will also be "cannibalizing" itself with the amount of dollars that's involved here. Like the big big Jon Berk auction on CC afew years ago, I believe a lot of these books whenever they do come back to market might just be able to realize even higher prices going forward.

Yes, although the top corner of the All-Star 33 definitely appears to be a bindery corner production related flaw, I am not so sure about the one on the Suspense 8, and in particular the small but rather noticeable one on the bottom corner. Hard to tell from a scan though, as you would need to have the actual book in hand to tell for sure.

It a cringey name. Won't hold those books down though. Maybe it's supposed to make you think of the Hope Diamond or sommething of that magnitude. Whatever, it's still sounds a lot better than the name they came up with for Ayman Hariri's so-called "Impossible Collection", although that one there at least was not an official CGC pedigree collection.

Agreed. While it’s an amazing book, a 9.8 has to be a mistake, no? Well, if this copy of Suspense 8 with its visual corner spine defects comes in with a blowout grade of either CGC 9.8 or CGC 9.6, then there's definitely something off with the grading of this Promise Collection here:

Sorry, my bad here as I was referring to just the unrestored Universal copies of Mask 1 here. If you include the restored copies, then this Promise Collection copy would be #4 on the list since there's 2 copies in CGC 9.6 restored including the Church copy here, and then followed by another in CGC 9.4 restored. Nevertheless, it will still be interesting to see what this newest copy goes for in terms of its pricing level.

For me, it's pretty much the Tom Reilly SF pedigree books that I'll most likely never have another chance at given the current pricey marketplace. Well, I guess it's also going to be books from this newly designated The Promise Collection pedigree as given the nosebleed grades which these books have garnered so far, I am not going to be able to afford a single copy of any of these books. The only possible way is if Heritage decides to unwisely dump all 5,000 copies of these books into the marketplace at the exact same time,and just hopefully the sheer volume will allow the odd copy to slip through the cracks and right into my hands. At least, that's how it worked with respect to my small handful of wins during the big Jon Berk auction which they had on CC a few years ago.

Well, as I had alluded to in a couple of my previous posts above, given that CGC assigned a grade of 9.8 to this particular copy of All-Select 3, I don't think it would have qualified for one of those CVA or QES stickers.

Yes indeed, as I just took a look at this first batch of 20 books and it would appear that out of the 20 books that have been loaded into Heritage so far, 15 of them are the single highest graded copies, another 3 are tied for highest graded copies, with the remaining 2 being the secon highest graded copies. This is definitely going to be a dream come true for the GA label chasers, although I will admit that from a strict visual presentation point of view, the white cover on the All-Select 3 kind of makes the dust shadow stand out more than it normally would on a non-white cover, especially for a CGC 9.8 graded copy. Since the colors are so strong on the books from this pedigree, the books with the non-white color covers certainly appears a lot nicer from my point of view.

Well, if the restored copy of All-American 61 is not in your price range, you can always go try for this newly designated pedigree copy then: Looks like they haven't finished fully loading this scan into their auction website yet, but since this is only a CGC 9.6 graded copy, it makes me really curious as to whether the highest CGC 9.8 graded copy is also from a pedigree. If so, which pedigree and really jealous of the collector who owns it.

Well,looks like we are going to be seeing some blowout record setting prices for this upcoming highest graded Mask 1 and 2nd highest Mask 2 here: Will be interesting to watch these 2 copies from the newly designated Promise Collection pedigree in the upcoming Heritage Signature Auction to see where they finish up, although I believe the sheer volume of books from this new pedigree just might keep prices down a bit, because there is just so much money that can go around for these books here. Especially since most of the other books from the early batches in this new pedigree collection have been graded into the CGC high 9's, so these 2 books here would appear to be downside outliers from a condition grading point of view.

Case in point being this File Copy of Crackajack Funnies which was initially slabbed as a CGC 9.0 graded copy with the CGC Grader Notes specifying "Front Cover Writing" and "Top Back Cover Lite Shadow": https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/crackajack-funnies-9-file-copy-dell-1939-cgc-vf-nm-90-off-white-pages/a/830-91039.s?ic4=ListView-ShortDescription-071515 From the Heritage archives, it looks like upon resub some years later with no visual evidence of pressing being done, it was regraded as a CGC 9.6 copy even though it still had the exact same 2 defects that was previously noted when it was still only a CGC 9.6 graded copy, as clearly seen in this link here: https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/crackajack-funnies-9-file-copy-dell-1939-cgc-nm-96-off-white-to-white-pages/a/7169-92033.s?ic4=ListView-ShortDescription-071515 No worries though, since this was just an interim pit stop as the 9.6 has now been removed from the census and the census count for CGC 9.8 has increased by one, even though I am quite sure the same two 9.0 noted defects must still be on the now CGC 9.8 graded copy of the book. Anyways, back to this beautiful Promise Collection although I certainly do wish there was more consistency to CGC's grading when it comes to how they view certain defects over an extended period of time.

I believe that's because CGC has been pretty much inconsistent when it comes to dust shadows. If I am remembering this correctly, when Borock was in charge they went pretty soft on dust shadows to the point that some collectors were complaining about the grade. With Matt in charge, I believe they kind of put the hammer to the grade when it came to dust shadows to the point that collectors were probably complaining about the inconsistency here. Of course, with their swings between loose and tight grading, it's almost like a yo-yo sometimes and might just depends on your luck. Then again, I believe they've also gone all over the grading ladder when it comes to defects such as writing on the covers and dust shadows. Sometimes, the books seems to get bludgeoned on the grades, and then they are seemingly ignored upoin resub and end up with a substantially higher grade. When it comes to an official pedigree copy of a book though, I believe that the graders tend to get a bit intimidated by the pedigree as these books always seem to get the benefit of the doubt whereas regular non-pedigree don't seem to get to enjoy this same benefit. Of course, this is just my own personal opinion as I am sure that others will wholeheartly disagree with me here.

I believe that's most likely because the name of this pedigree is "The Promise Collection".

Okay, I'll bite...........................what's the rationale for this name here? With a name like that, it would only sound good if the entire had been Promise to me only and to nobody else.

Well, I really need to get off my big fat lazy duff then and look for my copies of SME 15 to see if I can help to spike that count a little bit higher (even for 9.6 copies) as we certainly wouldn't want it to get too far behind Spidey 300 and GSXM 1.

You are THE man here!!! This method definitely works best as I simply couldn't get the other 2 previously mentioned approaches to work that well for me.

Well, certainly not for Special Marvel Edition 15 since Heritage was just able to auction off a CGC 9.8 graded copy last night for $14,400.

Is there a fast and simple way of finding this "taxex" number since I certainly would not like to search manually through some 2,000+ lines of computer code for this number here?

(very true) You mean all of these long running and supposedly successful TV shows like the Arrowverse, Black Lightning, Star Girl, Gotham and all of their related comic book intros of long established DC characters for some reason just don't seem to have the same effect on the DC books like they do with the Marvel books.

Well, in today's marketplace, it's really all about those crazed crypto like FOMO buyers who's driving these prices into the stratosphere. This new generation of buyers today don't really care so much about the underlying comic book itself that's encased inside the slab, as what really matters to them is just that big big number on the top left hand corner of the slab. In addition, they are probably also afraid that if they wait much longer for the movie to hit the silver screen, the book might be into the $20K's by then or possibly even higher, as evident by books such as GSXM 1 which went from the mid-$20K's into the mid-$40K's, and now into $60K's a short month later. Similar with TMNT 1 where it was the CGC 9.8 graded copies selling for mid-$50K's into the mid-$60K's, and now that there's none of these around, it's the CGC 9.6 graded copy that sells for $66K and then another CGC 9.6 graded copy that beats it a few short weeks later by selling for $88K.

Yeah, I still remember flipping right past so many minty fresh copies of this book here for only a loonie back in the day, just because of the rather overwhelmingly high proprotion of them that had this exact same rather huge miswrapped white stripe running down the spine. I guess I shouldn't have been so hasty and simply have picked up a few more copies since CGC probably considers this to be a normal printing defect for the book here, as they haven't rerally downgraded for it in terms of this copy here.

Yes, have they come up with a catchy and exotic name for this new pedigree yet?