lou_fine

That's a price issue, which is not a reflection on the collection itself but a reflection on the people who simply paid way too much during the initial auctions and have compounded that problem by reselling way too soon. Personally, I think the prices on resale have still been too high. You do realize that I was only you and really meant more in jest to your comment on my original post because of course it's a pricing issue and not a reflection on the quality of the collection itself. Now for the part of my original post to which you was commenting on: I don't quite see where I've always called the Promise Collection as a once in a lifetime generational collection right from the get go along with my original comment above as something that should be read and taken as bad mouthing the quality of the collection. The only negative comments wich I have had with respect to the Promise Collection was the manner in which it was handled from both a promotional and certification issues point of view, and absolutely nothing at all do do with the "quality" of the collection itself. To say that I am denigrating the collection when I am really referring to promotional hype and grading issues is really tantamount to me saying (which I wouldn't) that you are bad mouthing the collection at every opportunity when you seem to gleefully and constantly point out that buyers simply paid way too much on the initial rounds of the auction and that prices in the subsequent resale rounds are still too high.

As I had stated in my post, really NOT so much to do with financial valuation, but just so much more to do with the pure collectibility factor itself as it would sure be nice to have all of those key first appearances of the major Spidey villians in those first 10 issues, and all supposedly in HG to boot. Less so from a pure valuation POV as I would not have sold any of those books since they would still be sitting right here in my personal collection. Any increase in valuation is just an extra bonus whenever it comes time for me to part with them.

I guess it's really a case of to each their own, as any HOT list that includes Boris the Bear, Albedo, Elementals, Flaming Carrot and the likes only brings back memories of the short lived B&W Indie bubble of the late 80's that's set to burst right in the face of collectors back then.

No, nothing to do with FF 1 at all, as it is my eyes as I kept thinking of it as Fantastic 2, 5 and not as Fantastic 2-5.

Thanks again and like I said, it INDEED are my failing eyes in my advancing years.

Yeah, just take a look at that Top 10 SA chart there with a ton of DC's in there and Adventure 247 with the first Legion leading all SA books. What a contrast to today whereby FF 2 is clearly no longer the second most valuable issue of FF and ahead of FF 5 with the first Doctor Doom. Heck just take a look at BB1 and JLA 1 rounding out the Top 10 and coming in ahead of BB 28 with the first appearance of the Justice League. Go figure that!!!

Isn't it really the bidders or the non-presence of the deep pocketed bidders who normally play in this deep end of the pool the ones who are actually "hammering" the collection by letting the auction hammer drop way too soon on every Promise book resale?

I thought the numbers were actually a high of around $125 when analysts were still calling it a Strong Buy and then finally (albeit way too late) having the smarts to switch it to a Strong Sell when it hit something like $2, before it eventually became a worthless POS on your monthly statement after it went through bankruptcy proceedings. Seriously though, sorry to hear that you was one of the nearly 100,000 Nortel employees that got hit hard by their closure after being North America's biggest maker of telephone equipment and one of the world's Top 10 most valuable corporations at its peak. Hope you managed to get out of there with some money and your corporate pension was not tied up in their worthless stock. Can't remember the reason for their bankruptcy, but probably overburdened with way too much debt and if I remember correctly, also issues with some big accounting scandals affecting the company.

How sure are you about that because that was 1986 and $1,200 might actually sound a tad on the high side to me for FF 1? After all, you have to remember that top of guide in Mint condition for FF 1 was set at only $1,100 back in 1986 and that was after all of the SA Marvel keys had basically gone absolutely nowhere at all in guide from the start of the 80's right through to '86 except for a slight downward drop in the case of FF 1. Plus we all know how Overstreet hates to show drops in his guide, so to have the SA Marvel keys going through a bit of a down draft during that time period would not have been surprising with '86 possibly being rock bottom as guide prices started to move back up from '87 onwards before the big SA price explosion at the turn of the decade. I remember being offered a supposedly absolutely HG run of Spidey 2 through 10 for only $1,000 (i.e. just slightly below top of Mint guide) back in that same time period and given a couple of weeks to make my mind up about it. Got a phone call back from the comic broker a short week later saying that another buyer got wind of the books and wanted to purchase the set, and as a result, needed me to make up my mind in the next day or so. Clearly, I made the wrong choice as I was just starting to get my foot wet with vintage comics at the time and said "NO" simply because it was missing the Spidey 1 from the set, as I did't even know about AF 15 at the time. To this day, still my biggest regret in terms of a non-purchase (after all, who gives a crapola about that toxic looking TMNT 1 for a super ridiculous $300 back then ) and not so much for the financial missed opportunity, but for all of those key Spidey villians first appearances that would still be residing in my personal collection to this day.

Is it just me or is it my failing eyes since I can't seem to see that copy of Fantastic 3 for $17.50 in your list above? From looking at that list of the early Master's with the much sought after Raboy covers, it would appear that Master 27 with the iconic "V For Victory" classic cover must have been just as elusive back then as it is today since there's a noticeable gap in there within the Master 20 - 30 run.

My understanding was it went from Church to Chuck who sold it to Redbeard who sold it to Bechara. I didn’t know Hughes figured into the picture. I know it was unrestored while in Redbeard’s ownership. Are you sure that Snyder also didn't figured into the picture somewhere along the line because I thought he had purchased the majority of the Church DC keys as he had direct access to Chuck via his annual preferred buyers list? Then again, I also believe that Redbeard himself was also up near the top of Chuck's annual preferred buyers list and might have nab the Supes 1 for himself before Snyder got to it.

Try telling that to Ronald Wayne, one of the three co-founders of Apple who sold his 10% share of the company back to to a begrudingly Jobs and Wozniak for a whopping $800, even after Jobs couldn't convince him to stay with the company. Needless to say, he would have had a nice return since his $800 sale back to Jobs and Wozniak would be worth well over $250 billion dollars today. Now, that's totally insane, although Wayne says he has no regrets as that was the best decision for him at the time given his age, his job interests, and his risk adverse personality.

Well, still not quite as good as Nvidia where you would be sitting on around $325 million if you had brought it when it first came out in 1999. One of the much vaunted Magnificant 7 this year and also one of the very small handful of trillion dollar companies, and most of all, one which some financial experts thinks will have no problem doing another double in the years to come with AI coming in like a storm. Then again, you could have invested the $180K into something like Enron, Worldcom, or for the Canuckleheads on these boards here, Nortel, whereby if you did, you would be sitting on a big pile of toxic smelling doggie dodo to show for it. Yeah, I still remember all of the financial whiz kids spouting Nortel as a Strong Buy when it already had a bigger market cap than all five of Canada's chartered banks combined and its market cap also represented more than 30% of the entire Toronto Stock Exchange all on its own.

Sadly as I've said here before, the less than stellar and rather inconsistent grading (i.e. perceived softness for a favored consignor) inflicted upon the collection by CGC along with the overwhelmingly overblown hype by Heritage (i.e. over promised and under delivered results) has seriously damaged the reputation of this once in a lifetime generational collection going forward. Hopefully, with the passage of time which tends to be a cure for most things, this collection can eventually attain its much deserved respected reputation and rightful place in the comic book hobby place without the baggage that it seemingly currently carries.

FTFY

Can't remember what year it was exactly back in the 90's, but I do remember all the talk was about Bechara Maalouf acquiring the Church copy of Superman #1, but there clearly seem to be more an air of sheer disdain to the book by the collectors at the time as it was deemed to have been restored. As for saying it's a better investment than the S&P, then that's kind of looking through the rear view mirror and saying it's worse than buying Nvidia when it went public back in 1999: https://finbold.com/heres-how-much-a-10k-investment-in-nvidia-stock-in-1999-is-now-worth/ Heck, you could have invested your $10K even a few years later as it has gone below its IPO price before and you would be sitting comfortably there with almost $20M. I remember some of my colleagues at work owning thousands of shares of Nvidia back in the day and all I ever own was only a couple hundred shares which I ended up stupidly selling them after it had a mere double several years later. Decided to support the local Canadian chip maker (i.e. ATI Technologies) instead which was an absolute mistake as although it had better numbers than Nvidia at times, a boring Canadian company was clearly NOT the choice for the razzle dazzle American day traders who had NVDA to play with which resulted in ATI's stock price going absolutely nowhere until it was eventually taken over by AMD.

This auction here should provide us with a more up-to-date picture of the battle as I believe Mystery Men 2 might have already surpassed Mystery Men 3 with the past few sales of MM 2 in this grade range all finishing up in the $5k to $7K price range. No real sales of Mystery Men 3 in this condition range except for a CGC 3.0 graded copy for only $2,280 at Heritage, but that was back in November of 2020. So, will definitely be interesting to see who wins this head on head tussle between the two of them. Amongst other things besides the oversized holder and the more clearly visual defects on the front cover for the Mystery Men 2 relative to the Mystery Men 3, I'm going with #3 by a full head here.

Well, looks like it's going to be a tooth and nail drag them out and down to the wire battle between these two to see who finishes on top to be the bridesmaid behind Mystery Men 1 in the upcoming Fox Showcase Auction scheduled for near the exnd of this month: https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/superhero/mystery-men-comics-2-fox-1939-cgc-gd-vg-30-off-white-to-white-pages/a/40239-82071.s Will it be Mystery Men 2 in this fugly looking oversized magazine holder above who's been playing catch up and even more during the past couple of years or the seemingly perennial favorite below, namely Mystery Men 3: https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/superhero/mystery-men-comics-3-fox-1939-cgc-gd-vg-30-cream-to-off-white-pages/a/40239-82072.s?ic16=ViewItem-BrowseTabs-Auction-Open-ThisAuction-120115 Equivalent CGC 3.0 graded copies of both, with the two of them sitting at a hammer bid of exactly $550 each with still another almost 3 weeks to go while many of the other Mystery Men issues in the run are still sitting at a hammer bid of only $0, $1, or $2 only. I guess there's no need to ask our fellow boardie, @tth2, since we already know his answer here plus the fact that it might caused blindness to his precious eyes to look at something as toxic as a 3.0 graded book.

And yet you expect poor Gary to go through and do all that tedious and excruciating work.

My bad then, but you probably should have set the link to take you right into that post on Page 67 of the thread then instead of making poor Gary plow through 66 excruciating and tedious pages before he came across the updated database worksheet.

I took a quick look at the Promise Collection retreads coming back into this upcoming Heritage Signature and if I remember correctly, there were a total of about 70 of them with most of them being DC's off the top of my head. As for the tracking database which Tim is referring to as masterfully compiled by Mitch (last updated June 22nd), ask and ye shall receive:

Apparently, even at such a young age, it was not those types of books that the Fish was dealing in.

Yep, that's the best option to take if you aren't in a hurry for your books although I highly doubt it would work if you are a speculator or flipper. I remember when I was still working and kept my books at HA and CL for well over 3 years before I asked for them to be shipped out to me after I had retired. Then when I received the big boxes of books from each of them, didn't opened them for another 3 years as they were just the perfect height to serve as corner coffee tables to hold my drinks and snacks while I watched TV.

Then again, I am sure that Josh and his gang are feasting out on yummy lobster rolls courtesy of his shipping money...............yum, yum!!!

Obviously not as impressed as Fishler's public school teacher must have been, as he was apparently already selling comic books to him at such a young age.