lou_fine

Figured it was time to give this thread a long awaited and timely bump as CC has both Mask 1 and Mask 2 in their Event Auction ending next week: Had posted these questions over in the CC thread, but figure the Mask aficionados here would know a lot more: Just checked the previous page on this Mask thread here and it appears I might already have my answer. Then again, I might not since although the prices for Mask Comics were plateauing or taking a bit of a dip towards the end of last year, with the way prices have shot up on key book with apparently all of the new deep pocketed monies coming into this marjetplace over the past few months, maybe there'll be some new record prices set here. Of course, maybe those newbie crypto investors, sports cards traders, and NFT speculators with their new found monies are much more interested in readily available uber HG books like Transformers 1 , GSXM 1, and the likes, and not so much into HTF GA classic cover books.

Yes, Kramer bought it from Roter. Hey Sean; Greatly appreciate you clearing that up for me here. Yes, wasn;t that Kramer just a little buzzsaw when he first got into GA comics as I still remember him running all around the SD Con back there in 94 or thereabouts. He was just grabbing almost everything half decent that was in his sights like a crazed buyer and totally non-stop with all the questions, almost like he was on a complete high and just needed all of the answers right away. When he set a target on a specific book, it seem like he would do almost anything to acquire it at the time. Like most other deep pocketed collectors though, a big big flash while he was there, but seemingly also left just as fast a few years later after he had lost interest in the hobby.

Okay, was flipping through their auction catalogue and noticed a couple of high demand and hot to trot GA classic cover books here, as follows: https://www.comicconnect.com/item/908049 https://www.comicconnect.com/item/908050 Aren't these normally low 5-figures books now in recent auctions in grades even starting from CGC 3.0? Not sure if I am remembering this correctly or not, but wasn't Mask 1 the first to explode in prices a few years ago, and more recently, Mask 2 has been doing a big time catch up with additional copies coming into the marketplace? Maybe I'll also post this question over in the Mask thread since the Mask aficionados might know more about these two books here. Will be interesting to see where these 2 finish up and see which one grabs the gold medal in terms of higher price point. If Mask 1 is going to do it, I guess it's going to have a bit of running to do to catch up since it's currently stuck at only $3,850 while Mask 2 has already lapped it sitting at a nice fat $8,150. And guess what people.............no Buyer's Premium on these 2 books for the mathematically challenged, so you pay what you bid. Will definitely be interesting to watch the race between these 2 and see what happens in the end.

Yes, Rotor sold it for $137,000 or so initially. So, if this is the PCE copy owned by Robert Roter to start with, which was the copy that was owned by Danny Kramer? I thought Kramer had picked up a copy in about the same condition range, or is this the Roter copy that eventually ending up with Kramer during one of its many rest stops on its way to this just completed sale by Metro/CC?

I believe you are correct in terms of the rarity of issue #3 as I remember reading some threads on these boards here where members were stating their opinion that Arrow #3 is the toughest to find in the group. As for me, I am sure that I have a low grade copy of Arrow #2 in my collection somewhere as I must have brought it a long long time ago since I have absolutely no idea where it even is anymore. Most probably purchased it from somebody like Harley because out of all the dealers at the cons which I went to back then, he was about the only one who would have the odd Centaur here and there for sale at a pretty reasonable price.

Okay, managed to fight my way out of the bargain basement dungeon to take a quick glimpse of the view from the penthouse before I get booted out. Look like this book is all alone right now taking up not only the penthouse, but the entire top few floors all for its own: https://www.comicconnect.com/item/900235 Not sure where it will end up by the time it's all said and done, but sitting all by itself now at $597,222 (i.e. $686,805 with BP) which is more than a few hundred thousand higher than it's next closest neighbor down below. Will definitely be interesting to see where this copy finishes up at, especially considering all of the rather extraordinarily record high prices all of the other copies have received on Heritage over the past few months so far this year. I guess it's only a matter of less than a week then until we find out.

At this point of time in the grading game, the chance of this happening is absolutely zero as it is a key part of their top and bottom lines. Actually, if you think about it, this was most likely all part of their business model right from the get go. All we had to do was watched what happen in the other collectibles field before the CCG ownership took their game and transferred it over here to the comic book hobby. I have been told by certain boardies that this game was really ramped up once Heritage came onto the scene with their overlapping ownership. I believe the circle was then pretty much complete once they acquired Classics Incorporated from Matt back in 2012 and what you call as hypocrisy and what many of us saw as potential conflict of interest, I am sure the CCG ownership simply viewed it as business synergies waiting to be unlocked and what they call vertical intergration in the business world by providing an end to end solution for the various key processes within the collectibles comic book marketplace.

Exactly right!!!

Oh, come on now............you actually made me Google up that word to see what it meant, although I had already guess it correctly.

I would assume you probably meant the LACK of very many exisitng HG copies here, because with today's label centric focused collectos, I assume any high grade books, especially ones from as far back as the 40's and 50's would be more than worthwhile to slab in today's hyper red hot marketplace?

Maybe I should turn off my cell phone anyways, just in case then. Seriously, I finally got around to opening up my catalog yesterday and if you are a DC GA collector, you are definitely going to have to check with your banker for a second mortgage because there's a whole ton of nice books in there from the Kentucky Collection. You still have time because that portion of the auction won't be until next Thursday and Friday of next week. And if you are into Spidey's or uber high grade Conan's or Daredevil's, you should probably set aside some time for yourself to do some bidding in the first few days of the auction then. Not sure if everybody is suffering from auction fatigue right now with HA already having 2 big Signature Auctions this year alone or from CL seemingly never ending auction that started back in February, but as @batman_fan stated in a previous post, bids and prices sure seem to be progressing at a snail's pace as compared to some of their previous Event Auctions. Just checked and it looks like a full 15% of their auction lots are still sitting in the single dollar digits (i.e. under $10) while a full 55% of their auction lots are still sitting at less than $100 for now at least. Hmmmm.....................maybe it's time for me to throw in some bids once I check out more of their auction offerings this weekend.

The real astute buyers were the ones who were wise enough to know this early on and brought up a lot of the SP Restored books at relatively dirt cheap prices way back in the day when the marketplace simply looked at the color of the label and paid absolutely no attention at all to the type and extent of the work that had been done. These early buyers have done very very well from either a paper profit point of view as their books would now qualify for a Conserved label, or from a real profit point of view by reversing some of these easily reversible work that had been done and having the book regraded slightly lower, but now at least in a blue Universal slab.

Yes, although you and I and the other long time comic book collectors would understand this point, do you really believe that buyers in today's label centric marketplace would be willing to dismiss this factor if the book ended up residing in either a quasi-grey/blue slab or dare we even say, one of those much dreaded Restored PLOD slabs. They certainly haven't done so to this point in time yet. Especially since today's label chasers are really focused on only two things when they decide how wide they are willing to open their wallets for a book. Namely, the color of the label and that big big number on the top left hand corner of the book, and sadly, less so than the underlying book itself. Like I said earlier, this complete aversion although it has certainly subsided in recent years, was due to CGC's mistake from the get go when they decided to implement the use of a multi-color label system to differentiate the restored books from the unrestored books as it served only to stigmatize them and exacerbated the difference in value between the two of them. Once in place and the collecting base got used to it, it was far too late to make changes as clearly evident by Borock's failed attempt to change it back to an uni-color label system back in 2005. Borock was simply trying to counteract the impact of the multi-color labels which had unfortunately resulted in the unintended consequences of decimating the value of restored books at the time which was clearly not their intention. I remember all of the belly aching and cries of scams and fraud if CGC switched to an uni-color label system with both a 10-point condition grading system in conjunction with a 10-restoration rating system. Boardies were complaining that nobody would be able to understand a 10-point restoration rating system where R-0 was unrestored and R-10 was extensive restoration and claimed that it would serve only to allow scammers to foist restored books into an unsuspecting marketplace as unrestored books. They claimed the only sure way to tell an restored book from an unrestored book was to use color labels like how school age children in Grade 1 would learn their numbers by using color blocks. And yet we have in place a 10-point condition grading system whereby collectors seem to have no problems at all differentiating a CGC 9.8 graded book from a CGC 1.8 graded book. Go figure that!!! Sad to say, but nothing at all would surprise me when it comes to CGC making changes and coming up with new additional revenue generating schemes to add to both their top and bottom lines in order to keep their CCG ownership happy. In fact, I would not even be surprised if micro-trimming (i.e. not trimming which is a completely different animal) comes into play one day and the exact same arguments end up being trotted out as the ones that were used when they decided after the fact to allow pressing because it is really nothing more than "maximiaztion of potential". No doubt, all of the speculators and label chasers will then be running down to the nearest loonie store as fast as their little feet can take them to buy the sharpest pair of scissors that they can find.

Well, the book is worth millions now. I don't believe it would take a multi million dollar hit. Sadly but not necessarily rightly, this is the EXACT reason why the book would take a multi-million dollar hit. It's simple arithmetic as Restored books (and Cinserved to a lesser extent) always get a sizable percentage hit when they are sold, and this percentage seems to increase even more for the higher grade copies. So, if you have a HG copy of a book that's worth quite a few million dollars in unrestored condition, the current marketplace sentiment will surely knock more than a million dollars or two off it by the time it's all said and done.

Congrats on your pickup here and finally being able to complete your Arrow run here. Just took a look at the CGC census and it looks like you have one of the higher graded copies out there as top of census is only a CGC 7.0 for this issue of Arrow. Looks like there are no true high grade copies (i.e. > CGC 8.0) for any of these 3 Arrow issues slabbed to date so far. I imagine the Church copy of Arrow 3 must still be locked away in some lucky collector's personal collection as it was graded by Chuch as a NM copy in his Mile High Catalog. No listing for for a Arrow 1 or 2, so I imagine no Church copies for those first 2 issues for collectors to look forward to one day. Although it took you the longest amount of time to acquire your Arrow 2, do you think this is the one that's actually the toughest to find in the marketplace or are all three issues pretty much just as tough to find?

Do you think this is due to the perception that they might be in low demand in today's super-hero focused marketplace, perceived low dollar value, hard to find in high grade condition to make it worthwhile to slab, or some combination of all 3, or some other factor?

It turned out to be Marvel Mystery #71 and was eventually found I thought I had heard rumours that it might have been a Detective 1, but good to hear that it was found even though a much more minor book.

Well, I guess you must be some deep pocketed big time buying customer if you got a personal phone call from them. I just checked my email and notice that I had received some standard form email message from some Kiera chick earlier this afternoon informing me about their big Event Auction next week. I guess I must be a nobody compared to you then.

Sounds like it is the Famous First Edition rePRINT version that came out in 1974.

I have seen very few, and they have been going for quite a bit, even for beater copies. I'm glad I got the ones I have when I did. Well, since Jon Berk was one of the very few collectors here who had a complete Centaur run, virtually all of them came out (except for the very few he held back) into the marketplace in his big auction with CC back in the summer of 2017. After that, some of the buyers probably took the opportunity to make a fast buck on them by flipping them back out into the marketplace, most likely after the usual CPR procedure had been done to the books. Likewise, the same thing happened when @G.A.tor had to unfortunately sell off his much treasured Centaur collection the other year when that nasty hurricane ripped through both his home and comic shop business the other year. If not for that collosal disaster inflicted upon him by Mother Nature, I am sure that all of those Centaurs would still be in Rick's personal collection today and have never hit the marketplace. As a result, most of the Centaurs from thos 2 big collections have by now slowly worked their way through the marketplace over the past 2 years and we are probably back into the usual low low supply of Centaurs in terms of a small sprinkling into the marketplace here and there over time.

Yeah that's one that was stolen in 2000. He got it back in 2011 but then auctioned it off. He had a TEC 27 that was stolen along with the Action but he never saw that one again. I am sure that like the Action 1, the 'Tec 27 will surface one day in the future and you'll see Fishler flying across the country once again to reclaim it for Cage because he apparently has a memory like a steel trap when it comes to these types of books. Any truth to the rumours that there was a third book involved in this big theft, but the authorities want to keep this one under wraps as they generally don't release all of the details to the public in the hopes of catching the culprit?

Hey Mitch; Trying to figure out your trend of thought here or was you simply in a hurry and mistyped or dropped a word? Sounds as though you are saying that they need to keep the current multi-color label system in place and then you go on to say that you cannot agree with the boardie if he says that he wants to keep the current system. If I was CGC and had the chance to do it all over again from the start, I would have simply adopted a uni-color label system utilizing both a 10-point condition grading system in conjunction with a 10-point restoration rating system. This would have put all of the books, both unrestored and restored on a level playing field, as opposed to stigmatizing one group of them and thereby encouraging the current desecration or mutilation of them in order to avoid the much dread PLOD.

Hmmmm....................that's exactly why it would no longer be considered to be Restored , and instead, be classified as Conserved and residing in one of those slabs with a quasi-grey/blue label. Then again, nonetheless, it's still a big knock to the book and its resultimng value.

Yes, but that was a long long 7 years ago way back in 2014 and therefore completely not even comparable at this point in time. Just take a look at how much key books have gone up over the last few months, let along the last 7 years and you can just imagine how much more that CGC 9.0 graded copy of Action 1 would be going for in today's hyper driven comic book marketplace. Nowhere even close to $3.2M anymore as it would be way past that price point by now.

I absolutely love the variation of colors on this cover here and since green is my favorite color, it definitely doesn't hurt with this cover here.