lou_fine

Did you actually buy it? Why YES, YES, of course I did and what a STEAL OF A DEAL that turned out to be now that I know a lot more about its super rarity, courtesy of @Black Bat Being the nice guy and generous chap that I am though, and considering that it has only a tiny infinitesimal 3,093 slabbed to date plus the fact that the TOD 10 sold for $106,350; I am willing to take the sacrifice and sell it to you for the same $106,350 amount. Especially since that sale took place quite a few days ago which is like a full lifetime when it comes to the increasing valuation of comic books in today's red hot hyper marketplace. , YOUR money, that is!!!

Why in the world not, especially if you are a comic book collector. I remember buying comic books off the shelves of my LCS bck in the mid-70's, and like almost every other comic book collector at the time, would always try to cherry pick the best copy for my personal collection.

This is most definitely correct since it's impossible to fully enjoy your books if they are imprsioned in a slab. Since a picture is worth a thousand words though, my answer is best expressed by a very popular 2017 thread that ran for 175 pages, as follows:

I would definitely tend to agree with you in terms of the atomic bomb style snipe bids that takes place right in the last few seconds of an auction using the CL or EBay auction format, as per one of my previous posts from the X-Men 94 thread in the BA Forum:

Oh sorry, my mistake and clearly my bad then..................nowhere even close to the 13,966 copies of Hulk 181 that's already been slabbed. I am absolutely surprised then that this "super rare" Transformers 1 didn't hit into 6-figures like what the Tomb of Dracula 10 did.

I certainly hope you are not suggesting that this $20K result based upon 2 totally blind and I am sure automated computerized sniping bids in the last 7 seconds from 2 individuals who most likely thought no other bidder would place a similar irrational atomic bomb style bid is the new normal for X-Men 94 in CGC 9.6. I believe you need to have this same result occur in a fully visible step-by-step bidding format auction before you can say this. Especially since the last 2 CGC 9.6 sales on HA since October came in at $7,800; the last one on CC came in at $6,988 in December, and this one here was sitting in the $8K range before the last 2 out of this universe blind Hail Mary snipe bids came in with only 7 seconds left in the auction. How real is this disparity between grades when grading is really still more of an art (i.e. based upon a human opiniong at a particular point in time) as opposed to an exact science, coupled with all of the gamification that is taking place when it comes to the grading and slabbing of comic books. After 20 years of certification, it still puzzles me as to why some buyers would pay multiples more for tiny increases in subjective grades when we have seen books at times go from CGC 4.0 all the way up to CGC 9.0 and books from CGC 9.0 be "maximized" all the way up to CGC 9.8.

I'm not sure. Well, if that's the case, then try to explain Ms. Marvel 1 as compared to Marvel Super-Heroes 13.

Sadly, one that we'll most likely never ever get the answer to because I highly dount that you will ever see a CGC 9.8 graded copy of Cereus 1 due to the absolutely poor printing quality for that entire 2,000 print run. Then again, I guess anything's possible given CGC's ongoing changes to their undisclosed grading standards over time, coupled with their inconsistencies in grading at times.

You two frigging stupid screwballs..............I took your advice and placed a bid of exactly $44,000 and nobody took it up to $46,000!!! WTF:..............now I am stuck with this drek "common as dirt" book here all because of you two knuckleheads: https://www.comiclink.com/auctions/item.asp?back=%2FAUCTIONS%2FSEARCH.ASP%3FFocusedOnly%3D1%26where%3Dauctions%26title%3Dtransformers%2B1%26ItemType%3DCB%26CGC%3DYES%26CBCS%3DYES%23Item_1452303&id=1452303&itemType=0

Money well spent Where is @Boston Corbett-migration when he can continue to lecture us all on NM 98 and finally rightfully get to say after all these long years: THUS ENDTH THE LESSON!!!

I hope it’s that cheap when I decide to go after one Yes, although it went from $8K up to $16,450 within the last 5 minutes, it went from $31,111 down to this $16,450 mark in the past 15 months.

How much more would this book be worth if SubMariner were on the cover? Yes, that cover for Motion Pictures Funnies Weekly would be a perfect example, with another one being this book here: I am sure this book would be in a lot more demand and sought after with a even higher price valuation than it currently has if it had cover appearance with the Phantom in this book which featured his first appearance in comic books. Surprisingly, it would not be until another 130+issues in Ace Comics #143 before the Phantom managed to be featured on the cover even though he had taken the lead story for the Ace run almost right from his introduction. Even though those Phantom covers on the last several issues of Ace Comics were rather lame, they all still managed to achieved double digit multiples to condition guide when some of them at long last became available on Heritage in the past couple of years. Clearly extremely rare and tough to find as each one of them has less than a handful in the CGC census, with Ace #145 still having no copies slabbed to date so far.

Yes, I guess when it comes to the Planets and Fiction House books in general, it's all really about the strength and boldness of their cover colors becuase they must have gone to some cheapo printing out since you often tend to get a rather wide range in their color variations.

When it comes to comic books, believe me that cover appearance makes a big difference in terms of a book's valuation, especially in this day and age of slabbed comic books where all you really see are just the front and back covers only.

Heritage for sure tweaks and Metropolis/Comicconnect tweaks even more... I would be surprised if Comiclink didnt (just to keep up with the competition) Whenever I think of tweaking, I always view it to be an obviously overstated positive enhancement of a book like what we clearly from Heritage. According to seemingly ongoing complaints from some consignors and also from a couple of the books which I have won over the years, I would not call CC's rather seeming poor quality of their scans to be "tweaking". Especially when the books often tend to have brighter colors in hand and I just can't figure out what the heck is happening with the bottom edge of the books on some of their scans. From the very small sample which I have received, the books tend to be better than how some of their scans present. What CC really needs is either a better scanner or operator and most of all, if they had any type of writer that's even a tiny fraction as creative as the person who CL has, they would be doing a lot better from my point of view. Heck, it shouldn't be that hard to beat a <8 word one line description listing for a book (if you even get that) and is clearly the exact opposite of what I would call embellishment or hyping when it comes to trying to sell a book for a consignor. It seems like they just expect the book to sell itself from just the CGC grading and the PQ designation alone. Come to think of it now, they don't want your book to only sell itself, with their new website design, they also want your book to help sell all of the other competing copies of the exact same book which they have sitting unsold in their inventory. Not sure sure how consignors feel about the lack of a sales pitch in almost all of their auction listings, and yet they'll provide direct links to all other competing copies right at the bottom of the auction listing. Definitely not an auction sales approach that I have seen any other auction website take.

Well, from my reading of the original post, it seem pretty clear to me that he was not talking about just one or two specific billionaires driving up the entire collectibles marketplace. He was referring more to an entire generation of younger people with a different way of thinking and a different perspective on what's taking place in the world as compared to most of us old fogies on the board here, and I would tend to agree with his point of view here.

I would assume you must be referring to that rather infamous story about the mishap with the CGC 9.9 graded cpy of Hulk 181 here?

Any boardie here the lucky seller of this later HTF issue of Mystery Men 27 which sold on CL in the Wednesday portion of their Featured Auction: https://www.comiclink.com/auctions/item.asp?back=%2FAUCTIONS%2FSEARCH.ASP%3FFocusedOnly%3D1%26where%3Dauctions%26title%3Dmystery%2Bmen%26ItemType%3DCB%26CGC%3DYES%26CBCS%3DYES%23Item_1455846&id=1455846&itemType=0 Sold for a very strong $8,099 final price, especially considering that the Church highest graded CGC 8.0 copy sold for just a bit more at $10.8K in a Heritage Auction only a few short months ago.

Well then, how about the crazy money now being paid for Marvel trading cards from the 90's which are supposedly available by the tens of millions? Are you really trying to convince me that you wouldn't trade one of your old used pre-Robin 'Tec books for that immaculate and priceless CGC 9.9 graded copy of Transformers 1.

I bet he felt as good as a hippy on crack. Oh wait....... Well, that plus the fact he was far too busy trying to figure out how he was going to come up with the 10 cents which he was going to have to pay for each one of those Church books. He ended up getting the money from Burrell Rowe and I believe that the entire Planet run was a small part of the Church collection that he got in return for providing Chuckles with the $2K to purchase the entire estimated 20,000 book collection.

I’ve got a few copies of that one! Hey West; Big big congrats to you on your new found wealth since I can't seem to find a single copy in my personal collection no matter how hard I look. If you've got multiple copies of this beauty, then I am sure you must have a ton of other invaluable books from this same time period. Best for you to steamroll them all and send them up Josh's way as you probably got yourself a million dollar collection just in these books alone. If you are running out of room in your safety deposit box to hold these new found treasures, you can kick some of those worthless Edgar Church drek out as I am willing to sacrifice myself and take them off your hands for free. I guess the motto of the story here is: One collector's worthless drek is another collector's priceless treasure.

Yes, can you just imagine how much more it would have gone for if it was one of those truly rare in grade newsstand copies instead of this common as dirt in grade Direct copy of Transformer 1?

Well, if this Tramsformers with thousands of copies already graded in total can still fetch $44K, then I really need to look for my copy of this book here: With a total of only a measly 2 copies graded to date so far, just imagine if I can squish squash my copy into a CGC 9.9 slab, it should be no problem at all for me to get 6-figures for this true rarity from some deep pocketed CGC label chaser suffering from a big case of FOMO.

I certainly do not put much weight in it at all, just pointing out how outsiders would view it. They see the trend and jump in both feet. Yes, as I said in my previous post on this result...........................this is a consignor's dream come true when you have 2 crazed bidders with a big case of FOMO come in with only a few seconds left and decide to toss in an atomic bomb style bid to outbid the high bid, not suspecting that there would be another crazed lunatic out there also deciding to do the exact same thing. And for the lucky unlucky winner, their worst nightmare come to life: https://www.comiclink.com/auctions/history.asp?item=1457503&back=%2Fauctions%2Fitem.asp%3Fback%3D%2FAUCTIONS%2FSEARCH%2EASP%3FFocusedOnly%3D1%26where%3Dauctions%26title%3Dx%2Dmen%2B94%26GO%3DGO%26ItemType%3DCB%23Item%5F1457503%26id%3D1457503%26itemType%3D0 Well, if you look at the bidding history posted above, you can clearly see that this is nothing more than an outlier and the real normal for this book in this grade is most likely around only the $8K mark.

Isn't it simply amazing how some of these now recognized and acknowledged classic covers were not so high most collectors' list, as per a post I had done up in another thread talking about the top GA comic book covers in the Comic Book Marketplace magazine: