lou_fine

Now, now..........remember there's no politics allowed on these boards here or else the Mods (especially Mod1) will come and spank your big bottom.

Well, I guess my comment would be that this gives us a pre-emptive answer to our question of whether this copy with the first appearance and origin of Batgirl would beat the $90K price point achieved by Batman 181 (1 of 3 in 9.8 & 7 in 9.6) and with the first appearance of Poison Ivy.

Well, from the rumours which I have heard, is that due to ongoing interest and apparent demand from the likes of you and Cat on the boards here, they are now planning to expand the size of right hand toolbar to accomodate even more useful information for us lucky board members here.

Well, it's pretty clear that his interests extended far beyond just DC's from some of the Church runs that have shown up for auction on Heritage over the years. I remember when I was working with Pat to help him with his Chinatown Collection back around 2007 and Dave contacted me to express interest in obtaining the entire collection lock, stock, and barrel. Although I am sure that he would have preferred them in raw condition, he said that he would have no concerns with taking the entire thing once they all came back from CGC. He still wanted them all even when I told him that the DC's were not in the same pristine 9.6 and the few 9.8 graded condition that the later non-super hero books from the 1950's were grading out at. I told Dave that his chance of getting the Chinatown Collection would be absolutely zero as Pat was not even willing to let a single one of the books go except possibly for the odd humour or low demand book from the 1950's. It's now 2021 and looks like my prognostication was correct as I am not aware of Pat selling any of them even though he finally did managed to obtain the pedigree designation from CGC for them last year that he had been seeking to for so long.

He may have but, if so, he sold them early on. Joe Duggan had them and then sold them to Joe Smejkal back in the 90s (or earlier). Joe ended up consigning them to Heritage in 2008. If I remember correctly, believe Joe S. also had the Church run of Green Lantern which he told me about when I was sitting next to him at a CBM dinner during one of the SD Con's to honor all of the GA DC creators from the 30's and early 40's. I am sure he also ended up selling tht GL run off in one of the HA auctions, but not sure if it's the same auction as the Flash run. Any idea whatever happened to Smejkal in the end, as I assume he would no longer be in the hobby after selling off those Church runs?

Yes indeed, as this was the big Anthony Chiofalo and Tandano Corporation embezzlement case: https://www.theverge.com/2015/7/22/8870089/texas-comic-book-heist-anthony-chiofalo-tadano Unfortunately for the Tandano Corporation, they were never ever able to recoup anywhere close to the $200K paid for this copy of All-Star 3, as it sold for only $72K in a subseqquent HA in 2019 conducted on behalf of the Tandano Corporation. Needless to say, they must have lost big time on all of the books which this embezzler brought for ridiculous money and which Tandano had to put back out into the marketplace.

Well, it would appear that the Heritage fer which you posted is in the BIN (i.e. Buy It Now) format which is something that is proactively initiated by the winner/buyer based upon a Offer price which he himself has set. Completely different from the Make Offer to Owner feature which is something that is automatically initiated by Heritage, and in virtually all cases, without the winner/buyer even aware of it, as per my previous post above:

On Heritage, Has anyone actually bought anything from the "Green" Buy now offer? Or sold? I submitted one for the amount listed and never heard a thing. I noticed a few have a disclaimer like this "The owner of this item indicated they would sell this item at this amount on Jan 1, 2021, and it may no longer be available at that amount." Does that mean someone else likely hit the green buy now button? I emailed HA and did not hear back but had a few offers on the table. Unless you have specifically reqested to opt out of the Make Offer to Owner feature, all winning bids will have this automatically set to show an offer of 30% above the winning bid price. It is then up to the winner to turn down any bids that might be received. Not sure why you did not hear back from HA on your offers, but I guarantee you 100% that you will hear back instantly from them if you had made an offer similar to this one here that was instantly accepted within days of the auction ending: https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/all-star-comics-3-billy-wright-pedigree-dc-1940-cgc-vf-85-off-white-to-white-pages/a/7054-91043.s?ic4=ListView-ShortDescription-071515 Book won by bidder for $49,293.75 and then resold a week later for $200,000 through the Make Offer to Owner feature. , the money that is. So, I guess if you really want a book, you will simply have to up your offer to something that the winner cannot refuse.

Yes indeed, as I also remember that he used to owned the Denver copy of All-Select 1 back then. If I remmber correctly, he said something about siamese pages which would make it hard for the buyer to read one of the stories. I guess in this age of certification, it wouldn't matter as much since the slab makes it impossible to see any of the interior pages unless you crack the book out of the slab.

Upgrade of 9.0 copy. If this is indeed the case, then I assume the book must have been graded twice by the owner since they have apparently owned it for the past 38 years. I assume the second time would be with a bit of help in terms of maximizing its potential. As for the back story from Heritage with respect to this particular book, ask and ye shall receive: http://intelligentcollector.com/batmans-best/?ctrack=473536&type=article11-1-www-icmag-winter20-21-special1-tem010521 In 1979, Billy T. Giles moved from Shreveport, La., to Houston, when Texas Eastern Transmission Pipeline Co. relocated its headquarters to Texas. Billy fell in with the local comics shops and dealers and helped his son complete an Amazing Spider-Man collection and obtain other key comics. Billy then decided to collect Batman for himself, starting with the purchase of six of the first nine issues from Camelot Bookstore owner Willie Patterson’s personal collection. Camelot was located in downtown Houston, where Billy spent many lunch hours discussing comics – especially the Batman No. 1 – with Patterson. Around that time, Patterson advertised Camelot’s copy of Batman No. 1 in the Comics Buyer’s Guide for $5,000, at the time a costly investment. When it failed to sell at such a steep price – remember, this is around 1982 – Billy offered him $3,000 cash, which Willie happily accepted. The first Batman became Billy’s, and friends and neighbors teased him for spending that much for a comic book they insisted might one day be worthless. History, of course, proved otherwise. When Billy retired from Texas Eastern, he began a comic-book business called BTandWDGiles, and spent the rest of his life buying and selling comics; his passion had turned professional. When he died in 2019, Billy’s son inherited his father’s remarkable collection, and a year later decided it was someone else’s turn to own the finest known copy of Batman No. 1.

Is there an ungraded Church copy out there? Or do people think there might be? Sometimes, a picture is worth a thousand words:

yes, but I doubt there is or that an existing copy can be juiced up to that grade. Well, let's not forget about the Church copy of Bat 1 that Dave would have locked away in his private collection.

That's because we are waiting for you to bump up the bid to the next increment so that we can REALLY have something to talk about here.

Why would you say this..................is it from your own personal experience?

Come on, 2nd from the left is the clear winner 😂 That’s a bahdunkadunk right there! Well, I think old Bats himself might prefer the one on the bottom right where his young ward has already assumed the position, although it looks like he's already had a good beating there.

For our clarification purposes, which one of these butt angles would make it worth even more than $1.5 million dollars:

So, are you really saying that there's a museum or art gallery that's willing to take and display our copies of Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters, and the like?

Still no worries as Canada Customs is a completely different government agency from the CRA and I believe Canada Customs is much easier whe it comes to these things. Especially since they simply don't have time to open up every single one of the millions of parcels going through the postal system every day and tend to work more on the honor system. They are really looking more for illegal items such as illegal drugs and the likes.

Well, not sure about you or Greggy, but absolutely no worries for me as I am more than a life-long collector and plan to take everything of value with me so that I'll have something to read when I go to that big comic book room in the sky. The CRA can't tax me if I haven't sold off anything, but I do need to get a hold of them to check into writing off a huge taxable loss for all of those boxes full of B&W turd treasures like Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters, Samurai Penguin, Ultraverse titles like Ultraforce and Prime, Dark Horse titles like Barb Wire and Vortex, Marvel's UK Universe titles like Death's Head and BattleTide, etc. which I'll gladly donate to your comic book room as soon as you give me your shipping address in Hong Kong. Actually, now that HK is supposedly a part of China, I think it's really you who need to be careful with what you post here. After all, now that Xi Jinping is done with Jack Ma and his Alibaba/Ant billions, they might just come after you and your cache of comic books next.

That's because a lot of collectors must have excellent taste when it comes to these classic cover books, and I assume you would be referring to this copy here that sold back in March of 2020: Not sure if there are any significant issues with the interior pages here or if it's just the usual near invisible NCB spine ticks and creases that can only be seen if you hold the book up at a certain angle to the light, but it looks from the front and back covers that they really pounded the sledge hammer down when it came to grading this book. Makes me wonder if the submittor made the crucial mistake of not playing the certification game by the house rules and simply sent it straight in for grading and hence, bidders are simply trying to pick up the easy money left on the table by the consignor here.

Brian, place a bid on the Bats1 and we'll resume talks Well, I've been trying my best to, but it seems that the Heritage bidding system says that I am not allowed to place new bids in there that's lower than the current bid. Go figure that!!!

this Hate to be the bearer of bad news here...........................but this is no longer the old days where it's one and done when it comes to grading and/or pressing. Apparently they've now refined the submission system to have multiple levels of pressing built in there just so they can squeeze (pun fully intended ) as much money out of your pockets as possible. Yes, maybe they need to see tell tale evidence of multiple pressings such as popped staples or the like from being fully squashed to ensure that you've paid your dues in full before giving you the 9.8 that you are looking for. And yes, definitely leaving money on the table if you don't have one of those CVA Exceptional or QES stickers since the CGC label collectors will surely open their wallets to the max when they see one of those stickers on a slab.

Yes, but it's just that we are starting to get bored to death here as there's been absolutely no action on this Bat 1 here for the past couple of weeks now. That, plus the fact we want to help distract the attention of the poor guy who's peeing in his pants right now as their tracking bid of $900K is still holding up as the eventual winner.

Not really when you compare it to much more plentiful and more recent books like TMNT 1 with pretty much the same number of copies in CGC 9.8 graded condition, and yet they are able to fetch even higher dollars than this. Especially when DD 1 is much tougher to find in grade, as compared to TMNT 1 where a sizeable portion of the entire print run is already in these HG condition levels.

Not sure, but is something going on with that top left green portion of the spine where the logo is or is that just where the Blob sat his big butt down on a few times too many?