lou_fine

Not sure if you should actually be posting this on a public website since Canada Customs might be reading this, and I am also not sure if you are using the correct adjective in your post above.

Yes 27 of them. 9.6's don't come around often even with that amount out there. I wonder what one of the two 9.8's would sell for. Well, probably because some bidders see some potential with this particular copy here: and hope to be able to answer your above question for you.

Definitely no mylar here as that's way too expensive to store raw comics for me, except for my GA books which have higher dollar value. This thread made me go look for my MOKF books (sadly the Gulacy issues only ) and I found them buried deep down at the bottom of a big apple box, all stored away brick style with 5 books per those original old poly bags from some 45 years ago.

You can clearly see that Gulacy was in fine form by MOKF 38 and doing what some would say was a poor man's version of Steranko's layout and artistic style by that time, as that splash page certainly brought back the darkened alleyway splash by Steranko in one of the Captain America issues:

Now, now..........let's not freak out the poor guy who's got their tracking bid punched in at $900K, as he's probably already sweating bullets and peeing his pants for the past week or so.

Since I also don't partake in the variant market at all, I would consider that aspect of the market to be irrelevant from my own personal point of view. As for the uber HG market when it comes to the more recent CA to MA markets, I would tend to stay far away and refuse to pay abnormally high prices for these seemingly "common as dirt" books. Especially the ones which are in demand and yet already graded in CGC 9.8 by the hundreds or even thousands as this huge number of uber HG copies makes it virtually impossible to track and trace them to verify their past grading history, if any at all.

I remember being in the Diamond vault right after their Int'l Galleries grand opening back in early '95 and saw nice copies of 209 to 212 along with 216 which I assume were part of the books from Martha's split out of the Overstreet collection. Sadly, no 213 or 214 which have always been my favorite covers out of the entire Frazetta run and ones which Overstreet (along with 215) probably never found in nice enough condition to match up with the other earlier issues in his run.

Over 30+ years, my buddies have moved at least 3 times each so factoring in the wear and tear of handling, transportation, and piling on box on top of box, I’d say it’s highly unlikely that more than 1 in 10 would would be pressed up to a 9.8 If you are using a 10% rate, it actually sounds as though you are a bit more generous than me as to the number that could be improved up to the 9.8 graded condition level. Considering the huge print run and the fact that many collectors at the time went out of their way to snap up additional copies to preserve in their collections given that it was not only a special centennial issue, but also a Special 25th Anniversary issue, I can forsee thousands more being graded at the CGC 9.8 condition level over and above the current 1,300+ copies by the time it's all said and done.

In 1993, Lamont received a phone call that led to the discovery of the origin of the Larson Comic Book Collction, the third largest collection of Golden Age comic books. In 2005, Lamont was guest of honor at San Diego Comi-Con, meeting with collectors from across the United States.

hang in there, 2021 a lot of good material will hit the market....complete set is awesome I would tend to agree with Mitch here, especially since that Frazetta run is probably as good as you are going to get when it comes to top end highly desired cover art. Although it would indeed appear that the last 2 issues of the run have the fewest copies slabbed to date by a long shot, I am sure it will be worth the wait as their are still enough slabbed copies (i.e. 30 Universal copies) of Famous Funnies 216 that one will come around to meet your grade eventually. Not sure about the price range though, although you can always be hopeful.

Yes, I know of several local collectors with 10+ raw copies each. And even though they were cherry picked from our LCS, I doubt a single copy would grade 9.8, given today’s current right grading. a newly graded 9.8 is truly an Uber-grade for this book. In total agreement with you that an unmanipulated copy right off the shelves of the LCS that has survived to this time in "virgin" 9.8 condition is truly an uber grade for this book. Any bets though that a small number of those 10+ copies could be lovingly hugged and squeezed into 9.8 condition, which I am sure was most likely done to a huge proportion of those well over 1,300 copies already slabbed at CGC 9.8 and up. Especially since depending on the type of defects, have we not seen some books jump multiple grade increments when their potential has been maximized, with some even evenntually going from CGC 9.0 up to CGC 9.8 graded condition by the time it's all said and done.

Sadly, it's pretty obvious that you was not the only one as clearly evident by the fact that there are a total of only 29 dead in Singapore, 7 dead in Taiwan, 0 dead in Macao, etc. after all this time and all of those countries are so much closer to China.

Well, those most likley would not be higher grade copies if you are referring to flea markets and garage sales. Now, if you are talking about uber HG copies being held raw in the collections of private collectors, there's still a whole ton of those still out there in the wild just waiting to be slabbed upon eventual sale.

I would most definitely add the name of Tom Reilly to this list of early comic book collectors, with what would eventually become more commonly known as the San Francisco pedigree which was one of the earliest pedigrees to surface way back in the early 70's. Out of this group of five though, it would appear that the Recil Macon books are the toughest to come across rhough, as they simply don't seem to appear in the marketplace as often as books from the other four collections.

Totally agree with both of you here as I made the exact same point on these boards when CGC first decided to add these 3 massively large mid-grade collections to their designated list of pedigrees when they introduced their new pedigree label back in the summer of 2019. Although these 3 collections certainly didn't meet the key pedigree criteria of high grade condition quality, they were certainly easily identifiable and I could imagine CGC salivating at the thought of absolute thousands upon thousands of these books being resubmitted back into them for their pedigree labels (for a fee of course ) over time upon eventual resale. One indirect benefit though was that I was able to position these 3 mid-grade pedigrees to convince the owner of the Chinatown Collection to give his collection another shot at obtaining a pedigree designation which from my own personal point of view was a no-brainer to me and more deserving of a pedigree designation which it did finally managed to achieve in the end:

If I remember correctly, I believe we already had this discussion previously on the boards here, and somebody suggested that this is most likely one of those intentional "errors" placed in there by Overstreet for copyright purposes. As a result, the conclusion at the time was that the April/May edition of this book most likely does not actually exist.

A very touching video and it's obvious that your words definitely come right from the heart. Needless to say, RIP Lamont, and many thanks and unforgettable memories as a direct result of you saving your much treasured books to share and pass onto future generations of comic book collectors.

There is a Comic Cavalcade #11 in an old school 9.2 label. Probably one of the exceptions to the rule when it comes to high grade copies for this particular pedigree. The same would probably also apply to the Eldon and Harold Curtis pedigrees which along with the Cookville's were all given pedigree status back in the summer of 2019 when CGC introduced their new pedigree label. From my own personal point of view, definitely not on par with the Edgar Church and Allentown pedigree books when it came to condition quality.

Does anybody here have any idea as to the highest grade achieved for a Cookville book to date so far? It would appear that most of the Cookville books tend run in this CGC 7.0 grade range or thereabouts and probably top out somewhere in the CGC 8.s. Just wondering how this collection, amongst a few others, were ever able to meet CGC's original (but apparently no longer) key criteria of "pre-dominantly high grade condition" in order to achieve pedigree status?

Yes, my better half thinks everybody can do their investing with a rear view mirror and doesn't understand how anybody can ever lose money in the market. Definitely do wish I would have traded in a few of my Visa shares which have just managed to get back to their March highs, and instead had gotten some more Square which has done a triple from their March highs. Or in a perfect dream world, gotten in much earlier into some of those Chinese EV stocks which have done a 10-bagger or 12-bagger from their March highs.

Don't worry, it's not politics until I post in a thread. Why, are you looking for another holiday break from these boards here?

Are you basing this on the condition of the exterior cover or on the interior cover which CGC uses to determine their final grade? Personally, I always feel that it should be an average of the 2 grades at the most.

Especially in the case of a common book like this where there are absolutely thousands upon sands of uber HG copies in the CGC 9.6 to CGC 10.0 grade range, making it virtually impossible to do any kind of tracking and tracing to determine if any of these have been artifically manipulated from lower graded and hence much lower dollar valued copies.

Yes, I know opinions vary on pressing but I think everyone agrees it’s a shame to see perfectly good books destroyed by bad pressing being done. Just like those who allowed cokes to be spilled on books or let cats pee on them... I believe this was something that was indeed done when pressing first came to light on these boards way back in 2005, as Borock stated rather emphatically that books would be downgraded for defects arising from improperly performed pressing. From reading feedback on these boards here at the time, I believe this tolerance for pressing defects became more acceptable as time went on and definitely in place about 5 years ago after the pressing maestro (i.e. Nelson himself) shifted over from CCS to become the Head Grader at CGC. Especially since the newbies that took over the pressing work at CCS simply didn't have the same expertise and the CCG ownership knew they would be losing a substantial portion of their additional streams of revenues (i.e. pressing, resubs, etc.) if CGC started to downgrade for pressing defects that were now coming out from their own shop.

what is the point of pressing a GA/SA comic book...to "game" the grading system and get the grade pumped up on steroids. Mitch; Is this like a case of something like what came first: the chicken or the egg? The point of pressing might just be to level back the playing field so that you don't receive overly egregious punishment grades from CGC. After all, wasn't it really CGC who "game" their undisclosed grading standards in order to pump up both their top line and bottom line to keep the CCG ownership happy?