lou_fine

Yes, CL seems to be quite into this as I know of another consignor who got contacted with regards to a mid-grade CGC 4.0 or 4.5 graded copy of a classic cover book. He also said Yes and the book ended up selling for pretty big multiples to guide, although it is hard to say that this was 100% directly attributable to the sticker. I am not yet aware of anybody being contacted by CC with respect to the QES sticker, as this one here seems to be much newer and haven't seen that many books with them to this point in time relative to the CVA Exceptional sticker.

They contacted me during a Sept. or Oct. auction this year and said it was $12. I’m not sure if the price fluctuates based on the value of the book or not though. Yes, I believe with all of these certification services such as grading, pressing, etc. the pricing fluctuates based upon the value of the book.

I agree and despite being an unpopular opinion, on the average a book that garners the CVA sticker tends to present nicer than other copies. Well, I would also agree and this should be completely expected because this is exactly the service that the submittor/consignor is paying for. Similarly, if you are paying CGC to have a book graded, then you would expect a CGC 9.6 graded copy to actually be at a higher condition level than a CGC 9.0 or even a CGC 9.4 copy. After all, isn't this the exact service which you are paying for when you submit a book into CGC? With respect to the "CVA Exceptional" sticker, I actually think the "QES" sticker from ComicConnect imparts a bit more information to potential bidders. Especially when the CVA sticker is just a generic sticker while the QES stickers on the back comes with a detailed itemization of the specific attributes that qualifies the book in question for this sticker.

Yes indeed, I was all in at the full $88K for the book. That was until I saw the $4.95 shipping charge when I couldn't come up with any more money to foot this fee.

So, what in the world are we paying for if these guys can't even grade with any reasonable degree of consistency. Based upon your statement here, do you believe they are doing this intentionally for future resubs or is it simply because of total and complete incompetence when it comes to grading?

Here’s that same book currently listed on the Bay OMG............Did the buyer of the Heritage copy have an accident and dropped the book into his bathtub while taking his bath and reading it, as the cover colors look completely washed out now?

Well, let's hope it's not the same so-called seller who supposedly also verified his eBay sale of TMNT 1 for something like $87K which then turned out to be a bogus transaction to spike the GPA numbers, as the scan of the book was cobbled together from 2 different copies of CGC 9.8 graded copies of TMNT 1.

SWEEET seldom shared Robot cover Yes indeed, a very very early Robot cover (tied as 2nd overall in comics) and a book that appears to be extremely tough to find in grade.

Would a sanitation engineer count:

This. One of the odd things about our hobby is that the supply axis doesn't seem to be nearly as important as the demand axis. From a supply point of view, the one advantage that GA buyers of these high end books have is the very limited number of copies of these books in play makes it so much easier to track these books as they are going through their permutations ever upwards in terms of graded condition. This allows potential bidders to bid accordingly with better information assuming they are conducting their due dilegence on the book before placing their bids. Good luck trying to do that on much more common BA or CA books where there might be hundreds, if not thousands of copies already graded in 9.0 and above just waiting to have their potential maximized so that they can take their Great Leap upwards. Lots of temptation to do this on the hundreds of HG copies of TMNT 1's and/or Tomb of Dracula 10's when you see a copy selling for for $90K and $85K respectively. Even easier to hide the work done when you have literally thousands on copies in these high grades to play with for big dollar books like Spidey 129 and Hulk 181 where you see the latter being able to sell in CGC 9.8 for a record price of $59K either last year or earlier this year. I guess the latest one that should be relatively easy to launder into the marketplace for big money would be the red hot Spidey 300 with the seller of a CGC 9.8 graded copy grudgingly having to accept a piddly offer of only $15,000 on the book or at a $5K discount off their so very reasonable BIN price of only $20,000. Especially when you consider the fact that this is a relatively common CA book as there's already well over 10,000 copies of this book graded in CGC 9.0 and above for the manipulators to play around with. Well okay, to each their own and if I were the lucky seller of this apparently super rare book even at a $5K discount.......

Any bets that they were not seriously expecting to get $20K for the book since I believe the high point for signed copies was only around the mid-$7K to date. They probably just threw a ridiculously high number out their to see if they could wheel in some sucker "lucky buyer" which is exactly what happened at double the current going rate.

Why not? If there are fools willing to pay $7K for what is basically one of the most common CA books out there in HG, why not ask for $20K and see what happens. If there was really somebody willing to bid $90K for a CGC 9.8 graded copy of TMNT 1 last summer when the previous prices were only in the mid to high $30K's, then you might find the same kind of fools willing to pay a paltry $20K for this fugly all-signed copy here since it's got that big number on the top left corner of the label. the money, that is.

Yet, we look with utter disdain at those who used to conduct these nefarious practices in their supposedly darkened basements back in what Borock called the bad bad old days of the Wild Wild West. Instead, nowadays, we bowed down in front of them and kiss their feet while we throw money their way just so they can maximize the potential of our books in every way imaginable as long as it is not detectable and we can hopefully foist them onto an unsuspecting marketplace without any disclosure at all.

Yes. When it was first auctioned (by clink iirc) it was a Cgc 8.5 and the “s” was still there Actually, now that I think about it, that erased "S" mark looks very familiar to me. Any idea if this particular copy is part of that early GA collection of very high grade books that had the tell tale black greased pencil "S" mark on their front covers? I remember some of these from the early Mystery Men and Wonderworld Fox books. In particular, the one that comes to mind was a uber HG copy of Wonderworld 8 which Verzyl had behind his counter at one of the SD Con's back in the mid-90's. I remember asking him about the book and then being quoted what I thought was a ridicously high price at the time and then John refusing to go down even a single dollar because of its almost pedigree like quality and condition.

My thoughts are that your post would've been welcome back in 2005. The battle was fought, the battle was lost, and the horses left the barn a long time ago. It seems like you've been living in this land during the last 15 years... Yes and sadly, the little pony has definitely left the barn a long long time ago. Actually, my idea at the time which I was actually silly enough to post on these very boards here was to have all professional restorers certified in order to conduct their trade. In addition, as part of their annual certification requirements, they they would then have to imprint some type of small invisible (to the naked eye) digitized code on the last interior page identifying the type of work that had been done on the book. Yes, those were defintely still the innocent days of wine and roses, when in reality all everybody really wanted was to be able to maximize the grade of their books and then foist them into an unsuspecting marketplace without any disclosure at all, in order to maximize the amount of dollars going into their pocket.

Unfortunately for all parties involved (except for CL themselves), this is most definitely the case with books auctioned off through the CL website. Not so much the case with CC though since their auction archives goes back to 2011 (and possibly even earlier) when I first started to take serious notice of them with the release of their quasi-pedigree Atlantic City books that summer. The only problem with their archives is that you usually have to input the exact name correctly or you could also end up with pulling titles with almost similar names.

Why, kind Sir..............................................ask and ye shall receive: Well, okay.......................................if not that oldie moldy picture, then how about this one here with his very own comic book cover appearance:

I'll admit, this went about $1,000 more than I thought it would. Yes, a very very strong price indeed and cewrtainly goes against the thinking that a book has to be certified in order to get the big dollars as this raw copy here sold for something like 3.5X raw condition guide:

Umm. Are you trying to compare the impact of Superman to these two ? Well, if this was Australia, I guess it would indeed be the Phantom because he apparently is THE BIG hero in the land down under. Any bets this HTF key book here would be worth a whole ton more money if it had a Phantom cover instead of this humor cover here:

Yes, like much of the vintage comic book market, collectors sitting around a computer or laptop with nowhere else to spend their excess money in this pandemic driven environment. Even moreso for those lucky enough to have made a killing in the record rise in the equity markets since they hit bottom back in March.

Agreed. Tiny color flakes that you have to go to 4x magnification to see don't bother me too much. And yet if I remember correctly, the virtually impossible to tell micro-trim jobs by Jason was no better than "throw away destroyed books" once they were outed on these boards through side by side before and after scans which had to be magnified to something like the 64X degree in order to see the difference.

Not sure how the CGC grading works in terms of markings on the cover, as opposed to erasures. Just wondering if the erasure would have resulted in a bigger hit on the grading of the book, as opposed to leaving the original "S" marking on the book. From my own personal collector's point of view, I definitely would have prefer the original "S" marking as opposed to the intentionally made fugly erasure which just seems to stand out so much more.

I guess that's probably why I always thought books presented so much nicer in a clear mylar holder as opposed to those bulky industrial-like looking CGC holders. Though I will say that even the old CGC holders looked much better than those old real bulky fugly Fortress holders which were around in the old days.

A much more apt description just for you!!!

Can't quite remember here, but I don't believe that Trimmed pages (all 3 edges) are one of the signature tells for an IGB worked on book?