lou_fine

I am quite sure this would apply to all of the major comic book auction houses like CC, CL, and Heritage since their system will not allow you to bid on your own books directly.

Always thought that Mystery Men 3 was the go to MM book for Fox collectors to go for after Mystery Men 1. Doesn't appear to be the case in this just completed Heritage Auction since this copy of Mystery Men 4 ended up selling for more than the Mystery Men 3: The above copy of Mystery Men 4 sold for $3,360 as compared to only $2,280 for the Mystery Men 3:

Any bets that this collection wouldn't have hit the auction blocks so quickly if they hadn't been stolen in the first place? Probably one of the major reason why the owner decided to sell as it must have made him nervous to hold onto them for the long haul after finally getting them back.

Well, if you watch the recently completed Gotham TV series, it's really all about the Penguin right from start to finish.

Well, I believe that the cover for 'Tec 40 is now acknowledged by collectors to be the key first Joker cover. This is also very clearly designated as such in the Overstreet Guide with 'Tec 62 now listed as the 2nd Joker cover and Bat 11 grabbing the Bronze medal as the 3rd Joker cover. Looks like we had a very very short thread on this (i.e. 2 posts only) way back in 2006 with the following definite response:

I only ever had one Eldon and one Curtis book. Neither was special except for the name written on the cover. If I ever had a Cookville, I did not know it. I wasn't around when they were made pedigrees but I assume it was fairly controversial. Well, since this was done back in August of 2019 when CGC released their new pedigree labels, I assume you shoud have been around at the time based upon your profile. I believe all of the controversy centered around the colors of the new pedigree label and I might have been the only one to point out that high grade condition had fallen way down the priority list for pedigree designation, while size of collection now seem to be one of the key factors. Pretty much no controversy at all since this is simply another one of CGC's additional streams of revenues whereby everybody wins as collectors gladly resubmit their books back into CGC (for a fee of course) for the new pedigree labels as all parties involve hope to get more money out of this move. As I said at the time, no doubt CGC will rinse and repeat as they will eventually come out with an ultimate pedigree label for the true pedigrees such as the Church and Allentown's to segregate them back out from the mid-grade Eldon's and Harold Curtis mid-grade so-called "pedigrees".

I would tend to disagree with this as I believe the last 3 pedigrees which they designated last year to be even worst than the Crowley's by a long shot. These would be the Cookville, Eldon, and Harold Curtis as all 3 of these pedigrees are probably in the Fine to VF condition range at best, and unlike the Crowley, with possibly only a tiny tiny fraction of them being able to hit into the CGC 9's, if any at all.

I believe they are being cranked out as we speak:

Rather surprising to see somebody like the winner of the Pokemon Red actually pay attention to these things like proactively getting into the Heritage settings to actually remove themselves from Heritage's Make Offer to Owner feature. If I am correct, the default setting on all HA members accounts is automatically set to Yes for the Heritage Make Offer to Owner feature if you are the winning bidder for any of their lots and is calculated based upon an automatic 30% increase over and above your winning bid.

Well, for the winner's sake, let's hope it was truly a real case of 2 legitimate bidders going after the book here.

Exactly and although most boardies laughed at the price paid for the CGC 9.8 graded copy of GL 76, that book looks like a steal compared to this Batman 181.

I guess you must be referring to this copy here that sold for $90K: From another thread, the only question which I have is whether this kind of loose flaking is normally allowed in a CGC 9.8 graded book:

Grading is subjective of course. Your raw 9.8 may be my idea of a 9.4. I felt this was a solid 9.8, minus the fleck almost detached on the bottom right. That was a bit blah imop. But someone clearly thought it was worth $90K lol. I can tell you no one is paying anymore than a fraction of this sale for a high grade raw copy. The power of 9.8 is always impressive with these bigger keys. As far as your assumption there will likely be more 9.8’s, sure more may hit the census. I’d say likely it could be 1-3 more and over the span of 5-10 years. It’s not like they’re going to pop up like hot cakes. As per my earlier post in another thread on this particular auction result: Especially when you are playing in the deep end of the grading company's pool here in terms of their facilitating and encouraging the maximization of potential along with other forms of artificial manipulation. After all, haven't we seem so many examples of these kinds of upgrades over the years, and yet the CGC label collectors continues to happily dig deeper and even deeper into their pockets to pay for the label? Then again, I guess it's all good as it's really a case of to each, their own.

Don't you absolutely love these CGC label collectors, especially when it would be halarious if the 9.8 copy had started out its certification life as only a CGC 9.0 copy? With a result like this, all I can say is that somebody must have really overdosed themselves drinking down all of that CGC Kool-Aid. The happiest people at this $90K result must be the other 2 collectors who also have CGC 9.8 graded copies of this particular book here.

Same here, as I was thinking you would have to see if you have the shall we say "balls" to bid high enough to snag the book in question.

Yes, happens all the time, especially when you have easily recognizable books like Action 1 and 'Tec 27.

And yet if you have horrid looking color scrape done by their partner company, they will happily reward your fugly looking book with a CGC 7.0 grade:

I believe this is correct also. At the time of the initial sale in 2003, most people on this board remarked how the book looked under-graded (but I don't remember people freaking out that a book graded "only" a 5.5 passed the $100K mark like the hoopla surrounding a 7.0 now passing the $1 million mark). https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/action-comics-1-dc-1938-cgc-fn-55-off-white-pages-more-than-a-comic-book-more-than-a-superhero-this-is-a-true-piece/a/806-3001.s?ic4=ListView-ShortDescription-071515# Is nobody else here concerned with the fact that CGC is this far off on their grading for a major book which they should have spent more time on and at least have gotten it in the same ball park? All I know is that if I was the original submittor of this book here and CGC blew it by 3 full grading levels, I would be totally pissed off at their absolute incompetence. At this rate, they may as well be using a dart board when it comes to their grading.

Without a doubt, there is absolutely no truer statement than this.

If you compare the grades on these 2 books, it might have been a lot smarter for the consignor of the Larson 'Tec 36 to have scrape the color touch off since they would most likely have gotten a much higher grade from CGC:

Wish I did. I think it went for a pretty good price for the buyer. Nice looking book, Looks like they did a good job on it. Goth do you know if that book was ever in a Blue label before the resto? I was going to ask before but wanted to wait until it closed. Yes, this was a point which I had first brought up a few months ago when somebody here posted that the Larson copy of 'Tec 36 was coming to market as a restored CGC 6.5 book: Not sure about my eyes, but might need to get the Grader's Notes since that book there sure seems to present much closer to Tricarichi's NM condition from a strict visual point of view, as opposed to CGC's assigned grade of only 6.5. Then again, it's often been said that CGC considers the parts of a book that's been restored as condition defects when it comes to their grading which is really like a double whammy on the restored books over and above the much dreaded PLOD label.

Hammer on the 'Tec 27 was $1.25M with a BP of 20% or $250K for a final total of $1.5M. Not sure how you would be able to compare it to the performance of the Dow and over what time period? Especially since the Dow is a very inaccurate indicator biased to the upside since it is a constantly changing index over time as it drops underperforming companies and replaces them with top performing companies.

Once again, at only $31,200, nowhere close to the $54,010 that CC was able to get for this CGC 3.0 graded copy back in 2017: https://www.comicconnect.com/item/676931

I was watching the auctioneer when these were happening. He seemed a little surprised the 29 didn't go higher. It did finish a little light compared to the past few of similar grade. Yes, especially when CC was able to sell this CGC 3.0 graded copy for $66,010 back in 2017: And then followed it up a couple years later with this CGC 5.0 graded copy for $107K back in 2019: Definitely makes this sale here for only $78K look a bit underwhelming to say the least. Then again, I've always said that if I was a consignor for these books, CC would be my preferred venue choice when it comes to pre-Robin 'Tec books and early Actions because they seem to be the market maker when it comes to these particular books here.

Wowza is definitely an under statement here when it sold for $78K including the juice!!! Until I took a closer look at the history of this particular copy here and looks like it was one of those that Gary Keller had overpaid for to the tune of $65,725 way way back in 2008. Especially since he ended up selling it for only $50,787.50 a short year later following the collapse in both the real estate and financial markets.