lou_fine

Ya I saw that for $50,000 Make that 💰 I don't see it as clicking onto the link above takes me to a message that simply says: "BOOK NOT FOUND".

I have heard this same sentiment expressed so many times by so many collectors, but where in the world does it actually state this? I believe the only time this statement was actually true was in the last century before slabbed books came into the marketplace and all books were sold raw back then. When was the last time you actually saw high dollar value GA books being sold, especially when it comes to the keys? Or for even that matter, high dollar value SA keys or even more recent books like Hulk 181 or Spidey 129. If you take a look at some of the sample key sales that Overstreet lists in his guide, you can see 3 full page of slabbed certified sales as opposed to only 1 page for raw sales. My personal belief is that the Overstreet valuations is based more upon prices for both raw sales and certified sales and is very heavily weighted towards the sales method that is most common for a particular book. So, this means that the valuation for a book like Action 1 or 'Tec 27 as extreme examples, are really based heavily upon slabbed prices because who in the world sells their copies of these 2 books raw. On the other hand, low dollar value books would be heavily weighted by their raw prices because no rational collector would think of even bothering to slab these types of books for sale because the cost of salbbing them would be higher than what they would sell for unless they were in uber HG condition which is a condition level that Overstreet does not cover because prices are too volatile in this grade range. Or at least that's the way that I see it. I believe the reason why most collectors think the prices must be based upon unslabbed books is due to the simple fact that Overstreet likes to lag the market and doesn't really like to increase prices too fast until he sees solid consolidation of prices at that level over an extended period of time (i.e. for a few years at least). This method to his madness in terms of pricing allows him to continuously nuture and guide the comic book market upwards in a seemingly never ending trajectory as he seemingly hates to ever show any price decreases.

Well, if the auction pamphlets are any indication, then I would have to say the mail is definitely moving a whole ton slower than they used to. I used to normally get my auction pamphlets from HA and CC a couple of weeks before I received their actual auction catalogues which are generally a few weeks prior to the end of the auctions. On thes last set of auctions, they definitely came late as I didn't received the auction pamphlet from HA until a full week AFTER the auction had already finished. With the CC auction pamphlet, I didn't actually received it UNTIL LAST WEEK when in fact, their auctions ended on the week of August 24th. I guess the Heritage one was a bit faster since it was done as Int'l Priority Airmail and mailed out of Twin Cities, MN; while the CC auction pamphlet was done as Priority A Mail out from Malmo, Sweden. Go figure that one to mail it all the way out from Sweden or I guess it was probably printed up in Sweden to save on costs.

So, you was the nasty bidder who managed to just squeezed past my high bid of $438 to steal this book away from me. Especially considering that I was more than generous with my bid at more than 5X condition guide and over $100 more than the last CGC 3.0 graded copy that sold at HA back in 2015 for something like only $334. Will admit though that your copy here certainly appears to present better than the copy that sold in 2015 which also was denoted as having tape on the cover. Well done and big congrats on your pickup of a classic Baker cover book here.

Probably about the same time that Ewert started micro-trimming his books and deep pocketed collectors/speculators were singing the praises about his uber HG books and digging deep deep down into their pockets to hopefully be able to sang a copy. What Bill Sarill and Susan C. were primarily trying to do was to conserve books not only for visual appearnace purposes, but also to prevent them from incurring further damage and to help to extend their life. Needless to say, what Matt and Jason were doing didn't really have much true redeeming qualities when it came to the conservation of the actual comic book, and simply so much more about getting as much money out of a book as possible by foisting and laundering artifically manipulated books upon an unsuspecting marketplace via CGC with zero disclosure at a time when pressed books were still considered to be restoration. Don't we all remember when this whole manipulation of books fiscao came to light on these very boards here about 15 years ago? Just imagine if CGC had decided to come down with the opposite viewpoint that micro-trimming was nothing more than maximization of potential for a book becasue all books got trimmed anyways and you would not want CGC guessing as they could not tell with 100% confidence if a book had been micro-trimmed or not, if the work had been done properly. To offset this, pressing would have been deemed as destruction of a comic book due to unknown potential long term damage to a comic book. Of course, in this bizarro world, Matt would have been drummed out of the marketplace while Ewert would now be in charge of grading at CGC with all collectors running down to the loonie store as fast as their little feet could take them in order to buy the sharpest pair of scissors they can find on the shelf.

I am in 110% agreement with you here as I absolutely love the early squarebound 100-pagers with the cardboard covers which you don't find on most books. I believe there's not much love for this run along with other DC books due mostly to the shall we say "silly" covers which are seen as the complete opposite of a classic cover which seems to be so critical nowadays in this cover centric marketplace that we now have. Iam sure a Joker cover would have helped, much in the same way that the first appearance of the Scarecrow in WF 3 has turned that probably into the one aand only single hottest book in the entire WF run.

Well, that's definitely good to know and certainly makes it much more tempting for me to pick up a copy when it comes out, even though the cover is shall we just say rather to say the least. I am certainly glad that you are also much better with this board's search function than I obviously am.

Gee, and I guess that's why I also prefer 'Tec 29 over the much more highly acclaimed 'Tec 31, since it's his 3rd appearance over his 5th appearance.

Sure. Briefly, I have found four different varieties of softcover OPG #2. The first variety has a darker red cover, with a pagination error (back-to-back pages both numbered 65), 32 pages of ads, split into four 8-page signatures spaced throughout the book. The ads are all printed on yellow paper and the ads for Harvey Schein and Buddy Saunders are duplicated. We know this was the first printing because it is the variety included in the hardcover OPG #2, which was bound in May and June. Hey David; This is rather surprising, but absolutely fantastic and invaluable information as I was not even aware that there were 4 different versions of the softcover OPG #2. Now, I remember that the previous discussion on these boards here were actually about there being 2 different versions of the hardcover edition for OPG #2. Would you happen to know anything about these 2 different versions here for the hardcover? I would look for the previous discussion, except that my Search skills for these boards is bordering on zero, if not right into negative territory. In addition, based upon your comment here, I would assume that the first and second versions of the OPG #2 in high grade should in theory be much more valuable in the collectors marketplace since they would just be so much tougher to find in condition as compared to the third and fourth versions here. Of course, that's also assuming that collectors even knew about these various versions which the majority probably did not before your enlightening and very informative post here. Interesting to note that Overstreet does not bother to differentiate between these various versions in his price guide on the Overstreet back issues. Maybe you need to flip him a note to let him know about this key ommission that he has with respect to his own back issue price guides.

Sure. Briefly, I have found four different varieties of softcover OPG #2. The first variety has a darker red cover, with a pagination error (back-to-back pages both numbered 65), 32 pages of ads, split into four 8-page signatures spaced throughout the book. The ads are all printed on yellow paper and the ads for Harvey Schein and Buddy Saunders are duplicated. We know this was the first printing because it is the variety included in the hardcover OPG #2, which was bound in May and June. Hey David; This is rather surprising, but absolutely fantastic and invaluable information as I was not even aware that there were 4 different versions of the softcover OPG #2. Now, I remember that the previous discussion on these boards here were actually about there being 2 different versions of the hardcover edition for OPG #2. Would you happen to know anything about these 2 different versions here for the hardcover? I would look for the previous discussion, except that my Search skills for these boards is bordering on zero, if not right into negative territory.

If he was looking for a quick 50% profit I'd be all over it but I doubt that is the case. It never hurts to ask although it looks like he's planning to do it the smart way by not being overly greedy and simply flipping it ALL out for a hopefully big fat profit, as opposed to being tied down with storing and moving it out slowly over a very long and extended period of time. If CC or Heritage doesn't come up with an amicable agreement on the price for the collection, maybe you can contact him and give it a shot. In fact, if it drags out long enough, you might just be able to pick up the whole thing from him at a discount to the price which he had paid for the kit and kaboodle and then come up with your own set of enticing and scintillating videos here.

Although he is now the sole publisher of DC Comics after his co-publisher (i.e. Dan Didio) got the boot earlier this year, he's also got another title as the Chief Creative Officer for DC Comics which makes me wonder how he has time to do all this including the artwork which he still continues to do? Especially when he also apparently has a whopping total of 9 children to look after at the same time. The guy that really seems to be much more of a business guy from my POV would be McFarlance with the various business enterprises and companies which he has started and is still involved in. If you look at it from a net worth point of view, McFarlane's net worth is absolute multiples of what Lee's is, while Liefeld's net worth is probably down where the rest of the upper middle class would be.

If you are comparing the Fred Guardineer 'Tec 30 cover image artwork to his 'Tec 28 cover artwork, it's really no contest from my own personal POV as I would definitely go for this one here in a flash:

Really? I didn't know that. He isn't even mentioned on the CGC label. I always saw that more as a Kubert key. That's because although he's credited as one of the creators of Gambit, as indicated in Overstreet for years now, he didn't actually do any of the artwork at all on X-Men 266.

It would appear rather obvious to me that many of you are confusing pressing that was done prior to CGC when it was the necessary final step after a book had other forms of restorative work done on it. Needless to say, this is a completely different animal from the stand along solo pressing which we see being performed on books nowadays and which was super rare in the old days as NCB crease(s) which could only be seen by holding the book up at a certain angle to the light. Definitely not a very profitable strategy to be taking back then since this kind of near invisible defect were not being slammed the same punishing way they are in terms of today's grading standards and I guess we would all sadly know the exact reason why.

Any chance you could plead temporary insanity (which should be pretty easy to prove ) and ask to nullify the trade in order get your copy of Albedo 2 back?

Any chance you could give us a bit of a sneak preview or advanced teaser trailer to this aspect of your article to see if it's worth digging into my pocket for a copy of this 50th Anniversary book here?

Actually, I thought it the "buyer" looked a lot more like the Fish (i.e. Stephen Fishler) from his younger days back in the late 80's and early 90's.

What did u trade it for? No need at all to be embarrassed as I am quite sure that Rob Liefeld and his anatomically well drawn books will become popular and hot again one of these decades. Or probably not.

lovely ! Peter; Are you really trying to tell us that you are not a closet Dell Four Color fan because these books came a lot later and as a result, accounted for the majority of the uber HG books within this Chinatown pedigree collection?

Yes, I imagine collectors prefer to grade and slab the Bat covers which is no surprise as the next 2 closest issues are 'Tec 30 with a total of 57 copies graded to date and then 'Tec 32 with 63 copies. This is then followed by all of the other pre-Robin 'Tec issues at pretty much double plus the census count of where Detective 28 came in at.

Was going through the list of books which I had on this Chinatown Collection and this is a perfect example of sometimes you can get lucky and sometimes not so much. Perfect example being the All-American run and imaging if it had started just one short month earlier with a much in-demand classic cover book instead of this issue here: Then again, you really can't complain too much since the Flash run just managed to stretch far enough to end with this classic dino cover and key first appearance:

Yes, but to offset that in paart, it's got one of those absolutely goregous early DC GA Guardineer classic cover images.

Well, at almost double the price in terms of $10,000 CDN or about $7,500 USD, it looks like this buyer here appears to have gotten a much better deal, even though they generally all appear to be Western books: https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/topic/475388-recent-collection-from-canada/

+2 As did I, which goes to confirm that this is still a much underappreciated and undervalued book in this current hyper cover focused marketplace. Especially since 'Tec 28 is not only Bat's second overall appearance, but also a book that is considered by virtually all collectors in the know as being the rarest of all the pre-Robin 'Tec books. A ccheck of the CGC Population Census Report definitely confirms this as 'Tec 28 has far fewer copies graded and slabbed by a long shot as compared to any single other pre-Robin 'Tec books out there.