lou_fine

Not aware of any CGC 9.8 TMNT 1 that sold on CL last summer for over $90K, as I believe you are probably referring to the outlier of a $90K auction result that took place at HA in the summer of 2019. As I have stated above, this $90K HA copy is the $59K copy that CC ended up selling to RallyRd for this $65K investment scheme.

Well, let's hope Vinnie wasn't the purchaser who had paid $90K for this copy from HA back in the summer of 2019?

Yep, it's filed with the SEC. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1768126/000176812620000004/rseaex6z54.htm Is this a Metro or CC related thing since Vinnie's name is at the bottom, or just a coincidence with the boys at RallyRd simply picking their books up from CC/Metro since they appear to be the source for both the TMNT 1 and the Cap 3 so far? Am I reading this correctly in that they had to pay $35,500 for this copy of Cap 3 and have sold 1,000 shares of it with a total value of only $37,000. Sounds like pretty much of a losing proposition to me for the boys from RallyRd unless they have something else going on behind the scenes or if this is being done as a loss leader. Any links so far as to where some of the other books have been sourced from?

Well, it's certainly not the CC copy that sold last year for $30,500 then. Any idea where this copy was obtained and at what price point? Looks like this is the copy that was auctioned off on CC for $15,900 way back in june of 2015: https://www.comicconnect.com/item/613140?tzf=1 So, unless they've been holding it all this time, I assume they must have picked it up more recently (CL possibly??) at a substantially higher price point.

Well, it's certainly not the CC copy that sold last year for $30,500 then. Any idea where this copy was obtained and at what price point?

From reading @valiantman comments, I don't believe the value is necessarily tied to the last sale for an equivalent graded copy of the same book: It's really based more like a stock where valuations are determined by the bid and ask prices for an asset, but only every 90 days which means it is rather illiquid. In this sense, it does not have to be tied to the last sale as investors tend to look for the future potential of a company going forward. If a company or a particular book has a better potential outlook going forward, investors are usually willing to pay a lot more to own a tiny percentage share of that company. Just take a look at all of the tech companies out there and their ridiculous valuations and why in the world would investors be willing to pay those insane types of multiples for say a Tesla or a Shopify. For example, take a look at Royal Bank of Canada which used to be the biggest market cap stock in Canada which earned over $3.5B CDN in its last quarter and has a total market cap of something like $133B CDN. Now, take a look at Shopify which has overtaken it as the top company in Canada as it earned something like $263M USD in its most recent quarter, but yet has a total market cap of over $146B CDN. Apparently, the word on the street is that it is expected to reported a loss in its upcoming quarter, but yet money keeps on flowing into it, probably similar to Tesla in the U.S. So, to pay a slight premium for a tiny fraction of something that we cannot afford to buy outright is certainly not a new concept and as the stock market has clearly shown us over and over again, something that we will gladly pay ridiculous premiums for if we think it has future potential value and that some other sucker will pay more for it going forward.

Governed by the SEC as with similar securities. Liquidation of assets. You will lose money, but that possibility is no doubt all over their disclaimer. Unless you mean something more nefarious, then that's a different animal. In general you probably shouldn't get in with anything you can't afford to lose, but that's good advice for almost any speculation. You as investors would most likely lose everything because aren't shareholders usually right at the bottom of the feeding list when it comes to the divvying up of assets for a bankrupt company that has closed up and gone out of business. Does anybody here have an idea how some of these other companies mentioned here that have done similar things with comic books have actually performed in this red hot bull comic book market which we have had the past few years?

And to answer my own question here, I believe the answer has already been posted by Gats who made a very astute observation in terms of the following scenario: Haven't rerad through any of the details behind their plan, but is there any type of requirement to disclose the names of the owners who happens to own say 10% or 20% or more of the shares for any of these books here, similar to how companies are required to identify shareholders who own more than 10% of a publicly traded company?

Since I don't have the time or patience to check through the past CL highlights and HA shows no CGC 5.0 graded sales for Cap 3, I assume they are probably referring to this copy here which they picked up from CC last year for $30,500: If so, this would then represent a 21% markup over what they had paid for the book in the first place. Like I have said before, not much room for locking in profits if they are then responsible for all of the ancillary costs like insurance, secured storage, administration fees, etc. while it is in their possession to make it much of a worthwhile venture. Which then makes me wonder if there is something else behind this little investment scheme of theirs in order to ensure it is a money maker for them?

If you are referring to the outlier $90K copy which Heritage was able to auction off last summer, this is the exact same copy that RallyRD picked up from CC/Metro for only $59K and now have apparently sold off through these 1,000 shares at $65 a pop. No, the last CGC 9.8 sale for TMNT 1 was the CL copy which sold for $58K earlier this month which represents a 12% premium for the opportunity to buy into a TMNT without having to pay the full shot.

There's an even more sure fire way to change the landscape of the comic book market in terms of seeing huge price increases going forward. Just have the government allow comic books to be registered investments that investors can place into their retirement funds or tax-free savings accounts like stocks and bonds and you'll have knowledgeable comic collectors buying into them like wildfire before the general public can figure out which ones to buy and jump onto the bandwagon.

Well, if this is the case, then it would appear they make their money by selling the shares at $65 a pop. From reading the TMNT 1 thread on the CA boards, it sounds as though this particular copy of TMNT 1 was the one which was purchased from CC or Metro for $59K earlier this year. So, if they sold 1,000 shares at $65 a share for a total price of $65K, then their gross margin would be $6K. Not sure if there would be any profit left if they have to cover expenses like storage, insurance, administration fees, etc. All I know for sure is that the person who sold it through Metro or CC for only $59K in a non-auction sale lost money on it big time since they had paid $90K for it a few months earlier in that outlier of an auction result at Heritage back in the summer of 2019.

Why, you fool.............absolutely nothing at all. I am all in, just as soon as I contact Greg Buls or whatever his name was so that I can finally cash out those comic book 'mutual funds" he was trying to set up for all of those red hot pre-printed Image and pre-Unity Valiant books that he was hoping investors would buy into before the books even hit the shelves of the LCS's. After almost 30 loooooong years of holding this comic book mutual fund, they must be worth millions by now and I can transfer my winnings over now to get in on the ground floor of this latest comic book "investment" scam scheme.

Well, I believe this kind of idea has been attempted on more than one occasion in the past, as per a post I just made on the GA boards here:

Yes, didn't we have Greg Buls or whoever it was tried something similar in the early to mid-90's in terms of attempting to set up some type of "mutual fund" for speculators to buy into all of the latest red hot books that were due to hit the shelves of the LCS's that week? Well, I believe we all know the eventual result of an idea like that.

Wow, not much of a horror fan myself, but were most of these Chamber of Chills books part of a warehouse find or something? Just checked a recent census count through HA on this CC 23 and there's already 75 slabbed copies of this little beauty of a book here, while the CC 19 is sitting at 98 graded copies which kind of seems to be on the high side for a GA book. Still, scarce relative to demand though, I would imagine.

Well, if you really want one, they should be out there since I believe this book was included as part of some huge warehouse find. I guess it really depends if you are willing to spend the kind of money that it seems to be going for nowadays, even with graded copies totalling almost 100 copies.

Most definitely as true collectors always love to talk about all of the books we collect and long for. The way that I use to judge whether a comic book is of true vintage collectible quality is that it has value in all graded levels across the entire condition spectrum. This is in stark contrast to many of the more common and much more recent hot comic books which tends to just graded collectibles in the sense that they have value only in CGC 9.8 or CGC 9.6 graded condition levels, but no real value in any grades below that. Like you said above, it's nice to see when more recent books like the Hulk 181's, Cerebus 1's, TMNT 1's, Platinum Spidey 1's, Bone 1's, Walking Dead 1's, etc. can attain these kinds of levels. When it comes to the collecting of comic books though, it's really a case of to each their own, as there is no right or wrong way of collecting as long as they are getting fun and enjoyment out of it.

This. The book was $200-$300 max when it first came out (in 1990). Yes - that was a lot of money at the time - especially for a brand new comic. But *nobody* was charging, let alone *paying* $1,000 for a copy. Boy, it sure sounds like the original poster here got out of the wrong side of the bed today or doesn't know how to use the Ignore button if he doesn't like to see messages on a public message board. Anyways, although the regular Spider-Man 1 book did indeed come out in 1990, the Limited Retailer Platinum Edition did not come out until 1991 and as would happen, just before the big SD Con that summer of '91. This must have been around the start of the new comic book craze with the red hot Valiant books arriving on the scene a few months earlier and I also remember Wizard Magazine getting their first issue just out in time to hand out to all of the SD convention goers. How can we not remember about that red hot time period to follow with all of those Wizard hyped Image and Valiant flavor of the month books that would follow and hyped to the point that they would be selling for huge multiples to cover price by the time they hit the comic book shelves before becoming forgotten ,months later as the speculators moved onto the next big red hot book. In the summer of '91, McFarlane was the go to artist and the Spider-Man book was red hot and selling in the hundreds of thousands, if not a million copies by then and would pave the way for other red hot big million sellers like Jim Lee's X-Men later that year. So, just imagine a so-called "rare" edition that was limited to just one copy per retail store and you can imagine why some of the dealers were TRYING to ask $1,000 for the book in this type of red hot hyped environment. Like the original poster said above, they can certainly ask, but I highly doubt that anybody was foolish enough to fork over $1,000 for a book like that. Then again, you never know as history has clearly shown us time and time again that some buyers are willing to pay outlandish and ridiculous prices for otherwise common books when they are being hyped as limited variant copies or CGC highest graded copies, so you just never really know. As further proof of what these books were probably selling for, you just need to refer to the Overstreet price guide. As we all know full well by now, old slow Bob likes to be very very conservative with his prices and as a result, tends to lag the market until the price of a book can consolidate over time before raising the price in his guide. Yet, if you take a look at the 1992 and 1993 price guides or the first 2 years after the book came out, the Platinum Edition of Spidey #1 was already being valued at $350 in top of guide which is a strong indication that the book was most likley selling for far more than that with a big price range during those early years when it first came out. Needless to say, the book only continued to drift downwards in valuation over the ensuring years until it hit $100 in the 1998 price guide before it started its slow climb back up to its current $200 top of guide valuation. I most definitely agree with the original poster's comment that this book is indeed not rare at all (reason why I put it in "rare" in my original post.) This fact is clearly evident by simply looking at the CGC census where there are already 169 uber HG copies of this book grading out at the CGC 9.8 condtion level and a total of well over 1,300 copies in CGC 9.0 and above already. As we all know, dealers love to hype their books as being rare when in fact, they truly are not. Do we not all remember the supposedly rare Death of Superman issue or a Death in the Family Batman books which dealers were trying to ask big dollars for back when they first came out. For all of you TMNT aficionados out there, it's also interesting to note that while Overstreet had the Spidey 1 Platinum Limited edition valued at $350 when it first came out, TMNT 1 was valued at only $325 in guide the same year. This now highly valued book would also followed the same downward drift in prices behind the Platinum Spidey 1 until it bottomed out at something like $115 near the end of the 90's . Unlike the Spidey 1 which started a slow climb upwards over the ensuring years though, the TMNT 1 would see much more of a meteoric increase in prices until its current $7K top of guide valuation which definitely still seems a bit on the low side to me. Although collectors claim that TMNT 1 is "rare", I guess it's really much more a case of rare relative to demand since there's already 32 copies graded out at the CGC 9.8 condition level and over 350 in CGC 9.0 and above.

Thanks - didn't catch that they were church / mile high copies. That makes allot more sense! Yes, the quality of the pedigree desigantion always makes a hugh differencce and you really can't get much better than a Church copy. The copy that sold for $38K back in 2012 was the Billy Wright copy when all of those books sold for big time money, but unfortunately most of those BW copies ended up selling for much less when brought back to market right afterwards. I believe the result for the Church copy on this go-round will also be strongly influenced by the census population count here. The first time that this Church copy sold back in 2007, it was the highest graded copy at a CGC 9.4 graded condition level and tied with 2 other copies. Looks like the population count has now doubled with 5 other copies with thie same CGC 9.4 grade plus another new single highest graded copy at a CGC 9.6 graded condition level.

Do we know who ended up with this book? Was it a boardie? I guess likely we will never know. We should attach gps trackers to these. Well, even though he apparently tried to raise the price by $25K up to $125K, it looks like it sold for a much more realistic price point and possibly even a bit on the low side at only $48K once it hit the open public marketplace earlier this month: https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/detective-comics-37-dc-1940-cgc-vf-85-off-white-to-white-pages/a/7231-91056.s?ic4=ListView-ShortDescription-071515

I can care less if you or anyone “recoups” money from a book... I was pointing out the simple fact that it has doubled in GPA over the last 9 years. Take that however you like 🤷🏻‍♂️ I always just take it as a positive if a book should happen to go up in value over time. Similar to how you pointed out the fact that the book has doubled in GPA over the last 9 years, I was just pointing out the fact that it appears that a CGC 9.8 graded copy is finally hitting the same pricing levels that dealers were trying to ask for raw copies of the books when it first came out almost 30 years ago. Being a long term collector, as opposed to a speculator of day flipper of books which seems to be the trend with much of the CGC generation of collectors nowadays, it also doesn't really matter to me either since the books will still be sitting in my collection decades later, no matter if it's gone up or gone down in value. It's just a nicer feeling if it has gone up though.

Well, let's hope they get all of their books shipped out pretty soon becuase I was just on their website and it appears that their upcoming Event Auction looks to be rounding into fine shape with already over 3,000 lots in total and still increasing on a daily basis. Not sure about the actual quality of the items though since there's just so many auctions nowadays, that it seems the quantity is certainly there, but not necessarily the quality. Thi seems to be the case even for Heritage as the quality of books have certainly gone down with the increasing frequency of auctions that they are running.

Best 54 I’ve ever seen color wise by far. Sometimes with FH you get color or high grade. This one has both. With this one we could debate the loosely grading, but I think price would be the same if in a 7.5 or a 8 holder. It has White pages too as a bonus. This copy and the Planet 24 HA sold a few weeks ago are both color unicorns for their respective issues. For the record, I did not win either. Not sure where you got the $3,360 figure from as my search indicates that it sold for $3,120 which is still an absolutely amazing price for that copy there. I guess the bidder must have really like the red color strike as all of the other copies would appear to have much more of an orange color tone to them. Then again, looks like a pretty stiff price to be paying considering that there 4 other higher graded copies out there plus another 4 copies in equivalent CGC 8.5 graded condition. To top it off, this appears from my own personal point of view that is, to be a bit of a gift grade considering that I have certainly seen much nicer 8.5 graded condition books.

Now we can look 9 year later and the prices have doubled. So, you are saying that buyers can now finally start to recoup their money after almost 30 long loooong years,............but then again, only if you happen to have a copy in CGC 9.8 graded condition. I am just so glad that I used that same money to pick up HG copies of Captain America 29 & 31 down at the SD Con instead, even though the dealers told me that I clearly made the wrong choice by turning down a "rare" McFarlane Spidey 1 that would never see $1,000 again over some books that nobody would want once all the old time collectors go to that big comic shop up in the sky.