lou_fine

Just my observation. How it seems to me. All depends on ones view point and definition of word dead. Of course I been popping in every day so not much is new to me. If you would take a peek at some threads even just a few years back I don't see many of those around. I could also say it is fairly active but a nice chunk of that activity comes from the same dozen or so folks. Well, I would say it's all pretty much relative, but if you compare it to the good old days of yesteryear, yeah it's pretty much dead. I still remember the first few years after I first joined up and this place was rocking and rolling with tons of action and new posts every few minutes from different boardies. I still remember they used to have a real time counter for the number of active unique users on the boards and it would hit triple digits at times. My bet is that you would be lucky to have 10 unique users on the boards nowadays at non-peak hours, as clearly evident by the fact that entire forums can go for hours on end without a new post being added. Definitely like Grand Central Station during rush hour back then and much more like an almost empty airport terminal during a pandemic lockdown nowadays.

I do believe this as I have many friends at the post office that routinely tell me of packages going to China. While it's true that the Chinese do spend serious money on real estate and fine wines, many have begun collecting AF15s as Spiderman is the #1 hero there. Reminds me of the early 90's when the younger new generation of Oriental collectors in this city really had the hots for the latest Valiant and Image books being hyped by Wizard and were chasing after them like no there was no tomorrow. Definitely not so much for the more expensive vintage SA and GA books though, or even the BA books for that matter. They figured all of those kind of books were for the old timers or nearly deads and would have only declining value in the future as more and more of them go to that big old comic shop in the sky. If you haven't looked into those packages going to China, my bet is that they are most probably CGC 9.8 graded copies of the latest hot book or variant that just arrived at the LCS's the previous week. If they were actually copies of AF 15's, they would most likely be shipped via TNT or DHL (and not the regular post office) which seems to be the courier of choice for most residents of China.

I hope so Sounds as though the two of you are only thinking about the first half of the equation here when the movie is first announced. You forgot the second half of the equation where all of the Hollywood books generally tends to fall by 90% AFTER the movie comes out.

Unfortunately for us comic book collectors here, when it comes to the real serious money, the Chinese have a long and storied history of always going after real estate and property. Although there are some starting to ventured into fine wines and more artistic wants, do you really believe there are that many AF 15's being shipped over to China, where the real money is?

That's fantastic that you took the time and went through all of the trouble to contact CC on this book and then post your findings to keep all of us in the loop. Yes, I heard from a few boardies of good standing here through PM's that this is the classic MO for scammers to create fraudulent eBay transactions in order to manipulate GPA stats in hopes of showing an increasing trend in valuations of books which they own in their personal collection. A so-called "completed" sale at this price point of almost $80K would definitely influence the trending valuation of this book in this grade since they simply don't come to market that often. Since you think the CL sale back in December might possibly have fallen through, then this means the only 2 completed sales for TMNT 1 in CGC 9.8 both took place at Heritage, with the August 2019 copy going for $90K and the November 2019 copy going for $52,800. Though dated and probably irrelevant at this time would be the 2 copies sold in 2018 through Heritage, with both going in the mid to high $30K price range. From the CC archives, it would also appear that they sold a copy for $59K, although there is no actual date specified since it was not an auction format sale. As a result, it will definitely be interesting to see where this copy goes for and see if it is closer to the $90K range or back in the $50K+ range where the last Heritage copy was and also whenever the last CC copy sold. I guess only time will tell as it has been sitting there at $42K with only a few more weeks to go. I went onto GoCollect and noticed that the sale has now been removed and I received a PM from a boardie saying that it has also been removed from the GPA records.

That's because stocks are meant and designed solely to be pure equity investments in the hopes of making money for the purchasers, even tough there are a lot of Enron's and Nortel's around. Not sure how much fun and enjoyment you get from collecting stocks like these. Comic books in general, on the other hand, were never ever meant to be published purely for investment purposes. Of course, with the comic book marketplace performing the way it has, there have been exceptions to this in the form of "manufactued collectible comic books" such as special cover, variants, etc. and we all know how well they do in the long run in terms of ensuring you never ever get your money back. Comic books, first and foremost after all, is really a hobby for collectors to enjoy and derive fun from the actual books themselves, as opposed to never ever opening one since it's really nothing more than a vehicle to make money from. My thinking is that if you collect and enjoy the comic books as a hobby, and if they also happen to go up in value over time while you are deriving fun and enjoyment from them, then that's nothing more than an extra bonus as you've won on both ends of the transaction.

Even though I don't really buy any of the new books nowadays, I am still somewhat aware that many of the retailers are not that happy with how Diamond runs the direct comic book market and their control and influence over everything. On the other hand, as a vintage comic book collector I am also well aware of Geppi's love for the collectible side of the market and how he has always been an avid and ardent supporter of the vintage comic book market through many of the ventures and activities he has funded over the decades. In this sense, I would much rather see Geppi with a stronger Diamond who continues to support and sometimes even lose money funding the collectible side of the market, as opposed to a Diamond Distributors that has gone out of business.

Yup that’s the one... Well, there's always the possibility that it was actually a completed and "paid for" sale and the buyer is simply doing a quick flip on the book to either hopefully make some money on it or to recoup some of his money in light of this negative pandemic driven business environment? Then again, I don't seem to see this particular book listed as one of their November/December 2019 Fall Feature Auction highlights, so you are probably correct in saying that this particular sale might have actually fallen through and is really another non-sale. Does anybody here still have a link for that TMNT 1 listing in the CL November/December 2019 Fall Feature Auction and can post it here for us.

the past auction This I actually found rather strange and confusing because I thought the May Event Auction being the first auction after their big revamp of their website was supposed to be for non-consigned books only, since it was supposed to be a test to ensure that everything was running fine and proper. Maybe they changed their mind near the end and decided to spice up the auction a bit more with some hopefully nicer consigned books.

Yes, definitely a classic GGA bondage cover by Kamen. It still surprises me though how much these books are going for, especially when so many copies of them have already been graded, with a few in nice higher grade to boot. Then again, like the listing says, this is a rarer pedigree and one that really doesn't come to market that often.

Are you referring to the past Event Auction which they had back in May where they were supposedly accepting consignments right up to the Friday just prior to the start of their Event Auction, which I actually find rather hard to believe from a pure logistical point of view. Or are you referring to this upcoming Event Auction where the initial deadline for consignments was set for June 1st. This deadline was then extended to June 15th and has now been extended even further to June 22nd? Sounds as though all of the various auction houses for fighting it out for consignments, especially in light of the increased frequency which they are having for all of these auctions.

Well, of course White Pages affects the value of a book. As we all so clearly know from our time spent on the boards here, the much dreaded White Pages will always lower the value of a slabbed book and are to be avoided like the plague.

It's not entirely clear but a sale is a sale is a sale. Except when it's not, which is CLEARLY the case here when the eBay seller scammer simply stole scans of both the front cover and back cover from 2 different copies to come up with this listing and so-called "completed" sale on eBay. Will definitely agree with you here in virtually all cases, but unfortunately eBay is a completely different animal and is home for all of the scammers and GPA manipulators. They most definitely should be doing their due diligence, but unfortunately most of them simply rely on something like the GPA stats on the assumption that they are always correct. Unfortunately, this is a classic example and the tell tale MO of GPA manipulation with respect to this fraudulent and non-sale of a TMNT #1 for $79,950 Monoploy dollars done for the sole purpose of manipulating the GPA stats to show a high value sale that never actually took place. Certainly hope that @gpanalysis is on the ball and able to see through this whole scam here.

+1 Definitely of the same opinion as I have been to 2 Chinese dim sum restaurants during the past coupe of weeks and they didn't have any line ups at all, as compared to the almost hour long line ups in the past. My sister-in-law who normally goes out to restaurants 5 times a week still hasn't gone into a restaurant even though they've been opened for the past month or so. Although I would love to go on another ocean cruise sooner rather than later, not sure how soon I would actually be willing to sit on an airplane for hours on end or be cruising in the middle of the ocean until there's an actual vaccine out there. I personally believe this pandemic is going to create a big change in the way we function going forward. Are companies going to continue to pay expensive rent for all of these huge office complexes or are they going to start allwing more of their employees to continue working from home. How about the impact on the ince sky rocketing commercial rentals now that some of these small businesses sound as thiugh they will never be reopening back up again. Sounds as though it will even affect some of the big businesses, as even Starbucks will be closing hundreds of their locations on a permanent basis going forward.

If you think that questioning someone is enough to be ignored, then please ignore me. Oh, come on now..............it's not nice to place people on IGNORE as it's always good to see other people's point of views and thoughts. Especially since if I had to place boardies on IGNORE, I would probably have to start with myself since I tend to go on and on sometimes and I certainly wouldn't want to miss my own pearls of wisdom here.

I would defintely agree with both points being mentioned here, especially with respect to the fact that their auction archives has finally been brought up to date and incorporating results on a much more real time basis. Since I am not a computer nerd by any stretch of the imagination, I also didn't have any problem with the speed of their system. I guess with their 3-minute extended auction formats, that's tons of time to navigate your way through everything from my point of view. They probably do need to tweak that are finishing because they were kind of dropping in randomly, as opposed to falling in place at the top of the first page as per previous Event Auctions. If I was a potential consignor though, I would definitely have second thoughts about consigning any books to them now that they are seemingly using your books as an autolink to promote all other copies of the same book which they have for sale in their inventory. Especially when this is right in the middle of when the auction for your copy of the same book is taking place.

Clearly the reason why you don't see all of the images as they can't scan them in until they have the books in their possession. In virtually all cases though, they should have all of the books by the time the auction starts since all of the images are generally loaded by that time with only the odd exception. Now, as for the All-Star 8 and the Sensation 1 that they are highlighting in their currrent Event Auction, they might not actually have them in hand as the back covers certainly looks like a scan of a another poor quality scan.

Yes, and as our superstar Provincial Health Officier, Dr. Bonnie Henry, who has guided our province down from the low triple digits into the mid-20's before reopening the economy into Phase 2 and now down into the single digits for new daily cases, during these unique extraordinary times would say......................we all need to "Be Kind, Be Calm, and Be Safe".

Not to insinuate anything at all about the OP, but this thought also crossed my mind and the reason why I think it might be harder to convince CGC in terms of seeking some form of restitution for the book. I think the OP should pursue this issue with CGC though because they usually tend to stand behind their product when it comes to blatent errors such as this.

The green Qualified (GLOD) label is definitely the correct way to go here, especially in the case of an otherwise HG copy of a book. I have seen auction for books graded in the 9's with a Green label due to a missing page or a missing coupon and this definitely tells me a whole lot more about the overall condition of the book then if it was simply in a Blue Universal label graded as either a 0.5 Poor copy or a NG copy.

Not completely sure what the two of you are complaining about here since this defect is already "clearly" identified on the CGC label itself. After all, a centerfold is just made up of many multiple small pieces which was already identified on the label as being out of the whole book. I suggest you should probably check the rest of the book because there might just be many other multiple small pieces (i.e. missing pages) out of the book. Seriously though, sorry to hear about the predicament that you find yourself in now.

Hey Richard; You should flip this book back to CGC so that they can slab it properly since it's good for the hobby place not to lose the provenance of these treasured books.

I haven't been following them that closely. I love xmen but when they practically doubled in value I thought it was a good time to sell them. Put that $ somewhere else to work. If they triple in value the next few years then bad move for sure. I sold too early before so not always right. It definitely sounds as though you are much more into trying to time the market, as opposed to spending time in the market. From my point of view, it's all good as it's really a case of to each their own, I would have to say.

This is a massive auction, taken me over 2 hours to "quickly" browse through everything Although they certainly do have the quantity in there, I am not so sure about the quality that's in there though. I went through the entire 11 pages for the GA books and found only 1 possible book of interest to me, as everything else just seem rather ho hum from either a character (i.e. title) or condition point of view. Then again, with all of the increasing frequency of auctions that's being done by everybody, this seems to be a problem not only for CL, but also the other major auction houses like Heritage and CC.

Great to have you here as it's almost like getting valuable information as close as possible to the horse's mouth after all this time. There seems to be a lot of question here about the actual size of your Dad's collection. Some here seem to think it numbered under 1,000 books while others thought it numbered in the thousands and was just wondering if you could give us a better idea as to which side is correct based upon your memory of the collection?