lou_fine

How do we go from $78k for a1.5 just a few days ago to this? Well, I am not sure if the venue is to be completely to blame for this result, especially since this CGC 4.0 graded copy just managed to fetch only a few thousand dollars more at $117K when it was auctioned off at HA a few weeks earlier back in March of this year: https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/batman-1-dc-1940-cgc-vg-40-off-white-to-white-pages/a/7224-91053.s?ic4=ListView-ShortDescription-071515

Mitch: I think you are probably a bit confused here as to my original post. In this particular situation here, it was DD along with Masterchief, Red Hook, and some other boardies who identified what was actually taking place behind the scenes with CGC through their before and after image scans of books that were sometimes magnified up to the nth degree in order to point out the micro-trimming or what have you that were done to the books in order to bump up the grades. In the case of Danny Boy, it was probably more a case of competitive jealousy more than anything else, as his trim jobs were always much more like macro hack and whack jobs as compared to Jason's virtually undetectable micro trim jobs.

Wow, the Lone Long Ranger will definitely be very HAPPY with you as it looks like you are a fast learner and laying down low in the perfect prone position all ready for him.

Hey Cat; Maybe, just maybe................it's going to be a neck and neck race down to the wire between you and whoever owns this File Copy of Crackajack Funnies 9 featuring the first appearance of Red Ryder as to who's going to hit the big 11 sweet spot first on their way up to an even dozen: Will it be this CGC 9.0 certified copy of Crackajack Funnies graded back in August of 2004 when "maximization of potential" was still hush, hush, and only for people in the know: Which then sold for $1,434 in November of 2008 when "maximization of potential" was all the rage, but I assume only partially maxizmized later as submittor was probably too cheap to pay for the whole treatment as it was only bumped up to a piddly CGC 9.6 grade, as follows: This copy was then sold for $2,868 in November of 2017 before being resold once again a full year later in November of 2018 for a even $3,000. This last buyer must have been thinking like you in his quest for 11, as this serial number no longer shows up in the CGC database and the CGC population census report now no longer has a 9.6 graded copy in there, but the count for a 9.8 graded copy has now miraculously increased to 2 copies with this one here now joining the Church copy who was probably feeling a tad lonely sitting up there all by himself at the highest graded 9.8 perch for the longest while.

Now, now, now................am I detecting just a hint of jealousy here because lucky Darren has probably done and seen things with the Lone Long Ranger that you have yet to experience in your life?

Mitch, Mitch, Mitch; This is such old news but it looks like you joined the boards only as far back as 2011, so I guess you missed all of the wild fun and gangbuster controversy that took place back in 2005 or thereabouts when the whole micro-trimming and pressing fisacso first came to light on these boards here. Those were definitely the days with multi-hundred page threads and this one here with Boy Comics 17 as the poster child for the opening of the kimono to see what was actually taking place behind the scenes at CGC was certainly no exception. Especially when board members like Danny Dupchak himself , Masterchief, Red Hook, etc. led the charge at the time with before and after scans of books to detail how certain people in the know had been making scads and scads of money by laundering undisclosed manipulated books into an unsuspecting marketplace. This is where CGC with their undisclosed grading standards finally after days (if not weeks of and angst) had to retroactively declared (as opposed to proactively when they first opened their doors years earlier) that "disassembly and reassembly of a book, in and of itself, does not constitute restoration" and hence how a book could go from a grade of CGC 4.0 up to CGC 7.5. Of course, by then it was a no-brainer as to how a book could go from a grade of CGC 7.5 up to CGC 9.0 as boardies were still smarting at the time from just being schooled on the whole "maximization of potential" concept as we had seen books going from CGC 6.5 up to CGC 9.0, so going from 7.5 up to 9.0 was really nothing at all if you simply gave it a bit of a helping hand. As for the value difference, the CGC 4.0 graded version first sold for $368 in the summer of 2002 and then a year later in the summer of 2003 as a CGC 7.5 graded version for $552 with apparently nobody the wiser at the time. We were all so young and innocent in those first few years thinking that CGC had our best interest at heart and were making sure that the old shenanigans were not taking place anymore. Definitely not the case a couple years later in 2005 when the Church Boy Comics 17 became the poster child and outed on these boards as a "maximized to its full potential" CGC 9.0 graded version where it got stuck at something like the $200+ or $300+ price point before Heritage finally pulled the book due to all of the controversy at the time. Fast forward to May of 2018 where it sold for $1,135.25 with nobody bringing up the controversy, most probably because they figured the book had already served its 15 year sentence in the sin bin by then. There was some talk about the book after the sale though, and this might have accounted for the fact that this same Church copy came back to market 2 more times in 2019 at a continuous lower price point each time.

4.0 to 9.0? Was that a Boy Comics 17 reference, perhaps? Yes, you must be on the ball and guilty as charged based upon a post in a thread talking about books going from 9.4 to 9.6 to 9.8 which I had made last summer:

No doubt that part is , it's the next 35 plus years afterwards, and in particular the last 20 after CGC came onto the scene, that deserves a bit more due diligence.

Hey Mitch; Would a CEDAR chest qualify as this dynamic duo mentioned at the 2:03 mark of this big time huckstering video here: Must have worked as this copy managed to fetched $3.2M million dollars while sitting in this one-color label slab, although I guess as we all know here, we really should be reading between their lips and shifting eyes since they clearly forgot to mention this book's climb up the grading chart over the years.

You are definitely asking the wrong person since I just like to keep and hold onto the books in my personal collection the way they are. Like what Borock said on these boards here way back in 2005 or thereabouts, "disassembly and reassembly of a comic book, in and of itself, does not consitute restoration" or something to that effect. Definitely blew the doors wide open to another whole range of undisclosed manipulated activities as flippers and speculators saw how a book could go from CGC 4.0 right up to CGC 9.0 just like that. Now, if you are going to clean the staples, I am not sure if that would fall under either Restoration or Conservation since it's under both categories according to this link here: https://www.cgccomics.com/news/article/4084/ Of course, I assume if you clean it really well in such a way that they cannot detect it, I guess it would then be considered as Universal Unrestored.

I've had a few books in my collection for 40 some years with staple and paper rust, and haven't noticed it having spread any further than when I got them. And all of my books are raw. Same here as I had an early GA book which I had picked up from my first SD Con some 30 years ago with rusty staples and it doesn't seem to have spread any further in the interim. Asked a prominent GA dealer about replacing out the rusty staples and he said that it would be better investment wise to simply put it in a mylar holder which should slow down the migration of the rust to a large degree.

I know that before they came up with the quasi Grey/Blue Conservation label, replacing staples even with vintage staples used to be deemed as Restoration. Since these latest update from back in 2014, I am not so sure anymore as seen in this following link here: https://www.cgccomics.com/news/article/4084/ Sounds as though replacing rusty staples with vintagr staples from the same time period is now considered to be Conservation which would only make sense as you are preventing further damage to the book. Yet, the part that confuses me is they also seem to have it under their Restoration umbrella as part of their "A (Excellent)" restoration category.

This was certainly the thinking back in the day when the big money investors were more than willing to pay for the high grade copies, while the collectors were ofen times just happy getting any copy of the book, especially the ones who only wanted a reading copy and didn't want to spend big dollars for a copy. This then left the middle ground as sort of like the unwanted child with no ready buyers for the copies in the mid-grade range. As books have gotten more and more expensive though and with the HG copies still locked away in private collections in most cases, this current hot market have seen the CGC generation of investors step in to fill this middle ground, especially in the case of the red hot in-demand GA books. As a result, it's almost become the norm now to see record prices on mid-grade copies of either semi-keys or classic cover books like Mask 1 & 2, Archie 50, Seven Seas 4, etc. Speaking of mid-grade in-demand books, it'll definitely be interesting to see where this copy of Cap 3 finishes up at in the next Heritage Auction: I imagine probably not as high as it could if it didn't have the detached centerfold and the 2 rusty staples which kind of sticks out like a sore thumb.

Yes, when I started collecting back in the mid and latter part of the 70's, I still remember Overstreet had price spreads of 1:2:3 on his Good/Fine/Mint valuations for several years back then. I guess that was already a significant change from the first guide when his spreads were generally in the 1 to 1.25 to 1.5 for Good/Fine/Mint when he first started out. Not surprisingly, the spread started to increase for the higher grades as collectors were definitely more on the hunt for these better condition books as time went on. I remember talking to Snyder who was a big time broker back in the day when the spread was around 1 to 3 to 6 for G/F/M and he would always advise me to skip the non-key mid-run books and go for the keys, and then in the highest grade that I could afford, because he said one day the marketplace would come to realize how truly rare the high grades are and they would end up selling at a much bigger multiple than just the 1 to 6 spread which was in place at the time. Especially for a collector like me on a limited budget, since his rationale was that if I had spent all of my money buying mid-run books as they came around, I would never have any money left for the semi-keys and classic cover books when those would come around. With CGC eventually coming into the marketplace some 10 to 15 years later, that was definitely the right strategy in terms of going for the higher graded copies. Interesting to note though, that as the GA books became more and more expensive, the affordability factor finally kicked in and this was clearly evident over the past few years as lower graded copies of books have actually increased at a faster percentage rate than the higher graded copies. So much so that even old slow Bob finally ended up refelecting this in his price guide as evident by in-demand GA examples like 'Tec 31 which went from $13K in Good condition in his 2015 guide up to $30,100 in this years guide for a percentage increase of 132%; while it went up from $210K in top of guide in 2015 to $325K in this years guide for a percentage increase of only 55%. Likewise, if you take a look at another semi-key like Flash 86, this book went from $314 in Good condition in the 2015 guide up to $2,700 in this years guide for a percentage increase of 760%; while it went up from $5,500 in top of guide in 2015 up to 27K in this years guide for a percentage increase of 490%. No doubt the lack of availability of these in-demand GA keys and semi-keys in HG condition probably held their price increases back a bit, but clearly evident that books have not increased at the same rate over the years that Overstreet was thinking way back in the day.

With the astronomical increass in prices for the 2 Mask books, is this a continuing increase in the price trend or do they appear to be plateauing or possibly even starting to drop back a bit.

In this climate i would say yes In general, I would definitely tend to agree with you here. From a specifics point of view though, there are always your outlier winners like Shopify and the like which has now gone up by over 100% in less than a month from its bottom, making it now rivalling Royal Bank as the biggest market cap company in Canada now. Go figure that and of course nobody's lucky like that, although I was considering picking it up a few weeks ago, but seem too high then at just over $500 CDN and possibly still overvalued. Was waiting for it to go back down to under $500 where it had been the previous day and now it's getting closer to touching $1,000 per share.

Since sports cards is a completely different type of collectibles, and a major one at that, I believe it would be up to CCG to set up a completely different branch of the company from CGC.

With his extensive eBay track record, I am going to be bold and really go for it and make him a big big offer for the full cover price of $0.10 for what is definitely a very used copy since it is no longer in brand new 10.0 graded condition.

What's your rationale for thinking that Bat 1 would have a substantially higher percentage of their copies graded, as compared to the other big GA keys?

Sitting back, waiting to make it's move up. If I remember correctly, wasn't Hulk 1 the big SA mover about 5 or 6 years ago, just before the heat got transferred over to AF 15 starting in 2017 or thereabouts?

A post from yours truly taken from the SA thread which you mentioned just above:

Who really knows and is it possible that Steve and Jim simply got their wires crossed and thought that each of them alone was supposed to be shill bidding on the book and did not realize that the other one was also mistakenly shill bidding the book at the same time. By the time they realized what was happening, it was already too late as it was at the $66K price point with the juice built in there.

2 involved here. Who’s the underbidder. What if heritage never gets paid. Maybe we have 2 guys up to no good +1 as @Foolkiller pointed out in the Silver thread, with several superior copies currently available that are being offered for much less, one can only suspect shill bidding on this one. So, I imagine it's a slightly different situation from the March Signature Auction whereby the owner supposedly brought back the CGC 9.4 graded copy themselves at the $795K price point?

And yet how ironic, that if you look at some of the recent auction results over the past few years for HTF GA books, classic covers, or expensive keys, the ones that have gone up substantially more from a strict percentage point of view have been the more affordable lower graded copies as compoared to the more expensive higher graded copies. For some of the truly HTF books that hardly ever come to market or the real in-demand books like Cap 3, even the restored copies have gone up astronomically in value as compared to before.

Why then are new collectors able to look at a uni-color label and able to comprehend that a blue label CGC 9.0 graded copy of a book is worth more than blue label CGC 6.0 graded copy of the exact same book? I have always thought the best way to handle restored books was the method which was proposed by Jon Berk way back in the day and would have been the best since it would have forced collectors to have a much better understanding of the type and extent when it came to restoration, similar to how they now can understand the nuances of the 10-point condition grading system. This was from a post which I had done in another thread here on the GA boards a couple of weeks ago: The big argument from most boardies at the time was that since the labels would all be the same color, they would still not be able to readily tell the restored books from unrestored books even if they were clearly and boldly labelled as R-0 for Unrestored and R-10 for say Extreme Amateur Restoration. This argument was totally irrational to me since they seem to have no problem understanding that a 9.6 graded copy of a book is in much nicer condition than a 2.0 graded copy of the same book. Not sure why when it came to restoration, they were all like little school children that needed the color bars to tell the difference since a 10-point rating sytem was like rocket science to them and totally beyond their comprehension level.