lou_fine

If we step back from the hobby place that the comic book world is thought to be by comic book collectors here, isn't CGC just another corporate business entity? As such from a pure business point of view, isn't it CGC's primary job to maximize both the top and bottom lines to their CCS (and now Blackstone) owner group? In the course of performing their primary job here, if it also serves the "best interests" of the hobby and the collecting base here at the same time, all the better for it. And if it just so happens not to, but as long as it doesn't negatively affects CGC's business plan going forward, then so be it. From a corporate point of view, isn't that the beauty of having undisclosed grading standards as they can simply be adjusted subtley over time to suit your current business agenda of the day? If you take a look at the Graders Notes for pretty much any certified book nowadays, save for the lower graded copies, you should get a pretty clear idea of which defects have seemingly moved up to the top of their "hit parade chart" with a bullet right next to it. Let's just say it's leaning very very heavily to the defects that tends to entice submittors, in particular to the flippers and speculators, to send their books back in on a seemingly endless cycle just to see if they can squeeze just that little bit more potential out of it. Definitely a case of to each their own, but I would much rather stay away from a book that has bad visual aesthetics that you can see clear across the convention floor but has that big number in the top left hand corner, as opposed to a book with a smaller number in the top left hand corner but has nice eye appeal and near invisible defects that can best be seen with a loupe while sitting atop a light table.

Well, if you really really want to be cynical about the whole thing, do you really need a third party to tell you what the condition grade of a book is? Seriously though, it doesn't hurt if you are into the CPR game and either too lazy or don't have the technical smarts to figure out what is potentially upgradeable or not. I remember taking a look at about a dozen or so of Doug's GA Dell File copies from the late 30's/early 40's that had either the QES or CVA sticker on them when he had originally picked them up, and if I remembered correctly, it was a perect batting average when it came to him reselling them on Heritage, all encased in higher graded slabs. The ironic and rather funny thing about it though was that Dougie still ended up losing money on the ones that originally had the QES stickers on them as some of them sold for even slightly lower dollars at HA even though they had the bigger number in the top left hand corner, but no longer any sticker on them. He more than made it up though with the one that originally had the CVA sticker on it, probably because not as many GA collectors frequent the CL auctions as compared to the CC auctions.

You do realize that this has NOT stop many of the submittors from sending their non-Promise books back into CCS/CGC over and over again in the hopes of even further optimization. From a pure business POV, is this not the perfect business model when you can convince your customers to happily pay for the exact same service not just once, but on multiple occasions even though they have to sometimes go through a waiting period of countless months to get their books back. Being a longer term collector from the so-called bad old days prior to the safe confines that we now find ourselves in with CCS/CGC here to look after our interests, I just find it kind of ironic and rather funny that collectors used to live in abject fear of restoration since it was seen to destroy the value of your books. Now, we live in this clearly bizarro world where we live in abject fear of NOT having our books "restored" prior to grading so that we can maximize the potential value of our books.

I believe you just might have made a little typo there in your post up above:

I disagree. I would also disagree here since this particular writing is the pedigree code for the Promise Collection and not just some random writing. I will admit though that I don't care for its placement on the cover or the size of the writing, but it is what it is. When it comes to preferred pedigree code writing, the perfect example would be the Church pedigree code with its placement and small size that makes from my own personal POV, increases its desirability over a Church book without its signature pedigree code.

FTFY...............after this past weekend, I heard this book was now going for well into 5-figures, if not 6-figures by the time it's all said and done: https://comics.ha.com/itm/silver-age-1956-1969-/romance/barbie-and-ken-1-dell-1962-cgc-nm-mt-98-off-white-pages/a/40208-81004.s?ic4=ListView-ShortDescription-071515 Especially since Barbie had such a big opening weekend to even leave old webhead himself way behind eating his own cobwebs. Why.............who in their right mind would want to have a copy of a crashing AF 15 with thousands of slabbed copies already out there and multiples showing up in every single auction when you can have an unique one of a kind single highest graded copy of the truly HTF first issue of Barbie.

From my own personal POV, I believe that Overstreet has completely missed the boat on them or is just absolutely tone deaf when it comes to these later pre-hero New Adventure/Adventure and More Fun issues. It is pretty clear to me that more of these issues needs to be broken out as certain ones of them clearly goes for more than others. I have waited years (okay decades) for him to do a nore detailed breakkdown for them, yet it always seems to be the same old, same old larger groupings of 5 or 10 books in a shot with their customary single digit percentage increase every single year. To the point where the Guide seems to be totally out of whack on some of these issues, and some of them often selling for double digit multiples to condition guide value. Heck, we even saw some raw restored lower graded copies selling last year for more than what the top of guide valuations for these issues are in this years edition of the guide. Clearly, Overstreet is living in a completely different galaxy from the real world when it comes to some of these pre-hero DC books. Not sure why it always seem to take Overstreet so darn long to break out some of these books, but from a collector's POV, always nice to get books like More Fun 56, Archie 50, Seven Seas 4, and the likes before they do eventually get broken out in the Guide. He FINALLY got around to breaking out the Frazetta Famous Funnies issues into two groups last year (although it really should have been three), but still hasn't yet got around to breaking out the Junior issues where there are clearly also a couple in that short run that's shall we say splittingly apart from the others in the run.

And yet they continue to list the Overstreet Price Guide valuation within both the Auction Listing Description and also as a segregated Price Guide Report for every single one of their auction lots. From the CSR response here, I believe it's really more the messenger this time, than the message itself.

Sounds like the type of wife who's got her priorities in the right order, and a definite keeper for life, albeit your life might be rather short.

Yes, probably best to ask right at the source, namely Gemstone Publishing, since they are the home of the various Overstreet Guides.

Not exactly sure what you mean by "at the time" as I guess I am part of the comic book collecting generation that has and will always consider Funnies on Parade to be the first Modern Day version of the American comic book as we all know it today. As such, I believe it is a highly underappreciated and subsequently also a highly undervalued book in today's marketplace, especially realtive to its historical importance in the comic book medium. From my personal POV, the value of this book was negatively impacted going forward when Overstreet segregated his guide into different sections and this resulted in Funnies on Parade being banished into the much lower profile Promotional section of his guide and out from the regular General comic book section of the guide where everybody goes to check for valuations. The other factor that has hurt its valuation is its relative rarity as the last copy to be graded and slabbed was back in 2018, with the last copy to be auctioned off at Heritage all the way back in 2014 and the last copy auctioned off at CC was a mid-grade copy in 2019 for something like 5X its condition guide value. Although there are some here who believe that The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck from 1837 should more accurately be considered to be the first comic book, I guess I am not part of that school of thought. It doesn't even have the same design or layout format to the comic book that we know today, and if we go there, why not go back even further back to the drawings from the cave men way back in the Stone Age then.

And you would be exactly correct according to this article that was written up about Sotheby's and their connection to the White Mountain Collection and the origin of the pedigree and the late Jerry Weist's key influence in making this happen: https://www.tricottetcollection.com/WhiteMountain_comicbooks.html

Totally agree with the points which you have made here. As I have said here here before in the past, the Promise Collection is indded a top notch pedigree collection, and as such, deserved to have top notch grading done by the gang at CGC. By this, I mean consistent and accurate grading, as opposed to either overly soft or overly tight grading, and in this sense the perception of inconsistency with respect to grading of the Promise Collection has in my mind seriously damaged the reputation of this pedigree going forward. In this day and age of certification where the CPR game seems to be so embedded into the whole certification process, the mere fact that out of the almost 200 Promise books that have come back into the marketplace, only 5 have successfully had their grades changed either upwards or downwards seems rather odd. This definitely gives pause as to how the books from the Promise Collection were originally graded and why there seems to be such abject fear to even try to play the usual go to CPR game when it comes to the Promise books relative to other certified books.

OMG..............has our chariot somehow already galloped us all the way into the 17th Century or something, as I thought we were all still using the abacus to analyze Overstreet's valuation changes?

To answer your question in as few words as possible........."Yes and No".........as it really depends on your definition of "more accurate" here. Are you trying to imply that I didn't answered your question here or is it more that you simply didn't get the answer that you wanted to hear? In either case, I will now give you the expanded version of my answer to your question since you did not care for my short hand version, and for those who don't care for a wall of text and numbers, please skip straight to the next post: YES, If you take a look at the OPG listing for the Frazetta Famous Funnies issues, you can clearly see that he is much much more accurate than the mere $3,100 valuation he had each of them listed for in top of guide back in 2021. The mere fact that he broke them out into two separate groupings makes it more accurate from that one change by itself, although from my POV it really shoule have been into three separate groupings, but that is really besides the point. The additional fact that he bumped the FF 212 to FF 214 grouping by a whopping very un-Overstreet like 158% from a mere $3,100 in top of guide all the way up to $8K in last years guide makes it even doubly more accurate. Then again, the fact that he did not follow through with continuing high double digit percentage increases in this years guide, unlike what he did with the hot to trot L.B. Cole and Matt Baker covers, means that, NO, he is still clearly NOT as accurate as he can be. Especially since he raised the FF 212 to FF 214 grouping from $8K in top of guide to $9K for a piddling percentage increase of only 12.5% and the second grouping from $4K up to $5K for a more respectable, but still low 25% gain. Especially when you take into consideration the increased frequency with which these Frazetta issues were coming into the marketplace last year (albeit in lower and mid-grade condition) and yet still able to garnered nice multiples to their new guide valuations. I get the distinct impression that what really gets Overstreet's attention is when higher grade copies of books sells for headline grabbing results and less so when its lower grade copies that sells for high multiples, but probably the absolute number in and of itself keeps them flying under the radar. Now, that we've seen a Famous Funnies 209 (BTW: one of the most common Frazetta issues) crossed into 5-figure territory for the first time at $20K+ and a Famous Funnies 212 hitting $30K, both in last month's Heritage Auction, you might just see more of an increase reflected in part for these stupendous sales in the 2024 OPG in a mere short 51 weeks from now. If you want to be even more current though, all you need do is to take a look at this auction result for a copy of Famous Funnies 213 which just finished up within the past hour: https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/science-fiction/famous-funnies-213-eastern-color-1954-cgc-vg-40-cream-to-off-white-pages/a/122330-17069.s?ic4=GalleryView-ShortDescription-071515 Sold for $4,200 or what is now still running at almost 4.5X the increased condition guide value in the new 2023 OPG that just came out. Really, nothing new here as it's just more of the same old, same old that we've been seeing with respect to the multiples for the Frazetta Famous Funnies issues during the past couple of years.

Was this the auction where several of the key books were brought up by this guy who then proceeded to put them on display as part of his travelling rioad show where they all ended up quite faded after awhile?

In a short answer to your question here......you do realize that it's still old, slow, and conservative Bob who's still in full control of the OPG.

To answer your question in as few words as possible........."Yes and No".........as it really depends on your definition of "more accurate" here. If you aren't afriad of getting totally bored, I wouldn't mind on expounding on my answer here.

I guess when everybody here said the Promise Collection brought in a lot of newbie money from outside the hobby like the crypto guys, sports cards collectors, and the likes, they probably forgot to include the lucky sado machist winners who's now having all of their wild and crazy punishing fantasies fulfilled to the max with these Promise retread auction results:

Definitely getting better looking everyday and now I understand why he's apparently a total "chick magnet" with that wild mane of hair and "manly" face, as like they say, opposites clearly do attract:

Yep, clearly one of the first things that I used to read over and over again when I first started with the Overstreet's in the late 70's and early 80's. Clearly NOT so much nowadays as they are one of the last things I read as I simply try to trudge my way through them before the next edition comes out. Definitely fun back in the day, but then the Gary Carter edited early CBM mag's came out and now, I can find out so much more current infor from these very boards right here. Doesn't stop me from still buying the updated Guide every year though and surprised that the owner of the LCS came down to give me the Friends & Family 20% discount even though the last time I was in his store was last year.

Sadly, we all have limited budgets on what we can spend, especially when it comes to our hobbies. As such, I never got into PCH as that was just sort of out there when I was into my major collecting phase. To the point that I turned down the offer for the Church copy of Mask 1 for something like under $3K as added incentive if I attended the Diamond Galleries grand opening back in the day. Didn't care for the book at the time and also past my budget for a single book, but when I saw it on lighted display through display case in the library with all of its bright colors, I knew I had made a mistake, but by then it had already been offered to another collector. So, although I don't think I have any real PCH in my personal collection, at least I still get to enjoy them nowdays through what other boardies post on these boards right here. Yep, kind of funny how popularity changes for the vaarious genres in our comic book hobby here. My brothers have 2 big orange boxes of well read Westerns and sadly, no current calue in there at all except possibly as kindling for starting a campfire. They asked me if I wanted them since they are in the proicess of moving, but I already have enough grabage, so I imagine it's all going to go into the recycle bin once they reread them one more time. Either that or wait until Hell freezes over for Westerns to get popular again.

Glad to see that you was on top of your game here and hopefully able to pick up your copy at a steal of a deal before the big runup in prices. Always a smart move to pick up a book before it gets broken out in the guide because once that happens, the book usually tends to rocket up pretty fast. Well, instead of paying a mere $418.25 for 18 copies, I guess you could have dig just a tiny bit deeper into your pocket for this single copy here: https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/horror/chamber-of-chills-19-file-copy-harvey-1953-cgc-nm-94-cream-to-off-white-pages-cover-by-lee-elias-interior-art-by-bob/a/15121-17097.s?ic4=ListView-ShortDescription-071515# Still the second highest graded copy after being auctioned off for $477.25 back in 2005, or if you was willing to dig deeper into your pocket: https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/horror/chamber-of-chills-19-harvey-1953-cgc-nm-96-cream-to-off-white-pages-the-lady-on-the-cover-is-flirting-with-death-and/a/813-1100.s?lotPosition=27&ic16=ViewItem-BrowseTabs-Inventory-BuyNowFromOwner-ArchiveSearchResults-012417 You could have picked up this still highest copy for a mere $776.25 back in 2004, and if so, hope you would have been smarter than the flipper who made an unsuccessful attempt to CPR the book and then flipped it for what was a most likely money losing $1,063.75 less than a year later. Now, that winner there (i.e. the owner of the Black Cat Collection) was the smart one as they held the book until it was sold for $102K in 2021.

You don't seriously think that anybody in their right mind would sell any of the books listed in Overstreet's Top 100 in raw condition, do you? Although I've always heard this theory that Overstreet's valuation are based on raw condition books, my take is that the valuations are based upon the most common method that the underlying books themselves are sold in. That is, graded prices for your high dollar value items which no rational person would ever sell in raw condition and raw prices for worthless drek in a condition that no rational person would ever think of sending in for slabbing before selling.

Although I get the demand side for this particular book, I don't really understand the prices being paid, considering the supply side of the equation. Especially since this book was apparently part of a warehouse find and there are already well over 100 graded and slabbed copies of this book, with copies seeming to pop up in almost every single major auction offering for the past two years. Considering the frequency with which they were showing up, I found it rather stunning that they managed to get 6-figures for a copy back in 2021 which were then followed by near-figures for slightly lower graded copies. Even more stunning though was a lower grade CGC 2.5 beater copy which managed to sell for 5-figures last year which made me think back to how lucky the winner of this lot must have been: https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/horror/chamber-of-chills-19-multiple-file-copy-group-harvey-1953-condition-average-gd-vg-total-18-comic-books-/a/19062-12153.s?ic4=ListView-ShortDescription-071515 A multiple File Copy group of 18 water stained copies in G/VG raw condition selling for just over half of guide value for a whopping $418.25.