lou_fine

Well, if this is indeed the case, then when is your personal collection hitting the HA auction block?

Mitch; Greatly appreciate your long and well-thought out posts in this thread here. For most long time GA collectors, my thinking is that they would already have their house and cars paid off by now. Especially when most people tend to buy and pay off their necessities before they would even contemplate spending any money on luxury or fun items like GA comic books for their collections. To these long time collectors, it's all about the comic books themselves. Now, if you are referring to the CGC generation of flippers and speculators, that's definitely a completely different story. The feeling I get is that most of these guys tend to gravitate much more towards the later and non-GA segment of the marketplace where books are much more readily available for them to play the CPR game. Especially since this part of the market is all about the big number on the top left hand corner of the slab, and less about the actual book that is inside the slab. To these kinds of speculators and flippers, it's all about the money and the comic books are just the avenue or tool being used to acquire it.

Hey Mitch; I imagine this collection here is a perfect example of what you was referring to in the other thread with respect to "quality" GA/SA collections coming into the marketplace due to the current uncertain economic environment which we find ourselves in nowadays. All I can say for a long time collector like Ian who probably paid pennies on today's dollar for his books, this is both definitely the wrong time, wrong venue, and the wrong method (i.e. sell as 1 giant lot only) to dispose of his collection if he was thinking of maximizing his dollars.

No way his ask is only 1.5 million. Ian will be asking a premium because his name is attached to it. I actually thought it would have to go for a discount with Ian's name attached to the collection.

Mitch; What makes you think that these types of GA books would all of a sudden show up for sale or auction in what many think will be a cooling or downtime for the marketplace? If they were going to come out, wouldn't it have been during one of the most red hot marketplaces that we have seen during the past few years? Especially when the types of books which you are talking about have most likely been in the hands of long time collectors for decades and is there really a need for them to put them into the marketplace right now.

Not sure what you mean when you say the previous auction results for these exact same books in the exact same grades had completely different results: 1) The Star Trek #59 you pointed out sold for $43 while the HA Archives indicates a total of 10 copies in CGC 9.4 graded condition selling between $35 to $66; 2) The Star Trek #56 you pointed out sold for $47 while the HA Archives indicates a total of 8 copies in CGC 9.4 graded condition selling between $47 to $88; and 3) The Star Trek #49 you pointed out solf for $144 while the omly other listed CGC 9.4 graded copy on HA sold for $131.45. Looks like the winner of these 3 Star Trek books probably got the first 2 at a good price and is now simply hoping to flip them for a completely outrageous BIN price which he will most likely not be getting. No harm in a seller asking whatever he wants, although I strongly doubt that anybody will bite given the prior HA results.

Sad to say, but it would appear that America had their blinders on and simply made the huge mistaken assumption that the Coronavirus would never ever make it to these shores. As a result, instead of tracking and tracing the movement of every single traveller returning to the country from the time the virus was first flagged to the WHO and CDC back in January, they basically ignored it until it had already spread far into the community before realizing it was a major problem that was then beyond control.

Yes, but isn't this the same scenario for virtually all books that sells through an auction platform of one type or another? I have won some lots on the CC auction site where I know that the final third of the actual realized price just came down to a bidding war between the last 2 bidders. No doubt this is also the exact kind of sceanrio that the consignor of the book is hoping for.

That was fast even at full BIN (what it sold for) great buy Or as some other boardies were commenting in terms of falling prices in this current new real world environment............a panic sell!!!

Looks like your wish came true as CC is not having their usual March Event Auction this year. Nothing to do with Covid-19 though, as it was much more due to the big screwed up job done on the revamping of their website.

Although it looks like most of these books would be from the SA and BA, here's a post from a Comics General thread which kept track of about 80 books so far: From the linked data spreadsheet, it would appear that there is a definite downward drift in prices based upon what I am looking at. Doesn't appear to be any compariosns in there for GA books as far as I can tell.

No other character more popular then Spider-Man or Batman.. Superman I love but in today's world he doesn't fly.. Probably true, but if you hand me a copy of Action 1 or Supes 1, I'll be right there to happily take it off your hands.

Yes, it would appear that there wasn't a single GA book in the entire list of results which you provided to us in your link. So, I am not sure if this simply means that this particular CL auction is devoid of any GA books or not?

What kinf of books are you buying like crazy right now? I was looking at some GA books and I am certainly still not seeing any real screaming deals of any kind yet.

Well, I would assume this must be nothing more than a slabbing mistake on the part of CGC. Especially since I don't see an actual pedigree designation of any kond on the label here.

Yeah, but does that only happen when slabbed? Or can you still get those good prices on raw copies? I believe books will always tend to sell for more when it's been graded and slabbed as there's an additional so-called independent 3rd party opinion as to its grade. With respect to GA books, another key factor is the restoration check. The most important thing for GA books (especially keys and/or HTF classic covers) in terms of their valuations, however, is that they tend to have underlying value in all grades across the entire condition spectrum, as opposed to more recent books which have value only in the uber HG's and no real value in anything below that.

Sad to say, but actually very true. Not only that, but getting their submittors to happily have the exact same wrothless books optimized and regraded as many times as possible. If they were in the business of only having true vintage collectible books graded and slabbed, they would have been out of business a long time ago.

Well, I used to think that a book wasn't really worth grading unless it had a condition guide value of $500 or more. Especially when you take into account the margin of error when it comes to grading along with the additional ancillary costs involved to have a book graded. Since I would probably only have my GA books slabbed though, I have since lowered my standards to something like a condition guide value of $300 or more. Especially since a lot of the GA books tends to sell for a nice premium or possibly even multiples to condition guide on some occasions, depending upon the particular book in question.

Maybe hoping to get lucky during the grading process and then being double lucky by finding a CGC label collector for a book such as this: So, if you are indeed lucky enough to have all the stars in the universe line up for you, you too can hope for getting $15K for an otherwise relatively common book such as this or a CGC 9.8 graded copy of Eternals 13 for something like $4,100. the money that is!!!

I am sure your count of worthless or money losing slabbed books is off by a long shot. Since CGC has already slabbed several million books up to this point in time, I am quite sure there must be a couple million books which would fall into this money losing category by now.

Even without any shipments of new books coming in every week, it's still going to be extremely tough for some of these shops to stay in business if it goes on for a couple of months. Especially when it comes to these commercial rents for the stores which can often run at $30K a month and up from there. Although there does appear to be pressure on local governments to have tenants forgo rental payments during this whole crisis. Then again, what about the landlords although it sounds as though mortgage payments can be pushed off for 6 months which simply means you still have to pay them at the back end.

This is what I’m trying to do.. don’t need the cash but hard to see your profits and capital disappear each day At times like this, I say that I am just glad that a portion of my now retirement funds is locked up in vintage collectible comic books which certainly don't seem to be as volatile as the equity markets in times such as these. Of course, for other long term collectors like me, it was probably really more a stroke of luck than anything else. Especially since I certainly never really truly believe they would have the kind of value that they do nowadays and was really only using that reason to rationalize purchasing them in the first place.

Not sure who you are referring to since I was actually talking in my post about the Carl Barks Donald Duck story which i was reading last night? Hopefully, you are not referring to an actual real person because the Mods will be sure to slap you with a big warning once they get back into the office from their imposed lockdown. Hopefully, you simply misquoted and really meant to say "With great power comes great responsibility" as said by good old Spidey in his famous line. So, by linking your comment to my post, if you don't see me around here for the next while, I guess I'll have you to blame for being given the bunt from the boards.

Now you tell me. Especially right after I gave a call into Dave to see if his Church run of Action Comics and Allentown copy of 'Tec 27 was now available at full cover price, for what really amounts to nothing more than some used and now worthless old comic books.

I can't believe anything that comes from them I would most definitely take anything I see on the internet with respect to the origins of the Coronavirus with a whole ton of skepticism. Especially since I have heard everything from Chinese spies stealing it from a Canadian lab, bio-engineered virus brought into Wuhan by American operatives acting as participants in the World Military Games, bio-engineered virus accidentally leaked from a Wuhan lab which just happens to be the only BSL-4 virlogy lab in all of China, virus came from a burning meteorite which landed in China, etc. From a comic book point of view though, the only conspiracy theory that I would subscribe to is that it came from a Thanos wannabe who's actually doing a very bad job at right-sizing the world's population. I actually live right next door to a family that came back from China about a month ago and they simply can't believe how lackadaisical the North American approach is to containing the virus as it is compared to China. They said it was like the diffference between night and day with most of the general population over here still not really taking it that seriously. Especially when they say that people can still go out to go jogging or to walk their dogs, and then you see the younger generation celebrating Spring Break with beach parties or younger people not caring about their elders by doing stupid things like licking subway car pole handles, door knobs for doors to public places, etc. No matter how inaccurate the numbers might possibly be, I woud still much rather be in the position of the country that is reporting only 39 new cases during the previous 24-hour time period, as opposed to the country that is reporting 9,339 cases for the previous 24-hour reporting time period. Although large number's of China's own general populaton don't believe all the numbers emanating from their own government talking heads, it appears to have still been good enough for Apple to reopen all of their brick and mortar retail stores in China, while at the same time, closing every single one of their retail stores outside China on a now declared indefinite basis. Not sure how much more faith I would put in any type of administration that boasts they knew the virus was a pandemic right from the get go and the first one to call it as such. Sad to say that this is probably actually true since Military Intelligence had apparently already informed them as such way back in January. And then to state right the next day that nothing could have been done about it because nobody knew anything about the virus as it had snuck up on everybody. And then to top it off, to counter with the boast that they were actually early to the game and ahead of the virus when questioned the other day as to whether their response to the virus situation was late or not. I am sure that I see a Pinocchio nose growing longer and longer here, and yet it seems that most people would believe almost anything in this day and age of so-called "fake news" and media hoaxes.