lou_fine

Any reason why you waited so long to sell since virtually all of these negative factors and extreme uncertainty were already clearly evident in the marketplace during the prior 4 weeks while the North American equity markets were happily away and setting new highs which didn't actually make much sense to me?

I do not, nor have I ever seen one. It would be like 900 books vs. 100 camp era ones. It's quite evident that the Camp copies of this pedigree are the most desirable, as seen from the huge multiples they sell for. Any idea if the post-camp Okajima books would also carry some kind of lower multiples to guide or just a premium to condition guide?

I guess you are probably referring to books like this Hulk 181 with the CVA sticker that sold for $59K or more than $20K higher than any other CGC 9.8 graded copy:

On the other hand, as investors are running away from the equity markets and looking for safe havens, they just might seek shelter in the comic book market and toss some of their money our way. Haven't we seen this same scenario also played out before in the past as investors seek to diversify away a bit from the equity markets during these times of extreme volatility and high uncertainty? Just took a quick look at some of the CL auction results for tonight and they appear to be holding onto their strength better than I had expected, especially after the very noticeable dropoff on the Spidey's and Cap's the other evening.

So, are we then to assume the corollary to your above statment would be that "just because pages are NOT peeking out (even all the way down the book) does not automatically mean a book was NOT pressed?

Love the strong deep purple cover on this book here, as purple is definitely not one of the common colors to see on the covers of GA books.

Now hold on here, if it's Bulletman 3 or Bulletman 5 with the once designated (but now no longer) classic Raboy covers, I believe I already have first dibs on them.

Did you watch the movie? It was pretty bad at all levels. Probably a 8-12 year old would like it. I am guessing it knocked 20% off prices. No, since I actually find most superhero movies to be virtually unwatchable, especially from a storyline point of view. Result is that I usually tend to doze off multiple times before I ever get to the end of the movie if I am not already sound asleep by then. From other movie related comic books here, I would actually expect a much greater than 20% AFTER the movie comes out, but isn't there usually a huge hike prior to the actual release of the movie when it gets announced? Or more than likely, this type of more volatile price action usually occurs with the more recent versions of the books since they are readily available for speculation and doesn't necessarily extend all the way back to the GA books.

Just try to track down some of those early Master issues with the classic Raboy covers like Master 27 and Master 33 and you'll definitely find out the meaning of high pricing, if you are lucky enough to even find any decent copies available in the marketplace.

Didn't they just have a Shazam movie earlier this year which should have sent the book right into the stratosphere from a valuation point of view? I guess the so-called hype and increased interest that books are supposed to receive from movies do not necessarily apply in all cases.

Like I've said here many times in the past before..............when it comes to the "speculeeches", it's all about the money. If they could flip used soiled toilet paper for money they would be at the front of the line and some grading company would be right up there certifying and grading it all for them.

Same here. I stopped after the questionnaire asked me to list the names of the graders I knew. Did they also asked you to list your most valuable books and exactly where you stored them, along with the times you would not be home?

I’ve heard that the pushing and shoving in the elevator resembled an episode of Jerry Springer... And then you get the nice guys like Joe Vereneault who for us was the lucky one to get the box of Allentown early Fox books. Upon finding out that I was a collector as opposed to a dealer, he handed the box over to me and said that I was welcome to pick one of each (i.e. Mystery Men & Wonderworld) for myself. I believe he also made the same offer to one other collector right after me. Unfortunately, there was no Wonderworld 7 in there as it had apparently already been set aside in advance for somebody else. Not sure if there was a copy of Mystery Men 3 in the box or not, but I guess I did not considered it to be any more of a standout cover as compared to the others at the time. Still, I am 100% sure that we would have gotten absolutely nothing at all if one of the Big 3 had gotten their hands on that box to start.

Whoops. Brain overload Well, if the markets continue in the same downward trend for another few days, you might even get some bid retractions and be able to snap up this nice looking copy for a real bargain basment price.

The online listing says that it ends in 6 days from now , but the auction catalogue clearly indicates that it ends next Thursday on March 5th.

For reasons I cannot fathom, the Heritage Cap 1 7.0, at $132k(with the vig) is already doing better than the Clink ones Well, it is a signed copy after all if you take a closer look at the front cover. Not sure how your math is working anyways. The CL 7.0 graded copy sold for $211K or a shade over 1.4X condition guide and the CL 5.0 graded copy sold for $100K or over 1.5X condition guide, while the HA 7.5 graded copy is still at only $132K with the juice or only at 1.05X condition guide.

Well, if this is indeed the case, then I would assume books from this collection have been "maximized to their full potential" multiple times already.

I've seen that S as well on other books. But I remember being told that was a known designation retailers used as a shorthand. I forgot what it was though. As far as I know, there is a very clear distinction between the greased pencil 'S', as compared to the books with the regular small pencil 's'. The former appears to be from a very early HG GA collection while the latter appears to be your standard distributor marking normally on mid-grade books. There appears to be some speculation from some board member here that the greased pencil 'S' books might have been pedigree worthy except for the fact that they were already broken up and sold into the marketplace before the concept of pedigrees for comic books even came into play. It should be noted that the shape of the greased pencil 'S' appears to all have the same look and shape. Although I would definitely love to acquire some of these books with the greased pencil 'S' identifier, the only problem is that they seem to be priced either at a huge premium or even multiples to guide when I used to see them in the distant past.

He who panics first, panics best. Probably one of the rare situations where there was no need for panic as investors had ample warning signs well in advance this time. Especially since this whole Corona Virus came to light well over a month ago and investors had a whole month to reduce their exposure while the market kept setting new highs in the interim which made absolutely no sense to me.

Well, from what I can see then, this appears to be much more like a free giveaway promo book to promote their upcoming Nintendo line of comics. Not sure if I would agree with CL's description of this book as being "extremely rare" as this sounds much more like their standard hype more than anything else.

Was flipping through the CL auction results looking for a particular book and noticed this book here: Astonished that it sold for something like $2,300 since it certainly isn't rare or anything like that with already 20 graded copies and virtually all of them in CGC 9.0 and above. Just wondering if this is the going rate for all of the pre-hero Valiant books or is this considered to be one of the "special" pre-hero Valiant books?

In Blue or PLOD holders? These books would have been in a PLOD during the first 15 years or so of CGC's existence, but have since been upgraded to reside in the quasi blue/grey Conserved holders with their last revamp of their Restoration grading system.

Correct. Although technically correct from a pure mathematical point of view, your answer would appear to be a bit misleading here. Especially in the sense that pressing prior to CGC was normally only done as the final step after other restoration activities had already been performed on a book. Standalone pressing with no other restoration work done on a book was not a common activity since it was simply not worthwhile as differences in price points between grades in the old grading system were just not as significant as they are in today's so-called "more refined and developed" grading system. Especially since the focus of today's grading system is really geared much more towards ensuring the maximization of the top and bottom lines for the grading companies.

I've seen many more Arrow 1s and 2s than 3s in general. I had no idea there was a complete dearth of high grade copies though. Well, I just went and checked my copies of both the Church and Larson catalogs. From the records which I have, it indicates only a NM raw graded Larson copy of Arrow 1 along with a NM raw graded Church copy of Arrow 3. Apparently no other Larson or Church books in the short-lived Arrow run except for these 2 books here.

I haven't seen (noticed?) anything in terms of ads or eBay auctions in years. They were certainly more high profile in my view back in the day, if they are still in business Don't believe they are in business anymore as Dan has apparently already retired from the funny book business according to one boardie in the thread below: I still remember back in the mid-90's when he was part of the big East Coast triumvirate (along with Fishler from Metro & Robert Rogovin from Four Color Comics) and they tried to scoop up all of the GA books from the Diamond Int'l Galleries Grand Opening when GA books were super red hot for a short period of time back then.