lou_fine

Sounds as though you got yourself a greart deal then if you based it upon the estimate from the other board members here. Was the Suspense 8 in pretty much the same condition as your nice looking Mask 1, considering the assigned grade? Were both of these books officially graded and was the Suspense 8 priced higher than the Mask 1 relative to their assigned grades? Too bad you wasn't able to pick up both of these classic L.B. Cole covers as they would certainly two gems to have in any collection.

Congrats on the pickup of what is a truly classic L.B. Cole cover. Was this from one of the auction houses and hopefully, you was able to get it for under the $8K price point that everybody seems to be targeting at here? What's next on your hit list.........one of the L.B. Cole classic spider covers from Suspense 8 since I heard that HA has a couple of these in their current auction?

I was in it. We'll see if it matters in this market - after all, look at what happened to the Action 1 (CGC 9.0 W) that was "upgraded." Are you referring to the Action 1 that was supposedly stored in a cedar chest, been in the hands of a dealer for 30 years, and had never been publicly offered for sale: Are you saying that we should not believe this hype story about the Action 1 and the fact that these 2 guys in the video are deliberately misleading any potential bidders by leaving out some rather significant facts about the history and timeline of the book? Now, I would find that absolutely impossible to believe.

+1 Most definitely, as I believe we would not be in this same sad predicament if CGC had gone with a uni-color label from the get go which incorporated both the current 10-point grading system coupled with a similar 10-point restoration rating system at the same time. Sadly for all of the hobbyists, the ship has sailed on that long ago and books are now being "destoyed" in the hopes of getting the blue label, simply because the use of the multi-colored labels resulted in the unintended consequences of exacerbating the difference in value between restored books from the unrestored books. The 10-point grading system sure helped to make collectors become much more aware of the intricacies behind a book's condition and its associated grade. The implementation of a 10-point restoration rating system right from the get go would have done the same thing for collectors in terms of the intricacies when it came to type and extent of restoration. Unfortunately, the multi-colored label system was implemented instead, and restoration was dumbed down to the point so that all you had to know was the difference between blue and purple.

I believe you are both in agreement as that appears to be exactly what Roy is saying from the first line in his post:

+1 Yes, as this is the basic economic theory that price for a good is determined by both the supply and demand for a particular good. Of course, it's also only a theory since it's based upon a perfect market environment and I am not sure that we necessarily have a perfectly competitive marketplace here when it comes to these high end comic books.

Depends how it presents and how bad somebody wants one Quite sure it's not my imagination, but with the high prices that this book has been receiving over the past year, it seems that they are starting to pop up on a much more frequent basis now. As a result, I believe the book will not be quite as high on a price per point basis as what they were going for earlier this year.

There are a whole ton of comics that are rarer than Action 1 since DC was one of the 2 major GA publishers and their books would have had much wider distribution. Amazing Man 26 is from the Centaur line of books which had their beginnings from the mid-30's when comics were still not that widely distributed. Especially in the case of Centaurs which was basically a relatively small publisher which most likely suffered from poor distribution. Being the last book in the run, I am sure that A-Man 26's distribution would have even been weaker than the earlier issues in the run as it would have been winding down shop by then. Most Centaurs are generally considered to be extremely rare relative to most of the other more common GSA books, with many of them having only less than a handful in the CGC census after almost 20 years. Needless to say, most of these would also be found only in low grade condition and definitely still in demand as any copy is better than no copy at all.

More than that Yes indeed, the ship has sailed right past that dollars figure many years ago.

Probably been tried many times over as I remember some comic book wholesaler (was it Greg Buls???) trying something like this in terms of attempting to set up a comic book mutual fund type investment for all of the hot Image and Valiant books way back in the early 90's. I guess we all know what would have happen to those investors.

Well, maybe it's part of a larger consignment of books from the consignor who didn't want to bother with having to reholder it and CC simply wants to keep them happy. After all, it clearly states in both the comments section of the auction description and also right on the CGC label that the book has been Conserved. What would be absolutely worst and egregious is if the buyer did not bother to do any due diligence at all and simply bidded on the book based upon the colour of the label. Boy, that would be the classic case of buying the label, as opposed to buying the book. From my own thinking, that would most definitely be on the buyer themself at that point.

You're exaggerating a bit on both points. Well, maybe just a tiny tiny bit on the second point in an attempt to make a statement. Definitely nowhere close to your huge understatement with respect to my first point though. I highly doubt you would find another book from any other era including the GA that would be graded as a CGC 6.5 with that much missing paper from the front cover. For example, take a look at this relatively nicely presenting CGC 6.5 graded comic: and even a blind person would be able to tell you which CGC 6.5 graded book has far superior eye appeal.

Well, I am quite sure that the AC 13 is going to finish well ahead of the AF 15 by the time it's all said and done. Especially considering the fact that the last time a CGC 9.2 graded copy sold was way back in 2011 when the Atlantic City Copy sold in the CC Auction for $185K when top of guide at the time was only a paltry $30K. Looks like Overstreet has finally caught up to that sale as top of guide for AC 13 for this year is now at $190K.

Yes, definitely so considering that it is a CC scan which is usually a much more accurate reflection of the true colors , as opposed to those horrid looking blinding whitewashed scans that you tend to see on all of the Heritage books.

Thanks for the reminder Yes indeed.........so far, it looks like the 'Tec 29 is rather surprisingly leading the pack right now at the bargain basement price of only $66K after the first day:

Need I remind again before you go blind that you always need to put on your dark dark sunglasses before looking at a Heritage scan, let alone one with a white cover.

Now, that looks totally messed up with Restored books sitting in slabs with blue Universal labels. Last one might be alright though since trimming is considered to be a defect to be taken account in the grading and noted as such on the lable, as opposed to it being considered to be restoration as far as I can remember.

I know how much that hurt to say Well, definitely not as much as it must have hurt Mitch (i.e. Mehdy) as he's always been the biggest promoter for Cap 1 for the longest time.

Ok I perused his posts-wow yes very knowledgeable!!! Unfortunately for all of us here, it would appear that Jon no longer posts or visits here on the boards ever since he sold off his massive collection back in 2017. Hope he's doing alright and this is simply nothing more than just his way of coping with not having his collection anymore.

Whenever I see a book like this that's clearly been overgraded if you factor in the extensive and clearly visible Marvel chipping defects, it seems absolutely ridiculous that they would ignore something so obtrusive. Yet, on the other hand, they would apply a battering ram to the grade of a beautifully presenting perfect looking book that has a tiny near invisible NCB crease that can only be seen by holding the book up at a certain angle to the light.

That would make it a definite plus on a going forward basis, in comparison to GPA.

I'm gonna go with Action 1 on that one. I have always gone with Bat 1 as being the GA book with having the best content by far, as detailed by Overstreet and again by the board member below: Bat 1 also has the last pre-Robin story that was originally intended for 'Tec 38. Yes, Action 1 has the origin and first appearance of Supes (along with Zatara & Lois Lane) which is truly iconic in its own right, but's that just one story out of the entire book.

Yup, it certainly is. +2 I would have to say that this title is a whole lot underappreciated. I imagine it's all to do with those rather lame and comical covers which DC was notorious for with some of their GA titles.

As far as I can remember, the "very small amount of glue" has been deemed acceptable on GA books right from the get go when CGC first opened their doors. Makes me wonder if there's a pedigree copy of More Fun 52 that doesn't have this "glue designation" on it, as it's there on the Church, Larson, and Rockford universal blue copies from what I can see?

Definitely nowhere near as sketchy as CGC attempting to determine an estimated grade range and possible label type (i.e. Universal, Restored, or Conserved, etc.) based upon their pay for a fee "expert review" of eBay scans for customers thinking of purchasing a raw book off eBay.