lou_fine

yeah I had the same situation on a few years ago unless something changed recently... @lou_fine how did you get them to hold books off. As you can see a few Canadian buyers didn't know about this as some have even emailed myself included and were told no they can't do this.... Well, that was quite a long time ago, so things have probably changed since my last order from CL. If I remember correctly, that was back around 2010 or thereabouts and they sent me a box with orders covering a 2 or 3-year time period after I finally gave them approval to ship the books out to me. Surprsingly, they didn't missed any and they also didn't bother to charge me a storage fee for having to hold onto the books for such a long period of time. Well okay, it could also have something to do with their antiquated checkout and shipping system.

Actually no, I have been grabbing those every chance I could knowing they would be tough. I only have one late run issue to get with the rest being fairly "common" if there is such a thing with Fox books. Well, sounds like it's only a matter of time then.

Woud the majority of these 6 be at the end of the Mystery Men run as these later issues appear to be tougher to find as compared to the early issues.?

I agree with you guys shipping to Canada sucks, I only bid with taking into account my 70$ shipping fee and potential brokerage fee's wish they could do something to help Canadian collectors. I've been in your situation before Black_Adam where I won something and I am scrambling to get something else to make the shipping hit make sense . I usually try to find local guys now in Canada to save on the headaches of Comiclink, HA and such. Not sure why all of you would take the strategy of bidding and winning books you didn't really want just in order to justify the shipping charges? Especially when there's a much simpler solution which is just to ask them to hold onto your winnings for you until you do win enough books that you feel comfortable with the shipping charges. That is, as long as you don't mind waiting a few auctions to get your books.

I would tend to agree with you that anything in VF 8.0 would qualify as HG for the early GA books. For the later GA books or anything from 1945 onwards (such as Suspense 8) which in theory should be more available or common, I would consider true HG to be anything in VF/NM 9.0 and above.

+1 I can't believe that there's over 50 copies of this particular book already graded, and we still have yet to see one in true or even close to HG condition. Looks like this copy here is in a group as the second highest graded with this book topping out in grade at only CGC 7.5. Well, looks like I am the high bidder for now, but doubt this will be anywhere even close to the final price by the time it's all said and done.

Every time I see how fast prices for OA are going up recently, it reminds me of my first trip down to the SD Con at the start of the 90's and how the big boys always tends to be ahead of the curve. While all of the comic collectors were down there chasing after and forking over big dollars for comic books, I still remember Geppi and several of his older collecting buddies flipping through OA pages and picking them off for what would now be seen as pennies on the dollar.

Not sure where you guys are getting that it costs only $5 to $10 to have a book pressed. I was talking to somebody that submits to CCS on a regular basis and he said that it costs him well over $50 a book and possibly even closer to $100 to have a book pressed, especially if you have to factor in the additional ancillary charges like shipping, packing materials, etc. If I am not mistaken, if you get your pressing done by the underperforning and overpriced CCS, you are paying virtully the same price for pressing as you do for having the book graded. I believe he said that his average cost to have a book pressed and graded was over $150 a shot. So, maybe you do have something to lose if you don't get a grade bump from the press.

What does that even mean. How can they even claim that? Seems like a silly way to say- "these are really nice copies", but with an over the top dramatic flair. You know, like a virgin! Boy, Madonna sure looked young in that video from way back then in '84..............almost forgot how long she's been around. Although I still remember her more from her "acting" role in Body of Evidence: https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=Body+of+Evidence#imgrc=ima-m7cppXAnpM: Definitely saw a lot more of her there and shall we say, most definitely NOT un-touched in that movie role.

Batman 1 266 copies graded to date. Well, I guess there is an exception to every rule.

Will most definitely agree with you that there is most likely less than 800 unique copies that have been graded to date. Less than 1,000 total copies or possibly even 2,000 in existence including all of the beaters out there, probably not so much but who's to say for sure.

I don't understand why it would not be relevant, especially in terms of the 5-year time period. For example, if it was the 5-year time period of 1936 to 1941 then it would most definitely qualify for full pedigree status. Now that we know from Masterchief that it is from only the much more common and abundant 5-year time period of 1966-71 when comic book collecting was already in place, it's rather obvious why this particular collection was not given pedigree status. Any COA's for books from this time period is really geared more towards marketing hype in hopes of maximizing dollars upon sale, as opposed to anything resembling a true pedigree worthy book.

I can't think of a single GA superhero book that has those kind of census numbers. +1 I can't think of a single GA book, unless it was part of a huge warehouse find, that would have even close to a quarter of this census number count.

I'd say its far more likely a 4 but I don't think 5 is that much of a stretch. Gerber 5 = 1000 copies or less. There's 897 on census, and who knows what percent of those are CPRs and duplicates on census. You can't seriously think there's less than 1,000 copies of this book remaining in existence when there's already almost 900 copies in the census. Have you forgotten about all of the raw copies that are still sitting out there in private collections since the owners have absolutely no reason to have them graded since it's still not time for them to sell their copies yet? Being a CA book with a print run of 3,000 copies with a huge percentage of them already graded and in relatively high grade at that, I would have to say this book is more like a Gerber 2 in that it can generally be found without too much trouble. The only proviso being that you have the money and are willing to pay up for it.

I wish we knew who the winning bidder and underbidder were. Paying $90K for a scarce collectible seems routine, but paying that much for such a common book seems bizarre. The buyer had to be somebody with money to burn, someone who is bipolar and was in a manic phase, or someone who owns a long box of the things and wanted to manipulate the market. I can tell you with 100% certainty that you will never ever see me spending even a fraction of this kind of money on this particular book. Well okay, unless I have a guaranteed crazy buyer willing to pay me even crazier money to take it off my hands. Especially after a LCS owner offered to order me a copy of the book some 30+ years ago directly from the publisher if I was willing to fork over $300 for it. Took a look at some of the sample artwork which he had for the book and thought that it looked like absolute doggie doo doo and said to myself that nobody in their right mind would ever pay that kind of money for it. Took him up on his second offer though and forked over $40 for the now worthless signed and numbered limited edition of Batman The Dark Knight by some guy name Frank Miller that was about come out.

I thought it was something like that.........but I am still not sure if it warrants a 50% increase in the admission rates. Especially when you factor in all of the additional dough they must be puling in from the dealers for the extra tables. Rain-couver is definitely right from what i went through last week after being away in Japan for almost a whole month there. Although we did get to enjoy the benefits of super Typhoon Hagibis while we were there. Well, at least it looks like the sun is going to be with us here in Sun-couver for the coming week.

Are they jacking up the admission fees for this show with every single outing? I thought this show was only $8 on the last go round back at the beginning of the year or was it the one before that?

You can definitely never ever go wrong with any copy of Mystery Men #1. Especially when it comes from the highly desirable Allentown Collection to boot and a CGC single highest graded copy at that.

Not sure what the count should be... Well, according to the Grand Comics Database (GCD), it's supposed to be 36 pages in total including the front and back covers: https://www.comics.org/issue/6205/ Looks like there's supposed to be 3 separate PL stories in there............a 9-pager entitled Scroundels and Scandals, a 10-pager entitled Condemned Venus, and then followed up by a 10-pager enntitled A Shroud For the Bride. So, I don't see any room for duplicate stories or pages in there unless its a manufacturing error.

Wonderful. More detail would be appreciated when it's possible. +1 That's definitely good news for the owner of these books here. Although I still can't understand why collectors would leave their valuables in a storage locker when history has clearly show us that they are not secured at all.

From seeing some of these Cookville books in this thread plus ones I have seen in the past from other threads, it really makes me wonder how watered down the definition of "pedigree" is going to be with CGC making their "not so impartial" decisions as to what qualifies as a pedigree or not?

Why in the world would they do that as they love customers that have these types of OCD behavior as it adds more dollars to their top and bottom lines. In fact, they should probably change their labels every year because they've got these customers by their short hairs and can easily and willingly squeeze more dollars out of their pockets. With all this extra money coming in, they can hopefully keep the prices down for everybody else then.

+1 Most definitely agree with you here.

Well, after reading everybody's posts here, it's clearly a case of to each, their own. Well, from my point of view, I am fine with either Option 1 or Option 3. Black and silver is a nice color coordinated combination from a visual point of view. If Option 1, they definitely need to increase the font size for the pedigree name since THAT is the reason for the label in the first place. If Option 3, they should make the gold color a tiny shade brighter so it stands out more as it just appears a bit faded from this scan that's been posted here. Don't really care for Option 2 as I personally think it's the worst of the bunch here. Far too similar to the Universal label and I've never care for this color blue in the first place. Don't really care for Option 4 as the silver color is too faded as compared to Option 1, plus the gold lettering is overpowered by the black lettering everywhere else on the label.

That looks more like an expression of confusion as to why he's no longer featured on the cover of his own title. Well, from where his face and eyeballs are, I believe the prurient smirk is really more from what he's seeing under her hot pink undies.