lou_fine

How very true, but what happens in terms of the opposite situation? Just took a look at some of the so-called "pedigree" books here with only a couple of days to go, and some of them are still at single digit percentage fractions to current condition guide valuations. Then again, I guess Rockford's and the like aren't really true pedigree quality books, unlike the newly minted Eldon and Harold Curtis pedigrees.

Hey whats the first appearance of darkseid, Overstreet? Well, unlike Ultron and Wolverine's first appearances which were limited to only 1 panel in Avengers 54 and Hulk 180 respectively, and didn't command much valuation wise, it seems that Darkseid's initial 1 panel appearance in Jimmy Olsen 134 is all the rage. Everybody seems to pay up for the full appearances in Avengers 55 and especially in the case of Hulk 181, but for some reason, not so much for Darkseid's much more prominent appearance in Jimmy Olsen 135. Go figure that.

The passing of the torch probably began with the monstrous size Greg Manning Fall of 2000 Catalog in October of that year. Not sure when CGC first opened their doors, but I believe that auction featured many of the very early graded books that came off the CGC grading tables. If I do remember correctly, the prices on some of those books were right up there in never never land, especially relative to guide which most collectors were still using as a reference point back in those long gone days of yesteryear.

Same here. Probably at 50%. Action has slowed significantly. Based upon my own personal experience though, there is one very serious flaw with the strategy of waiting until the last minute to bid. Like me, how many times have you completely forgotten all about the end of the auction or all of a sudden been busy doing something else, that you never get around to being there when the auction actually ends. Of course, if I think I might be busy that day, I do go in there that morning and place a higher bid, but being the El Cheapo guy that I am, still nowhere close to where I would have been willing to go if I was actually there for the real end of the auction.

Yes, it's especially exciting if you are a consignor and the 3-minute bell keeps getting rung on your book, while it's especially excruiating if you are a bidder and the 3-minute bell keeps getting rung on the book that you want .

We need to save our precious internet energy to debate which young up and coming tennis star will win the US Open. Sad to say, but I don't think the much younger inexperienced Canadian teenage girl stands much of a chance against the much older and more experienced Serena.

Well, like many boardies have already stated, it sure does look like this book here will be the next one to be joining the $100K Club: Already sitting at something like $86K where it has kind of stalled out for the past week awaiting the 3-minute bell to go off before the real action begins. Although the $100K Club does look like a sure bet to me, I am not sure if it can do a double from here and be able to get into the mid $100's that some board members here have suggested. I guess the fact that it is the sole one and only one copy sitting atop the CGC census and QES sticker whatever it is, shouldn't hurt its chances here. All I can say is that the cover for this edition of the CC Auction looks absolutley stunning with this book taking up the entire front cover of the catalgue in all its glory.

Hoping that ends up true for me here as well. I could be slightly ahead of schedule then. Well, how are they looking now that it's the weekend before the end of the big CC Event Auction? Looks like a lot of the books which I have been following have not made any major moves over this past week. I guess most bidders already have their potential bids locked and loaded, but only in their minds and are now simply waiting for the 3-minute buzzer to go off starting on Monday. Especially since most of the current bids are still sitting rather low as compared to where I know they will end up finishing at next week. Well, I can still hope out hope that the book that I want will continue to sit at its current 35% of condition guide even though it has always sold for multiples of condition guide in the past.

It will be interesting if that turns out to be the case and we can revisit this prophecy in short order. I don't doubt you are correct. Well, if you look back even at recent times, history has clearly shown us that this tends to be a very common occurrence. Since I tend to follow the early Fox books, I still remember the CC auction a couple of years ago for this book here: Similar to the Air Fighters book which we were talking about, this copy of Mystery Men 11 was also graded back in the early to mid part of 2000 if I remember correctly. Like the Air Fighters book, it was also already the highest graded copy at the time after almost 20 years of grading had passed and managed to sell for somewhere in the mid to high $3K price range Well okay, actually tied with the highly acclaimed Allentown pedigree copy which also came in at a grade of CGC 9.0. Yet, even though it was already sitting atop the CGC census, within only a month's time or was it even less, we saw the following copy being listed on another dealer's (WW ) website: I guess after sitting in that old slab with what Richard described as a toxic pool of waste for almost 20 years, I imagine it must have washed away all of the cream and left the book with the rather nicer off-whitw pages. Like all of the skads of Jon Berk books that had been brought from the CC Auction and then relisted in their higher grade slabs on Ritter's WorldWide website at substantially higher prices a few short weeks later, the MM 11 was no exception since it was listed for somewhere in the low to mid $7K price range. I guess that buyers often prefer to pay higher prices for their books since I was surprised at how many of them were already listed as Sale Pending almost right off the bat. Not sure about the MM 11 in the end, although I did eventually see it listed on the Heritage site last year where I was able to snag this photo from. So, like you said with these old label books, I guess we will wait to see what happens with these kinds of books, but history often tends to rinse and repeat itself.

I would assume this is the death of Ultron-5, but as everybody knows, Avengers 57 is really all about the first appearance of the Vision.

Well, according to Overstreet you would be correct in saying that Avengers #54 has the first appearance of Ultron since he appears in 1 panel only. Overstreet clearly states that Avengers 55 is the first full appearance of Ultron. Clearly remember this as there was a ton of hype and speculation on this particular issue here several years ago, before it came crashing back down to Earth.

Gene who? How dare you tempt the fates and possibly subject all of us to a long dissertation on the cons of comic book investing from our resident Wall Street financial whiz kid.

Yes, definitely extreme as it somehow found a way to reside in a blue Universal Unrestored slab as it went all the way from a CGC 4.0 through to a CGC 9.0 while making a layover at the CGC 7.5 rest area. While I certainly don't play in this particular deep end of the grading pool, I would tend to agree with you that there probably hasn't been an explosion of 9.6 graded GA books becoming 9.8's. Now, if you are talking about BA books and up, now that's a completely different story most likely although I am definitely not the person to keep track of these things. Although I am aware of one high profile GA book that did managed to make the jump from a CGC 9.6 grade up to a CGC 9.8 grade. It was the Allentown copy of Cap 1 and probably the only reason why I remember it was because of the rather hilarious back story which West provided to us on how it was able to acheive its upgrade (click into the top grey area of the link for the appropriate post): Oh no, it's that Veryzl guy again for the 100th time. We better give it to him or else we'll fall even more months behind in our TAT times.

The more new GA books I see slabbed, the more apparent it is that they're giving a LOT of these books a friendly wink of a bump. Can you show us some examples? Richard; I guess this book doesn't actually belong here since it hasn't made it anywhere close to a CGC 9.8 graded level yet. Then again, I giess we should never say never as there's still lots of time left to play before the game is over. I guess it probably belongs more appropriately in your "Why So Many CGC 6.0's " thread which you started since it blew right past this condition grade like there was no tomorrow. I think we all remember this now classic Edgar Church Mile High book which started life out as a CGC 4.0 graded copy: and then graduated to become a CGC 7.5 graded copy: before finally acheiving its current CGC 9.0 graded honors, all while residing in a Blue Universal unrestored slab: Not only did we learn all about undisclosed pressing and what had been happening behind the scene at the time from this book amongst many others, but we also learned for the first time that "disassembly and reassembly of a comic book in and of itself does not constitute restoration" and this was how a book could go from a grade of 4.0 right up to a grade of 9.0. Why, how absolutely silly of the hobby place to have thought otherwise for all those long decades before CGC finally opened our eyes to thankfully let us see the light at long last. I also noticed that Heritage must be making more money as they are apparently putting stronger and stronger light bulbs in their buildings as the years go by.

If I won it I would at the very least have it reholdered. The old labels may represent purity to you but to me they are a warning of the toxic pool of rotting plastic waiting to damage the book. Oh crappers...........now you tell me!!! From the CGC serial number, it looks like the book was graded back in April of 2000. So, if there's rotting smelly toxic waste in there after only a mere short 20 years, what the heck is happening to my BA books that I cherry picked off the shelves of the LCS 45 long years ago and still rotting away in those now sticky yellowing poly bags of decades gone by?

Yes, he had an auction end date of September and then this whole veribage about the January auction sessions. His auction listing just didn't make any sense at all from my point of view.

Good point on the "older" graded books but now you have to compete with the Flippers and Pressers for those which can be upgraded as well. There's only one big problem with your strategy here........you would not be able to buy very much since there's hardly any old label books left out there anymore. For example, just take a look at the current CC Event Auction that is due to close next week. If we simply look at the first letter in the alphabet, namely the A's only, we have over 8 pages or more than 200 comic books listed there. Yet, there is one and only one single old label GA book (i.e. less than 0.5% of the total "A" books) in that entire grouping there: Even though this is already the single highest graded copy at the top of the population census, any bets that if it is snagged by either a dealer or a CGC generation speculator they will still not be satisfied and seek to "maximize" or squeeze even more potential out of the book. If so, my second bet is that the cream designation will also be gone since CGC was apparently much tougher on PQ when they first started. It seems the thinking in the current marketplace would most likely be: Why be satified with just having the highest graded copy of a book when you have have the new and improved "super" highest graded copy and then have the buyers beating down your door to throw even bigger wads of money at your feet? It would be so much nicer if books like these were brought by collectors who appreciate them for what they are and just keep them in these original old label slabs.

Man I love this hobby! Now, there's the Tim that we all here on the boards know so well and love so much.

Then you would have to ask Gene to see how much he is willing to sell it for?

Well, it doesn't work on me..........anytime I hit a DC title, I simply skip right to the next page and anytime I hit a Marvel title I simply skip a few pages over.

Dear Mr. RMA; Are you not aware of the fact that Hong Kong is not an independent country and actually only a special economic zone within China? Please let us know the next time you are entering our country and we will gladly re-educate you in one of our restful and relaxing "resort" camps. Sincerely Yours; - Xi Jinping

Agreed. And how basic is that? Do they honestly not realize how often people collect by age? Well, if we complain long and hard enough, maybe they just might hear us and actually do something about it in the end. Similar to our complaints about the extended lengths of their auctions and now they've finally cut them back by one whole week for this particular go round.

So, are you trying to tell us that the impending U.S. China trade war is not going to have an impact on your business, even when they slap on the additional tariffs for your exports into China?

I've always loved these later Moon Girl issues, but supposedly they are a bit tougher to find relatively to many of the later EC books. The other thing is that whenever they do show up in the marketplace, they generally tend to sell for rather healthy premiums to guide, if not even at multiples to guide in a few cases.

It's rather ironic that CC has pretty much the entire run of this Frankenstein series in their upcoming auction next week from issue #1 right through to issue #33, but yet somehow missing only this particular key issue here, along with Frankenstein 20.