lou_fine

Decided to give this thread a bump here since it's now less than a week to the auction and there doesn't seem to be much discussion here so far. I fianlly got around to going onto their site and was actually surprised at how tepid most of the prices still are at this point in time. Wish the auction would end right now since I found a book that I have been hopping to snag for the longest while and it's still sitting at only around 15% of guide. I bidded it up to something like under 25% of guide to become the highest bidder and it took a few hours, but some other bidder finally came in and topped it by one bid increment. Well, still surprisingly low at just over 25% of guide and this is for a book that always goes for multiples of guide. I guess the fat lady still hasn't even started to warm up her voice, even though we have less than a week to go in terms of real time.

Yes, most definitely............buy the book, as opposed to buying the label.

What color label will those have? Well now, of course they would be black and white like this one here in order to to make it cheap and easy to counterfeit: After all, you can't expect counterfeiters to use the high end expensive photocopiers now, would you?

I actually don't think we can truly ever question CGC grading from an accuracy point of view, especially since they don't disclose their grading standards. As a result, they can and clearly do make subtle changes to their grading standards over time in order to meet their business agenda at the time. From a pure business point of view, this is totally understandable and in fact, should even be expected to take place. That is why we should not be surprised when certain near invisible "additional revenue generating" defects are moved to the top of their grading hit list, and yet at the same time, visible defects that might be caused by inferior or improper quality work done during the "enhancement" process moves to the bottom of their hit list when it comes to grading. It's almost like they have 2 sets of eyes sometimes.............sharp like an eagle when it comes to certain defects and then almost blind like a bat when it comes to other defects.

I tripped over a stack of them this morning. They weren't there when I went to bed. Well, that's what ends up happening when you get yourself all boozed up and then try to hit the sack for the night. It's not a surprise that you missed the bed and ended up falling on your stack of GA comics instead. With all that excess weight from your booze ladened body, it's actually a surprise they weren't pressed right up to CGC 9.9 levels by the time you got up. Makes me wonder if that's what happened with the TOD 10 that managed to fetched $85K in the CL auction last week.

CGC label collectors have a lot of excess spending money on their hands and never have to worry about a budget of any kind at all.

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. Well, it would definitely not help the business model for CCG longer term if they do not give their customers an extra bump for providing them with additional revenue streams of revenues through both their CGC and CCS subsidiaries. That is why I am generally willing to bid a higher amount for the old label slabbed books or even the second generation label books that were slabbed pprior to the whole pressing fiasco back in 2005.

Well, I guess the buyer of the Tomb of Dracula 10 for a mere $85,000 must have been left off the email distribution list then.

Hate to be the bearer of bad news here, but they are most definitely much more interested in flipping condos and other forms or real estate, as opposed to trying to trade in relatively much lower dollar value comic book transactions.

Speaking of Fighting Yank #21 here (of which I am apparently the only one ), I am about to assuredely say something controversial to most of the long time collectors here . Namely, that from my own personal point of view, the Schomburg cover image for Fighting Yank #21 from a thematical point of view, bears somewhat of a striking resemblance to the much more highly acclaimed and widely recognized classic cover image for Blue Beetle 54: The major difference being the masterful use of the mirror image which allows the viewer to see both sides of the femme fatale in BB 54, as opposed to the single frontal image for the girl in FY 21. The other being the impression that the girl in the BB 54 cover is much more like the poorer, but sexier and sultry Ellie Mae or Daisy Mae counterpart to the obviously more elegant and sophisticated uptown girl living in her Manhattan penthouse with the fancy jewellry and decked out in her high end lingerie. Yet both of them about to be attacked by a perpetrator just sneaking out from the corner of the cover, one being an obvious ruffian with a cheap knife while the other by a suited clad individual utilizing a much more expensive weapon of choice. Although it's clear that Blue Beetle 54 has long been recognized as a classic GGA cover pretty much right from the get go, it would seem that Fighting Yank 21 on the other hand, has been much more under appreciated and has only recently started to finally gain some recognition from the collecting base.

Thanks. Here is my #21 Wow, where in the world did you managed to score this absolute stunning beauty of a truly HTF book? Especially since Heritage doesn't have a record of any graded copy being sold through their auction site to date after 20 years of existence so far. ComicConnect indicates 3 graded copies being sold on their site, but in substantially lower grades. Looks like your copy here is the 3rd highest graded copy in what appears to be a relatively low census population count.

Well, all I can say is that you must have me confused with somebody else as I am much more like the bargain basement type of comic book shopper. I was trying to be polite and not just come out and say that you're wayyyy older than me... Well, that certainly goes without saying, much muchhhh younger man.

That's a beautiful copy and definitely one that you would be able to sell for a lot more than whatever you had to pay for it before. Would you also happen to have a readily available scanned copy of your Fighting Yank #21 which you could post for us here to take a gander at?

You're in a better position to know than I. You're more connected to the high-end market buyers. Well, all I can say is that you must have me confused with somebody else as I am much more like the bargain basement type of comic book shopper. Speaking of Gary Keller, it would appear that he did not do so bad on some of his purchases, but if I remember correctly, unfortunately not so well on a lot of the other ones that he had overpaid for: https://www.cbr.com/hulk-1-smashes-record-at-125000-heritage-auction-comics-event/ Well, at least not well enough to write up a book on comic book investing like the other 26 odd books he had authored in terms of the real estate market.

What was the name of the real estate guy that spent a ton of money on SA books and lost an absolute bundle on them when he had to sell out during the real estate crash? Was it Gary Keller or something like that? Nevertheless, I belive he would be challenging Parrino for the crown here.

That's an absolutely fantastic story and certainly glad to hear that you got a second chance at your Holy Grail and took full advantage of it. Wish you had made out as well as Geppi did though. If I remember correctly, Geppi apparently sold the Pay Copy of Masrvel Comics #1 to Jay back in the early 2000's for $350,000 or what was then the highest price ever paid for a copy of Marvel Comics #1. When Jay left the comic book market a few years later, apparently Geppi was able to pick this exact same Pay Copy back for something like only $200,000. I guess he basically "rented" out the Marvel Comics #1 to Parrino for a few years there and got back $150,000 in compensation.

How about the former beat down PLOD's for key and classic cover HTF books, especially if they could potentially be upgraded to Conserved status upon a resubmit? Especially when you take into the fact that entry level or uber low grade copies of key GA and HTF classic cover books are now fetching ridiculous mutiples of bottom of guide valuations. Starting to remind me of the ridiculous multiples that census topping or uber HG copies of seemingly otherwise more recent common books tend to fetch in today's CGC-centric marketplace. I guess it's a good thing that Overstreet doesn'r report on prices for books below CGC 2.0 Good condition levels, similar to how he also doesn't report on prices for books above CGC 9.2 NM- condition levels, because prices at both ends of the condition spectrum can be so volatile at times depending upon the particular book in question.

You better be careful with your words here or Gene, our residential Wall Street financial whiz kid on the boards, will come and wash your mouth out with soap. Seriously though, I believe if you build your comic book collection up properly, it can indeed be used like a cherry to top up the rest of your other investments and pensions to fund a good portion of your retirement dreams like your travels around the world.

Ahhh................I've got a copy of this Heritage Auction Catalogue somewhere around the house here. I am not sure how I got myself on their "junk" mailing lists since I guess I've been receiving catalogues from them right from the get go then. Actually, one of the very few junk mailing lists I don't mind being on. Especially since my wife looks at the price tag on the back and thinks its worth $50 that I somehow managed to get for free.

Yes, and sad to say, but Jay lost a ton of money with his purchases since he was indeed paying "crazy" prices at the time and also did not have the patience to stay in the market long enough for it to catch up to the prices which he had paid for them.

I think the first time I became shocked at the prices that CGC books were getting was when one of the Overstreet updates came out and had a picture of a HG Shadow Comics #1 that had sold for $2,500. Not the GA Shadow 1 by Street & Smith or even the BA Shadow 1 by Kaluta, but rather the BA common as dirt one by Howard Chaykin. I thought at the time it must have been nothing more than a typo or had misplaced the decimal point and they really meant only $25. I guess not so much, even though to this day I still can't fathom why somebody would pay $2,500 for a book that to this day is still considered to be fodder and can be found in the dollar or even 25 cent box at some of the local cons. Makes me wonder how the buyer is feeling about his purchase now 20 years later.

If you are a consignor, lots of time it really depends on your luck in terms of both timing and also having the right set of eyeballs on that particular auction. Now that the auction for the Startling 49 is over and definitely did not do as well as expected, it looks like an alternative strategy to prevent this scenario from taking place is to set a reserve on the book, similar to what the consignor of the Tomb of Dracula 10 did. It certainly helps to push the price right up there with one day to go to see if there are any potential crazy bidders up in that upper stratosphere when there are none at the lower levels.

Any bets that the consignor of the Startling 49 is now thinking he probably should have followed the safer strategy like the consignor of the TOD 10 by putting in a reserve price on his book. Somehow, I think with CL coming in and forcing the bid up to one increment below the whatever the reserve would have been, the Startling 49 could possibly have sold for a whole ton more money in the end. Sometimes, you just need that little bit of a push to get you over the hump.

There was always a reserve for this one, and it was met (it says "Reserve Met" if you look at the listing). The detailed auction listing also indicates that the auction estimate for this listing was for $90,000+. So , you might just be correct in stating that while virtually everybody in the entire comic book collecting world is flabbergasted at this result here, the consignor of this book here might actually not be that happy with the result.

This is most definitely the here!!!