lou_fine

Quickly re-sold for more Oh, so the Allentown Wonderworld 7 was went to a dealer or quasi-dealer, as opposed to a personal collector. Overstreet had it but it was in a different box. Discovered later by a deserving collector. Must have been discovered or paid for later since the Wonderworld 8 was not listed by Snyder in the pages of CBM #23. Was it in one of the other boxes that came out that Saturday or was it in one of Martha's boxes that never made it out of Geppi's massive vault that day? All I can say is that poor Martha should probably have been paying a lot more attention when she was helping Bob out with the publication of his price guide every year back in those days.

So much amazing stuff hitting the market. Will it all be absorbed at top price? Since this book doesn't come to market too often, I guess this is another opportunity to see if this book really still deserves to be sitting at #4 in Overstreet's Top 100 Chart? Well, there's a good possibilty it'll be surpassed by Batman #1 when the new guide hits next month, but personally there's a few other books I would still put higher than AA 16, even though I do love its supposed rarity relative to the other big keys.

Well, if you are going to think like this, then how about this copy of Star Trek #1 then: Sold for $40,500 in a CC auction back in 2015. Of course, it's not quite in the same grade, but still kind of a shicker when I first saw the final price.

I know -- not me Looking backwards now, whoever it was managed to get themself a real steal since it was not recognized as a classic cover at the time and hence, did not carry a premium relative to the other surrounding issues. Looks like it sold for $1,400 or what the rest of the Allentown Wonderworld #6 - #10 (no #8 in the bunch ) had sold for at the time and even less than what WW 4 had sold for. Could this have been the Allentown that got mis-labelled? That was also my assumption since the other books were also all Allentowen copies. That assumption didn't hold true though since Heritage had the Allentown copy goes through their auction back in 2016 for close to $40K and the scan is clearly different from the copy pictured in the Diamond Gallery catalogue:

Yes, I clearly remember as Joe V. was the lucky dog who got the box with all of the early Fox Allentown Mystery Men and Wonderworld books. Luckily for some of us , Joe was gracious enough to share a few of the books as long as you were a small time collector, as opposed to a big time dealer like Fishler and the East Coast Gang of Three who were simply scarfing up all of the books and seemingly trying to build their piles right up to the ceiling at the time. Not sure who ended up with the Allentown copy of Wonderworld 7 as I believe that was not in the box and must have been pulled out ealier in some type of pre-arranged deal or enticement to attract more attendees during the big Super Bowl weekend. The other book I clearly remember was the "Denver" copy of Mystery Men 1 since it was listed in the catalogue at the time. I assume this copy might actually be from some other pedigree since another board member here states that he has the actual Denver copy direct from Payette. Highly doubt there would be 2 Denver's for the MM 1, so I assume Overstreet's copy must have been from another pedigree collection or simply just a HG copy.

I’m with ya. Quite humbling. And amazing. The superheroes of these boards. +2 I know the exact feeling as it's really all relative in a sense. I remember when I first got into GA collecting and just wishing that I had started 10 years earlier like many of the people I was in contact with at the time. It definitely would have been much better from a pure financial point of view, as opposed to collecting those now absolutely worthless B&W and early Valiant books along with those now almost worthless BA and CA books which you now see sitting unsold at every dealer's table marked up at ridiculous prices.

Well, they must have made an exception for the Church Mystery Men run as the CBM the following month indicated all of the issues were sold as part of the Gallery opening. Definitely looks like an absolute steal now when compared to those prices back then. I assume Jon must have either negotiated for that separately or earlier and the transaction was simply completed during the opening. Either that or the set was offered to him as an extra enticement to attend the grand opening?

Do you really truly believe that movie patrons go down to the LCS and buy comic books or buy vintage comics off the comic book auction sites just because they saw a superhero movie? Absolutely no argument that there is a definite pickup in books featuring the first appearance characters who are about to make a movie or TV apppearance, but these price movements are usually most evident when the rumours first come out or when it is first announced by the movie studios. This is usally short term hype and most of the speculative price increase is by speculators who are simply buying the book thinking they can make fast money on it selling into a rising marketplace. The key word here that you have correctly used is hype which usually has a limited life and wears out over time. Yes, the Avengers are the number one franchise now, but I was just reading another thread here where it was showing that Avengers 4 in grade has been in a decline ever since their peak of 2011 / 2012. The movies definitely affects the more recent common book market as speculators and flippers are looking for any possible reason to make some fast money on books which have been sitting in the deep freeze for decades. Yet, if you look at certain sectors of the vintage GA comic book market which are red hot right now, it has absolutely nothing at all to do with movie hype.

Didn't we just have one the previous week with the CGC 9.2 graded copy going for $598K on the CC auctiion website.

Thanks for posting this screenshot. Pretty sobering. It actually might not be quite as sobering as it appears based upon those stats above, since they are really referring to the uber HG end of the market which is really nothing more than a CGC label market. As everybody should know by now since history has shown us time and time again, the CGC label market (especially for the highest graded copy) for what are otherwise relatively common books only has transitory value and in most cases tends to move down as other copies in equivalent or higher grade shows up in the marketplace. Since the original poster stated that he collects only CGC 8.5 to 9.4 graded copies of books, I do not understand why he would be showing stats for CGC 9.4 to 9.8 graded copies which are highly volatile. It would have been much more informative to look at the stats for CGC 8.0 to CGC 9.4 graded copies of Avenfgwers 4 where the large majority of the real collecting world resides in. The picture might look a lot prettier for the copies in CGC 8.0 to 9.0 grades (if not even lower) where the majority of the real world slabbed transactions are actually taking place at.

Any idea if it was just the early portion of the run that Geppi and Overstreet had since all 119 issues would certainly be a bit much to expect one person to pick it up intact? Wonder when and by who the run was eventually broken up?

You mean Jason was the previous owner of that copy? Seriously though, I remember this run or early run being intact during the Diamond Int'l Galleries grand opening back in the early part of 1995. Geppi announced very clearly that this run was only going to be sold intact, similar to how Jon Berk had to purchased the entire Church run of Mystery Men run even though he told me his main interest was only in the first 10 issues. Looks like Geppi and Overstreet did him a favor by forcing him to pick up the entire run. After hearing this announcement from Geppi, I still remember Fishler pulling out the Cap Marvel Jr #4 with the classic cover out of the group and putting it in his pile. He chuckled and mentioned something about that being the only book he wanted in the run and was going to see if Geppi and Overstreet was going to catch it, which they did in the end.

When you saw this copy here, was the early CM Jr run still intact or was it already split and scattered to the wind amongst various collectors?

Well, I certainly can if it's graded out of 100 that is.

I apologize for adding some reality to the discussion and being right and I accept your apology on behalf of jaydogrules. No need to apologize since I was just trying to convince Glassman that he should pay you at least some kind of token commission fee for all the hype which you created that no doubt help in terms of his copy getting such a good price.

We smell a rat . . . Well, if somebody had brought abook off you for $395K and then requested that they didn't want the image up there anymore for shall we say privacy or security reasons, I imagine it might be hard for any auction house to say No to the purchaser. Anyways, it's really all mere speculation on my part since it might not even be this copy that had sold back in 2017. That copy was the Hope Collection copy which was auctioned off on March 20th of 2017. Looks like this copy that was auctioned off for $598K the other week was graded back on May 3rd of 2017. Sounds like a pretty fast turnaround time, but I imagine quite possible if they had paid for it immediately and then walked it through in terms of grading plus any other optimizing work that might have been done in between.

Hey Glasses; All kidding aside as it's all in good fun, happy to always see you so ecstatic about your AF 15 sale through Bob Storms. Especially since it did help your son with a big down payment for his home which was definitely a good thing. I believe you got the timing right as the AF 15 frenzy appear to have started that winter with the big CL sale of a CGC 9.2 graded copy for $460K right at the start of 2017. This was then followed by CC big March 2017 Event Auction with 3 then record setting sales, namely a CGC 9.0 graded copy for $395K, a CGC 5.0 graded copy for $57K, a CGC 4.5 graded copy for just over $37K, plus 2 other lesser copies that nobody ever talks about. I believe it's quite possible that the CGC 9.0 graded copy is now the CGC 9.2 graded copy that CC just auctioned off for $598K the previous week. So, although the market may appear weak for the mid-grades right now, they still appear to be on the upswing for the higher grades if the 9.2 graded sales are taken into consideration. As they say, a rising tide lifts all boats and I feel that your eventual sale was directly impacted by the rapid upward trajectory in the AF 15 prices that took place in 2017. In parcrticular, with respect to the CC auction result of the CGC 5.0 graded copy for $57K which helped Bob to set his initial starting price of $55K for your copy. I believe if this $57K auction result did not take place and Roy did not keep coming onto the boards to harp about this record setting sale at the time , your copy might not have sold in the $50K range or it might have taken a lot more time to hit this mark. Especially since the big public auctions are so high profile and easily visible that record setting results tends to influence the market to a much greater extent than either private or independent dealer sales which are really out of the public eye.

No...the guy got ripped off! CGC 9.0 oww (# 1449688001) re-graded to CGC 9.2 oww (# 1223893001) Well, in this case then, it's quite obvious that the seller had made a very astute and timely purchase. Just by any chance, would it happen to be this copy here which had sold in the big CC auction back in March of 2017 since the image is no longer available: https://www.comicconnect.com/bookDetail.php?id=701480 I remember this copy selling for what was then a record price for a CGC 9.0 graded copy for $395K. So, not a bad little profit of just over $200K before auction fees that he was able to "squeeze" out here. Of course, everybody soon forgot all about this sale as all of the talk was about the CGC 5.0 graded copy that sold for $57K in the exact same auction. This was then followed by all of the talk about the sale of Glassman's 5.0 graded copy for somewhere in the low to mid $50K's.

When you break it down by grade, copies above 6.0 are not as plentiful. Very true, but as we all know by now, economics states that price is determined by supply and demand. Although the supply of AF 15's in CGC 6.0 and above might not be that plentiful, it should also be noted that the demand in terms of the number of buyers willing to pay for a copy in CGC 6.0 and above are also not that plentiful. For example, take a look at how fast that demand for CGC 5.0 copies of AF 15's was satiated once they hit the $50K mark.

EXACTLY!!!

My point being AF15 has always been in high demand, even BEFORE the movie and media hype. I can recall in the 70s collectors were always scrambling to the weekly pub CBG (Comic's Buyers Guide) to see if a new one popped up (what....no internet???). I used to make phone calls from the current Oversteet's "yellow pages" to ask dealers if they had one in stock...NEVER did. Like anything else, it has had its ebbs and flows as it has grinded upwards over time. If you think back to the mid 80's time period where all of the Marvel keys moved absolutely nowhere for almost a full decade before Overstreet finally dropped the prices a tad on them towards the end of that time period. I still remember being offered an aparently HG uber run of Spidey 2 - 10 towards the latter part of the 80's for the grand sum of $1,000 which turned out to be the biggest collecting mistake that I have made as the SA Marvel market started to take off a year after that after sitting in the deep freeze for almost a decade. Yes, longer term the trajectory has definitely been upwards even though there have been extended pauses and a few slight dips in there along the way.

The Verzyl’s still own it and it’s been seen by many Apparently it's been seen many times by CGC as a CGC 9.6 graded copy before they got tired of seeing it. As a result, they finally decided to give it a 9.8 so that they wouldn't have to see it again and also finally stop John from to them to no end about the book.

+ 1 I believe both of those are considered to be what's called "iconic" covers which is probably even better than the classic cover notation that appears to be rather ubiquitous nowadays. I definitely remember the Action 1 cover for sure, but can't quite remember the Cap 1. Was it this one here:

Hate to be the bearer of bad news here, but as compared to the past prior to CGC, there are now quite a few things that you can do to improve a book that CGC does not consider to be restoration and will still give you the Universal Unrestored label. If you aren't too picky, there are also a whole slew of other things that you can also do to improve a book that CGC now considers to be only Conservation only and not to be the once dreaded (but not so much now) PLOD restoration. Guess what, even with all of these former restoration activities that they have now taken out of the former Restoration bucket, the marketplace stay views them as being trustworthy.

It sounds as though your self-imposed break or vacation away from buying didn't last very long. Welocme back to the hobby!!!