lou_fine

someone wants the best of the best at whatever cost. I've seen the same results on some non-key highest grade Tecs on HA Totally understand the rationale here or should I say the irrationality of it. Especially when the so-called "best of the best" is often so transitory in nature when it can be easily usurp by another copy a year later or even just a few short months later.

Did somebody post here the other day that there were some Mystery Men books in this auction? Just checked and there's not a single one at all. But there is the usual never ending pages of Mystery Tales that we are going to have to wade through.

Actually, every single comic book is heated and pressed during the printing process. But no, you are taking the conversation in a different direction by trying to blame CGC for either suppressing the idea (even though the idea was prevalent before CGC) or blaming CGC for the proliferation of pressing (which is simply a product of economics - nothing more). If anyone was suppressing the idea, it was individuals who didn't want to share a business advantage. And CGC had no obligation to proactively announce anything. They were largely rejected by people - even dealers - in their first few years. Wow Roy, that's certainly an interesting angle and justification for changing the rules of the game and not letting anybody know. Really, it's nothing more than a simple case of economics and the fact that some less than honest dealers had done it before. A simple follow-up question for you then.............when did you start micro-trimming your books because this would also be simply a case of basic economics and the fact that some dealers had also done this before? Especially since every single comic book had to be trimmed during the printing process and we all know how collectors value books with perfect sharp edges. And as we all know, CGC does flagged trimmed books as clearly stated on their labels, but I would assume based upon your comments above, under no obligation to proactively announce anything about micro-trimming since it was also prevalent before CGC and a definite business advantage for anybody doing it.

Especially when you have buyers like me even a few years ago who simply roll up their comics and stuff them in their suit pockets.

Never ever use UPS for anything that has to cross a border. They will 100% ALWAYS put everything through a Customs Brokerage house and you will almost assuredly end up paying more than the value of the goods by the time all of the Customs brokerage fees and additional service charges are factored in. Just use your regular postal service as long as you make sure that you packaged everything safely and securely.

I am starting to think Roy must have come from an alternate Earth as he seemingly would like everyone to conveniently believe that standalone pressing has been around and widely done ever since the first comic book rolled off the press way back in 1933.

My bad, as usual you are once again correct as it was not 5 years as I had incorrectly stated: Year 1 2000 Year 2 2001 Year 3 2002 Year 4 2003 Year 5 2004 Year 6 2005 Looks like it was in actual fac,t 6 years before CGC retroactively announced to the collecting world that pressing was no longer considered to be restoration as everybody had thought at the time. It was instead, really nothing more than "maximizing the potential of a book" and this was in fact, how CGC had always viewed it. Opps, did we forget to inform everybody about this tiny little insignificant point. This is not rocket science that we are talking about as I certainly don't think it should have taken them 6 years to iron out all of the kinkss before publicly launching this service. Especially since it had already been privately launched 6 years prior when they first opened their doors. If I remember correctly, I believe it was not until all of those before and after scans of books by boardies like Masterchief and RedHook that showed books with significant undisclosed upgrades that brought this whole fisaco to light. If standalone pressing was as common as you are now trying to make it out to be, why was there such an uproar on these boards here when it first came to light back in 2005? Similarly, why did it take Overstreet until the 2007 edition of the guide to move pressing out from his restoration definition in his glossary and give it its own separate definition as a direct result of what had taken place?

Roy; I hate to tell you this, but I am quite sure they also had new books distributed to the LCS's on a weekly basis prior to CGC opening their doors. I certainly don't remember anybody talking about sending them off for pressing back then, like what they do nowadays in search of their pressing need to search for those 9.8's and much hope for 9.9's.

Definitely some serious competition here for CCS as I have heard nothing but good things about joey's work from many of the board members here.

Now, that's what I call deep and solid blues.

I basically use the OSPQ from a multiple to guide point of view, similar to how I also use price per point on some books to guage if the price is still trending up or starting to trend back down a bit. I definitely don't use it from an absolute value point of view for these kinds of books, but more from a relative multiple point of view.

Wow, it looks like those mid-grade (i.e. VGish) mid-run key 'Tec's went for quite a bit of money as both 'Tec 140 and 'Tec 168 sold for pretty much triple condition guide. Also noticed the Church copy of 'Tec 172 going for $12,200 or pretty much 9X top of guide. Yes, a Church copy,but that's still a ton of money for a non-key. Looks like there's still a lot of strength with respect to the GA Bat market.

Best of luck on acquiring a copy of the 1st and 2nd editions at a reasonable price. As for the 46th edition, I hope you are getting the HC limited edition with the nice Sgt. Rock cover.

Now, that's a nice looking and impressive display that would keep even Bob Overstreet happy. Although I am sure he would have been a lot happier if you had also gone after all of the variant cover editions. It looks like you might be missing the first couple editions there. I imagine you probably have no interest in chasing after them now.

Mine was 15, and it ended up in about 20 pieces just like this. My favorite thing to do was to imagine that I could have one book from each page, and then figure out which one to choose. Yes, I guess in the early days when we didn't know any better, we all went the cheap route and just coughed up for the softcover version only. Now that I am a bit older and hopefully also a bit wiser and willing to spend the extra 10 bucks or so, it's always the hardcover for me nowadays.

Pressing wasn't a secret. Books were being pressed before CGC was ever opened for business. As I am sure you are fully aware and failing to point out though, not anywhere close to the extent that standalone pressing is being done to nowadays where it seems to almost be a prerequsite for a book prior to having it graded. Especially when standalone pressing was clearly recognized as restoration in those days. Was this the only major time that standalone pressing was done because the everybody seems to keep coming up with this same one example to prove that pressing was also rampant back in the days prior to CGC, which was definitely NOT the case? I just find it so ironic and kind of funny that it was Marnin who tried to start that ill-fated NOD movement when the whole pressing fisaco first came to light. Any idea where he is or whatever happened to him? I would have to totally disagree with you on this particular point because you just have to take a look at companies like Apple, the video game industry, the movies, or almost any other companies whereby they always try to launch new products and/or services with as much proactive hype as possible. The only time they don't is when they view it as a possible negative side deterrent such as shorter battery life and then they quietly sneak it past the buying public without proactively informing them on the consequences. I also don't view 5 years as a short time to get things ironed out. Being a business, I do totally understand why CCG did not proactively promote or reveal the fact that they would now be viewing pressing as a "maximization of a book's potential" because that would NEVER EVER had been accepted by the collecting base as the long held standard was that standalone pressing was deemed to be restoration. History has now clearly shown that this was the only way that they could have gotten it through was by not informing the collecting base upfront and instead, by retroactively showing them how much money they would be giving up across the board if they didn't let this continue.

Unfortunately, it has also had some rather horrible looking covers in comparison during the recent past few years. The only one that I really liked from the past few years was the Sgt. Rock Limited HC Edition by Russ Heath a couple of years ago.

As they say, buy the book not the... oh, wait. Forget that. Or is this copy much better for all of you complainers out there: Sold twice through CC within the past few years. The first time for $43,505 back in 2016 and then the second time for $44K back in 2017.

If you think they don't belong, report it to the mods and tell them why you think it doesn't belong. Well, if this doesn't work and you really don't like these so-called "ads", the answer is rather simple. Simply don't click onto these threads and let everybody else enjoy themselves by talking albout all of these books which they are interested in.

Sounds as though that's the crux of the problem. They probably never saw a comic book in their life before they started to work for CCS. Based upon some of the comments here, it sounds as though they could be nothing more than minimum wage workers that knows absolutely nothing about the possible ramifications of pressing a book. Like you said, all they do is press and possibly even without thinking.

Definitely a blast from the past as I used to remember their always cute cartoony ads in the Overstreet guide and dreamed that one day I would eventually get down to California and be swamped with all of the wondrous old comic books of yesteryear. Alas, it was not to be as I believed they were either no longer in business by the time I eventually got down there or I might have out grown them by then.

+1 Congratsto Bat 34 on a great pickup at a very reasonable price. As I had stated in my initial post up above, most definitely a nicely presenting copy relative to its assigned CGC grade of only 2.0 with nice PQ to boot.

+1 In full agreement with you here, but maybe even a possible $20K+ more.

I thought the Tec 35 ended right where I expected it to be considering it has little bit of color touch, glue, and tape. Book has very high eye appeal though. A copy with no such notes would command a higher price. +1 I was initially thinking that the auction result looked rather weak considering the classic cover and how nice it presented relative to its assigned grade. Then I noticed all of the notes and like DK here, felt that this is what really killed the price of the book in the end. Still a fair price considering all of the noted defects on the label.

+1 Knowing absolutely nothing about the future value of comics and going strictly by the cover image, I probably would have also gone with the Wonderworld 7. Gotta see the picture in full color in order to make an accurate assessmment. I believe the aliens and the bright colors on Wonderworld 7 would trump the other more bland covers for me.