lou_fine

Was your purchase valued at $500 or more? Although you may have paid 5 figures, did you check the Customs Declaration form to see what it was actually declared at?

Any idea what the Platinum Spidey #1 in CGC 9.2 would be going for in today's marketplace? Definitely don't make the right choices most of the time as when I decided to go with that signed and so-called limited edition of the Dark Knight by Miller for $40, and said a big fat NO to ordering a copy straight from the publisher of what appeared to be an ugly looking and crudely drawn copy of TMNT #1 for what seem like an outrageous $300. Still feel that I made the right choice from a personal collecting and artistic preference point of view. But definitely not so much from a financial and/or speculative point of view, it would seem. Oh well, to each their own as I guess I still much prefer Miller's work over Eastman and Laird's work though.

Exactly, what is your window for evaluating value? Just like stocks, you can look at the last week, last 90 days or last 5 years. In 2009 there was one 9.8 sale for $66. In 2018 there was a sale for $659. Is the book tanking? Ah.......I see what the issue is as we are just looking at the same book through a different set of eyes. It would appear that you are probably viewing it more through the eyes of a speculator (i.e. day trader type in the stock market) and hoping to make some money on the book as it swings between its speculative highs and lows. Since I am definitely much more of a long term collector (i.e. Warren Buffet type in the stock market) and as such, just hope to recover my money when it comes time for me to sell my books. Nothing wrong with either approach as it's really a case of "to each their own". Reminds me of the first time that I was down at the SD Con in the very early 90's and many of the dealers were asking $1K for the so-called "rare" Platinum Edition of Todd McFarlane's Spidey 1. Against the advice of most of the hype dealers down there, I decided to opt for the HG copies of Cap 29 and Cap 31 which I found instead at the full guide price of a combined $1K for both books. Needless to say, many of those hype dealers laughed and thought I was a complete fool to buy those old GA books which collectors will have forgotten about in 10 years time when they are all dead and gone. Especially when I could have picked up a copy of Spidey 1 by McFarlane who was destined to be a superstar in the industry and a book which would never ever see $1,000 again. Well, they was definitely correct about that last comment as the Spidey 1 is certainly nowhere close to $1,000. In fact, it now lists for only $195 in top of guide and I would probably be lucky to get that in the open market today. On the other hand, the 2 Cap's now list for over $15K at top of guide and would probably have no problem fetching more than that in the open market today. I guess it turned out good to be a lazy collector here as spending time in the market worked out better than trying to time the market in this particular case.

Well, based upon name recognition, I would say that Aquaman is blowing the doors wide open similar to the surprise hit that GOTG was for Marvel. From a DC point of view, I would consider Wonder Woman to be small Tier 1 comic book character while Aquaman would be a Tier 3 character. So, to have Aquaman even within shooting range of Wonder Woman in terms of domestic box office is a big win for DC and all comic book fans. By the time it's all said and done, it looks like Aquaman might even have an outside chance of becoming the top grossing movie on a worldwide basis to date for the DCEU movies. Definitely no mean feat for a Tier 3 character from the DC universe. This would be like having the Ant Man movies being the biggest box office winner out of all of the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies. I certainly didn't see that happening, so big kudos should definitely go out to the Aquaman movie and the people who put it together.

Exactly! It's been gone over here time after time, that number is inflated. Is it really though? Especially when the CGC census population does not account for the copies graded by the competing grading companies. Most important of all though, it has not taken into account all of the HG raw copies that are still residing in private collections that have yet to be graded.

This is exactly why it's generally never a good idea to buy into a hot speculative book if you are thinking of reselling it for a profit. Especially since hot speculative books tends to have a very short trading window as speculators are quick to jump ship and try to hop onto the next hot speculative train that's barreling towards them. Well, all I can say is that if a book is worth half of what it was earlier this year or if its artificial and temporary speculative value is gone once a movie has been announced, is that not the exact definition of a speculative or movie hyped book. Especially since it will in most cases, not be able to retain its value over an extended period of time.

+1 Yes indeed, as I have seen a few threads on this book in the CA Forum since this book was published around the early 80's. I have an unsigned copy in my collection somewhere. I believe it's worth in the neighborhood of $100 or more, dependent upon the condition of the book of course.

Was your purchase valued at $500 or more?

Either that or they need to hire JD to cook the books for them and spin the story which ever way Marvel wants it to come out.

Not sure about the current auction houses since the last time I mistakenly used UPS was about 25 years ago with the brokerage fee being more than the cost of the item itself. I believe most of them probably use FedEx now, but you might be able to avoid these high private courier charges by simply going through USPS (i.e. United States Post Office). I guess it's really up to you depending on how much you are willing to pay relative to speed and security of delivery.

Well, Heritage is more than willing to have you pool your books together from various auctions and then ship them to you whenever you want. I am actually surprised that they don't charge you some sort of storage or insurance fee for holding onto your books like this. As for shipping, it is best to use USPS because they will simply be rerouted to your nearby Retail Postal Outlet for you to pick up. In fact, you can specify to Canada Post that all of your parcels are automatically rerouted to your nearest RPO. Most parcels simply gets waived right through without any additional fees at all except for the minor invoice fee. If shipping to Canada, you should never ever use UPS because they will send everything to a private Customs brokerage house which guarantees 100% verification by Canada Customs with you footing the entire bill for everything (i.e. broker's fees, customs fees, invoice fee, etc.).

Well, from what I am reading here, it would appear that CGC really needs to update their website with respect to what constitutes restorative work then. Especially since the link to their restoration grading scale clearly lists married covers or pages as falling under their restoration repairs category.

Marketing expenses on this are estimated at another $150MM. Total nut for this movie is around $350MM. Therefore magic number to break even theatrically is ~$900MM. JD; You are comparing apples and oranges in your analysis above since you are including the FULL costs (production & marketing) and yet including only the box office revenues which really makes no sense at all. If you want to include the post production marketing costs for this movie, then you should also include the post theatrical revenues they will be pulling in after the movie is done at the theatres. If you want to look at only box office revenues, than the fairer comparison would only be to production costs for the movie. Either way, it looks like Aquaman is going to be a sure fire winner (even by your measuring stick) for DC and Warners as forecasts are now saying that it could hit the $1B mark by the time its all said and done.

I agree with this -- with the caveat that studio's North American take is a sliding scale. Studio take is usually avg. 65% of the first two weeks domestic, 35% thereafter (which averages out to 50% over the full domestic run). But using your numbers, as of yesterday, the film is close to break-even. Because using those percentages the studio has so far netted $198.3M of its $200M production budget. Don't forget about the marketing expenses to be added on top which is usually almost as high as the production costs in some cases. On the other hand, we should then add back in the DVD sales which certainly helps out as it is also over and above the movie gross.

Ok, I just checked this link here: https://www.cgccomics.com/pdf/restoration-grading-scale-handout.pdf Not sure if this is the most recent and current definition, but it states that archival tape is now considered to be Conservation which actually makes sense here. Much better than the old system which hammered collectors for using the less damaging archival tape by giving them the PLOD and then rewarding the books with the damaging regular scotch tape with the blue unrestored labels. On the other hand, it states that a book with married pages or a married cover would be considered as having restoration repairs. So, it looks like you are not going to be able to get away from the dreaded purple label in your particular case here.

What is your definition of "surviving copies" here? If you are referring to the narrow definition of only currently graded CGC copies only, then you are probably correct as the CGC population census report is only a couple hundred away from this 3,275 mark. Of course, we would have to factor back out the potential resubs that did not bother to turn back in their original labels from that count. If you are talking about a more generally accepted definition of total surviving copies including the ones graded by the other companies and the number of still raw copies out there, this 3,275 mark is nowhere close to the total estimated final count for surviving copies of AF 15 by the time it's all said and done. If you exclude all of the auction listings, I have definitely seen more raw copies of AF 15's out there as compared to slabbed copies of AF 15's by a wide margin.

This is exactly why it's generally never a good idea to buy into a hot speculative book if you are thinking of reselling it for a profit. Especially since hot speculative books tends to have a very short trading window as speculators are quick to jump ship and try to hop onto the next hot speculative train that's barreling towards them.

This is without a doubt the best looking 1.5 book in history! +1 I must say that I am in 100% agreement with Tim here. From my point of view, I personally believe this CGC 1.5, although technically correct due to the spine split, is virtually meaningless since it doesn't really tell me much about the visual condition grade of the book here. I probably would have prefer the Green label here with the higher grade since it is probably more representative of the overall condition of the book.

On the other hand, I don't think you would be quite so enthusiastic if it also meant selling some of your stuff back at 2008 prices.

Especially in light of the fact that many of today's high flying investors might not be fully diversified, and a bit over weighted in terms of the relatively higher risk but definitely more popular FAANG stocks which have taken quite a haircut in terms of a 30% to almost 50% drop from their recent all-time highs from a few short months ago. Even though it's still assuredly a huge paper gain which most longer term investors are still holding onto right now, this recent drop would still result in a big loss of overall confidence which will tend to negatively affect investors' spending habits, including those of comic book buyers. Of course, if you are also an astute serious seller of comic books, you would also be aware of what is taking place in the comic book marketplace relative to the falling stock market and thereby dialing back on your consignments accordingly. So, hopefully some of this resulting drop off in demand for comic books as a result of the falling stock market, will also be offset in part by a drop off in the supply of vintage collectible comic books in the marketplace.

Agreed,especially now with Airbnb. That opened up another new market for passive income. Or why not just put your money back into the beaten down stocks and wait for them to recover over time? Instead of running away from the stock market which most people do during these times due to their emotional fear of what is taking place, should common sense not dictate that we should really be buying when things (i.e. including company share prices) are on sale. With the stock market though, our mentality seems to be opposite to where it should be as emotional enthusiasm takes over and most of us tend to buy when things are at a high.

Well, if you based it upon the unemployment numbers, the economy is still running on all cylinders and doing alright. But as we all should know by now, the stock market is generally seen as a leading indicator of where the economy is heading, while the employment numbers are generally seen as a lagging indicator of where the economy was. So, things might not be looking so good for the overall economy going forward.

Yes indeed, especially considering the fact that Aquaman made more money in China just on its opening weekend alone than what Woman Woman was able to make in its entire theatrical run there. And I believe after its first 4 or 5 days in China, Aquaman apparently made more money than any other DCEU movie did in its entirety.

All I can say is that I have always loved the cover for this book, especially in terms of its colors and use of toning on the main character's facial expression. I imagine you would lose some of that without the color on the original art, but then again, that is definitely something not to be passed up if you have the means and financail resources to obtain it.

I will most definitely concede that Heritage clearly has a much better website in which to display their auction material, along with a much better write-up for each one of their auction lots. Definitely helps when they have so much more money coming in from other streams of revenues to since the comic book division is just one small part of their overall auction business. Until a week or so ago, I also thought Heritage was superior with respect to their auction archives. From another post on these boards here, I discovered that CC has their own archives with apparently every single item that they have sold or auctioned off. It's also easily accessible by simply clicking onto the Sold Items button on the left of their home page, typing in whatever book you want to check out, and just like that, all of their previous sales and auction history for that particular book shows up. Gee, the inefficient dummy that I was by wasting my time in terms of retrieving and sorting through their old auction listings to check on the price history of various books when I could have simply done it through their Sold Items archive which is available to everybody to see.