lou_fine

Yes, better cover. +1 I've always loved the cover for 'Tec 71 with the big Joker image and always wanted to find a really nice one at a reasonable price for my personal collection back in the day. Never did managed to find one that I was happy with and if they were anywhere close to being in the VF/NM condition range or thereabouts, they were always past my then threshold level of paying more than $1K for a book. Oh, the mistakes we make when we first start out in the collecting world.

Like a Suspense 3 all about the cover Speaking about Suspense 3, this book reminds me of a conversation I had with Magik at a local con a couple of weeks ago. Although he had virtually all of his worthwhile vintage books graded a few years ago, he said that he had a really nice copy of this book in his collection that still hadn't been graded yet. Sounds as though he was planning to have it graded, but didn't seem that sure of which grading company to send the book to this time. Knowing Magik's taste for books, it's probably a really sharp copy with cover colors that pop. I guess I should have listened more carefully as I am not sure if he was talking about this book here or if he was talking about Negro Romance #1.

Yeah, especially being a 9.0. That will take it completely out of consideration for some bidders. Same thing with the #5 in the auction, also a 9.0. Also doesn't help that it's from a 3rd tier publisher like Street & Smith that is not highly collected by the big money collectors. This particular issue of Shadow Comics also doesn't sport a classic cover image which is all the rage in the marketplace nowadays.

I would have love to see Magik give it to the guys at CGC since he has such a low opinion of their grading skills. I wondered if he went on about how they always fail to factor in the strength of cover colors when it comes to grading and will seemingly give high grades to books even with faded cover colors. Always a pet peeve with Magik and he probably does has a valid point here. Was away in the Caribbean for the week and by the time I got to the con around 2:00 on Sunday, CGC already had their booth down to the bare wooden tables and everything packed away in their suitcases and boxes. Somehow, I get the feeling the number of submissions were nowhere near what they were expecting and we probably won't be seeing them back here next year.

No, don't believe they charge the $5 anymore for books going on the different value tiers. That's only because I believe they are charging you $8 now for books going on different value tiers.

From what I saw at auction, they were all graded by the Distinguished Competition, and a bunch auctioned already. Yes, they've been spread over a few years going back to the Suspense 3 from a couple of years ago to the AF 15 from August of 2016 and then to the rest of the Spideys just this past summer. Along with a whole bunch of other supporting books behind these headline grabbers of course. I believe the 9.8 graded copy of SilVer Surfer 4 is scheduled to come out next summer, along with apparently another as of yet, still ungraded HTF GA books.

Perhaps because there seems to be a boat load of them coming to market. Yes, even Hakes is in the game with a CGC 7.5 graded copy that has been in play for over a week now: https://www.hakes.com/Auction/ItemDetail/216543/AMAZING-FANTASY-15-AUGUST-1962-CGC-75-VF-FIRST-SPIDER-MAN Looks like everybody's trying to move their AF 15's right now before the air starts to leak out from the big bubble.

I'm also not a believer in "old label goodness" -- I'm in a skeptical mood today! Again, it assumes that CGC graded tighter in the early years, a point I'm not convinced of. And it assumes that somehow the current owner (or auction house listing the book) hasn't bothered to pick up the free cash on the table by regrading an obviously undergraded book. These days I thinks it's more likely that an old label book is overgraded (explaining why it's still in an old label slab) than that it's undergraded. One last point is that the old slabs were more subject to SCS and, of course, the more time that has gone by, the greater the chance that the book might have deteriorated in the slab due to improper storage. Well, looks like we got our answer with regards to this book possibly being overgraded: https://www.comicconnect.com/bookDetail.php?referral=EAlist&id=721161&title=MYSTERYMEN COMICS Not only did the book get bumped up a notch to now become the single highest graded copy and even ahead of both the Allentown and Church copies, but the PQ on the book also improved after sitting in the old label slab for 17 long years.

Now that's a wonderful way to start off a Centaur collection, with a beautiful gorgeous looking classic Arrow cover.

Sure, Batman 121 is probably a "cooler" book, but definitely not as thunderous as Batman 127 where we see Thor the Thundergod way before JIM 83 even crosses Stan Lee's mind.

Do you mean the Our Fighting Forces with the grey-tone cover in the above picture. Sure looks nice with all that green and blueish grey-tone. Not so sure about that 'Tec 31 though as its brightness is almost blinding and you certainly do need a pair of sunglasses for it.

I actually think Whiz will soar again. The Big Red Cheese and Whiz is definitely off the ground again, especially in comparison to a few years ago when he was more like 6 feet under. But I highly doubt he will be soaring into the Top 5 though. Top 10 maybe since there is supposed to be some type of a movie coming out.

Sounds as though it's the Number 1 book in terms of people trying to cash out on it, as opposed to collectors trying to pick one up for their collections.

So in three years, after at least one Venom-verse movie, and who knows how much more growth in popularity, not to mention the book turning 30 years old by then, the book will be selling for what it was selling for up to 11 years in the past ? Gotcha. Better hold off on picking up a copy till then. FWIW Not sure why you think it's not possible for this book to be moving down in price over the long haul. Especially in light of the fact that the current high prices has much to do with movie related hype and we all know from history what tends to happen to these books by the time it's all said and done. On top of that, there is an absolute ton of this book out there in uber HG with something approaching 4,000 copies in CGC 9.6 and above if you include the signed copies. Probably at least an equivalent number of uber HG raw copies still sitting out there in personal collections that has yet to be slabbed. Just took a look at the Heritage archives and it's rather interesting to note that Daredevil 168 used to also be a $2K book about 10+ years ago with even one selling for almost $2.4K back in 2005. Since that peak period back around 2005 to 2007, it looks like the book had dropped by half after that and now CGC 9.8 graded copies have been selling in the $500 to $700 range for the past several years. And similar to Spidey 300, this is for another hot CA book with movie related hype in terms of the Netflix Daredevil TV series. So, it is indeed quite possible for a hot book to be selling for less than what it sold for 10+ years ago. Especially if it happened with a red hot book like DD 168 which has far fewer copies relative to Spidey 300, with just over 500 uber HG universal copies in CGC 9.6 or higher (with no 9.9's at all) and a book which will soon be approaching 40 years old. Only time will tell I guess to see if Spidey 300 will be one of the only movie or TV related hype books to buck the historical "fly like a bird and then crash like a rock" trend that these books traditionally seems to take.

No doubt this is affected in part due to the fact that the highest graded copies for Bat 121 are only a couple of 9.2's while the highest graded copies for Spidey 14 is way up there at 9.8's. In fact, it looks like there are only 4 copies pf Bat 121 in CGC 9.0 or above while there are a total of 173 copies alone of Spidey 14 in universal 9.0 or above. That's a ton of copies in high grade for a big expensive key book.

Looks to me like your database is not quite up-to-date as you are missing the 9.8 graded copy of ASM 14 that sold at Heritage for something like $71.7K just a couple of months ago.

Long overdue? You know CGC gave out grading notes for free for 14 years, right? Welcome to the Boards! As far as I know, the only person that gets free grading notes are the ones who submitted the books in for grading, and then only if you request them. Everybody else who wants to have the grading notes will have to pay for them and the cost is dependent upon the grading teir and can range from something like $5 to $15 per book for the notes. It's free money for CGC if you want the notes. A virtual cash cow for them since it's simply a completely automated system that sends the grading notes to you after swiping (pun fully intended) the monies from your credit card and depositing it right into their own bank account. Especially in the case of when the grading notes is only one short sentence and actually even shorter than the notes already on the CGC label itself. Now, that's when you realize you've really been ripped off.

Yes, they are kept locked up from both the real world and these make believe boards as far as I know and only come out when it's time to do more grading. That's why they never knew all of those books belonged to Jon Berk when his collection went through and got graded and slabbed.

That would most definitely be good to get.

Tighter is always good as long as it is reasonable and does not reach the point of undergrading. When you get to the point of having your own previously 9.2 graded books coming back as 8.0's in some cases or previously graded 9.6's coming back as only 9.2's, then you've gone way past the point of tight grading. Although you might be grading tighter than the competition FOR NOW, you've also unfortunately in effect invalidated all of the grades for your own previously graded books. The best type of grading is not the one who comes in with the tightest or lowest grade on a book, but rather the one who can grade both accurately and consistently.

In theory, the graders are supposed to know absolutely nothing about the books in hand. If you deslabbed the book before submitting they wouldn't know anyway. Regarding HA, I have no idea but I suspect it happens. To be honest, I don't have a problem, no biggie, with any relationship that may exist between HA and CGC. I believe that all of the auction houses will submit raw books on behalf of their consignors if requested to do so. It's all part of their customer service as many of the consignors simply couldn't be bothered with doing up the paperwork and all of the shipping hassles. It's all about winning the consignments from the potential sellers and I don't have any issue at all with this part of the process.

I believe the "other guy" is in a much better position, today, after the merger than a couple of years ago...bigger, stronger, and more $$$$ means more competition for CGC, and possibly a "price war" down the line..hopefully I actually have absolutely no problem at all with a price war, or even price increases for that matter, because it is something that is obvious and clearly visible that all potential customers can see and make their own decisions if they want to use that service or not. The issue I have is when they compromise their own product by having a "grading war" in a veiled attempt to give the impression that they have a superior product that has more value, as compared to the competitor which as a result, must then have an inferior product. Of course, we all know what happens here when we get the expected response from the other competing companies. Although some customers think they are getting ahead, it's actually a slow spiral and what I call a race to the bottom, with both the hobby and marketplace losing out long term unless one of them puts a stop to the silly game. Especially when the grading standards are undisclosed to the marketplace and as a result, open to subtle but significant changes almost at a whim in order to align with the business agenda of the day.

Although I see luxury fashion (or maybe not) and luxury cars in this little video clip here, I don't see any AF 15's so far: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sT25z0UESD0 What a bunch of entitled losers here. Reminds me of my university days, except all of the girls were from Hong Kong then instead of China.

If this is the case, then that's a real serious issue with the quality control process at CGC. Especially when you would expect them to at least take a look at the book after encasing it in the slab to ensure it was done properly.

Actually, didn't Greg Buls or somebody like that actually tried to come up with the idea of setting up a comic book index based upon the hot Image and Valiant books back in the early 90's when the newsstand market was on fire. The idea was that you would simply invest into this comic book index as they went up in value, as opposed to wasting all that time and space to actually having to buy and store the actual comic books themselves. I believe the idea never got very far as the big comic book bubble crash came right after that.