lou_fine

This actually doesn't sound too bad at all. Especially considering that it would take an uber HG copy of AF 15 or a cool million to get a dump of a house that's in tear down condition on the poor side of town here. And if you want a half decent (i.e. not brand spanking new) gaudy 6K house here on the west side of the city, you are looking at a life time's worth of comic book collecting, similar to Jon Berk's former collection.

Reminds me of a comic con I was at back in the day when a dealer had something similar on his wall, except it was Batman 428 when the Death In The Family story was just wrapping up and the 4-issue series was still red hot. The dealer actually had the nerve to post a huge sign in front of his table declaring how "rare" the book was.

All of the books I brought off the shelves such as the Bryne X-Men, Miller Daredevils, Perez Teen Titans, and all of that other Marvel 70's drek are still reversed bundled in groupings of 5 or more in those poly bags from 30 to 40+ years ago. When I was at my sister's house a few years ago, I took some of those bundles out to see if I should switch out the old sticky bags and surprisingly, all of the books were still as fresh as if they had just come off the shelves. So, I just left them for now since I figure there's no point wasting money to buy new bags or mylar. Maybe I should take another look at them one of these years.

Any idea what happened to this raw Church copy of Mystery Men 20 to make the Church coding almost disappear: http://www.wwcomics.com/comicdetail.asp?Product_ID=MysteryMenComics_20_57696 The Church coding on this book seem to be quite a bit more pronounced when it was slabbed and initially sold as part of the Jon Berk auction: https://www.comicconnect.com/bookDetail.php?referral=EAlist&id=713186&title=MYSTERYMEN COMICS Is it simply due to the brightness setting on the scanner or was the book "clean" a bit too much?

I think cgc cases are water tight. In that case, I think we should do a quality control check by having everybody here who owns a CGC slabbed copy of AF 15 to submerged them in a big tub of water for several days and then pull them back up to see if the books are still dry as a whistle. Unfortunately, I don't own a slabbed copy of AF 15 so everybody else's copy will have to do for this little test here.

Just because something is at record highs does not necessarily mean it's overvalued. But, in this case, yes, you are right. At long last, I finally managed to get something right!!! Oh, I forgot since it's now October. How about the long-standing generalized theory that investors should buy in October, sell in March, and then take the next several months off for holidays until October comes around again? Rinse and repeat.............but get ready to take cover.

Is that from Thomas The Train? No, I believe that's a train carrying all of the known copies of AF 15 that are in existence.

To each their own, I guess. What you see as a fun time, I see as tedious and a ton of work to try to grind your way through. Give me 2 or 3 key books in HG condition as opposed to 250 dog eared books which will probably take forever to convince somebody to buy at a price whereby you won't lose your shirt, given the possible high reserve on this lot of low non-key books.

Just because something is at record highs does not necessarily mean it's overvalued. But, in this case, yes, you are right. At long last, I finally managed to get something right!!!

Welcome to the Merry Marvel Retirement Club then. I must also be a chartered member since I know that I have at least one copy, but possibly 2 copies of this book which I cherry picked off the LCS shelves way back in the day. Since your copies are also not boarded but bagged, would they still be residing in those now sticky yellowing poly bags like where my copies are?

Asking $90K? Seriously? That's only if you Buy It Now at their BIN price. It clearly states that they are asking potential buyers to make offers for the book, with the minimum amount set at only $1.

MASTERCARD = OVERVALUED AF #15 = OVERVALUED Well, isn't both the entire stock market and comic book markets pretty much overvalued at these record high levels? As my better half has mentioned to me many times before, since I buy and collect stocks similar to how I buy and never sell my comic books, I guess the key is as I had stated before in a previous post: I was definitely the wrong person to ask when my daughter asked me last weekend if she should sell her cannabis stock since it had already quadrupled from the time she brought it 15 months ago, after going up almost 30% this past month alone. Looks overvalued and a definite sell if you based it upon past prices, but probably will end up with these current prices being viewed as bargain basement if you take the long term view and look 5 or 10 years down the line.

The only problem with this is that micro trimming, similar to pressing, if done properly is virtually impossible to detect on a consistent basis. Of course we are talking about micro trimming or shaving as done by trimming masters like Ewert before they were outed here on the boards, as opposed to the crude macro hack jobs that used to be done by Dupchak way back in the old days. How ironic that it was Danny Boy himself along with a few of the other boardies here like Red Hook, Masterchief, etc. who managed to snagged some before and after scans of these books and blew them up to the nth degree to confirm that these uber HG books had indeed been micro trimmed.

Plus they also all appear to be non-key mid run books in desperate need of a good press job.

You probably missed the last part that I had edited in: Definitely not in the case of dealers such as yourself, since your sales model is completely different and based upon setting a price and waiting for potential buyers to come up and meet it. Although we always focus on the grand slam home runs produced by the auction sites, the majority of the results are probably more like singles and doubles, and no doubt more like a strikeout if it was my turn at the bat knowing my luck. Going to the dealer sites to sell allows a potential seller to avoid getting only a single or even a strikeout with their book, but the possibility of a grand slam home run is also most likely not there.

Glasses; I find it rather strange that you say the auction method of selling is a consistent way of leaving money on the table and produces sales results that are below market reality. Although this is probably the case with many of the lower profile books that might get missed by the collecting public as they get lost in the hundreds of other more high profile listings, I definitely don't see this with a book such as AF 15. In fact, virtually all of these record setting sales that are taking the AF 15's to the next pricing levels and the ones that we are constantly talking about here are actually taking place on the auction sites, with the dealer listing prices following behind after that. Hence, with the AF 15's, I find that it's really the auction sites and in particular, CC and CL, that are the real trendsetters here and continuing to move the market up on this particular book here. However, I will most definitely agree with you that No Reserve auctions definitely do present risk to the consignor since it's often a crapshoot and really depends if the right set of eyes are looking at your book, especially if it's a lower profile book that could get lost in a big auction.

Since I believe you already have the CGC 9.0 Allentown copy of this book, I highly doubt you would be interested in this particular copy here. I also doubt any of the other boardies here would be interested in this copy here for $7,250, especially since I had already pointed it out last month and yet it still sold for less than $4K: Not sure how easy it's going to be for Ritter to try to resell it for over $7K when nobody else except for him was willing to pay under $4K for this exact same copy. Especially when it looks like CC is going to give it a second shot next month with the Jon Berk Church copy of this book which they had apparently graded as a raw F/VF 7.0 copy and sold for $5,700 back in the Berk auction a few months ago.

+1 Looks like both you and I are thinking the same way: But it's better and probably safer for everybody here if we just keep this between the two of us because if Jay ever finds out, we'll never hear the end of it and this could go on ad nauseam for another hundred pages.

Not at all. At least around here. Houses still abound for sale. Property tax goes up while town property assessments go down. Well, the good thing about your particular situation is that the average person should still be able to purchase a house of their own at least. Might actually be better than my situation over here where property values have more than quadrupled in the same time period, making it almost impossible for the younger generation like my kids to even dream of ever owning a house of their own. Especially when the average cost to service a mortgage, even at these current low interest rates are running at something like 87% of the average household income. Doesn't leave much for food, entertainment, or what have you.

Since it's now 2017 and 11 long years later, haven't house prices more than recovered to pass where they were back in the former bubble of 2006.

+1 Isn't that a Fantasyland price for a Hulk 181 in only 9.4 graded condition? Regardless of the price point, keeping the Superman 16 is a no-brainer here. Especially when you would have one of the Top 10 graded copies for Superman 16 here, versus something like one of the Top 800 graded copies for the Hulk 181.

Actually it was the 9.0 that sold for $395k that was also in that same auction in March, 2017, and also sold more than 100% higher than the prior public sale for that grade (that the history revisionists also fail to mention) that lifted the lower grades in that auction. +1 Yes, that March 2017 CC auction was definitely a game changer or a key milestone for the vintage collectible comic book marketplace. Not only was there the CGC 5.0 copy of AF 15 that sold for $57K, but there were also the CGC 4.5 copy that sold for just over $37K plus the Hope Collection CGC 9.0 copy that you mentioned above which sold for $395K. All record setting and key milestone prices which paved the way for the continuing price increases which we saw over the next few months. Not to be outdone by the AF 15's, this was also the exact same auction that saw a CGC 3.0 copy of 'Tec 29 go for $66K along with a CGC 3.0 copy of 'Tec 38 go for just over $54K. Both of these were also key milestone markers as both of these results were more than 100% higher than the previous record valuations for these 2 books on a price per point basis, especially with respect to the 'Tec 38.

Yes, it was those 2 sales (the 5.0 at $57K and the 4.0 at $35K and a couple similar sales late winter/early spring) that pushed prices up rather significantly to current levels. Well aware of the CGC 5.0 sale for $57K back in March on the CC auction site, but can't seem to remember this 4.0 sale for $35K. Was the 4.0 sale on CL since they are the other auction site that seems to be able to pull in record prices for the AF 15's?

But that's called investing with a rear view mirror which my better half is a master at doing. It's simply amazing how she can forecast every single turn for a stock and she simply does not understand how people can ever lose money investing in the stock market. Actually, my sister brought some of the Visa stock when it first came out as a IPO and I also brought a bit not too soon after. So, you are definitely right if we are looking back to 5 years ago. Not sure if it's such a good buy at these prices now though, even if there is still a lot of room for them to grow in the foreign markets and as everybody moves away from cash as the main financial instrument. I guess the real trick is to look 5 years down the line and see what will be hot then. Personally, I am thinking of something outside the traditional box like some of the marijuana stocks as provincial and state governments one by one are starting to legalize this product. Looks like a potential growing industry just taking its first baby steps as even the leading companies in this field with the widest established distribution channels are currently valued at only one or two billion dollars in comparison to the Visa's and MC which are already valued at hundreds of billions of dollars. Ok, maybe an AF 15 or some GA classic cover books might be a much safer bet, but it never hurts to take a bit of a flyer sometimes.