lou_fine

save your cash for the Fox books they go cheap Unfortunately, the Fox Mystery Men books are about to come up next. It's too bad we can't make "M" the last letter of the alphabet as that would then let me know how much money I have left to play with.

It only takes two collectors Unfortunately for me and happily for my better half, I certainly won't be one of the two collectors here.

18 to 20 k my guess This still seems like an awfully long ways to go with only about an hours and half to go up another $10K.

Good point. I guess you mean something like that raw Fair 1.0 copy of Action 13 that they was able to sell for almost $15K in one of their Sunday auctions last summer.

Well, I guess somebody must have woken up from their deep slumber as this copy of MM 3 has now moved a bit past its condition guide price. Without the classic cover demand, it looks like the other 2 Mystery Men books are not attracting any attention yet as I believe both of them have been stuck on the exact same numbers since this past weekend, with less than a hour to go now.

18 to 20 k my guess Are you trying to tell me it's still safe to put in a punishment bid at this point in time or are you simply trying to get me booted out of my own house here.

Will this be your first high-grade Baker? Oh, forgot to answer your question in my previous post. No, not my first high-grade Baker book. Started the Seven Seas run way back in the mid-90's with the goal of acquiring a Seven Seas 6 since I just love the green cover and the varying colors of the water. Ended up picking up uber HG copies of Seven Seas 1 and 2 from Metro with the SS 1 being graded by them as a 41 out of 42 or something like that on Steve's grading scale at the time. Went on and somehow acquired nice copies of SS 4 and 5 in my quest for Seven Seas 6. Can't remember from where as they were unimportant and relatively cheap books at the time. Couldn't pass up on an uber HG copy of Seven Seas 3 for $1,650 at a local con here a few months ago from an out-of-town dealer I knew who was here on vacation at the time. Most I had spent on a single book during the past 2 decades until the Jon Berk auction came up. So, instead of picking up a copy of Seven Seas 6 which was my original goal from the start, I ended up with high grade copies of the other 5 issues and yet still no SS 6. Although I was happy to see the Church copy of SS 6 in this auction here, I just can't justify bidding more than double what I paid to acquire the first 5 issues of the Seven Seas run. Maybe one of these days, but I highly doubt it being the El Cheapo that I am.

Will this be your first high-grade Baker? No, way too rich for my blood as it's already gone past $7K now, as I had dropped out at the $6K mark or thereabouts. Was hoping this one would get missed until you had the audacity to post about it right here on Page 1 of this thread.

Definitely watching this one with much interest also. Although it won't be the first Baker to clear the $10K mark if it does since that was already achieved earlier in the year by Seven Seas 4, there just might be some fireworks on this one here. Especially since it is a highest graded Church copy and has already been moving up steadily throughout the day since this morning.

Well, it looks like we got our answer as this copy moved up about $20K in the last hour of the auction, with most of this move done during the extended 3-minute bidding time periods. Definitely looks like a strong price for this grade, but at the same time it's not an irrational silly price in the end, as the book came in at something like 3.2X condition guide for one of the preeminent classic cover books out there. Being a Fox collector from way back in the day, I always love to watch the bidding action on these Fox books, especially since they don't seem to come to market that often, if you exclude the recent Jon Berk auction. Since we got the answer for the Fantastic 3 yesterday, I guess we we'll find out how the Mystery Men trio does today, the most interesting of which is the following: http://www.comicconnect.com/bookDetail.php?id=721161 Although it is already running at over condition guide by just a tad, it should have a bit more room to go if the Fantastic 3 from yesterday's last minute activity is any indication. Especially since this is also a Fox book which is supposedly hot in today's marketplace, along with the fact that it is tied as the Highest Graded Copy which for some reason tends to make a book hot ever since CGC opened its doors. The part that I like more is the fact that it is tied with Mystery Men 7 as having the fewest graded copies out of the early MM books. Will be interesting to see where this copy ends up as it's been pretty much a full decade since a relatively nice copy of this particular book has been even available in the marketplace. Like the Fantastic 3 from yesterday, I guess we'll just have to wait and see in a couple more hours from now.

Yes indeed, as purple and green use to be 2 of my favorite colours as opposed to that cold and dreary blue before the dums dums at CGC came up with all of their silly coloured labels.

No idea. Maybe I will have to try and win another book to make shipping worth it. That's actually a good idea in order to keep your shipping charges down as low as possible relative to the cost of the actual books. I believe there's a Pep 22 out there calling for $244K or something like that which should give you the biggest bang for your buck in terms of minimizing your shipping charges.

Either way it won't get a blue label. Oh yes, it will if it's a Conserved grade which will get you the same Universal blue colour label, but with a gray Universal line on top instead of the blue Universal line on top if it was completely unrestored.

Looks like there's still a few Church Mile High Westerns ending in the CC auction today that you won't have to break the bank for: http://www.comicconnect.com/bookDetail.php?id=733466 And this one is the most expensive of the 3 and it won't even cost you a 20 bill so far.

The 7.5 went for $35,500 And the 4.0 restored graded by the other company went for $20,500. Looks like both of these restored copies sold for only a small fraction of their condition guide price. Most probably due to the fact that they were both flagged with Extensive Restoration. And yet the fugly looking 0.5 Trimmed copy also graded by the other company was still able to hit $16,000.

Just took a closer look at the promo email that CC had sent out for today's auction and noticed that there are 3 old label books in there. Since one of these is from way back in 2000 when CGC first opened its door, I guess the chance of the grade and PQ being tougher is probably higher than the other 2 old labels which were graded later in 2002 and 2003? Maybe there's some truth to your point since the one graded from 2000 sure looks nice from the scan.

Yes, it'll probably end up costing you more to ship it than what the cost of the book went for. Does CC always ship their books by Fed Ex or do you have the option for snail mail on books such as these?

Hopefully, Tim has set his alarm so that he'll wake up in time to bid on this copy of Mystery Men 3 in today's CC auction: http://www.comicconnect.com/bookDetail.php?id=716460 This way, he'll at least have a reading copy that he can go through and guess what, it's still at a substantial discount to condition guide so far. Unless he wants to crack open his Church copy and give us a Cole's Notes version of the stories for some of the boardies that can't afford to pick up a copy of this book.

Actually, is staple replacement even considered to be Restoration anymore or is it considered to be Conservation now? If you look at CGC's Grading Scale, it appears to fall under both of these categories. So, I am not sure how they would decide whether it is Restoration or just Conservation?

As I stated in one of my other posts here, I guess only time will tell. If this is only one data point in a continuing price trajectory line as more uber HG copies come to market, then this is not so crazy of a price and might actually look like a bargain in years to come. If this amount was paid for the transitory value of the 9.8 label and the price is not supported as other similar uber HG copies eventually comes to market, then yeah this is a crazy price to have paid for the label.

I guess everybody has different tastes. The one that I used to look for back in the day when I was after these books was the Detective 71 with the big Joker on the front cover. Had a copy of Detective 85 with the 2 Jokers on the cover, but believe I gave that one to Harley as partial trade for something else.

I would put this to catch-up time for 'Tec 36 relative to the other much pricier and high profile pre-Robin 'Tec books which got the fast start out of the gate. And as Overstreet notes in his price guide, 'Tec 36 features the first appearance of Hugo Strange, Batman's first major villain and also one who is sinisterly and masterfully played by BD Wong on the Gotham TV series.

Looks like I was spot on with the Tec 31 Well, it indeed looks like you was pretty spot on with your prediction since the book sold for $44K on this go round here. Hope you don't have to send CC 44 big ones though just to prove that you was right in the end with your prediction. I was actually rather shocked, but pleasantly surprised that it was able to hit this same aggressive number again. Especially since after the $43,505 sale in June of 2016, another CGC 1.0 graded copy managed to fetch only $26K in CC's August/September auction and then this was followed by a CGC 2.0 graded copy with Brittle pages in December that managed to hit only $17,200. So, maybe we've just gone full circle back to late 2015 and early 2016 when a CGC 0.5 graded copy was able to go for $21.5K in one of CC's auction back in September of 2015. So, $44K is definitely a pretty big number here for a CGC 1.0 graded copy, although I assume the consignor would still be out a few thousand dollars after paying for the auction fees.

I dropped out with about 10 minutes to go. It ended, after all the 3 minute extensions, at $45k I think. Triple guide is about right for that book, I guess. Well, it looks like we got our answer as this copy moved up about $20K in the last hour of the auction, with most of this move done during the extended 3-minute bidding time periods. Definitely looks like a strong price for this grade, but at the same time it's not an irrational silly price in the end, as the book came in at something like 3.2X condition guide for one of the preeminent classic cover books out there.

Might be the effect of removing the tear seal. Is there a bit of red missing from around the "No." on the CLink copy? Possibly scraped off ct? Hard to tell from the scans. In any event, the CLink copy is a spiffy looking 8.0. +1 I believe you would be correct here as it is quite normal for a book to be downgraded once you remove the resto. After all, isn't the purpose of having a book restored is to "fix" the defect and hence to hopefully improve the overall grade of the book? Of course, it could also be within CGC's acceptable grading margin of error as I still remember reading a BA thread whereby a CGG 9.2 copy of X-Men 94 was resubmitted and came back as a CGC 8.0 copy and another initially graded CGC 8.0 book came back as a CGC 7.0 copy after the resubmit. That was sometime last year when it look like the other company was finally making inroads in terms of market share and I believe also around the time the new grading teams came into place.