lou_fine

I know, I think it's just a more than one set of eyes scenario. On this particular book, I was told the finalizer saw something on the apex of the spine that the other two missed. I actually still own it but have never resubbed. Crapshoot if it would get a 9.6 or not = would they spot the flaw. I don't like to play the 'let's fool CGC' game anyway. BTW, I could never, with my own eyes see the flaw, even cracked it open. Well, since it looks like you live in the Chicago area, maybe you should consider bringing it in for something fast and simple like on-site grading if they have it there at the con. You can always take it back out of the slab once your curiosity has been satisfied.

That's extremely sad news about Ron as he was always so friendly and such a nice guy.

Maybe I spoke too soon as it was a quick start, but has not really moved in the past couple of weeks and seemingly stuck at $29K for now. Guess we will have to wait for the last few hours and then the extended bidding to see any further action on this book here.

Now, this sounds like a book that should definitely be sent back in for a resub. Actually, with this type of scenario that you pointed out, what's the point of even having the first 2 graders since their input means absolute diddly squat in the final analysis.

Any idea what happened with Ken and where he is? I know that Ron moved to Detroit awhile back, but I did bumped into him again in Vancouver a few years ago when he came back for a visit. I was surprised that he recognized me immediately and still remembered me as being one of his regular customers back in the day.

From reading these comments, it sounds as though Mark has cleaned up his act from his World's Finest days back in the late 80's and early 90's when he was notorious for wet cleaning virtually all of his books and not disclosing this fact to his customers as he considered wet cleaning to be a non-restoractive activity. Since he was also a professional restorer at the same time, it seem that he was never ever satisfied with a book even if it was already in HG condition, and as a result, was apparently always tempted to improve on the book. Unfortunately, it looks like this type of work fell on the wrong side of the ledger when CGC opened their doors as these books all came back as PLOD's, while books with other types of work such as dry cleaning, pressing, etc. were eventually outed by the boards here as a non-restorative activity a few years later. It's good to see that he's making the best of this opportunity because all of the other dealers used to assume right away that any book that passed through Mark's hands must have had some undisclosed restoration on them. Not sure if this was always fair, especially when they could not even find the restoration sometimes.

An interior shot of the original Comicshop. Needless to say, the new location - while loaded with TPB's, new comics and a limited supply of older (low grade, common) material - will never have the cool factor of those that came before: Wow, a blast from the past! There's the 2 co-owners, Ron Norton and Ken at the front of the picture. Not sure who the three at the back are though. Definitely looks like the days of the hippie generation and the love & peace movement or the Haight-Ashbury of Vancouver at the time. I remember Ken was nice enough to sell me his personal cherry picked collection of Cerebus 1 - 10 when he was closing down his own store in North Vancouver years later.

Any idea what part of the year 2000 did CGC started grading books, as I believe they started up in 2000 or was it even possibly as early as late 1999? Since that CGC 8.0 copy of 'Tec 27 was graded back on July 30 of 2001, that in theory should then be past the tightest period of the old label books, but I guess there would always be some exceptions to any general rule.

Sure looks nice and pretty in this CGC slab here. When it comes time to sell it , maybe you should consider removing it from its slab as raw copies of these Fox books seems to sell for thousands of dollars and for huge multiples to condition guide., as evident not only by this sale but also some of the other low grade Wonderworld sales that took place on eBay last summer. Was just reviewing some of the upcoming auctions listings for next week and noticed that the current price for the slabbed Mystery Men's and Wonderworld's on the CC auction site are generally just running at only a few hundred dollars and virtually all at a pretty good discount to condition guide price. Maybe it's just their auction format with the extended 3-minute bidding time period which might possibly negate the need for early bidding, but the prices for all of their Fox books sure looks pretty attractive at this point in time. Either that or the Fox collectors have already satisfied their appetites with the Jon Berk offerings plus the much larger than normal Fox books which were also available from the CC auction back in March?

I don't think you can really compare the census numbers for a Marvel book to a DC book, especially a CA NM 98, with all of the marvel zombies around. As for the BB 54 to Gl 76 census comparison, I believe the GL 76 has always not only been a much higher priced book, but also one that is in much more demand and as such, more collectors would have been looking to slab this book as compared to a BB 54. Especially with all of the hype for years that the collecting marketplace was looking for that uber HG GL 76 to come along. Certainly didn't hear the same talk or desire to find an uber HG copy of BB 54. Hence, I would have been absolutely shocked if the less popular and less in-demand BB 54 had had more submissions than the critically acclaimed and more highly sought after GL 76.

The very earliest CGC books have always been regarded as tightly graded. Add pressing to that mix and I'd say a LOT of people have taken advantage of books like this. And yet some board members here think the exact opposite and claim that they are most likely over graded because they are still sitting in their old slabs.

I am quite sure this part here was meant as just a joke only, because all of the collectors that I am aware of actually would prefer to have a Church book with the signature dates on them because that helps with the proof of pedigree verification.

Congrats! My raw purchases from HA are usually a smidge overgraded. Nice turnout. +1 Most definitely as it looks like you was able to turn what looked like a raggedly book that was coming apart in Heritage's scan into something that looks relatively bright and gorgeous and possibly even undergraded for a CGC 3.5 graded book. As noted by Heritage in their auction description, definitely an uncommon issue as they have seen only one that is not incomplete, brittle, or restored. In fact, the highest graded copy of this book is Berk's former Church copy and that was only a CGC 8.0 grade. Since the Larson has a clipped coupon missing from the back cover, there probably are no real high grade copies of this particular issue out there. So, it looks like you've got yourself a real winner here.

Actually, there so-called new location is only about a block away from their original location back in the 70's which was on 4th Avenue close to Dunbar Street before they moved to the one on 4th and Arbutus.

speaking of which, did that movie with the Inhumans ever materialize? Sorry - I don't keep current with many of the movies. Yes, I believe it did come out on only some limited IMAX screenings this past weekend and looks like it did something like $1.5M dollars domestically, with another $1.1M of foreign box office receipts. Apparently, only peanuts from a total overall box office point of view due to the very limited release, but way at the top of the chart on a per screen average. Doubt it'll ever go into general wide release however.

Yes, especially if you have a spare million dollars or so, then you can go see Gareth Gundin about his copy of AF 15.

lois has black hair and longer Well, issue #23 was before issue #27 or #29, so her hair would have been naturally shorter. And have you never heard of hair coloring before, because I am sure they must have had that even back in those early days?

I don't know how you "take care" of color loss and still get a blue label. Not the colour loss issue per se, but maybe some of the other more "fixable issues" that were initially keeping the grade of the book down in the 8's.

You really think so? The color loss on the spine and the 1" crease on the bottom right corner would really bother me in a 9.2 holder. Yes, but isn't that the CGC 8.0 scanned copy you are looking at and not the 9.2 graded copy? What if the 9.2 graded copy took care of some of these issues or made them less pronounced?

I would hope the Curators were not touched. They actually stood on their own and probably only needed a light press in some circumstances. I believe the Curator X-Men #1 got a 9.8 on it's first submission and, for a while, was the only 9.8 on the census. The Curators came out just before CGC started and Brulato got most of the good stuff. It's still one of my favorite pedigrees, incredible page quality, and not too many books in the marketplace. However, you raise a good point. Didn't Brulato have his Curators and other uber HG books graded very early on in the grading game before this whole grade manipulation and enhancement came to light? If that's the case let's hope that the books have also not been pressed in that case, since he most likely would have also used Jason's services for this. And if it was Jason, why would they have stopped at "sharpening the edges" since both pressing and micro trimming were thought of in the general marketplace as a form of restoration in CGC's first few years of existence before these hidden practices were outed on these very boards here. I guess it doesn't really matter at this point anyways, because I strongly doubt we will ever see these books taken out of their old slabs.

No, box diving is too too much work and hard on your back. As we have seen from the Jon Berk Auction, as a comic book dealer these days, all you need do is sit back in your easy chair, zoom in on your scans, be astute and then selectively bid away in order for your profits to follow.

40K-45K Shades of highest graded copies of what are otherwise common books such as GL 76, NM 98, GI Joe 21, FF 52, etc. that once sold for ridiculous amounts of money at one time and then, not surprisingly, had nowhere else to go but down. Clearly, lesson not learned and especially when grading is still a subjective art as opposed to an exact science in this day and age when artificial grade enhancement is still sadly the name of the game.

What's the chance that some of Brulato's uber HG SA books sitting in his personal collection, including some of his Curators and other highest graded copies, might have also receive a similar tender loving care treatment from his former VIA partner? Especially since I believe they have never been reslabbed or placed into the marketplace as far as I am aware of.

Unfortunately, if you want to find the true vintage collectible books that have half decent value, Pat most likely have them all locked away and not available for sale. If it's more recent stuff like common BA and CA keys and non-keys, you are probably good to go.

What exactly are you talking about? Roy; I thought you was the supremo master at reading between the lines?