lou_fine

Love these books, but are collectors really paying the kind of dollars that Overstreet has them valued at in his price guide? I assume they must be since he seems to keep bumping them up a bit every year.

1941-1945 and mainly DC doesn't get you enough "key" books probably. Too late for all Superman and Batman keys. Too late for AS 3 and the JSA character appearances (GL, Sandman, Flash, Hackman, etc.). Best case, it means Adams might have a really nice All-Flash 1, Star Spangled 1, All-Flash 73, and GL 1 (but those all pre-date AS 8). Of course, since he didn't have a WW 1 (or it wasn't nice enough), we know its not comprehensive or all high grade from AS 8 forward. Possible "keys" after AS 8 would include Leading 1, Comic Calvacade 1, Boy Commandos 1, and MF 101. Not a lot. Exactly my line of thinking also, although he might have a More Fun 73 in there since it came out a month prior to AS 8 and the OO provenance description states they range from 1941. The only other ones would be not currently in vogue and lesser keys like Adventure 72 & 73.

Vinny is doing London Doesn't Vinny do all of the major cons that Metro sets up at? I was really referring to Fishler himself.

Well, to compensate, I guess you get to share one with the Fish himself, who's apparently been absent from a major comic con for the past 2 decades. I wonder what's bringing him out of the woodwork after being in hibernation like Rip van Winkle?

Any idea if there is a big difference in the print run between these 2 books? I am sure the reason for the current wide disparity in the census counts for these 2 books is due entirely to the fact that NM 98 has been a key book for a much longer time period than NM 87 which is a much newer key. Does anybody think NM 87 will one day become as valuable as NM 98 in the marketplace, or at least in the same ballpark in terms of value?

+1 Definitely not much more room for long-term growth due to the huge number of hoarded copies out there, especially since Liefeld and McFarlane were the hot artists at the time and their books were scooped up and kept in top condition by speculators at the time.

I think Adams' strategy was to create a huge publicity splash by offering up "the trifecta" of WW comic books. I don't think, that he's gotten as much mainstream interest in this sell as for the Action 1, though. I guess he must have already had the AS 8 and Sensation 1 when he bought the WW 1 and he views the risk of taking a loss on the WW 1 as a reasonable marketing expense. +1 Exactly my thinking as well, especially since any minor loss on the WW 1 should be more than made up by the gains on the other 2 books, simply from having all 3 of them available to the buying public at the same time.

Since your post is indirectly questioning my integrity as the buyer, I will respond. If I post an in a sales thread, if it was my last dollar, I would make good. I may not post much on these boards but that doesn't mean I'm not a well known entity in good standing in the hobby. No, my sincerest apologies if you misunderstood my post and thought I was questioning your integrity. The link took me to a Forum Selling and Buying section of the boards which I do not normally go to. As a result, I was wondering if the sign held a lot more more force in this particular Forum as I also see this same sign when I am in the GA, SA, General, etc. Forums of the boards here and they do not carry the same weight. Absolutely no questioning of your integrity as I simply did not fully understand the language and signs within the Forum Selling and Buying section of the boards here, and was simply trying to get some clarification in a poorly worded fashion. BTW: Congrats on your pickup here as the MM 7 is indeed the toughest of the early Mystery Men books to track down.

Never heard of Matchfire before this. Maybe we need to vet and conduct due diligence on these guys before we bid over $50K in this auction?

agree Wow Couldn't they have come up with better lighting or possibly a better scan of the book? Without zooming in on the book, the original smaller image makes the book look very tannish along all of the edges.

Most definitely they do, but at nowhere near the price point that it currently sells at or possibly anywhere even close to it.

Hate to tell you this, but that's an absolute no-no as it's a Made in China product and we are supposed to be in the process of making America great again. Unless of course, it's a Trump family related company and then it's good to go because their supplier companies don't have the necessary infrastructure in place to make things in America.

+1 Most definitely the crystal clear features of the mylar as opposed to the bulky, heavy and industrial appearance of the slabs which more than anything else, detracts the beauty of the underlying comic book itself. Has always been an absolute no-brainer to me and could never figure out why collectors would even bother to slab a book unless it was time to sell or simply for the resto check.

for the yearbook, this one was voted most likely to be purloined. Beautiful copy with lots of bright colors there. Now, it makes me regret even more that I didn't bother increase my bid on the current highest graded copy that was just in the recent Heritage Auction since I thought it went for a very reasonable price for a book that seldom ever comes to market.

A powerball win ! Are people really still paying silly money for the label as opposed to the book itself in this day and age where grading inconsistency is apparently so prevalent and rampant out there?

Greatly appreciate the link to the sale. Hope the sign represents a confirmed sale on the Forum Selling Boards here. If so, that's actually a much more amazing price than what you had to pay for your copy, considering that it was a copy with a fully split front cover and brittle corners and yet was still able to fetch $1,799 pretty well immediately upon being listed. Good for both the buyer and the seller in the end though. Makes me wonder what the CGC 2.5 G+ copy of MM 3 that CC has in their Event Auction starting next week will end up going for since it is considered to be one of the go to books in the entire MM run?

They usually are. +1 Of course they are since he's very highly compensated to write this type of financial investment analysis. Especially in terms of his last paragraph whereby he probably just pulled up one of his old investment analysis reports and simply did a Find and Replace with AF 15 for whatever investment vehicle he was writing about at the time.

Yes, diamonds are valuable, but unlike AF 15's, they are so common that they have actually dropped down significantly in value over the past few decades. I remembered being in an jewelry store with my wife and sister-in-law who's so much more into diamonds. She was interested in one that the owner told her was worth $240K which my sister-in-law insisted would be a good investment. I kept asking the owner how much this particular diamond would have sold for back in the 80's and she kept trying to avoid the question. She finally relented and said that it would have sold for something much closer to $500K back then, but that diamonds was always a good "emotional" investment. Needless to say, my ill-informed sister-in-law was totally , but it was good to see that the owner was honest since I already knew the severe downward trend for diamond valuations.

Do you have a link to this sale as these boards are not the best for conducting searches? Of course, I am also lazy when it comes to doing searches when somebody else can hopefully sent send me the link.

From the serial number, it would appear that this copy of Avengers 4 was graded back in June of 2017 while the JIM 83 was graded back in April of 2017. I believe they had tightened up, at least from a GA point of view, back around the middle of 2016. Then I saw some rather less tightly graded non-GA books graded at the end of 2016 and the start of 2017. So, maybe it's just more of an inconsistency issue or different grading teams being used to grade the different time periods. After all, as they clearly state in their CGC Comics Guarantee, the assigned grade represents only their subjective opinion and is not guaranteed, and as we all know, grading is really more of an art as opposed to an exact science.

HA has a MUCH larger bidding pool, more marketing, more reach etc. Also, less suspicion of shill bidding (given priors) if his stuff is listed elsewhere than in-house. Then you are in agreement with me since your first sentence confirms that you should not use Pedigree to auction off your books since they have a MUCH smaller bidding pool, less marketing, and less reach. Your second sentence is a reason why many potential bidders do not bother bidding on his site because of suspicions, whether warranted or not, that he conducts shill bidding on some of his auctions.

Perfect reason then why potential sellers should never consign their books to Pedigree for auction. When it comes to his own books, he shows absolute zero confidence in his own auction house to do the job, and instead consigns them to Heritage like what he did several years ago.

Not sure if you was around in the mid-90's during the last big GA bull market run when the heat finally settled in on the Fox books. It must have been quite hot because even old slow Bob hiked his top of guide price for Mystery Men 1 from $2,100 in his '95 price guide up to $8,500 the next year for an unprecedented 305% increase in just one year. I personally believed that unprecedented hike virtually cooled off the heat on all of the Fox books almost overnight as purchasers and investors always like to buy things that are perceived to be undervalued, as opposed to buying items that are viewed as being relatively fully valued or possibly even being overvalued with more downside risk to them.

You should not post things like that on the world wide web since the IRS might be watching and taking notes. Looks like a typo since I am not what that last character is. I believe you really meant $60K, did you not?

I'm pretty sure I had A's in both those, and more. It was basically all bullsh*t. +1 Got straight A's in both my macro and micro econ courses as they were basically nothing more than just simple common sense once you thought about it.