lou_fine

I believe it's pretty common knowledge that the Promise Collection was completely overhyped by the gang at Heritage and helped along by questionable grading on some of the books that nobody save for Ritter (with only two successful upgrades out of 116 Promise retreads to date so far) even dares to resubmit the Promise books for an upgrade or to play the CPR game with these books. Enough of the bidders brought into the hype to the point that they completely overpaid for the books during their first run, but clearly the reputational damage and negative sentiment attached to the Promise books is quite apparent and hard to overcome, save for a few of the in-demand and still must have books.

From a strict visual POV and without having the actual book in hand, I would tend to agree with you here. It definitely presents a whole lot nicer than so many copies of AF 15's that we've seen with real fugly Marvel chipping running right down the entire right edge of the book.

Did that $92K sale on 6/8/21 take place on CL because i could not find it in botht he Heritage and CC archives? Rather interesting that the price for TMNT 1 in CGC 9.8 took such a big jump from $92K in June of 2021 so quicky in less than 3 short months all the way up to $245K in September of 2021.

How did the Wonder Woman do? Well, from a Promise Collection POV relative to so many of the other Promise retreads, actually not too bad at all: Sensation #31 sold for $8,400 as compared to $9K back in November of 2021; Sensation #32 sold for $4,800 as compared to $6,600 back in November of 2021; Sensation 36 sold for $5,760 as compared to $6,600 back in November of 2021; and Sensation 38 sold for $8,400 as compared to $10,200 back in November of 2021. So, not too bad at all at a loss of $5,040 or only 15.55% excluding auction fees plus any other additional ancillary costs. Needless to say, another case where the consignor dare not even make an attempt for an upgrade or the CPR treatment which is so common in today's marketplace except when it comes to these Promise Collection books.

Well, there's the Chinatown Collection that's still waiting in the wings to make its appearance in the marketplace after all these long long years.

It's meant to catch those buyers who truly believe that CGC grading is an exact science and can be measured accurately right down to the infinitesimal fraction of a decimal point. Then again, even though the CGC 9.6 copy sold for a seeming whopping $6,600; it should be noted that this was still $600 less than the 9.6 copy that sold for $7,200 back in January of 2022. So, I would say that the winner of the CGC 9.4 copy in the weekly auction got themself a steal of a deal at only $900.

I think this was the adage that Nicolas Cage lived by. That is, until he met up with an immovable force, namely Lisa Marie, and apparently had to turf all of his collectibles and cars to try to keep her happy.

If this is the case, then what's your feeling on the CL auction of the single highest 8.5 graded copy of Mask 2 for $118.7K back in June of 2022?

Wasn't the CGC 7.0 copy already in preview before the 8.0 copy got placed into the auction later? Either way, both consignors with the help of Heritage made a dumb move as both copies probably sold for huge double digit percentages below what they would otherwise have sold for. Well, the way I see it is that Heritage tossed two almost equally big gorillas into the same ring and asked them to fight it out, with the end result that they both beat the out of each other by the time it was all said and done. What was your expected price point for the Bat 1 in CGC 7.0 since it looks like the last one in that grade sold for $334.6K back in 2018 which was quite a few lifetimes ago? So, if you say the current market value for a Bat 1 in 7.0 was $1M or a threshold which it has never yet hit, then that means it sold at a 34% discount to what it should have sold for. Now, if you take the Fantast 8.0 sale at $1.11M, then this represents a discount of almost 25% to the Goldin sale of $1.476 for the Larson 8.0 copy back in September of 2021 and also a 44.5% discount to the supposed $2M buyout on Rally Road (if it ever got consumated) for this same Larson 8.0 copy back in January of this year. So, who got clubbed worst in the end........................was it the 7.0 gorilla or was it the 8.0 gorilla?

Totally expected and no real surprise, especially considering that ComicLink was able to auctioned off the single highest 8.5 graded copy of Mask 2 for $118,700 back in June of 2022.

Wasn't the CGC 7.0 copy already in preview before the 8.0 copy got placed into the auction later? Either way, both consignors with the help of Heritage made a dumb move as both copies probably sold for huge double digit percentages below what they would otherwise have sold for.

As expected Not really as I had actually expected it to sell for EVEN LOWER than this still huge $360K amount.

As I had stated when I saw the placement of the Bat 1 8.0 copy into the same auction after a Bat 1 was already in there............clearly a "dumb as nails" placement move by Heritage to put 2 copies so close together in grade into the amauction as that will only end up hurting the final uaction result for both copies. Although the 7.0 Bat 1 underpeformed, it certainly looks like the 8.0 Bat 1 also underperformed to a huge degree. Especially since CC was able to auctioned off an equivalent 8.0 graded copy for over $1.2M back in 2021 which was then followed up by the Larson 8.0 graded copy selling for $1.476M at Golding later that year, with this same Larson 8.0 copy then supposedly receiving a buyout offer of $2M on Rally Road back in January of this year.

From what Harley had, was it mostly SA and up, or were there also some GA that did not go to auction and available for collectors to buy?

Was that the one with the dad who's comic collecting obsession ruined the family? And there was a midgrade Superman 1 in the mix, if I'm not mistaken. Didn't realize he had multiples of high grade bronze. Much more than that as he has 5 copies of FF 1 nd 13 copies of GSXM 1 (albeit probably not all in CGC 9.8) and a handful of Ghost Rider 1 plus a few GA nuggests:

I imagine probably the best one out of these in terms of the GA assembled collections would be BZ's collection as that covers the early time period starting from the late 30's.

Just starting to go through the lots for this week's Heritage Signature Auction and noticed this copy of Mystery Men 9 on Saturday: https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/superhero/mystery-men-comics-9-fox-1940-cgc-vg-fn-50-cream-to-off-white-pages/a/7339-94140.s?ic16=ViewItem-BrowseTabs-Auction-Open-BrowseAlsoViewed-012417 Read the listing description and was rather shocked that there's only 2 higher graded copies of this book slabbed to date, with the highest graded being Jon Berk's former Church copy at a grade of only CGC 9.0 with the second highest being a CGC 8.0.

A water clean will remove sizing and that is not reversible. You can add sizing back on, but it will never look like it originally did. Washing a book is not like washing a car. And yet it sounds as though they've changed aqueous cleaning from Restoration to Conservation when they updated their definition of Restoration back in the summer of 2014. So, I guess they are saying that Mark Wilson was indeed correct when he used to say that his aqueous cleaning of books back in the day was indeed NOT restoration.

Looks like you answered your own question here as the visual appearance of this copy here is clearly superior relative to its assigned CGC 1.5 grade. As for the Brittle Pages, I believe that is referring to the PQ (i.e. Page Quality) of the book and not so much the "structure" of the book. Clearly, the fugly miswrap takes away from the appearance, but this would definitely bother me a whole lot more on a CGC 9.6 or 9.8 graded copy of a book which we have sadly seen, and not so much on a CGC 1.5 graded copy of a book.

If you really think about it, speculators are buyers who speculate on what other speculators are possibly speculating on. And from that point of view, these are usually the types of books that have short term spikes, but don't have the legs to stay up there or continue to move up going forward.

Or is it possible that buyers have caught onto the fact that if books are relying on movie hype to boost up their prices, this is almost always only a short term spike and the prices generally falls right back down after the event has taken place and the hype has moved onto the next event?

EXACTLY!!!

Exactly why the census count on so many of these later non mainstream titles and non-super heroes books were so low that it was easy for Heritage to make their over hyped Promise that 75% of the collection would turn out to be the highest graded copy in existence. Especially if collectors even had equally HG copies in their own collection, they wouldn't have bother to get their own copies graded in the first place thinking it was not a worthwhile process to go through.

Oh, wow......................I am actually stunned and totally shocked that this all-time classic cover book with the "can't take your eyes off the cover" artwork didn't sell for more on its second go round: As for the Promise re-offerings on Heritage this past Sunday, it appears that you missed a couple of them here: https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/MR.-tracy-monthly-12-the-promise-collection-pedigree-dell-1948-cgc-nm-92-off-white-to-white-pages/a/122313-17089.s?ic4=ListView-ShortDescription-071515 MR. Tracy #12 CGC 9.2 sold for $456 as compared to $1,020 in October of 2022 for a percentage loss of >55%; and https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/li-l-abner-70-the-promise-collection-pedigree-toby-press-1949-cgc-vf-nm-90-off-white-to-white-pages/a/122313-17164.s?ic4=ListView-ShortDescription-071515 Li'l Abner #70 CGC 9.0 sold for only $192 as compared to $780 in October of 2022 for a percentage loss of >75%.

Well, how about if I see your 3-step mid-grade incremental upgrade and raise you a 4-step HG incremental upgrade: https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/crackajack-funnies-9-file-copy-dell-1939-cgc-vf-nm-90-off-white-pages/a/830-91039.s?ic4=ListView-ShortDescription-071515 https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/crackajack-funnies-9-file-copy-dell-1939-cgc-nm-96-off-white-to-white-pages/a/7192-92063.s?ic4=ListView-ShortDescription-071515 https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/crackajack-funnies-9-file-copy-dell-1939-cgc-nm-mt-98-off-white-to-white-pages/a/40208-81046.s?ic4=ListView-ShortDescription-071515 To each their own, but guess it made sense for the buyers to pay more than double for the 9.6 as compared to the 9.0, and then to pay more than double again for the 9.8 as compared to the 9.6, even though in all cases they were THE EXACT SAME COPY of the book. Especially since grading is still really more of a subjective opinion (albeit a so-called expert one) at the time a book crosses a graders table as clearly evident by this copy of Crackajack Funnies 9 here. Interesting to note that the 2 defects as detailed in the Graders Notes for the CGC 9.0 graded copy is still visually evident on the CGC 9.8 graded copy of the book. Then again, on the other hand, grading could also be based upon the current business agenda of the day as evident by the Promise Collection submitted by Heritage. Especially since we've now seen over a hundred of them come back to market, and surprise, surprise, nobody save for Ritter (with only the one successful upgrade to date) dares even to resubmit these books for a potential upgrade in this day and age where it's all about the CPR game, save I guess for the grading of the Promise Collection.