lou_fine

I've probably only upgraded 15 or so, 5 to 6 of which have just been posted or to be posted. So not as many as one would think needing to be posted. But I will You never know for sure. Shall we wait until this coming Thursday afternoon to see if your count goes up any?

Sounds reasonable! Since you always seem to be in the process of upgrading these Centaurs, this thread could go on forever longer then.

Boy, even though it's still early, you don't kid around when you say you are targeting just one, as that particular one has more than double in price since you pointed it out to us here just yesterday.

Oh, great. Now I'll I have to win three or four just so they'll know I'm honest. Oh no.......then that means I also have to win 3 or 4 of them in order to avoid being thrown into the clinker.

I will have a market report for next years issue. You sound pretty confident about being able to put one out for next year since we still have another 5 months to go before year end. Or is it because you are already pretty well into it based upon the active market we've had so far this year? Either way, looking forward to seeing it in next year's guide. I guess that little shout out that Bob gave to you on Page 95 of this year's guide was just a little teaser to us for what's coming next year then.

Yes, I still remembered getting a newsletter from Metro with a list of their Most Wanted a couple of years ago. Besides the usual GA keys that they were looking for in all grades like 'Tec 29/31/35, Pep 22, Archie 1, Bat 1, the only other 4 "lesser known" GA books they were looking for in all grades were Master 27, Ace 11, Fantastic 3, and Bill Barnes 7. Maybe he's trying to stockpile all 4 of these GA books?

Rick; Since you seem to have so much free time to spend with us and to share your knowledge, is there any reason why you do not bother to do up a merket report for the Overstreet price guide? Or do you think it might simply be a waste of time since they might just end up losing yours like they did a few years ago?

It's been a little while since I followed the market on this book, but the gulf was something like $600 for a 9.8 and $100 for a 9.6. That's too bad as I have a few copies which I cherry picked off the shelves of the various LCS's when they first hit the stores. Definitely very difficult to find a flawless copy given the solid black cover, if I remember correctly as I had to go through a ton of them to get my copies. Doesn't sound like they are slab worthy though since I always like to knock CGC grades down by at least a notch or so, just from a grading margin error point of view. Oh well, maybe I have to wait another decade or so for them to be really worth something.

Thank you! I was aware of Sgt. Rock, but not his significance. I never pieced together the artist either. +1 And an almost impossible book to find in grade, with the CGC census population report indicating only 1 highest graded copy at CGC 9.0 with all other graded copies at CGC 8.0 and below.

I agree - the most Centaurs I've seen available (purchase or auction) that I can remember. Well, how about we all come up with a collector's agreement that we all uniquely target just one of these Centaurs then. Unless the authorities are watching of course, then we never had this conversation at all.

the guy in allentown liked it okay. the guy on the bayou does, too. A real beauty here, and an Allentown to boot. Well, it looks like you was lucky to be able to snag a real winner in this pedigree copy at a steal of a price when the Fox books were going through their decades plus extended period of deep freeze. Perfect timing, I might say. A highest graded copy still to date at CGC 9.0 VF/NM and one that will probably stay that way going forward. Especially since there is no Larson copy out there and the Church copy is most likely only in the Fine range (well, Chuck had it there anyways) or thereabouts due to the spine splits. Unless there's another pedigree copy out there that we don't know about, I pretty much doubt we will see anything better than this CGC 9.0 copy unless one of the lower graded copies decides to give itself a loveable squeeze of massive proportion, assuming that hasn't been tried already.

+1 Definitely very much the case since I had been searching for one way back in the day, but never ever lucky enough to come across one in the wild.

Especially when it's almost been like a relative "feast" out there for these Centaurs recently, when compared to other years when it's been like an extended famine. Especially with almost the full slate of Centaur offerings from the recent Jon Berk Auction and then the rather pricey ones from Michael Goldman at the SDCC just a couple of weeks ago.

Is that code for "Rick will exercise restraint" Especially when one of them is touching on $10K already, which to me indicates that the market might be getting a bit tippy up here. Especially with the Centaurs which certainly does have the high demand, but that demand is not necessarily spread very wide.

Lamont hated the cover on MM 11. Since the Oriental villains all looked similar to Lamont, he simply thought he already had a copy of the book when it was really that inferior drawn copy of MM 10 that he was actually thinking about. Why anybody in the world would want a copy of MM 10 when they could have a copy of MM 11 is beyond me.

Martin was correct with the $30 figure for Batman 635 in 9.2 NM- grade as it looks like old slow Bob finally got around to breaking out this book from its grouping where it was simply lumped in with Bats 634 - 638 at only $3 a pop. Bob's usual MO is to break out a book from its larger grouping with some minor increase to show that it has now been segregated. He then piles on the valuation increases for the next few years until he gets it much closer to market value. Well, at least that's what he does with breaking out GA books, not so sure about his technique for the more recent BA and CA books.

That's really unfortunate about the clipped coupon, but I am sure the book must be an absolute stunner other than that. Yes, I would agree that MM 7 is tougher than MM 11 in grade, although I do believe there is no Larson copy for the MM 11.

Not mine. Just little opening bid so when live bidding comes up I'm ready With some of the bids where they already are, there's a high probability that they will be well past most collector's price range by the time the live bidding starts. Well, looks like the bidding for virtually all of these Centaurs have pretty much come to a dead stop for more than a week now. I guess everybody's got their tracking bids in and just waiting on the bell to ring for the final lap and then watch the deep pockets come out as they turn the final corner heading for home.

Only relevance is that Wizard always attempted to keep up with prices on the current hot books of the day which sounds like what you was looking for in terms of a price guide. As you have correctly pointed out, however, it is actually not possible for a printed format of a price guide to ever be right on top of current actual prices in the marketplace.

Then you should give some thought to having your Larson copy of MM 7 graded. I believe this plus the MM 11 are both relatively tough to find in terms of the early Mystery Men run. Especially with respect to finding MM 7 in grade, as I believe the Church copy was only a CGC 8.0 graded copy and one of the only Church MM's to finished out of the 9's in terms of grading.

Steve; Not sure if it's just the lighting or the angle, but the colors on your Larson copy seems to "pop" a lot more than the colors on the Church copy. Congrats on another absolutely gorgeous eye-popping winner for sure! Would you happen to have one of those Mystery Men 7 or 8 wrapped in a Larson that's coming up?

This is way too broad of a statement for whether a book is common or not since almost every single back issue that is more than a few years old would most likely be absent from many comic shop bins. Especially when a large number of comic shops don't really even carry collectible back issues anymore.

Are you sure about that because I thought it was always...........Buy on rumors, sell on the actual news. Historically, haven't prices always gone up prior to the actual release of the movie and then a big drop after the movie comes out.

I sold both my Solar #10 CGC 9.8's at auction this week. What kind of prices are the 9.8 graded copies going for in today's marketplace, as opposed to the 9.4 and 9.6 graded copies?

We still pay duty on comic books. You can have the sender mark books as the duty rate is lower on books than comics - go figure. Just noticed my FedEx receipt that I received a month ago from Metro with the books that I won from the Jon Berk auction. Invoice description was marked as "Used Comic Books" and Customs Duty was calculated as $0.00, but had to pay only the 5% GST tax plus an additional $10.00 handling or processing fee. Hence, as I said earlier, Custom duties no longer applies to comic books shipped from the USA into Canada and has been that way for awhile now.