lou_fine

I'm really not getting all this talk about CGC undergrading books. Admittedly it's a small sample size, but the grades for the two books I've received so far from the Berk auction appear to be on target, +/- a half point. I know I sound like a shill for CGC, but I don't really see why CGC would consciously assign lower grades to the books. Such a strategy undermines the whole point of CGC, which is to provide an "objective" assessment of the quality of the book. Assuming that the dealers (I love the dealers!) have a better handle on how to grade unpressed books just seems non-sensical, for numerous reasons. Can one possibly imagine that Worldwide would have assigned a deslabbed Berk book a lower grade? The idea that a CGC 0.5 Poor can be turned into to a raw Qualified Fine just sounds like so much hocus pocus. I suppose I've got the late-nite grumps. No worries as it's just like hocus pocus when you say the magic word: Abracadabra http://www.comicconnect.com/bookDetail.php?referral=EAlist&id=716330&title=ALLSELECT COMICS http://www.wwcomics.com/comicdetail.asp?Product_ID=AllSelectComics_4_58197 Seriously though, as you can see, Worldwide must have simply deslabbed the book and used their "magic" to maximize the potential on this particular book here. It's good to note that Ritter has now gone back in and given the Jon Berk designation back to all of these books which he has deslabbed to resell back into the marketplace and thereby allows collectors to maintain the provenance of the book if they so wish. With respect to CGC's grading, it should be pointed out that I never said that they intentionally undergrade unpressed books. It's more a case of CGC seeing these almost invisible non-color breaking stresses or creases as a significant defect and hence downgrading for them accordingly. Flippers and dealers in the know will happily purchase these books, press out these creases and stress lines, and presto, you have a higher graded copy of the same book since the defects are now no longer there. Since the CGC grading standards are not published and hence not official public knowledge, they are in reality subject to change or fine-tuning at any point in time. With the new grading team now firmly in place since last year, this is probably why books have been presenting better than their assigned grades on a much more frequent basis as compared to before. I personally believe this particular defect in terms of the non-color breaking creases has moved higher up in the CGC Defect Hit Chart when it comes to grading now. But then again, that's just paranoid me.

So, same spot as last year in terms of its #23 ranking. I guess it must still be trailing 'Tec 35 which I feel should probably be the other way around, although I am quite sure that many of the classic cover collectors here will strongly disagree with.

And as some would say, that's why they are also prone to crashing back down to earth or hitting a brick wall, as much as staying on the straight and narrow path upwards.

Rick, What's the thought process and the AA 16 ranking ? +1 Nevertheless, this book is only going to slowly drift down the Top 100 Chart over time.

, if that's the case the 2.5 on cl is a ripoff At $95K for that fugly clearly overgraded 2.5 copy, that is not the real world either.

Patrick 'wholesaled' his Flash #92 for over guide based on eBay trends but about 1/2 of true market value in Nov, 2016. He made enough loot, as he had that GA key in his collection for over 33 years, thus did not feel the Vancouver market would pay any higher. So, it was a Flash 92 because I would have given it some thought if it was a Flash 86 with the beautiful dinosaur cover. Actually, I didn't arrive at the con until around 3:00 and then Harley asked me about the book. I told him that he should get it if he really wanted it since he should be able to make some money on it. He went around the corner to Pat's table and it was already gone as Pat said somebody was willing to pay "full price" for the book when they saw it. You snooze, you loose, as Harley really should have picked it up right away instead of dickering around for a few hours thinking about it.

The Cap 1 doesn't really bother me that much as it's just absolute dollars we are talking about. It's the Cap 3 which he still has valued significantly lower than Cap 2, when everybody in the marketplace (except for poor old Bob himself) knows that Cap 3 has a higher market value than Cap 2 and it has been that way for years now. At least he should get the relative values lined up properly.

But they have talked about the Top 100 Chart and some of its changes in the GA Forum if you would like to mosey on over there.

Did you not say the same thing about the Church copy of Mystery Men 3?

I wonder where I can get one of those? Looks like it might also remove any resto. Well, not only resto as it might do the COMPLETE job and remove the entire comic book itself.

I took a quick look at Overstrret's Top 100 when I was in the LCS today. Although AA 16 is still staying in the #4 spot, it looks Batman 1 has now moved into the Top 5 ahead of Marvel Comics 1. And Mitch is not going to be happy about this, but it looks like Cap 1 dropped 1 spot since Action 7 moved ahead of it into the #7 spot.

Didn't Pat sell a VG copy or thereabouts for something like $1,800 Cdn in the Fan Expo last year, or was it a Flash 92. Either way, it looks like Overstreet has raised the VG unrestored valuation on this book quite aggressively during the past 2 years as it has gone from $628 up to $1,400 and now up to $3,000. Absolutely love this dinosaur cover, but I don't think you can expect conservative Bob to do much more than this 378% in terms of a percentage price increase in just 2 years .

In other words, his "price guide" is inaccurate. Wouldn't this be the same for any price guide or any other pricing tool that is available out there right now? With Overstreet, sometimes it's a matter of reading between the lines and understanding the market dynamics yourself. Same thing you would have to do when using GPA, Heritage archives, or eBay results in order to pull out the relevant useful information. Without Overstreet's conservative and nurturing approach to pricing, my pwn personal feeling is that the comic book market would not have grown to the healthy state that it currently is in. Definitely much better than Wizard's hyper aggressive pricing approach which seem much more like price setting in order to fuel the speculative Modern market which served only to result in a short term boom and bust on comic book prices. Especially embarrassing for them sometimes when they were caught with their pants down by showing hyper high prices on their latest "red hot" chart topping books when some of them were not even published or on the stands yet due to deadline and/or shipping problems.

Yes, of course not, since a lot of the long time old school collectors like Jon and Magik with his current Heritage auction offerings don't really believe in pressing their books. Just take a look at the All-Select 4 which went from CGC 0.5 Poor to a raw Qualified Fine on Worldwide or with the Amazing Man 21 which went from restored with color touch to a scrapped out unrestored and was still able to retain its same Fine - condition grading on Worldwide. No point looking to buy since I believe they are both already resold at pretty much double the Berk CC prices. Goes to show that CGC is extremely punishing when it comes to grading unpressed books as most of Berk's books present much nicer relative to their CGC assigned grades, as confirmed by most board members here who have been pleasantly surprised after receiving their books in the mail.

Almost biblical proportions To some that may have thought the Berk AMF's had gone for almost "highway robbery" prices, it looks like they may seem like an actual steal after the Heritage AMF's are all said and done.

Are you saying that you are following the lead of Chuckles and don't have a New Forces booth set up this year at the SD Con?

The usual suspects You must mean the ones that aren't selling because they are overpriced and really meant for display purposes only. Did Heritage bring any of the AMF Centaurs and do they appear nicer than how they looked from their scans?

There are very few that I saw yesterday. Metro had a 5.0 with marvel chipping, someone had a low grade raw. Only 2 I recall seeing, but not everyone was set up when I walked through Sounds as though most dealers are holding onto their copies for now since they must be expecting prices to continue moving upwards going forward.

I still remember back in the day when the market report was a must and almost immediate read for me. With the boards here and the much more ongoing current information available right here, I still do read the market reports, but they are definitely on the back burner as I find myself slowly and painfully trudging through them as there are well over 100 pages of them now. In fact, I just finished reading the last few ones just a couple of weeks ago, and only just because I wanted to finished reading them all before this year's edition of the guide came out. Maybe Bob himself feels the same way about the market reports now. I remember how it used to be the first thing I read as he used to write a few pages to summarize the overall market. Now, he barely writes one or if we are lucky, two paragraphs and then simply fills in the rest of his report with excerpted sentences or paragraphs from his other advisors. I guess the covers must all be pretty bad this year since I even resorted to getting the Deadpool cover done by Liefeld.

$320 for a 10 cents book Oh, my bad.......looks like it's going to be $382.40 with the juice in there. Hmm.........must consider retracting my bid now. Well, it's still less nickels and dimes as compared to the AMF V2#2 and V2#5 which are already at $4,302 and almost $9K respectively, with still another 20 days to go. With Tim's influence here, I am quite confident that my current high bid of $320 for only a 10 cents book should still hold and be good to go to bring this little baby back home to me.

Suspense 3 is now 7500 G/ 15k VG/ 22.5k F/ 45k VF/77.5k VF/NM and 110k NM- Ultra conservative Bob at work again as he likes to build in many years of future price increases and at the same time, let prices consolidate in order to nurture and grow the market over time with nice steady price increases going forward. Slightly higher percentage price increases at the top end to reflect there has been recent actual sales of this book in those grades.

I guess that's what we are seeing right now with these Amazing Mystery Funnies from both the Berk CC Auction and now in the current Heritage Auction.

A well-deserved move up into the Top 100 for Punch 12 which was listed in guide at only $22K last year. Looks like AA 25 is destined to be dropping out of the Top 100, most likely in next year's edition of the guide. I assume books like World's Best #1, Young Allies #1, or New Fun 2 may possibly have dropped off from the Top 100 on this go round here.

Flash 1 is now 210k in NM-. It is #15 in the Top 100. Flash 1 was listed at $195K last year and finished in the #13 spot on the Top 100. So, it looks like only a 7.7% increase for Flash 1 at top of guide, while Tsp99 says a 50% increase for all other condition grade levels under 9.0. Definitely a significant change in Overstreet's historical pricing valuation model as he used to always show only minor valuation increases in the bottom grades, if even any at all, and then simply widened the spread from Good to NM1 by increasing only the 9.0 and 9.2 condition prices. Although this is definitely applicable for in-demand GA books, not so sure this would apply to later SA books and BA books. Since Flash 1 has been bumped down 2 spots to #15, I would assume the 2 books that moved ahead of it would have been the aforementioned All-Star 8 and 'Tec 29 which were both nipping on Flash's heels at $175K and $185K respectively. I guess the Flash must be slowing down in his old age.

Best idea ever! Since I have been after Amazing Mysteries Funnies V2#4 for the longest while now and I currently have the high bid at $320, it would be greatly appreciated if you could please arrange with all of the other potential bidders not to place any more bids so that I can wing this grail of a book for $320. Please tell all of the other bidders to ignore the last 2 auction results at something approaching $3,600 and $5,400 respectively, since they are no longer relevant due to this new rule we now have in place.