lou_fine

A year or so ago, I would never have even conceived of paying six figures for a book that's primarily notable for its cover. But then Suspense 3 broke the $100K barrier, then the $200K barrier, the Fantastic 3 similarly broke the $200k barrier, and most startlingly (pun intended), the Startling 49, which is not a rare book in any way, even in high grade, broke $100K. So I figured I had to raise my game. Fortunately, the rest of the world didn't share my level of interest and let me walk it in from half court. I believe that most knowledgeable collectors share your interest with respect to the Mystery Men 3 cover. Unlike the Suspense 3 cover and the Startling 49 cover (which btw. I personally don't really find to be that special ) which are deemed by most collectors to be unique and special, Fine just has so many other covers that are deemed to be classic and outstanding in their own right, besides just the MM 3 cover. As a result, I believe that many collectors simply have their own favorite Fine cover that they love, whether that be the Wonderworld 7, the Fantastic 3, or other less acclaimed ones, but almost just as awesome such as National 7, Science 1/2/3, or Hit 1/5. I believe this wealth of classic and beautiful covers by the same one great artist serves to spread the collector interest and demand (i.e. dollar values) between these various books as opposed to having all the interest focused in on just one book, with the possible exception of the Fantastic 3. In terms of classic covers by Fine, I find that his superb cover for Jumbo 11 is in pretty much the same league as most of his other above more commonly acknowledged classic covers. Yet it still seems to be very much underappreciated by many collectors, and in fact, is still not even broken out in the Overstreet guide. Go figure that one.

Probably a combination of both as their GA selection was rather weak on this go round, especially in relationship to the Berk Auction which we were all so spoiled with, in terms of the beautiful and truly HTF once in a lifetime books that were available.

I expect it will do a fair sight better than the $12,650 it got last time, the consignor is in for a nice payday. This one must have been a last minute addition just before their consignment deadline of noon today, since there were no Fantastic Comics books listed at all for this upcoming auction as of last night.

Oh, come on now.........we all know exactly what that means. Higher admission fees for the attendees to get in just to see more dealers with the same usual books.

+1 I agree that the small handful of people who brought these AF 15's at recent record setting prices will certainly not want to let them go at substantially lower prices. The only problem is that the dozens and dozens of collectors who brought their copies at substantially lower prices years ago will be more than willing to sell their copies at huge profit margins once they see the AF 15 market start to take a downward turn. They are the ones who will see this as a signal to cash in their paper profits and convert them into real life dollars.

Unfortunately, you are dead wrong here. The FF 52 train has indeed left the station, except that it is heading back in the direction which it started from. I am quite sure it won't get back to where it started from, but probably still quite a bit from the furthest point it was able to reach

You most definitely did on the FPS 7, although I guess the Moderate Restoration rating probably made a few collectors gun shy on the book. As for Star 3, I prefer that cover much better than I do as compared to the cover image on the one for FPS 7. Now, that must be quite a nice CGC 6.5 graded copy that you have there. Guess I'll have to wait until you get there since you are still back on the "L's" right now.

You are right on the ball here. Yes indeed, as I did mis-typed and really meant Green Mask 8. My bad and now corrected.

I'm not sure what sort of math you are using. Well, since the Green Mask #9 has only 1 unrestored copy on the census, and the Green Mask #8 has zero unrestored copies on the census, then this means it has one less unrestored copy as compared to the Green Mask 8: https://www.cgccomics.com/census/grades_standard.asp?title=Green+Mask&publisher=Fox+Features+Synd.&issue=8&year=1941&issuedate=12%2F41 Although it is indeed the Highest Graded copy as correctly noted in CC's auction description, I see they did not also note that it is also the Lowest Graded copy at the same time. I guess it sold for that big price because this copy is the Only Graded copy (either unrestored or restored) as correctly noted by CC in their auction description. With these high prices, I guess we will find out in short time hopefully whether these books are truly rare or if most collectors just didn't both to send them in for slabbing due to their possible low demand and expected low dollar valuations.

Great story...in this case you can know that the winner would have paid a lot more ...maybe that will make you feel better You are a little late to the party Now, now, Rick........we all can't be as fast on our feet as you. Anyways, if Jon had had the Church copy of its Centaur "sister" book, namely Funny Picture Stories 7 which is supposedly also rare and in NM condition according to Chuck, would it have also have gone in the same monetarily impressive fiscally irresponsible ballpark as the Star Comics 3? Or is the Star Comics 3 really an one-off and a truly unique book in the eyes of these collectors?

Many looked very, very fine. And some of them looked very minty fresh.

Word. I know that some results are shocking, but this was a shocking selection of books. No one should really be shocked by the shockingness. As I have posted here right from the beginning back in March when the news first came out, this is a generational auction and indeed an once in a lifetime opportunity for collectors to finally obtain some true HTF books that have not been available in the marketplace for decades. And as Vinnie said in the Scoop newsletter today, this auction attracted "old school super-fans who haven't been active in decades", especially in my case when it comes to bidding in auctions. Yes indeed, a lot of the results at first blush may indeed appear to rather shocking, but if you look at the true rarity of some of the books themselves and how often they come to market, if ever, or at the condition and pedigree of some of them, it's really not that shocking at all. As I have already said, if I had known what I knew heading into the final days of the auction, I definitely would have place higher bids on books such as some of the early Amazing Mystery Funnies which I had missed on the first day amongst others, even though the final prices realized were already extremely high. Of course, it still doesn't mean that I would have won them in the end. Another example were the Church copies of Wonderworld 7 and Mystery Men 3 going for $66K and $57K respectively. Although the prices may appear to be high and a bit shocking to some, are they really since these are the best copies of the books to date from the acknowledged top pedigree in our hobby and will most likely never be beat. If you gave me a choice between these 2 books and the 19th rank graded unrestored copy of 'Tec 29 and the 28th rank graded unrestored copy of 'Tec 38 which sold for $66K and just over $54K respectively back in March, I know which which 2 I would go for. Especially when there are also a further 23 and 42 restored copies respectively for 'Tec 29 and 'Tec 38 that graded higher than the copies sold in March. Of course, both of those much in-demand books appeared much nicer than their assigned 3.0 grades, but that's another story I guess.

I was responding to your post on the subject! Well, of course it's present company included. At least I was trying be a bit more lighthearted about the situation by talking about claiming offsetting taxable losses for disposing of our drek comic books that we've all accumulated over the years.

I also believe that the higher perceived value for Green Mask 1 encourages more of the collectors to slab this issue as opposed to the much lower valued later issues. I guess the price for the Church copy of Green Mask #1 #8 would have probably sold for even more than this copy since it is both an earlier issue and also has one less unrestored copy on the census as compared to Green Mask 9.

Is this really the going rate for a copy of Green Mask #9: http://www.comicconnect.com/bookDetail.php?referral=EAlist&id=712348&title=GREENMASK, THE Interesting to note that it sold for even more than the highest graded CGC 9.2 Church copy of Green Mask #1 back in 2014 in one of their Heritage auctions.

Oh, come on, you party poopers! Why do you take such a fun thread as Jon's amazing once in a lifetime comic book collection and turn it into a depressing discussion on taxes.

I only found out from Allan that Ferd was there when he mentioned to Magik and myself that some dealer from Winnipeg named Ferd had a slabbed CGC 6.0 copy of AF 15 at his table. Unfortunately, it had Marvel chipping pretty well all the way down the right edge and was certainly nowhere near as nice a presenting copy as CC's 5.0 graded copy which they was able to auction off for a record $57K back in March. It looks like the market for AF 15's are based so much more upon its overall appearance relative to its assigned grade, as opposed to just the CGC grade itself. In terms of your GA book, best of luck in finding it. I guess the DC and Atlas one should be a lot easier to obtain since they tend to be out there, as opposed to the Archie's (especially the really early ones) which are much tougher to find.

Did you happen to catch the price of the PL 18 by any chance, since I only took a quick cursory glance at it? Still, it was certainly nice to see Ferd again and talk about some of the old times after not seeing him for more than 20 years.

The Zips went nuts, That's only because "Z" is the last letter in the alphabet and whoever still had money left over from hoping to win subsequent lots suddenly realized there were no more books to come after that. Unless you wanted to chase after a copy of Zoom Comics instead. So, nothing else to throw your money at except for the Zips since this was your last chance to get a book from Jon Berk's Collection.

I'm guessing he's still paying 10% +1 Lot of tax to pay I assume on that amount. I imagine he kept good records of his purchases, but that would appear to be a lot of paperwork to plow through. I would not be so sure about that, especially when you are probably talking about 30 years ago and at a time when most of these books were substantially and possibly deemed not to have significant real dollar value at the time. It's much more important to keep good records of all of your newsstand and drek books which still have no real monetary value after all this time, so that you can write them off as a loss to offset some of your capital gains. After all, they would probably be ecstatic that somebody is actually paying them taxes on sale of their funny books, but would not look very favorably on anybody trying to claim a loss on sale of their books.

Well, in that case, did you get a chance to hook up with Ferd then? He had a couple of real nice sharp raw GA books under his table that he apparently has had for over 20 years as they were brought from Geppi and Overstreet after the Diamond Int'l Galleries Grand Opening way back in the mid 90's. I believe one of them was a Phantom Lady 15(??) and another was a drop dead killer copy of another GA book that was being taken out from his personal collection. At least I believe it was a PL 15 since that's what he had mentioned to me and I didn't take a real close look at the book. If it had been a PL 16, 17, or 23, I definitely would have taken a much closer look and would have clearly remembered them.

Negative juice. Meaning consignor gets a cut of the bp Not exactly sure what you mean by negative juice here. For example, with the 10% auction fee for both CC and CL, I know that if a book sells for $100, I will be seeing $90 of that amount. Nice and simple. With Heritage, if a book hammers for $100, the buyer has to pay $119.50 and the auction result also gets posted as a sale at $119.50. Based upon your 12.5% HA auction fee, does this mean that the consignor will be seeing $104.56 (i.e. 87.5% of the $119.50 final price) or will the consignor be receiving only $87.50 (i.e. 87.5% of the $100 hammer price). There is a big difference here because if it is the latter, than that basically means the consignor is paying an auction fee of 26.8% to have their books sold through Heritage as opposed to the straight and simple 10% on CC and CL.

Fantastic 5, 6, and 8 have all been sold publicly IIRC. HA also has Weird 4 & Wonderworld 13 Dan; You are a wealth of information here. Was able to find them all except for the Fantastic 8. Looks like they range in grade from the CGC 5.5 for the Wonderworld 13 up through CGC 9.0 for the Fantastic 6, with a couple of 8.0 and 8.5 sprinkled in between for the Weird 4 and the Fantastic 5 respectively. Very small sampling here, but it looks like they are not quite up to par with the Church and Allentown Fox books from an overall condition grade point of view. Wonder where the rest of the Tom Reilly SF Fox books would be hiding away?

Fantastic 5, 6, and 8 have all been sold publicly IIRC. That's good to know. Any idea if there are any Tom Reilly SF copies for the Mystery Men or Wonderworld runs?

I'm guessing he's still paying 10% best I've seen on heritage is 12.5 and clink pretty firm at 10% too With respect to the 12.5% auction fee charge for Heritage, is this inclusive of the 19.5% Buyer's Premium or are you referring to just the Seller's Premium only?