lou_fine

Looks like Goldman finally selling those amfs he got last year. Do you have a link for the AMF's since the only ones which I could find were the 4 which CL indicates as Sale pending and CC with only the AMF V2#7 with a current bid of $6,850 for the CGC 9.2 graded Atlantic City copy? Which ones would be Goldman's AMF's or am I looking in the wrong place?

my raw Batman 3, 41, and 64 came from him back in the 90s And if I remembered correctly, wasn't he the dealer with the HG Showcase 4 for sale at one time?

I bought it and paid $5700 because I want it. End of analysis. After some sobering second thoughts, this is the real bottom-line as best expressed by rjpb: And as Mitch would have said, you Mannup for a book which you really wanted. And also as Richard said in another post with respect to this auction here: Every time he thought about market value, he ended up losing the book. Bottom-line: You did just fine and congrats on picking up another beautiful book for your collection.

I would try to target some of the harder to find later Fox books, strictly from a relative pricing point of view. And in this respect, I would specifically go after the HTF ones which are not present in either the Church collection or the Larson collection since these ones should be the real tough ones to find, especially if they have less than a handful in the CGC census.

i am the proud owner of 3 allentown early foxes, and am very proud to say that each stayed above the church counterpart on census. that doesn't suck. Although the Larson pedigree has a more comprehensive sampling of the Fox books relative to the Allentowns, I believe their overall condition quality is not as consistently high as the ones from the Allentown and Church pedigree collections. Does anybody have any idea if the Fox books, especially the early ones, are present in the highly acclaimed Tom Reilly / San Francisco Collection?

They were not pressed before the auction. Unfortunately, some of them will most probably now be pressed after the auction.

I wish I had made Tim pay more for his Mystery Men 3 Now, now.......you had your chance, but did not take advantage of it. As Tim has already stated, his max bid was actually a lot higher than what the Church MM 3 actually sold for. I just wished he had told us all before the auction what his max bid was. This way, I am sure that we as his fellow board members would have been more than happy to ensure that his MM 3 received full and its rightful value in the marketplace.

I have to wonder though if the Overstreet value on something is say 1k and the market value is 3k if Overstreet started jumping its value up to the market levels would the market start reacting by raising its values accordingly because they've been "trained" for so long about Overstreets lower values? Would that 3k book now be closer to 6k or 9k because Overstreet is saying its 3k now? I don't think Overstreet has ever been accurate with respects to the FMV going back decades on most things. The only difference today is the gaps in some cases are much larger than before. My personal bet is that this is probably the fastest way to turn a so-called red hot book into a relatively cold book going forward. With the kind of prices that we are talking about for vintage quality comic books in terms of today's marketplace, or even yesterday's marketplace, potential return or capital preservation is bound to be in the minds of most collectors. And in this sense, most purchasers would still prefer to buy a book that is deemed to be undervalued and still have upwards price momentum left going forward. And they would most probably not be interested in books that are deemed to be fully valued, or even worse, overvalued since these books are seen as probably having nowhere to go except down or at best, plateauing indefinitely until the next wave comes in. In this sense, value is often seen in the form of the price guide valuations and it's psychologically good to have guide prices running below real market prices with room for additional years of increases going forward. Definitely not psychologically good for guide prices to be running at or even above real market prices since the first thing to come to mind are stagnating prices or even declining prices in the guide going forward. The classic example which I remember here is in terms of Mystery Men #1 back in the mid-90's when the Fox market was going blazing red hot. Based upon one or two highlight grabbing sales, as far as I can tell, Overstreet increased the price of Mystery Men #1 which was seen as the poster book for Fox at the time by 305% from $2,100 all the way to $8,500 in just one shot. Well, guess what? What was once a red hot book not only cooled down almost immediately, but all of the associated Fox books also cooled off after that. And not only for a short period of time, but for a rather long extended period of time when the heat for these books were definitely extinguished and snuffed out. So, be careful of what you wish for because it could have the exact opposite results of what you were expecting.

It seems Overstreet has always been slow to react to dramatic jumps in market value, taking a more gradual approach. Since we often talk about market values here in relationship to guide values, what exactly do we mean by market value? Are we talking about the final auction prices that all of these books are finishing up at? Especially when many of the final prices for some of these rare and truly HTF books such as the early centaurs are often really being driven up by the final 2 insane bidders (present company definitely included here ) who are determined to win the book at almost any cost. For example, if a book goes up to $1,500 before everybody else drops out and the the final 2 bidders take it up to $2,700. What is the true market price here and which figure should Overstreet go with in terms of his price guide valuation? Is it the final auction price of $2,700 which is 80% above what everybody else was willing to pay? Or should it only be the $1,500 where the rest of the bidders beyond the crazy 2 dropped out? And if it should be the $1,500 price point, how is Overstreet supposed to know this? Even if Overstreet or anybody else is watching this auction very closely, how would they know the point at which everybody else dropped out and it was then just down to the final 2 bidders. The only way you would know is if you were one of the final 2 bidders with the other bidder and personally increasing the bid with every other increment. So, if you was poor old Bob, or whoever else he has doing this job, what price point would you use in determining your price guide valuation for next year? Definitely something higher, but exactly how much higher is appropriate?

It's not even useful as a base for multiples anymore. I can remember when the hobby used such phrases as "double guide book" or "triple guide book" with some regularity, now it's just "throw out the guide". I haven't bought a guide in over a decade, and it's probably pretty useless for most GA, not just hot books. I tend to only be aware of "guide value" from auction listings that include it, including ebay. It seems if a book doesn't sell for well over guide, it's just as likely to sell for well under as it is for close to it's OSPG value. Well, since I am definitely a pre-internet old school type of collector, I still use the Overstreet guide as a base from which to work from, especially when it comes to HTF books such as some of the early centaurs which rarely ever comes to market, if ever. Call me crazy, I guess. Ok, I don't use Overstreet strictly in terms of its absolute guide values for these types of books. What I do is that I use it in terms of "relative multiples" of guide since I still need to have some base to work from. By relative multiples, since the book normally doesn't show up in the marketplace, I look at the multiples to guide that the same book may have sold for in other condition grade levels, if even any other copies have sold at all. In addition, I also look at the multiples to guide that surrounding or similar issues may have sold at based upon previous auctions at Heritage, CC, or wherever. From here, I can then estimate a relative multiple to guide price point that I would feel comfortable with paying for a particular book. One word of warning though, please DO NOT follow this strategy if you really do want to win a book, because as I found out in this auction here, my win rate was extremely low. Now if you are talking about pre-Robin 'Tec books, I am in total agreement with you guys here. There are more than enough auction results here that you should be able to determine a fair market value for a book without relying on the guide. Especially if you use Gator's Price per Point (PPP) strategy which is generally good for most books, except for your entry level copies and your HG copies which very rarely, if ever shows up in the marketplace anyways.

You are definitely right in terms of the Weird 3 going for a more than reasonable price since I was the under bidder on this particular book. I would have certainly gone higher, but made a last minute on the fly decision to try for a couple of the later Wonderworld's instead. Extremely happy to hear though that it was October who managed to pick up the Weird 3 since he is a true Fox aficionado and I couldn't think of anybody better to get this book.

Richard; Actually a very interesting question and definitely one that collectors should be giving some thought to when record setting prices are being paid for most of these books. Anyways, here's my personal take on the situation for what it's worth: As I have stated several times before, this was a generational or unique auction which presented collectors with the opportunity to win some truly HTF books which may not appear in the marketplace for years or possibly even decades to come. As such, my so-called "exit strategy" was also greatly influenced by my "entrance strategy". By this, I meant that I wanted everything, but at the same time, I didn't really truly needed to have anything. Unlike probably most others here, I didn't really need to fill any holes and didn't have any must wins. With so many truly great and HTF books available, this meant that I went hard after several books, but if they went beyond what I was comfortable with, I simply stopped bidding and waited for the next great book to come along. Although a proactive approach to making the exit strategy a lot easier, it also meant losing out on most of my bids, but I didn't have areal problem with that as I was expecting that to be the likely scenario in most cases for me. To tell you the truth though, knowing what I know now, I probably would have bidded more on some of the earlier lots at the beginning of the week instead of holding back on some of my money for subsequent lots which I didn't end up winning. The other part of the exit strategy is that I am a long term collector. As such, the exit strategy becomes much simpler because I do not need to worry so much about timing the marketplace, as opposed to simply spending time in the marketplace. Investors and speculators certainly needs to worry about buying and selling at the right time and at the right price points in order to make money, while long term collectors need not worry so much about this because time will just take care of your exit strategy. So Richard, in this last part, I believe you have absolutely nothing to worry about since I know you keep your treasured books for an extended long period of time. BTW: I am sure if you ask Jon Berk today, it looks like he didn't have much problems with his "exit strategy" in the end.

Yes and especially if you consider the extraordinary range of his collecting. To the original poster: Yes indeed, as I believe virtually all of the top collections are still sitting in private collections in their raw and unslabbed state, until it comes time to sell.

Just for my own peace of mind. Of the books I've chosen to slab, I'm not pressing the vast majority of them because the lengthy CCS delay and high cost is really off-putting. Besides, when give a choice I actually prefer books in their natural state (as crazy as that may sound). Always a good thing to have peace of mind. Should it take only a few weeks and cost only about $15 to get a book pressed, but I am probably the last person anybody should ask with respect to CGC grading and pressing fees. Yes indeed, au naturel is always better than artificially enhanced.

From watching that video, for some reason I got the distinct feeling that Vincent would have said the pre-auction estimate was a certain dollars amount lower than the actual auction total, regardless of what the actual results were going to be. Especially when he started to talk about the rather conservative pre-auction estimates for both the Action 1 and the 'Tec 27.

Wow, absolutely surprised that you are finally having your Larson copy of Mystery Men 10 graded? Does this mean that you are actually thinking of selling it or just having it graded and checked for restoration for your own information purposes? Although CGC may not be kind to the Larson books, I hope you do realize that they are extremely harsh on unpressed books because this means that you are hurting their bottom-line because you have not presented them with the opportunity to maximize their revenue dollars on your book.

Views? Where's Mitch when we really need him.

Forgot to comment on this wonderful post from last week. This is by far the absolute best story I have read on the boards here with respect to the Jon Berk auction. Reading it just felt like a descriptive play by play and made me feel like I was right there sitting with him as he was bidding on the book here. It should be pointed out that I also threw in some bids on this book here, but dropped out well before it hit anywhere close to the finish. To the original poster, as Adam has already pointed out, it's quite possible that this book could come around again, but I somehow highly doubt it. Since you seem to like the cover theme and the apparent extreme rarity of this particular book, I guess the other option is to hope that the Church copy of Funny Picture Stories #7 will also come to market in the near future. After all, the FPS 7 is also a black racial theme cover and similar to the Star 3, has also been identified in the Overstreet guide as being Rare. Not sure why Overstreet would denote these 2 particular books as being Rare, when it actual fact, a lot of the early Centaurs are deemed to be extremely rare. Since the Church copy of Funny Picture Stories #7 was also graded by Chuck as being in NM condition, let's hope it's also a similar killer copy whenever it does comes to market.

Anybody else that was shocked, or was it just me, at this sale of the raw F/VF Mystery Men #11 for the very strong price of $5,700: http://www.comicconnect.com/bookDetail.php?referral=EAlist&id=713207&title=MYSTERYMEN COMICS It ended up selling for $5,700 or at a multiple of over 7.2X condition price, while all of the other CGC graded copies surrounding it sold for substantially lower price multiples except for the MM #10 issue. Especially surprising was the fact that all of the other copies were well into their 9's in terms of condition, as almost all of them were higher than the 9.2 top of guide condition range. Is this a sign that collectors now think that Metro under grades their books and this copy will come back from CGC at a higher than 7.0 grade? Don't think this will happen because of the 2 big spine splits as noted by CC in their auction description. This combined with the fact that this issue was listed by Chuck as being in only Fine condition in his original MH catalogue, whereas every other issue in the entire Church MM run was listed as being in either NM or NM+ condition. Or is it possible that MM 11 is now seen by some collectors as the poor man's cover version of the seemingly more classic cover for MM 10? Any bets that the buyer of the CGC 9.0 Allentown Mystery Men 10 from 2005 must be absolutely ecstatic with this sales result. Especially since this 9.0 grade is still the highest grade achieved after all of these long years. Although I am still not sure if a CGC 9.0 graded copy would be able to beat the $5,700 price mark of a raw F/VF copy due to the Church pedigree coupled with the Berk "berserkness", even though it probably should.

Rick; If they are young beautiful girls coming in scantily clad clothing, I very strongly doubt the first thing in your mind are dollar signs.

Nowhere near my friend, sorry. For that, the BIG 3 would have had to be blue. I think GAtor's estimate might come close though. My estimate was on comic book sales only, forgot the art part. Ok, you guys are right since I may have been a bit overly enthusiastic about these auction results. But it will definitely be much higher than the BW total of $3.5M and I could see it even getting into the $6M to $7M range without too much problems at all. Especially when you consider that the 3 big Fox runs along with the Action 1 and the 'Tec 27 alone accounts for over $2M just on its own. By adding in a few of the Centaur runs, the Fox Science run, the Silver Streak run, the remaining Action and 'Tec books, the 2 Cap's and Subby 11, along with the first 40 pieces of OA already identified earlier by Adam, coupled with another 4 pieces of OA noted by Scoop in their weekly newsletter, you are already over the BW $3.5M total just for these lots alone. Now, it's up to you guys to add in the rest of the over 2,650 additional lots still to go in order to come up with an estimated grand total for this auction. Or just leave it up to the boys at Metro and CC as I am sure they will want to hype these auction results to the max.

My question is why would having a lack of participation get you nervous? I wish there was a lack of participation on the books I was bidding on. That would have made me giddy and emboldened me with the possibility that I would actually win. I believe he is talking from the point of view that after a certain point, it is clearly only himself and one other bidder that is going after the book. There is no other third person or more that is coming in to raised the bids. I clearly got that feeling when I went after some of the rare and HTF Centaur books. Especially with some of the non-high grade copies which had less than a handful of copies on the census. For example, once the book hit something like $1,500 or already at multiples to condition guide, it was crystal clear to me that every other increment after that was being done by myself with no other bidder coming in besides just that one single competing bidder. So, raising it by another $1,000 just to win it at $2,500 or more does not meant that is the new current market value. The new market value might only be $1,500 or at the point where the 3rd bidder dropped out, if you happen to resell the book in the near future.

I think all bondage covers have been strong lately but those are especially strong. Yes, but still not as strong as the CGC 8.0 graded non-pedigree copy of Zip 34 with the bondage and hanging cover which has a condition guide price of only $909, but yet was able to sell for a whopping $6,800 in this auction here.

So all of these books were there in the Diamond Vault sale? Alas, back in 1995 I was a 2nd year associate at a law firm and $4883 was less affordable to me at the time than $75K today. That is why my personal answer to Tim would have been Yes and No. I believe there were a lot of side deals that were talked about prior to the Opening and then finalized or agreed upon during that weekend. After all, it was Super Bowl weekend and apparently some of the new big money players of the day such as Kramer and the likes made the mistake of going down South to the game instead of attending the Opening. Side deals in terms of certain books being set aside for attendees for their first right of refusal in order to encourage them to come for the grand opening. So, it would be a definite No in terms of the regular attendees such as myself since I did not see any of the Church Mystery Men run. And yet every single one of them ended up being listed by Snyder as being part of the Diamond International Galleries (DIG) sale. Not so for the Fantastic or Wonderworld Church runs which were probably acquired by Jon either prior to or after the DIG sale. Although a man of Tim's wits and smarts could probably charm the pants off both Geppi & Snyder and be able to acquire any run that he wanted. If not that, then with Tim's luck I am sure he would have been the lucky attendee to have been given the box with the Fox Allentown books in them during the Saturday morning feeding frenzy. That wouldn't have been a bad consolation prize since that is about the only pedigree that might stand a chance against the Church Fox books in terms of overall condition. The only other one that might stand a chance would be the Larson Fox books since it is a much more comprehensive collection than the Allentown Fox books. After all, without doing any real research, if there was a head to head competition between the Church and Allentown pedigrees in terms of the Fox books, I am aware of 8 Fox books which have been graded from both pedigrees so far. Based upon these 8 books, the Church copy is ahead on one, with another one in equivalent grade, and then the Allentowns ahead in the remaining 6 books. I am sure there must be more than just these 8 by now since I am primarily working off a 2006 preliminary article on the Allentown books which was written for the never to be published Pedigree Book. For Tim, he should take comfort in the fact that his Church copy of MM 3 is the only book that finished ahead of its corresponding Allentown Fox copy that I am aware of.

Tim; Hope you had a fantastic Happy Father's Day with you lovely wife and beautiful daughter. Anyways, seeing these 4 dead drop killer books reminded me of something: Instead of participating in this generational and historic online global auction event and paying a shade over $75K for these 4 not to be beat books, if you had attended the greatest event in comic collecting world history, you would have had to find loose pocket change of only $4,883 to obtain these exact same 4 books. Seriously though, congrats again on your stupendous purchases.