lou_fine

And from the Department of No Surprises: 8 of these books have black covers. 1 has a dark brown cover and 1 has a dark blue cover. Almost makes me wonder if any of these books would hit into the 5 figures if found in 9.8 condition and made available in the marketplace, similar to what happened with the Iron Man 30 which apparently sold for $15K in one of the recent CC auctions.

+1 Yes, indeed!!! And all 3 of these beauties present much nicer than their assigned grades, which is what collectors seem to be willing to step up to the plate and pay for in today's marketplace.

Probably a good time to keep an eye out on all of the Wonder Woman related titles such as Sensation and WW since her solo movie is due out sometime later this year which should help to pour a bit of gas on the fire.

The Church 'Blue Ribbons' I thought were surprisingly quite less than the Peps in the HA Auctions that followed. Not that much of a surprise to me since the Pep run is a higher profile title and definitely has much more demand in the marketplace as compared to the Blue Ribbon run. The MH Hit run is a better comparison to the Peps in terms of desirability. They went for some very strong prices. +1 Now, that's definitely a much more even match with the Pep's and the Hit's in the same ring. Pretty tough to pick between the two of them, but I would probably go for the Hit's myself. Especially with some of the classic Hit covers putting them over the finish line first.

With the keys and classic covers already well pass this target pricing level of $3K to $4K, maybe it's time to switch strategies a bit. With the big name pedigrees coming back into the forefront as of late, look for "relatively cheap" copies of any Edgar Church book that's available in the marketplace. Especially if they are from an established title and hopefully features a well-known super hero character. Don't know if there's any around right now, but I guess it doesn't hurt to try and look.

and now over 50 large. Yes, it looks like the Action's are all in the top spots for now, which was to be expected I guess.

CGC is spot on with this copy as an 8.0. It's not the nicest 8.0 out there, but I've seen 8.0's with less preservation then this copy. If a few recent folks with a recent 7.5's might want to upgrade and may cause a bidding frenzy. Looks like there are quite a few boardies who would not agree with your assessment here. All I can say is that the 8.5 copy graded by the other company in last summer's HA Auction was head and shoulders nicer in appearance than this 8.0 copy, and yet many members here stated that the 8.5 copy was clearly overgraded and should have only graded somewhere in the 7's.

The Church 'Blue Ribbons' I thought were surprisingly quite less than the Peps in the HA Auctions that followed. Not that much of a surprise to me since the Pep run is a higher profile title and definitely has much more demand in the marketplace as compared to the Blue Ribbon run.

Now, that's a sharp looking copy you have there. There are quite a few of the later Funny Pages that I really like, but unfortunately was never lucky enough to have picked one of them up when I was looking for them. And now it's way too late as they have gone past my purchase price point.

I would say close to 100% chance. Which of the Fox runs will you be going after so that we can make sure you pay through the teeth to get these books before they get shipped off to HK? On a more serious note, although it would certainly be fantastic for some of these Church Fox runs to finally be broken up and get into the hands of collectors, it would also be kind of sad to see them not be intact after such a long period of time. After all, I believe some of these Church Fox runs in its almost 80 years of existence have only passed through less than a handful of collectors from Edgar himself to Burrell to Bob to Jon and now finally to whoever wins them in a couple of short months from now.

Any idea if this CGC 8.0 copy was added to the census around the same time that the other Church MM books were added? Just curious that the Church copy of Mystery Men 7 would only grade out as a CGC 8.0 copy since Chuck had it listed in his catalogue as a NM copy. Of course, Chuck might have missed a few minor defects or the book could have incur some defects in the interim. Maybe a 8.0 is going to be as high as we are going to get with this particular issue here.

I would say close to 100% chance. Which of the Fox runs will you be going after so that we can make sure you pay through the teeth to get these books before they get shipped off to HK?

It was long after that. Metro had it on their site a couple of years ago. Well, looks like it's still in its original holder from when I had it sent to CGC back in 2000 to see how their grading would turn out.

Good luck snagging at least a couple I wonder if there's any chance a deep pocket collector is going to come in and try to keep some of these Church Fox runs intact, especially considering that they've been this way for almost the past 80 years ?

Richard; Did you pick up this Allentown copy of Nickel Comics 8 way back in the Greg manning Auction or was it after that?

That 5.0 is an outlier that would sell for a very high GPA. Impressive. Is this the newest strategy for trying to get max dollars on your book? Hope for a slightly lower grade on your book relative to visual eye appeal, then hype it in the marketplace so that it sells for record setting GPA prices or on a price per point basis.

VF, give or take - a real stunner, the thing looked practically brand new (came from an old-timer's small collection, only a handful of books unfortunately). Sounds like a real nice copy as this is apparently one of the real tough ones to find. Especially if you take a look at the CGC census with only 2 copies graded to date so far, and 1 of them being the Berk copy due to hit the auction block in a couple months from now. Any idea what other books were in the old-timer's hand and did he walked them around the various dealers before settling on selling them to Harley?

100% agree. First auction will have more attainable books. I mean there are complete Fox Title runs in it. Exciting. +1 Yes, and probably one of the main reasons why all of the hype won't really be focused on the Berk auction until this upcoming CC auction scheduled to start next Monday is done and out of the way. Will definitely be interested in how some of these Fox books do in terms of whether bidders will be going all out or leave some of the powder dry for the Fox books expected to come out from the Berk Auction.

This was at SDCC and is true - I know all three of the parties involved (original seller, Harley, buyer). I forgot, what was the grade on the book? Was it a VG / Fine or was it Fine / VF or something like that?

3.5x5,000 if it's purdy Yes, but if it's real real purdy and presents much better than its assigned grade, then just give it to CC and they'll be able to hit a home run for you by having it come in from $8K to $10K per point.

I'm with you. Any copy would be a good one for me at this point. When I asked Harley about that price, he said he had paid a lot for the copy and wasn't making much of a profit. Yes, still remember the raw copy of Mystery men 30 that Harley sold for something like $7,500 in one of the cons last summer, and apparently didn't make much money on that one either as he had to pay a lot for it himself.

Yes, but do you have any idea where this book will be in say 5 or 10 years from now? Just curious as to whether this book is a true vintage collectible that continues to appreciate through time in the market, or whether this is nothing more than a speculative gamble where you can win only if you time the market perfectly and get out before it's too late.

Not sure what you guys are talking about as that price for the Ms. Marvel 3 is peanuts compared to what this other Marvel non-key book sold for: http://www.comicconnect.com/bookDetail.php?referral=EAlist&id=689571&title=IRONMAN Now, that's what I would call as an outrageous price for a non-key, but then it's really a case of to each, their own. can you verify that sale? Well, if it is still on their site, I am quite sure that the sale must have gone through. If the sale had not gone through, the auction listing and details would have been removed. I am quite sure this is just another case of somebody buying the label since it is the single highest graded copy of Iron Man 30. We have seen so many of these highest graded copies resulting in some silly dollars being paid, and of course we all know what happens at the end in the long run.

Alright - A one dollar book in a $1210 slab, plus premium, plus postage. Man, some folks have a lot of extra bucks to waste. Not sure what you guys are talking about as that price for the Ms. Marvel 3 is peanuts compared to what this other Marvel non-key book sold for: http://www.comicconnect.com/bookDetail.php?referral=EAlist&id=689571&title=IRONMAN Now, that's what I would call as an outrageous price for a non-key, but then it's really a case of to each, their own.

Well, now that a couple of weeks have gone by since the euphoric days of the amazing (pun fully intended) AF 15 sales on CC, it looks pretty clear that those first 2 sales were indeed outliers. The sales for AF 15's which we have seen so far post CC pretty well brings the AF 15 market back down to a much more reasonable level that Gator had been talking about, as per the following post: As always , one sale does not a market (or trend ) make i would say sub 5.0 af15 are still 5-6k a point avg. always with exceptions (outliers) as we've seen...the 6-7.5 seem to be On the rise 8-10k+....with 8.0 and above exponential with no default