lou_fine

Not real well if I recall. Not that he'd admit it. Pretty sure it was an eBay sale... and as we all know their archives are ?. Note that I corrected where the auctions took place. I initially mistakenly thought they were done in Heritage, but it sounds as though they took place on CC, as per MMM's initial post.

Only Pep 22 has the prepubescent characters. They are teens in Pep 23 and Jackpot 4 Definitely me bad then for not doing the research here. Did try to Google up the Jackpot 4 story before I did this post, but my computer search skills leaves a lot to be desired. Wish I could afford a copy of these books to allow me to readily determine these details. Thanks again for clearing up my mistake so promptly.

That difference Speaks for itself. deeply worrying. Third party grading at its worst. I am quite sure that the new grading team at CGC does not share your opinion on this matter. They are probably working under the misconception that tighter grading is better grading. And being the new team with its new Head Grader in place, I am quite sure that they want to show that they are better graders than the old team. So, this could possibly be another one of the reasons why we have apparent differences such as this and swings between so-called tight grading time periods and loose grading time periods. My take on this is that consistent and accurate grading is better grading, as opposed to tighter grading which could actually lead to undergrading if taken too far. It should be pointed out though that it is never a good idea to try to grade from scans alone, as we are really just talking about eye appeal then. Clearly the Batman 1 wins out here in this particular contest between the 2 books here. Too cheap to buy the Graders' Notes, but I believe the Heritage catalogue has a side scan of the Batman 1 which indicates a spine split on the top going down to the top staple. Big kudos to Heritage for providing this additional scan, but not sure if it warrants a hit all the way down to an overall grade of only VG 3.5 for this otherwise visually appealing copy of Batman 1?

Too lazy to check in my CC emails right now. Does anybody have any idea how MMM did with his Archie listings since it seems he hasn't posted on these boards in almost 2 years now? Just wondering if all of his hard work on detailing the Archie timeline worked to his advantage in the end.

This actually leads me to think of something that I never thought of before. If both Pep 22 and Jackpot 4 are stories involving the prepubescent Archie characters, then this would lead me to think that Jackpot 4 must actually be the 2nd conceived Archie story in the timeline since Pep 23 changes the tone of the story line completely to teenage characters. So, although Jackpot 4 is not the 2nd Archie story to hit the newsstand, it is probably the 2nd conceived Archie story. Similar to how Adventure 40 is now no longer seen as the first published Sandman story, but still seen as the first conceived Sandman story in the DC timeline.

Wonderworld 13 is such a great book (Joe Simon signed cover); the Larson is the 9.2 on the census, fyi. So, I assume the Church copy must then be the 9.4 that is showing up in the CGC Census Population Report. I still remember standing at Harley's booth trying to decide between the Allentown copies of Wonderworld 13 and 14. Looking back at it now, it's quite obvious that I made a mistake by just taking the WW 13 when I should have taken both of them. BTW: I assume you must still have all those nice Larson copies of the early Mystery Men and Wonderworld books.

I'm thinking BILLIONS! Richard; I believe it would have been BILLIONS, except that it looks like his Church copy of Wonderworld 13 still can't beat your Allentown 9.6 copy. So, I guess we back back into only the Millions for Jon's collection. Unless of course, you went and crack your Wonderworld 13 out of its tomb, which would then make Jon's copy the highest graded copy.

+1 Absolutely wonderful green cover with the beautiful multi-colors coming off the waters. Clearly remember going after this one, but was never able to find a nice enough copy at a reasonable for my collection. If I remember correctly, this was how I ended up with a nice copy of Seven Seas 4 as I had to settle for it as a consolation since the dealer did not have a copy of issue 6, which was what I was really after. I guess it worked out for me in the end after all.

Is he still busy packing up some of his book and sending them to CGC for grading as it sounds like he has a ton of books to go though? Especially since the Census Population Report is still not showing high grade copies for quite a few of the Mystery Men and Wonderworld books. Or is CGC also behind in terms of grading this collection? If either of these is the case, I imagine it's going to be hard to get all of the books done up and catlogued in time for the May auction. It's been stated that in the state of New York, you cannot bid in your own auctions. So, I don't see how Fishler will be winning this book, although I am quite sure there are simple legal loopholes to get around this. For example, book auctioned off by CC, book won by Fishler.........two completely different legal entities. BTW: Dwight, if this is you, why don't you merge your old and new board account names?

At the same time, maybe not quite that much as it's quite evident that many of the DC and Timely keys have varying degrees of restoration work done on the books. In addition, it would also appear that some of the runs would be in the form of bound volumes. So, my guess is more than hundreds of thousands of dollars, but most likely also less than $10M dollars. But then, who really knows at this point in time.

Since the consensus seems to be that the $17K price was a bargain, what would a reasonable price be for this book now that we've seen the cover and the restoration details as noted.

this should be done over a one year period is my guess, but I think the very high profile stuff is going to go first in the upcoming auctions +1 Since the article clearly states that he was collecting Spidey right up to the current issue, I doubt that any of this MA drek is going to get anywhere close to CGC for slabbing and individual auction. It would certainly be nice, but clearly it would appear that we are not talking about all 18,000 books being of GA and SA vintage collectible quality here.

Interesting to note that many of the media articles seemingly quotes Jon as expecting the collection to sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more. I think we all know better than that, as a few of the items by themselves alone could possibly go for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Good news is the market will determine value regardless, so kind of just splitting hairs in a label I still remember the good old days or were they the bad old days now when restoration was viewed in the marketplace as something that added value to a book. Definitely not the case anymore of course, or is it actually even much more prevalent today and simply hidden under a different name and viewed in today's marketplace as maximization of potential.

Looks like Lasry's 7.0 Conserved copy sold at a relatively low price then: http://www.comicconnect.com/bookDetail.php?referral=EAlist&id=682275&title=ACTIONCOMICS-1938 I believe this is what normally happens when you put a ton of books out there at the same time (over 1,200 in this case) as it's easy for nice books to get loss in the crowd as there are just so many other things to go for at the same time. A big one-time dump makes a big splash, but not necessarily the best way to get top dollars on your books.

That seems to be fairly well known. The real question is who won them! Do you always talk about yourself in the third person?

woowoo; +1 I would agree with you 110% that there is a huge improvement in the book from when Leroy had initially purchased it. But what is becoming clearly obvious by now is that with a different grading team in place since last year, there has also been a significant shift in grading standards and/or in their focus on certain defects. For example, based upon your long-term experience in the hobby, do these 4 books appear to be only in G/VG 3.0 or VG 3.5 condition from your point of view: 1) Detective 1 CGC 3.5 graded copy in the current CC auction (Graded in December of 2016): http://www.comicconnect.com/bookDetail.php?id=697754 2) Detective 29 CGC 3.0 graded copy in the current CC auction (Graded in August of 2016): http://www.comicconnect.com/bookDetail.php?id=684452 3) Detective 38 also CGC 3.0 graded copy in the current CC auction (Graded in July of 2016): http://www.comicconnect.com/bookDetail.php?id=676931 4) Batman 1 CGC CGC 3.5 graded copy in the recent Heritage auction (Graded in June of 2016): https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/batman-1-dc-1940-cgc-vg-35-off-white-pages/a/7158-91008.s?ic4=GalleryView-Thumbnail-071515 Of course, there could be significant technical defects which does not show up on cover scans, but that would be an amazing co-incidence that they would show up on all 4 of these books which have extraordinarily strong visual eye appeal relative to their assigned grades. Or it could be that we are just showing our age as we are so used to the old school definition of condition grading as opposed to the ever shifting new generational definition of the unpublished grading standards used by CGC?

Certainly not as high profile as the Action 1 or the Fantastic 3, but this looks to be a killer copy of what is now recognized as the classic cover in the entire Wonderworld run. Unfortunately, I was never able to find a nice enough copy at a reasonable price to put a copy in my personal collection. My bet is that somebody is going to have to dig mighty deep into their pockets to acquire this book here.

And an accomplishment which you was able to achieve. Very well done, sir!!!

Is that your own personal high grade copy of WW 11 from your personal collection? Now that's a really nice and sharp looking copy you have there. Is it from a pedigree collection or is it just a straight high grade non-pedigree copy? I guess the old time collectors like us still remember when this particular issue was the go to book to get after Wonderworld 3 since it featured the origin of the Flame. Definitely not the case anymore as it has seemingly fallen behind every other issue preceding it, with the origin feature apparently no longer adding any premium to its value.

Holy.... The last three copies went for over $125,000 each?!?!? You guys had me thinking the crash was upon us. I thought you meant the book had sold for under $40K. Just checked CL and the book sold for $95K which means that I read too fast and it sold for $40K under the GPA average. So, I guess the crash is not quite upon us yet.

With all due respect, it appears that Gator would disagree with you on this scarcity issue: Especially since I also own a copy of the "rare" issue #4. But then if we all own a copy of issue #4, then maybe it's as common as dirt.

Leroy; Mission fully accomplished as your current copy is most definitely much nicer after the dry clean and press. Very well done on your part here. Yes, although the 3.0 copy on CC definitely has better eye appeal, it's quite possible that there might be some hidden technical flaws in the book that is not evident with just a scan of the covers. So, it's not necessarily a sure thing that the CC 3.0 copy will go for money than your copy. Although I guess it would be a good thing because it would then mean increasing value in your own copy. Bottom-line is that you got yourself a real winner in "Tec 29 with a ton of upside going forward. After all, it is only the second Batman cover and a book that has been in the shadows of the much more highly acclaimed 'Tec 31, but probably not for much longer. Lou

Is that your own personal high grade copy of WW 11 from your personal collection?

Interesting........this pressed version of the book as shown above definitely looks a lot better, especially along the spine, than in its previous unpressed stage: http://www.comicconnect.com/bookDetail.php?referral=EAlist&id=685980&title=DETECTIVECOMICS and yet, CGC decided to only give it the exact same 3.5 grade for a superior looking version of the exact same book.