lou_fine

I remember seeing the Larson copy of Fantastic 1 on display at the Diamond Int'l Galleries Grand Opening back in '95. The book was absolutely gorgeous and almost 3D like with the blazing red colors and Samson bursting out from the wall. Regretted not being able to work out a deal with Fishler for the book at the time as he wanted to verify the authenticity of the pedigree. I can just imagine how mind blowing the Church 9.8 copy of this Fantastic 1 must be.

It is the best book in Billy Parker's collection. It is another one of the best books NOT in my collection.

Cover has been cleaned. Book can't get "unrestored" but it will still go high Oh, yes it can. Tear off the "cleaned" cover, remove the resto, and you would have an unrestored coverless copy. Not sure what happens if you married an unrestored cover to the book in terms of label designation? Either way, I imagine it would go for less high than in its current PLOD state, or would it not?

1 is actually the most "common" (relative term) i believe 4 to be rarest. Followed closely by 3 and 2&5 almost as tough. That's also what I heard when I was chasing down some of the pre-hero books. But it absolutely can't be true since it's the only issue I have out of the entire run.

Oh man. Some people gonna take a looong hard look at this : no pieces added, must be many many moons Ago since a slight* tec27 last surfaced? remove resto flip'n retire .... This book could go High... Welcome to the Boards as it's always good to have new members join us here! Looks like a copy of Detective 27 on the market was enough to entice you to join the Boards. Well, it's all yours for the right price.

I think he has had a few Action 1s. I would think there is no money in bidding for a copy unless he keeps it for years My mistake.........the Church Fantastic 3 then.

I remember being so gung ho for this book back in the day when I was really into the pre-hero books. Never could pull the trigger on one as every single one I came across was either restored or just a shade under what I wanted condition wise relative to the price. Came super close on a couple of occasions though.

Well, Action 1 is a pretty big book after all, and certainly more than enough for most collectors to handle on its own.

Well, it's your lucky day then........it's absolutely yours for the right price.

was just about to ask if anyone wanted to "guess" the grade... boo FC looks 9.6. No matter, it is beautiful and it will surely shatter the Suspense 3 price. Looks like there have been quite a few 9.4's and 9.6's added into the census population reports for the Fox books. Yet at the same time, some of them are still absent of any books in the 9's grade condition range. For example, only a CGC 4.5 shows up for Mystery Men 1 while a CGC 9.6 shows up for Mystery Men 31. So, maybe not all of the have been posted yet or some of the Church Fox books are not into the nosebleed uber high grade condition range that we were all hoping for.

I strongly doubt that Jon has multiple copies of any of these top end GA books. The only book that I am aware that he has a duplicate copy of is Mystery Men 3 since he has always considered that to be his favorite cover of all time.

Hmmm.......interesting to note that there is now a CGC 9.4 copy of Fantastic 3 listed in their census population report.

+1 It was a given. +2 Like I had posted in the other thread, definitely a fully deserved and well earned designation. Especially if they gave one to Nicholas Cage who really had virtually no impact at all on this hobby at all, except for his name. The other collection I felt that deserved recognition was the one from Bob Overstreet, although this collection came out in 1995 or about 5 years before CGC came into existence. Personally though, it probably should not have been that difficult to keep track of the lineage for his collection of books if they had decided to go that route.

I believe it got a 6.5 sp quite a few notes (ct, piece added, cleaned, etc) as well as notation of it being signed (don't recall by whom) Edited 3 hours ago by G.A.tor Image of book added Well, I guess this answers our question though. Hopefully, he brought it with prior knowledge of the restoration work done on the book. Probably the case since Jon was always happy to get the book and restoration was not the main concern when it came to these rare books. Nice to see that CGC has given a designation of "From The Collection Of Jon Berk" to this set of books. If Nicholas Cage managed to get one, then Jon more than deserved to get his own designation. The one I could never fully understand was why CGC never gave Bob Overstreet's books a designation. I guess the fact that the collection was sold in '95 before CGC was in place is the main reason. But really should not be that hard to trace the lineage of those books.

Any idea what Jon Berk's copy of Detective 27 would grade out at and that might determine if we have another addition to the Million Dollar Club? I guess we'll be finding out any day now.

They've timed the unveiling of the collection to occur the evening of the upcoming New York Con so you had to provide enough notice for people to attend. Still not good timing from my point of view. Being the nice guy that I am, I probably would have made the announcement 2 or 3 weeks earlier then. If I was going to end up "messing up" my own auction that is just about to open, then I may as well "mess up" the competitor's auction as well, instead of waiting until their auction is closing and all of the bids are pretty well already in. Appears to be a "worst of both worlds" scenario from a timing point of view.

The National were sold back in the 90s and the Hits several years ago, none of them through auction. Oh, I see......a private sale then or one that was brokered by a major comic book dealer/broker. So, this scattering of Church Hit books that were auctioned off by HA just last week were most likely consigned by whoever had brought the books from Jon.

Which then begs the question: If Heritage was used to auctioned off his Hit runs just last week, why the switch in auction houses to CC in apparent mid-stream? Especially with all of the comic related original art left to go from his collection, which is right down Heritage's wheelhouse when it comes knowledge and expertise.

Hate to tell you this, but now that everybody's figuring out how to do nested quotes, I heard from a very reliable source that Mr. Berk is looking for a way to take his entire collection back, including the Hit's that were just auctioned off on Heritage.

Hey Arch; Is there any reason why the "Date Joined" by the member is no longer showing under their picture since there is a lot of empty space there right now? I know it will show up if you hover over the picture, but that's just an extra unnecessary step from my point of view. Especially since this should be a simple fix since it would be a data item that is fixed, as opposed to the post count which is constantly updating.

Wonder why CC would make this big announcement just when their big Winter Event Auction is about to be opened for bidding. Certainly not doing their consignors any big favors as some potential bidders for books in this upcoming auction will now be tempted to keep their powder dry for the next auction when Berk's books hit the auction block.

Better to leave alone. Archival tape gets restored label and reg tape won't improve grade but turn off some folks Has CGC always downgraded for the presence of regular tape on a book? I thought CGC changed how they handle the presence of tape on a book in order to discourage collectors from applying tape to the book hoping for a potential higher grade on the book.

Wasn't that also the last time you bought or sold anything? Actually, I was at a comic con earlier this afternoon and met up with a few boardies, including the infamous Greggy. Surprisingly, I even picked up a few comics plus a handpicked stack of assorted Archie related double digests (20 in total) for the outrageous price of $3.00 or $0.15 a pop. See, don't go believing those rumours that I never buy any comic books.

Since when does grading not include a restoration check? What's next - offering a grading service that only gives you a "ballpark" estimate with the caveat that it may be off by a couple of grades either way? This discounted service is really geared much more towards the new fresh books right off the shelves and/or books with limited dollar value. These are most likely the types of books that collectors would never ever give a thought to doing any type of hidden resto work on. Any true vintage book that has any real value at all would be going through the regular grading service that does include the restoration check. From my point of view, it's most likely being geared towards all of those "worthless" drek books that should never have been graded at all in the first place, and yet is creating a huge backlog at the grading companies.

There's not a chance on earth that this is true. Curious as to why you would think this? Especially since Heritage's standard auction fees to the consignor starts off at 29.5% before they start to apply their discount to customers for their big consignments. The standard auction fee for CC starts off at a much better 10% charge to the consignor before they start to apply their discount to long-time customers for their big consignments. Bottom-line: Heritage has to apply a huge discount to their standard auction fees in order to even catch up to CC's standard starting auction fees.