lou_fine

+1 Totally with you on this positive change 100%. Hated that part of the old boards since you could never keep track of your read and unread posts if you left your computer for more than half a hour or whatever time frame it was.

I expect that you will receive your answer in 6 days from now as the current CGC 8.5 graded copy of AF 15 is already sitting at over $131K with the juice included. Guess the consignor of this particular copy did not do so bad after a lot of board members here opined that he had over paid for what was clearly an overgraded copy of this book when he paid $77K for it only a few months in the summer Heritage auction.

I am not so sure about that. There are a whole lot more color breaking stresses and larger ones at that, on the spine of the 7.5 graded copy as opposed to the few small ones on the spine of the 8.5 graded copy. Sure, the top of the front cover on the 8.5 does not look that amazing, but the spine is sure a heck of a lot nicer than the spine on the 7.5 copy.

I believe the real luck has a lot more to do with the movie and TV hype phenomenon that has swept the comic book marketplace the past few years. Especially in the case of Wonder Woman with her recent and upcoming appearances in the DC movie universe. Looks like your original purchase took place back in early 2012 when Wonder Woman was still mired in the midst of a multi-decades slump when even high grade pedigree copies of her key books would often sell for less than guide. Definitely goes to show that comic books goes in cycles and if you are the long-term collector that doesn't mind holding onto a book, you are bound to win out in the long run.

+1 Unfortunately yes, indeed! The amount of time I spend on these new boards here is probably a single digit fraction of the time that I used to spend on the old boards.

It's not that everybody is ignoring the new postings of the Centaur books from Gator. I believe it's all to do with the new and NOT improved boards which we now have here. For the old-time GA board members here, we hate change and especially when the changes are quite drastic and not necessarily for the better. As you can tell from my board ID, I am still waiting for the merging of my accounts. All of this white space and less clarity in the separation of the posts also makes it a lot harder to go through the threads here. I assume this is all a matter of time and getting used to the new boards, but it has certainly dampen my interest in spending time on the boards here.

+1 Yes, indeed! If it wasn't for the Church runs of the Hits and the Blue Ribbon books, there really would not be much in this auction here. Definitely looks like Heritage is becoming more and more about comic book related Original Art as opposed to the underlying comic books themselves.

Certainly did and thanks for sharing! Sincere congrats on an absolutely amazing collecting accomplishment. Very well done!!!

That is not a lot. And the same logic is applied to hulk 181, ASM 129 etc yet those books and other Bronze Age books continue to climb You can't compare Wolverine... with...... erm! whats her name? The only comparison that really comes to mind is that both of their key first appearances were in an issue 180. Well, if you are talking about scarcity, issue 180, and first appearances, then we should probably be comparing them to Four Color 180. Only a total of 5 graded copies of this book, with the highest graded copy being only a CGC 9.2 copy and with Four Color 180 featuring the first appearance (not just a cameo) of the famous Ozark Ike.

If that should ever happen, I believe there would be a ton of HG copies of these common books popping out of the woodwork. Especially since Starlin was such a hot artist back then and all of his books were carefully collected and put away by the collectors of that time. Heck, even I have duplicate HG copies of all of these books and multiples of a few of them. And that must say something about how common these books are since I was never really a fan of buying more than 1 copy of a particular book.

Nice! I love sensation #26. It should be a "classic" cover. It probably should have been, except that Action 13 with virtually the exact same cover image had already came out years earlier. Although the Wonder Woman image on this cover is definitely much better than the tiny Superman image on Action 13.

I remember being down at one of the SD Con's back in the early 90's and Pat Kochanek was raving about the Church copy of this book. Apparently he thought the red, blue, and green color combination really brought the cover image to life. He stated that he always looked for these brighter colors in his comic book covers.

Which Fantastic books are you referring to and are you talking about John Veryzl here? I think he means "Jon". Ah....that makes a lot more sense then! So, if the speculation is correct, then the Church Peps in the last HA Auction came from Dave's personal collection and these latest Hits and the Blue Ribbons came from Jon's personal collection. That is very interesting to say the least.

that picture is of a reprint Well, there goes my big idea. Not worth borrowing to keep after all then.

Yes, somebody probably borrowed it years ago and never bothered to return it, figuring that they could sell it for a lot more than whatever the standard maximum fine is for a lost library book.

however the absolute best part is this.. In speaking with one of the people who graded this book they said it was one of the hardest books to grade ever. Structurally it was like a 9.0 or better but kid done gone and wrote all over it. To me thats part of the fun of Recil - thats one of the nice parts of the pedigree and connects you to him just doodling a bit on these books. To me it actually adds to the book and its history... I guess unlike the Church books where the coding is much less obtrusive, CGC would downgrade the the actual condition of the book to take into account all of the writing and doodling that Recil put onto the books?

+1 Yes, definitely better than that rather boring and mundane cover for Green Mask #1. I like the cover of #1 quite a bit actually I still need one though. Not boring at all IMO. I once started a thread called, "Larger Than Life" and GM#1 would have fit perfectly there. The few issues prior to the 6 excluding the #1 and maybe #2 I would consider to be a bit mundane but not the #1 Maybe it's just me as I've never really cared much for covers with that pre-dominant yellow background, which seem to be the most common color for covers back in the GA.

+1 Yes, definitely better than that rather boring and mundane cover for Green Mask #1.

It's always good to hear the background behind the discovery of some of these GA collections. Based upon some of the people involved here, it would not surprise me at all if the basic gist of your story is actually true.

I don't understand how this went from a 6.5 to a 7.5. There is no discernable difference between the 6.5 and 7.5 scans of the book. The only explanation is that CGC simply relaxed its grading standards, which must be frustrating for the guy that sold it as a 6.5. There has most definitely NOT been a relaxing of the grading standards based upon many of the GA books graded during the latter half of 2016, as based upon what I am seeing in these current auctions. Go and check out some of the comparisons for CGC 3.5 graded books in the AA 16 CGC 3.5 thread. Take a look at what is being called a CGC 3.5 nowadays as compared to the bug-chewed CGC 3.5 from before. There are many beautiful looking GA and SA books graded from the latter part of 2016 which presents far nicer then their assigned grade, relative to what we have seen before. I believe what is happening is a significant CHANGE to their unpublished grading standards with the new grading team that is in place. With the new Head Grader in place, it should not be surprising which defect is the one that has taken on much greater significance when it comes to grading now. Hint #1: It is the one that you would not be able to see from even the enlarged detailed scans. Hint #2: It is the one that will also add potential additional revenue to CGC's parent company since it is easily fixable.

Have no idea but most likely a whole lot of money it is the highest graded I doubt there will ever be another 9.6 that will be graded by CGC. I thought it was agreed by many board members here already that the book actually looked better in its former incarnation as a CGC 9.2 copy when it sold for just over $50K on one of CC's Event Auctions a couple of years ago.

Hasn't this one already risen quite a bit over the past few years? Especially considering how many there are of this particular issue out there already, and with most of them all in high grade to boot.

Good find, looks like a bidding war/battle of ego behind that one, guy even used a stock photo. Or perhaps they've bought vf/nm from him before that arrived 9.6? I know he's a v.good seller, just don't recall that he's a big undergrader (he might be). Two very low feedback bidders bidding up a non-key, not in demand book sounds a little fishy to me. Not sure what the angle is but it ain't a good one. Book is worth about $5 and can be had for less. Looks pretty sketchy to me . . . Also seller states they have the book in high quantity (along with hundreds of other dealers) so why on earth would you bid it up? I'm not a dealer, and I had like at least five copies of this book BY ACCIDENT like 10 years ago. I've given them away since.... That was a book that was so unwanted i passed on dozens of nice copies in dollar boxes of the years.... Is there any difference in valuation between the regular edition of the book with the issue number and the so-called variant edition of the book without the issue number on the cover? I imagine both versions would probably be as common as dirt.

Also interesting to note that in terms of slabbed copies, Detective 405 have by far the fewest out of the 3 books in question. Looks like Detective 411 have about twice as many copies slabbed while Batman 232 have about 10 times as many slabbed copies. Probably means that there are possibly a lot of raw copies of Detective 405 out there just waiting to be slabbed once there is any kind of uptick in the price.

I posted the picture of the book but I did not delete my post Well, that's mighty strange then. Can you please try to repost your picture of the book again then?