lou_fine

Do you have any of the earlier data for your Popular Submissions by Decade as it seems to have only gone as far back as the 1960's?

When did CGC give you the false impression that pressing was common pre 2000? Those stories came from long time dealers who said that Greg Buls and Marnin Rosenberg (who both found a Pedigree collection each) were pressing books pre CGC. My sincerest sympathies to you, Roy. I didn't realize a person as young as you could suffer from Alzheimer's at such an early age. It's clear that you must have forgotten Borock's statement saying pressing is nothing new and has always been with us, even well before CGC opened its doors back in 2000. He presented this argument when pressing was first identified way back in 2005 or thereabouts, and it has since been repeated many times by other CGC personnel whenever the pressing issue rears its head enough to warrant a response from them. The impression being given is that stand-alone pressing was always done even well before CGC was there, so what's the big deal about it now, since there's no real difference then. Of course, stand-alone pressing was really in fact more the exception as it was generally really just the final step taken in conjunction with other restoration activities in the days prior to CGC. The big difference is that stand-along pressing was the exception for books in the marketplace prior to CGC, whereas now it is considered to almost be the norm to either pressed or at least pre-screen a book for stand-alone pressing before it gets graded. Most definitely not the same scenario as back in the bad old days of the Wild West before CGC came onto the scene to ensure a safer marketplace whereby potential purchasers could now buy books with full disclosure if any work had been done on them. Not so much, I guess.

Maybe we should start up a thread whereby board members can highlight books that are clearly upgradeable, but that have not yet been worked on. This could help to slow down the undisclosed manipulation of books and also reward the owners of these untouched books at the same time.

Never mind what I just said in my earlier post above. Take this option as it will give you more than what you was expecting and you would have somebody else doing all of the grinding work for you, without you having to do anything at all.

A couple of thoughts: 1) You would need the $10,000 investment to grow at nearly 8.5% per year to reach your goal of $15,000 in five years. I'm not sure what investments you were thinking of, but it's not likely you'll be able to manage a return that high. Most financial investments are pretty pricey these days, so returns that high over the next five years seem unlikely to me. 2) The flipping approach has a better chance because, in effect, you (and your daughter) would be earning some of the return through the time and effort you would put into locating, prepping, and selling the books. I would take neither of your options because they most likely would not end up giving you what you expect in 5 short years. Squeggs has already explained why the financial option is probably not a realistic one if you are shooting for a 50% net gain in only 5 years. I personally also don't believe the comic book option is viable (unless you are a professional dealer working full-time at it) because it would take a lot of flipping, luck, hard work, and to get back a net profit of $5K. Especially since you are only starting with $10K as this small initial amount will not be able to buy enough true quality investment books. I personally feel that coming out on the winning side when investing in comic books is really done much more successfully through a buy and hold approach as opposed to a day trading approach. So, it looks like the suggestion below is probably the best one to go with:

Where in the world was you able to hunt down one of these super rare beauties? Big congrats to you on this pickup here!

Where is Darth nowadays anyways?

There's no chance this book hasn't been thoroughly worked on already. Agreed. Um.... The book was in the holder below until very recently. Notice the cert number is the same. I have no idea why the grade date comes up as it does, but it's incorrect. I'm not the original owner of the book, but I can tell you that it was in the slab below since 2000 and was only re-holdered within the last month or so. If the book has been worked on, it was prior to 2000. And given that the book does have some minor things that could be flattened, I doubt it has ever been pressed. An attentive eye would have caught that. I did, as posted in silver. +1 That's exactly why I thought it was highly unlikely that this book had already been pressed since it was mentioned previously as simply being reholdered into the new clearer case. Even though CGC likes to give us the false impression that it was also common for books to be pressed in the bad old days before they started up in 2000. NOT so much, as it really seems like nothing more than a poor excuse by CGC to try to justify what is taking place in today's slabbed marketplace.

There's no chance this book hasn't been thoroughly worked on already. Agreed. So, are both of you saying that the potential has most likely already been maximized on this book? It's hopefully quite possible that this particular copy may have been lucky enough to have missed the flattening machines as it was graded back in the beginning of 2005 which was probably before pressing became common knowledge by the collecting public. If so, do you believe this book would have a shot at being upgraded to a CGC 9.4 on a straight resub only, since many of the boardies here seem to be implying that it appears to be undergraded in its current 9.2 slab? Especially since we would now also have to factor in the new grading team that is currently in place and any changes to grading which they may have put in place.

But if it's got color breaking spine ticks on the book, I thought that pressing would not help to enhance the grade of the book as it would simply be left with flattened color breaking white spots or breaks on the book? ...that looks like a high contrast scan. I'd bet, in hand, the book's spine issues are much less dramatic..... pretty book I'd imagine. -jimbo(a friend of jesus) If it's a high contrast scan, would this not account in part for the strong deep colors and make the cover image "pop"? Irrespective of the spine issues, are you implying that the book might not be quite as visually appealing in terms of its color saturation in real life, as compared to this apparent high contrast scan? Nevertheless, it still looks like a pretty nice copy of the most important SA key there is.

But if it's got color breaking spine ticks on the book, I thought that pressing would not help to enhance the grade of the book as it would simply be left with flattened color breaking white spots or breaks on the book?

Yes, definite eye appeal there if you are talking about the strong and deep colors on the book. But is nobody else seeing the multiple small color breaking spine ticks which is running throughout a large part of the spine? Lou...see three posts up...I totally agree with you. :thumbsup: Jim My bad.....sometimes I post my response as I am going along without reading the rest of the entire thread first. Good to know that somebody is seeing the same thing that I am, as it seem that most boardies were saying that the book appears to actually be undergraded as a 9.2 copy. Thought my eyes might have been going on me.

I posted it in this thread 11 years ago. To my knowledge they always were but I also know a few things have changed under the latest leadership so I'm not so sure all the same rules for 9.8 still apply. Do you have any examples of what may have changed in terms of grading with the latest CGC team in place? Especially now that Matt Nelson is apparently the Head Grader and his reputation was based primarily on his pressing services.

Yes, definite eye appeal there if you are talking about the strong and deep colors on the book. But is nobody else seeing the multiple small color breaking spine ticks which is running throughout a large part of the spine? Interesting to note that this book was graded back in the early part of 2005 which is probably before the general collecting public was even aware of pressing . With the seeming shift in grading over the years, it makes me wonder if this particular copy with its many spine ticks would still grade out the same today? Especially since the high-end grading focus seems to be so much more about creases and spine stresses nowadays and straight visual eye appeal seems to be less important as compared to before.

Or just post less. If me and you stopped posting there would be a 50% drop in total posts lolll!! I will try to post less. Or you could try to hit the Preview button first, then read and edit your post accordingly before hitting the Submit button.

Any idea if the last CC auction was basically the extent of Lasry's total collection since it seem like it just ended before it got to the end of the alphabet? None of the Batman books out there yet, which seems kind of strange since his collection was so DC-centric. And did he not bothered with any of the SA Marvel books at all? Methinks there are probably still a lot more to come, but is still being kept for now or to be sold off at a more tax advantageous time.

Just for the record in case anyone was wondering, jbcomicbox is not the consignor on these books. The thought did come across my mind for a few minutes there, but discounted it almost immediately after that. I figure the super big boys such as Jon, Veryzl, the Dentist, etc are really in there for the extreme long term and we won't be seeing any of their big books in the marketplace anytime in the foreseeable future. Indeed. It'd be a sign of the apocalypse (or at least a watershed in the market) if Verzyl decided to part with all the Church Timelys. There is a high probability that the Hits are the Dentist's. The Peps were his and he did very well with them. Yes, this is also what I had heard about the Pep run on Heritage. Does this indicate to you that he is starting to dispose of some of his lesser runs and not saving them for his collector son after all? Of course, the sale of the Peps stopped right at issue #21 and did not hit the big one at Issue #22 and the rest of the Archie's going forward. Still don't see any of the early Church Actions or the Allentown / Church Detective books or would those be the last to go?

Bob, is that you........when did you hack into Gator's account to come up with this post? Seriously though, although everybody tends to complain how slow Overstreet is when it comes to increasing prices, I strongly feel that his slow and steady approach has helped to nurture and guide this comic book market to grow over time. Definitely better than what might have happen if he had adopted the Wizard approach to pricing by reacting to all types of wild speculation and keeping prices at extreme speculative levels by jacking them up and down on an ongoing basis.

This post by you is just so bang on. People always claim that they would be jumping in and buying when the market crashes, but in all likelihood, they would definitely be selling and running for the hills as fast as they can.

i agree. The day of the run builder seems numbered for sure (always exceptions). Likewise, exponential run up in prices for a myriad of reasons, is also not sustainable indefinitely. That's my main point. +2 With the prices of vintage comic books nowadays, the cost of building a run would be virtually impossible for the average collector. Actually, when I first got into vintage comics back in the latter part of the 80's, I spent hours being advised to stay away from run comics and/or less than HG condition comics. The theory was that if I spent my money chasing after mid-run non-key comics in mid grades, I would have no left money when the keys or near keys in high grade hit the marketplace. Of course, this was back when Overstreet had a price spread of only 1:3:6 from Good to Mint in its price guide. I was told that this price spread would continue to increase over time as one day collectors would come to realize the true rarity of HG vintage books and that the spread could even hit 1:100 one day as you went from bottom to top. Certainly not there yet, but definitely trending in that kind of direction and maybe one day. This purchasing strategy of going primarily after the keys and high grades was one I generally followed since I had only limited funds to spend. Unfortunately, this also contributed to one of my biggest non-purchasing blunders when I first started. So, although it's always good to have a strategy in mind, it's also good to have some flexibility and not to follow them too blindly.

Just for the record in case anyone was wondering, jbcomicbox is not the consignor on these books. The thought did come across my mind for a few minutes there, but discounted it almost immediately after that. I figure the super big boys such as Jon, Veryzl, the Dentist, etc are really in there for the extreme long term and we won't be seeing any of their big books in the marketplace anytime in the foreseeable future.

Depends if you believe the price for this one particular sale is a trendsetter for other AF 15 prices going forward or if this one sale was just an outlier on the high side. After all, didn't Heritage just auctioned off a 8.5 graded copy of AF 15 for less than $78K or @ less than $10K per point in their big Signature Auction just this past summer? This may be news for some, others not.

The fact that the 9.2 was bumped to 9.6 was brought up by me shortly after it did. http://boards.collectors-society.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=9102311 So no, we didn't take long at all to figure it out. The was for if it sold for 50K as a 9.2 (yeah, I know when and where it sold too), what price will it bring as a "9.6". It is currently in 3rd spot of HA auction result estimates only behind the Bat1 3.5 and AF15 8.5. That is not a good 9.6 9.2 ya but not 9.6 look at it. https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/detective-comics-32-dc-1939-cgc-nm-96-off-white-pages/p/7158-130003.s?ic4=GalleryView-Thumbnail-071515 [clor:#FF0000]Looks better as 9.2 Look at top staple now at 9.6 ? [/color]http://www.comicconnect.com/bookDetail.php?id=549588 I just compared the scans. Sadly, I must agree with woowoo on this point. Well, all I can say is that if you think this upgrade is bad, it's really nothing at all when compared to the Cole Schave books, as detailed in the following thread which has now been closed for obvious reasons: http://boards.collectors-society.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=6972017#Post6972017 No real need to read all 300+ pages of the thread as you should get the general idea after the first 10 or 20 pages of it. Besides the right page fanning, it also goes into Costanza or the facejobbing of books plus a discussion on indented staples as a result of improper pressing. It's rather funny how the page fanning was blamed on the poor print quality of the early Marvel books. Especially when they managed to survive just find for the first 50 years of their existence, but somehow this defect managed to manifest itself in the few short months that the books just happen to go from a 9.2 grade up to a 9.6 grade. Also funny how some of the board members went back into their own personal collection to identify only a tiny fraction of their entire collection to have this page fanning issue. And yet this Cole Schave collection somehow managed to have this same defect throughout the vast majority of their books. What was that about CGC supposedly downgrading for defects associated with improperly pressed books.

I believe the property taxes aren't going up by that much in just one year. The numbers you are referring to are the increases in the property tax assessments which is supposedly a reflection on the value of the property. The residential tax itself is only supposed to be going up by 3.9% for this coming year, even though residential property values have gone up in the 30% to 50% in the city on a year over year basis. I spoke to the owner today and he said that he had never seen so many people in his store until this sale. Definitely more than when I normally go in there. When I mentioned if the closure was due to high rents, he hinted that the real reason were the marketing strategies of the greedy publishers which made it really hard for a small store like his to stay in business.

Only if you are into common Modern books as they don't really carry any valuable collectible books of any kind. I asked the owner about any BA books from the 70's and he said that all of that stuff was long gone years ago.