lou_fine

I've been looking at some local auction sites in midwestern cities. I've seen 3-bedroom houses sell for as low as $17k. And at the opposite end of the spectrum, we've got all of the residents here person_without_enough_empathying like crazy how their property taxes will be going up. Especially since their property assessments which everybody received last week indicated average increases in property values ranging from 30% to 50%. A house for only $17K would sound fantastic for my kids and the younger generation, as opposed to an old house here on the poor side of town for $1.7M.

Yes, if I remember correctly, I believe a couple of the Wonderworlds (#11 & #12) sold for something like $2,700 in raw VG condtion on eBay this past summer. I guess we will get to see if the 2016 summer heat on the Fox books is still burning strong into 2017, as CC has 2 of the early Fantastic books on the block in their upcoming Event Auction scheduled for this March. Nothing much from the two big Fox boys, however, since there is only a raw G- copy of Wonderworld 17. Not sure if this is one of those mid to later Fox books that are supposedly tough to track down?

Yes, if I remember correctly, I believe a couple of the Wonderworlds (#11 & #12) sold for something like $2,700 in raw VG condtion on eBay this past summer.

Was it not in St. Louis several years ago that they found a house where the comic books were worth a lot more than the house itself? Unfortunately, this would not appear to be the case here from what we are seeing in these pictures. Not sure how fast house prices are accelerating in Ohio, but I imagine it's no contest here as to which one is more valuable.

Census as of January 3 indicates that there are still no copies of Jungle Action 19 graded in 9.8 condition yet. There are a total of 6 in 9.6 graded condition out of 23 Universally graded copies.

Any idea what happened to your uncle's comic book collection? Hopefully, you was or will be the lucky recipient of them.

Agreed - those two and Luke Cage 1 are my fave readers. +1 Absolutely love Special Marvel Edition 15 with the introduction of Shang-Chi. Even more so once Paul Gulacy started on the series with his poor man's version of the Steranko artwork and style.

My 2nd favorite GA comic of all time, so much so that I own both the Church and Larson copies (I actually prefer the A-Man 6 over the A-Man 5, for several reasons). Well, in order to remove the hoarder moniker that is now being attached to your name, I am willing to sacrifice myself and be more than willing to take one of them off your hands and won't even charge you anything at all for this service.

Why would you wonder that? +1 And why would you not fully expect that? After all, this is now 2016 and almost going into 2017. It's not like it's the year 2000 in the days of wine and roses and virgin like sweet innocence where this collecting world of ours was supposedly being populated with untouched properly graded books. so I should expect 100% of this collection to be pressed, just the higher graded stuff, or just books that need it. I'm thinking that the has to be books that won't benefit and would be otherwise a waste of time and money to do so. Kinda counter productive, but hey pressem all. You should expect every book that is getting sold in a slab to have been pressed. There's no reason not to. Sad to say, but it definitely would appear that you are correct in your assessment here. It would seem that grading at the higher end of the condition spectrum has basically evolved devolved from the overall aesthetic appearance of a book to a minute technical search for near invisible spine ticks and creases on a book. No surprise here as this is pretty much what I had expected when pressing first came to light more than a decade ago. After all, this is a business and as such, it's really all about the dollar signs. As I said way back then, it's all part of the business model and generating additional streams of revenues right from the get go. And as such, applying the hammer to near invisible additional revenue generating defects while ignoring or applying the feather to the fugly additional revenue inhibiting defects would be the wave of the future. Interesting to note that a collector friend of mine's who submits to CGC on a regular basis now has his pre-screen for pressing books coming in at an astounding rate of almost 70% requiring some form of pressing. And this is for somebody who is very meticulous and knows how to take care of their books. Like he said, pressing is now unfortunately all part of the grading game. So, if you are a collector hoping to sell a high end book, you are probably doing serious damage to your pocket book if you don't at least have it pre-screen for pressing prior to having it graded. And especially nowadays when CGC's grading team is headed by somebody who's real claim to fame is all about pressing. Maybe it's true then like what one of the CGC employees had stated recently: "We'll gladly take your money. But you won't like the results." My bad.....maybe that was on another subject matter entirely. Aahhh....the days of wine and roses and virgin like sweet innocence just seemed so much nicer and warmer , although definitely a lot less lucrative than the almost seemingly dog eat dog collecting world of today.

+1 Yes indeed, looks like they have got some of those very early Star Comics and Star Ranger Comics. Some of them would be the Highest Graded Copies, and this time without the Brittle Pages which was prevalent on the copies that CL had in their last big auction. Looks like a second chance for gator since he missed out on the books from CL last time.

That was Dec 2010. August 2014 it sold for $4800. Which IMHO is still a bargain. +1 You are most probably right since I saw it on Metro's Most Wanted List from one of their Monthly Newsletters, as being wanted in all grades. Besides the usual big superhero keys which everybody should already know, the only other books on this list which I saw were Master Comics 27, Pep 22, Torch 12, Bill Barnes 7, Smash #1, any issue of Joker Comics, and Fishler's favorite of course, namely Fantastic 3. Ace 11 is definitely a tough tough book to find and one that will always sell for multiples to guide. The VF guide price for those 2 sales were only around $500+ in 2010 and $800+ in 2014. Since the current VF guide price is now only at $1446, it will definitely continue to sell at big multiples to condition guide when available. Interesting to note that the Church copy of this particular issue was only graded as a Fine copy by Chuck. So, this 7.5 copy might just be the best existing copy of this very hard to find key issue.

Does anybody have a ballpark idea of what the print run on this Archie variant cover by Francavilla would be?

Absolutely love this classic Schomburg lingerie cover! For the longest time, I have always thought this particular issue to be both highly underappreciated from a GGA point of view and also highly undervalued at the same time. Especially when Overstreet used to always have this issue guiding at a much lower price than all of its surrounding issues, up until a few years ago. Never could figure that one out.

That does not look like a 2.5 +1 Anything that we are not seeing from the front cover scan that is keeping the book down to only a CGC 2.5 graded copy?

i think a 5.0. Have to finish inv this week and find it Any idea if the Recil Macon Collection contained many of the early Cap's as the collection was supposedly top heavy when it came to the Timely's? Would you know if CGC downgrades the books in this particular collection for all of the excessive writing that Recil did on his books, or does CGC generally ignore this defect on the Macon books since this is the key identifying feature of this pedigree.

You might actually be correct that the run might have been damaged by either the printer or shipper during the bundling and shipping process. I had always thought it was more of an incorrect folding and stapling error done by the printer. Nevertheless, I don't believe that all copies of a book has to be damaged before CGC factors the defect into their grading process. Take a look at the early Marvels where a very small proportion of the books had Marvel chipping and yet CGC tends to factor this defect in and be rather lenient when determining the final grade. Just because Dave was able to cherry pick the entire run to pull out the 0.5% of the run that had no spine ticks before they were shipped to the stores does not mean that collectors had access to these HG copies when the book first came out. My personal guess is that probably 98% or more of the entire print run may have had these spine tick defects to one degree or another.

Now, I believe that's the toughest by far to find in high grade out of the 3 that you have posted so far. Well done and keep them coming!

He was asking about 20 or 30 years later, and I have absolutely no idea who's going to be hot that far down the line.

WTTB! From this and your copy of Hulk 181, it looks like you take very good care of your books after purchasing them.

They will most probably continue to increase in value for collectors, albeit at a slower pace, in all condition grades, except for the uber high grades. Those might drop off quite a bit as more and more of them are "manufactured", especially in the eyes of speculators once Wolverine loses his hotness factor.

Would any of your copies be free of those notorious spine ticks which seems to show up on every single copy of Cerebus 1 that I have seen so far? Since these spine ticks appears to be a production issue with this particular book, does CGC discount for this flaw since they seem to do it for other production related flaws on other books? These copies all have the spine ticks (the ones that don't are counterfeit copies in this photo) - but it's not production, it's due to poor storage & general handling. Dave Sim's file copies of Cerebus #1 don't have the spine ticks, for instance. -1 Well, based upon the following post from aman, it would appear that you are incorrect when you say that the spine ticks are not a production issue. Especially when you should really discount Dave Sim's copies as he most likely cherry picked through all 2,000 copies to only find the best ones without the spine ticks to keep for himself. Hence, since the spine ticks are a production related issue for Cerebus 1, CGC should definitely place much less of a downgrade for them when they are on a Cerebus 1, as compared to the severe hammering they give to other books that exhibit the same amount of spine ticks.

The restoration notes and the general notes go on the same line on the label. If this were a Universal label, the ("Bob Kane" on first page in pen) would still be present on the same line. As it's a restored book, it must share the space with the restoration notes. Makes sense to me and good to know. Any idea if the marketplace views this uncertified signature as a slight positive or negative when it comes to selling, or is this dependent upon the individual collector? Is CGC supposed to denote uncertified signatures on their labels or is it optional on their part?

Interesting. That is very high grade. It would be interesting to know how much leafcasting was done...small area or large. I took "cover" to mean the entire wrap, and I can't deny the moderate designation was the first thing that stuck out to me when I saw it. "Cover" just designates where (as opposed to interior wraps) but doesn't speak to quantity...size of a dime, full spine, large corner, etc. I seriously doubt it is more than 10% of the full cover area, but it may be a bet I would lose. So, as far as I understand it, leafcasting is almost like recreating something from nothing in order to fill in the missing pieces. In terms of this particular restoration activity, I assume the graders would be able to readily distinguish which parts of the book have been leafcasted as opposed to which parts of the book is original. I hope. Any idea why the fact that ("Bob Kane" on first page in pen) is being included as part of the restoration notes on the label?

I definitely agree on what you said in the last paragraph. I suspect that at some point CCS will have to be let go or become the source of CBCS becoming the primary grading company. Although I certainly understand the issue of conflict of interest here, somehow I strongly doubt we will see anything of the sort. If this was the case, would it also not mean that Heritage Auctions would only be allowed to carry non-CGC books in their auctions?

I suppose a restoration job is supposed to make the book look as close to original as possible. That means if the restoration is not detected, they're probably doing their job. The actual detection of the restoration does not appear to be the issue here as as both the CGC labels and the Voldy labels clearly identifies the type of restoration work that was done on the books in question. I don't believe any of the grading companies specifies exactly how much of a book is actually restored, beyond their rather loose Restoration Quantity Scale ranging from Slight to Moderate to Extensive. And on every single one of these books in question, the restoration is clearly designated as Extensive. Maybe they need to add a new Level 6 or Super Extensive for these books, but that would be in the ball court of the grading companies. Once again, were the Meyers painting over the entire cover to intentionally conceal the extent of the restoration work or was the recoloring simply done so well on the recreated parts that you could not distinguish it from the untouched coloring on the original parts? If it's the latter, then I would have no issue with the work and would certainly not expect them to draw a line on the book just so the graders can know where the original stopped and the recoloring started. In reading the original thread from last year and if my memory serves me correctly, this indeed was the case with the initial books worked on by the Meyers. Apparently not so much with the books that were worked on later as I was under the impression that Matt was supposedly "working' with the Meyers and providing "guidance" to them in an attempt to perfect their technique and that the later books started to feel much more original. Lawsuit notwithstanding, if I was Matt, I would certainly be PO if the Meyers did in fact managed to improve their restoration techniques to the point where the books felt original and then decided to withhold them from him for proprietary purposes. Especially when he had supposedly helped them to improve their restoration techniques. See my comments above on the Restoration Quantity Scale as I believe buyers determine the valuation of Restored books based upon what is currently listed on the label, and not on exactly how much is original and how much is recreated as this is not actually specified anywhere at all. In other words, the valuation of restored books are really based more upon the type of restoration activities performed, the quality of the restoration work (i.e. amateur or professional), and the extent of the restoration performed (i.e. slight/moderate/extensive).