lou_fine

And as my former Science teacher would say, it's obvious you haven't been paying attention in school again. Wasting all your time thinking about weird and fantastic things in that wonder world of yours. You've forgotten all of the Fine and beautiful things that you learned in Science 1, Science 2, and Science 3. It's detention time for you again after school today. Seriously though, greatly appreciate your thoughtful insight as always! BTW: What's the current PPP for Jackpot 4 as until the past few years, it always seem to be the ugly stepchild to both Pep 22 and Archie 1?

3-fox 4-mlj 5-fiction house 6-fawcett 7-ec 8-centaur 9-quality 10-ace, though I would put lev Gleason ahead of ace and probably quality too Wow, surprised to see that Fox finished up in your #3 spot as I thought the lack of supply and subsequent sales would have been enough to keep it further down the list. Well, since you have Fox listed as #3 and MLJ listed as #4, what would be the Top 10 books from these 2 publishers based upon the current marketplace today. I assume it would be easy to put Fantastic 3 and Mystery Men 3 along with Pep 22 and Archie 1 at the top of both of those lists, but what books from your point of view would follow after that?

If true, that's really not a surprise - Centaurs are not transacting as much as the Big 2 (DC and Timely), there are no movies propelling them to the forefront, and in the GA field they are a collecting niche. I love Centaurs because they are pre-Timelys (Everett, Burgos, Gustavson, Mills, etc.) with a dash of DC feel tossed in. To clarify, I guess what I am really saying is that it is the super-hero books that are really powering the Big 2 in terms of their upward price movement. With the Centaurs though, from a relative pint of view, it's not just the super-hero books that are moving the prices upwards, but also the earlier harder to find non-hero books. Certainly not the case with DC's, in particular, where many of the early pre-hero books appears to be in more of a a price lull relative to their later super-hero formats. The strength in the Centaurs are much more diversified throughout their entire line of books. I love Centaurs because they are from the earlier part of the GA and just so much tougher to track down.

I think the "bid" on the clink fps7 might have had a lot to do with the price movement (I don't buy it for a second, but what do I know)... but, there are only a handful out there, and most every centaur is "rare"...however, if folks do want an early Kane proto, then surely this book should be separated in value from surrounding issues, even though all are about the same scarcity level star 3 is the same...there are only a handful of known copies...I'm not sure what the guide says it is in fine, but I paid $3500 for a 6.5 copy... opportunities rarely come up to own any single digit star comics, so they are "worth" what someone is willing to pay I agree that FP 2/10 is just as significant, but let's be realistic, no many folks banging down doors looking for Gustavson's arrow books these days (though they should!)... Jon Berk owns several of the MH I believe, as does Metro/Fishler... Win M and Bunky Brian also have some caches of MH copies of centaurs... Rick; You indeed are the man when it comes to the Centaurs! Was there an actual bid on a CLink FPS 7 as I typically have not pay much attention to CLink since their GA selection were rather slim at best? Not the case anymore, I would now have to say as based upon their past few auctions. Google indicates that CLink has a CBCS 5.5 copy of FPS 7 available now for a reduced ask price of only $3,400. Looks like it may possibly have been affected by the $3,500 you had paid for your Fine+ copy of Star Comics 3. Based upon your experience with the Centaurs, what is your ballpark estimate for a Fine copy of FPS 7 since I assume it should be less than Star 3, if based upon rarity? It would appear that none of the Centaur hero books, including even Amazing-Man himself, are not holding up as well as the main super-hero books for the Big 2. Actually, the Centaur covers that I really like are AMF Vol 2 #4 and Funny Pages #40 & #41. Okay, I guess you can toss in the run of AMF #3 - Vol 2 #3 in there also.

Rick; Since you are the acknowledged Centaur aficionado on these boards here, I had a few questions on a couple of early Centaur books, namely Funny Picture Stories #7 and Star Comics #3. Are these 2 books really as rare and as valuable in the marketplace as Overstreet appears to be making them relative to the other early non-hero Centaur books? Especially since both of these have been designated as "Rare" in the price guide and starting to approach guide valuations to the first appearance of the Arrow in Funny Pages Vol 2 #10, which I consider to be a much more significant book from my point of view. In fact, it looks like Overstreet bumped up Funny Picture Stories #7 by just over 30% from $4,600 up to $6,000. Is it because these 2 racial related covers are impossible to find in grade or is it because they simply do nor exist in high grade? BTW: Any idea as to who owns most of the Centaur Mile Highs (similar to Veryzl with the Timelys) or are they all pretty well scattered to the wind? A lot of questions for today.

I'll take both of those please. I won't be greedy.........I'll just take the Wings 90, please. Okay.......pretty pleaaassse!

Yes, definitely seems to be following the same trajectory as all of the other newspaper feature related books which were once amongst some of the most valuable books in the hobby. Definitely no longer the case here for a long time now.

Well, if you are patient, I am sure that one will show up on the Heritage Auction website as they seem to show up there quite often. Actually, if you check the HA auction archives, it looks like they have sold in excess of 20 copies of this book over the years. It also looks like some of them are open to offers to the new owners if you want to give that a try.

entry level does not follow logical ppp Still a 10k+ ish per point book Seems it would also depend on what sort of 0.5 one is talking about. A midgrade looking book missing a centerfold is not the same thing as a beat and brittle taped up rag with a chunk out of the cover - yet both get the 0.5 slab Common sense would dictate that CGC should really be using their Qualified grading in this case since it would provide so much more information on the book, instead of simply saying that it is a CGC 0.5 Incomplete or Poor rated book.

Maybe lou_fine doesn't collect Lou Fine books? The name must be a coincidence! You weren't supposed to let anyone in on the secret!

Nope - the collection appears to have been broken up early in fandom, but they sure are purdy books! Any chance that they might have become one of the early pedigree collections out there if he had held onto his books longer? Like possibly into the late 70's or early 80's when the other early GA pedigrees were finally identified?

I guess nobody's still been able to figure out yet who the writer with the big black grease pencil is after all these years. All I can say is that we should all thank him for keeping his books in such tip top condition.

Is she robbing the train or protecting it? Isn't it obvious that she's trying to rob you of your comic book collection!

Yes, a no back cover 13 went for $14k+ recently on a Sunday HA. That would appear to be an absolutely amazing price for a raw unslabbed graded book. A Poor grade actually appears to be on the generous side considering that it had no back cover, detached front cover, piece missing out of front cover, and tape running down the quite left side of the book: http://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/action-comics-13-dc-1939-condition-pr-no-back-cover-/a/121627-11140.s?ic4=GalleryView-Thumbnail-071515 That price works out to a price of almost $30K per point which would work out to almost 7X what the price per point is in the Overstreet guide. The seller must be totally estatic with the result.

Dang! +1 Yes, it would appear there are the typical Larson's out there, and then there are Steve's killer Larson's with the eye-popping colors.

That is a great one. You almost never see those books for sale. +1 You can't be more right! Almost as nice as Wonderworld 7 and it's nice to see that Overstreet has designated both of these Fine covers as classic covers.

Hey Jeff; Well, maybe we can get you halfway their pretty quickly. If you go onto the Heritage website, I believe you can easily download all of their previous auction results through some kind of .htm file. I've done that for quite a few of their auctions just so I can print off a hard copy of their auction results. Not sure if you can manipulate this data to suit your reporting needs or not, but I am quite sure that some computer techie should be able to figure this out for you?

Well, if this was the case, then most of the eBay results would be screened out as the large majority of comic related auctions on eBay appears to be done using BIB as opposed to the more traditional auction format.

Old age and pending dementia must be catching up to me. Who's the boardie that use to post about this book all the time and whatever happened to him?

What a gorgeous book,Steve! Pedigree copy? Thanks Russ - I suspect it's a Big Apple, but it wasn't sold tome as such. I absolutely love the combination of those colors and how they pop right off the cover. A killer copy with what looks like pretty white pages also.

I don't care for some of Miller's later stuff. His earlier stuff was groundbreaking, in my opinion, especially in terms of storytelling. I tend to like comic book artists who understand that comic art is about storytelling and is a sequential art form, and is not solely dependent on the ability to draw neat looking pictures. +1 Yes, from my point of view, it was his storytelling and sequential art that took him to the top of the comics world. Absolutely loved his first story writing in DD 168 and thought that nothing could top his Born Again story line.

My bad........since I don't want Steve to have a heart attack, I've corrected my terminology above.

You wouldn't even have to give me money. You have a book I want desperately. Even if I go as far away as Allentown, it would still be a complete mystery to men like me to figure out exactly what book you are talking about, even if I spend 10 years thinking about it. Richard; I'll PM you my mailing address and you can ship off the Hit 11 to me. I think that will just about cover my storage and safekeeping charges which I've had to incur for your pending copy of Mystery Men 10 over the past 20+ years.

+1 Obviously a man with impeccable taste. Absolutely love the detailed artwork on this classic cover and have always thought it was undervalued as compared to some of his other noted classic covers such as Wonderworld 8 and Mystery Men 3. Speaking of detailed artwork, another Fine cover which I feel is underappreciated is the cover for Hit Comics #1. Nobody ever seems to point this one out, but I think it is an absolutely gorgeous rendering and Fine once again at his best. I have terrible taste but I still love this book. That's a very nice copy. Fully agree that this classic is waaaay undervalued in the Guide. The book shows up rarely for sale - the last one I saw, Harley had it last year, restored, and it still sold for multiples of Guide in grade. I certainly paid a pretty penny for my CGC 7.5, and was more than happy to do so... I believe the repeated unsuccessful attempts to auction the Church 9.6 copy of this book over a few years certainly did not help the valuation of this book. I believe it was initially sold for over $20K back in the early 2000's and then went unsold for a few years after that before finally reselling for something like only $12K after the fourth attempt. I believe the Fine collectors were finally happy that it was able to find a good home after such a long time. If it ever comes back to market now after being away for so long, I am quite sure the book will have no problems doing really well in this current market environment.

Was it the good kind of clean that CGC approves of ; or the bad kind of clean a la Mark Wilson ?