lou_fine

Not too bad at all as it was just past my initial top end estimate as I was thinking $60K to $80K when I first saw this listing last month. Not quite the 6-figure threshold that some here were expecting it to hit, but definitely a very nice move up as you really can't expect to do it all in just one shot. On the other hand, also a few less than impressive results with this once red hot book here being rather noticeable on the downside: https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/romance/cindy-comics-37-timely-1949-cgc-vg-45-off-white-pages/a/40216-81047.s Sold for only $750 when equivalent graded copies were selling between $1,250 to $1,500 in the 2016 to 2017 time period, with Heritage even able to sell a raw VG+ copy for almost $1,800 back near the end of 2017. I guess the seller of this copy for only $750 must have lost money on it since this exact same copy was purchased from Heritage for $1,080 just a few short months ago in October of 2022.

Can't remember now since Can't remember now with regards to this specific book on its own, as there's been questions brought up with regards to the grading on many of the books from this Promise Collection that it's hard to keep track of them all. BTW: SCS damage also occurs after a book has ALREADY been graded.

Are we really going to start this whole endless discussion up again?

Although it's not yet time for the fat lady to get up and sing, any thoughts here on Heritage's new strategy to seemingly shift away from Signature Auctions and in its place have more of these Showcase theme style Auctions on an almost weekly basis now? Just wondering since I was looking at their Valentine's Good Girl Auction that finishes later tonight and I noticed that their top dollar book to this point in time is still Seven Seas 4 sitting with a hammer bid of $26K. Are these seemingly too frequent Show case Auctions too low profile in the grand scheme of things and getting lost in between all of the other ongoing auctions taking place since this is the exact same top bid that was in place a few weeks ago? Pleasantly surprised that most of my bids, including some of my tracking bids, are still holding up to this point in time for now at least. Especially since in a normal Signature Auction, they would have already been blown out of the water a long time ago.

I think it's a pretty well known fact that Eastern Color was the printer of the book for Proctor and Gamble, just that it was not listed on the book itself which is the standard practice with all other printed comic books: Funnies on Parade[edit] In early 1933, Eastern Color began producing small comic broadsides for the Ledger Syndicate of Philadelphia, printing Sunday color comics from 7 in × 9 in (180 mm × 230 mm) plates. Eastern Color sales manager Harry I. Wildenberg and his coworkers — salesperson Maxwell Gaines and owner George Janosik — realized that two such plates would fit on a tabloid-sized page. Soon after, in April 1933, Wildenberg created the first modern-format comic book when, according to legend, he folded a newspaper into halves and then into quarters and, finding that a convenient book size, led him to have to Eastern Color publish Funnies on Parade. Like The Funnies but 32 pages,[3] this, too, was a newsprint magazine. Rather than using original material, however, it reprinted in color several comic strips licensed from the McNaught Syndicate, the Ledger Syndicate, and the Bell-McClure Syndicate.[4] This periodical, however, was neither sold nor available on newsstands, but rather sent free as a promotional item to consumers who mailed in coupons clipped from Procter & Gamble soap and toiletries products.[5] Ten-thousand copies were made.[6] The promotion proved a success, and Eastern Color that year produced similar periodicals for Canada Dry soft drinks, Kinney Shoes, Wheatena cereal and others, with print runs of from 100,000 to 250,000.[2] In addition to Gaines, those associated with the project included Leverett Gleason other future industry notables working under Wildenberg's supervision. Later in 1933, Gaines collaborated with Dell Publishing once again to publish the 36-page one-shot Famous Funnies: A Carnival of Comics,[7] followed in 1934 by Famous Funnies, which ran for 218 issues and is considered the first true American comic book.[8]

Like all equity investments, the small time retail investors like Ryan Kirksey (i.e. author of the original article here) doesn't really truly get much of a say with his 10 sharers since the insiders (i.e. Goldin and Rally Road) already control 50% or more of the shares.

The discussion on this $2M transaction on the boards here already took place on the last page of the Rally Road thread last month: What I found most interesting was that the buyer of the book of the book in the Goldin Auction (i.e. apparently Ken Golding himself) was able to resell the book while retaining a sizable portion for himself and made out like a bandit in the end. Word of warning.................a bit of math involved in the transaction here if you are adverse to that.

Well, if you like Part 3 of his Comic Book History, then you should really go back to Part 1 to see where it all started from way back in 1933: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrEBWGyDtc4 Especially the part where the often overlooked Harry Wildenberg, the Sales Manager for Eastern Color, is given his due credit for coming up with the concept of the comic book as we know it today. It was under his direction, that the idea for the printing and successful distribution of the comic book as an business industry in its own right was conceived. As you stated, although Terry is rather slow but pretty thorough, it looks like he did make one major boo-boo in this video of his. He stated that Funnies on Parade, the acknowledged first modern format comic book, had a print run of 1,000,000 copies when in actual fact it had a limited test run of only 10,000 copies as per most recognized authorities like Overstreet and the like. Highly doubt it would have been a million copies since it was only a test run for Wildenberg and Eastern Color before it was deemed successful enough to come out with Famous Funnies, Series 1 in the following year with a print run of 35,000 copies. From a comic book historical POV, a truly highly desirable book but one that appears to be rare and rather hard to find, with the CGC Census Population Report indicating a meagre total of only 14 Universal and a further 5 Restored copies graded and slabbed to date. It looks like the the last time we had any in the marketplace were from Heritage almost a full decade ago back in 2014, while CC had a couple back in 2017. So, for those boardies here who might be thinking of acquiring some of these historical books sooner rather than later now that they are finally picking up some steam, it just might not be a bad idea to consider the first one that really started it all and gave us all here the hobby that we all love and enjoy so much:

Highly unlikely since most of the initial first run for these Promise books were from more than a year ago and I doubt HA would wait that long to bring them back to market. In addition, the ones I checked still shows up in their auction archives as being SOLD.

Notice this late Wonderworld that sold on Heritage last night and it looks like the Fox runaway train still shows no sign of slowing down here: https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/superhero/wonderworld-comics-32-fox-1941-cgc-fn-60-off-white-pages/a/122306-12013.s?type=bidnotice-outbid Any boardies here in on the action for this nicely presenting copy relative to its CGC 6.0 grade and no doubt helped by its Hitler cover, but still a very strong price at $11,400 or almost 12X condition guide value?

The broader lesson here is that it's never ever a case of one shoe (i.e. one auction house) fits all when it comes to selling your collectibles. You need to look at your individual items in terms of their age, grade, etc, as each one of the major auction houses have their own specific customer base targeting specific types of items which they would be much more interested in.

No detective work required at all as it is a Jon Berk copy and all of them were originally sold through CC back in the summer of 2017. So, similar to the HA archives, all you have to do is go into the CC archives to find all of their previous auction results and non-auction sales.

Have you NOT read his listing description for this book here...............after all, even the cover states that it's a "Novel Length Tale of Terror" featuring the one and only Blade the Vampire Slayer. What more can you ask for considering that he clearly states it is a "Very Rare Magazine" even though the CGC Census Population Report indicates a whopping total of 102 copies graded and slabbed to date and still counting? Most definitely an outright steal for any buyer in today's hyper red hot marketplace for a mere $3,500. Especially considering that if he was the original purchaser of the book, he would have had to paid a whopping $152 for it back in the dead cold frigid days of 2017 when Jon sold off his collection: https://www.comicconnect.com/item/718118

Ouch or awesome , depending on if you are a speculator who brought during the pandemic times or a longer term collector who brought back in the pre-pandemic times.

To each their own, but being a long term collector, I've never quite understood the rationale for offloading books so quickly, especially since you probably stand a good chance of losing money playing this game. On the other hand, I am quite sure that the speculators and shorter term investors probably don't understand why long term collectors are still holding onto all of those BA and CA books which were so red hot last year and could have been sold off for multiples of what they are going for in today's marketplace. Heck, what in the frigging world are these slow-witted collectors waiting for?

T Are you referring to Schmell here, because if you are, I would expect whatever were his would have all gone through the standard CPR process because that would appear to be the modus operandi for dealers like him and Ritter? Somehow I doubt it because buying runs like some of these DC's would not be the best strategy to follow if you are indeed planning to perform CPR on your purchases. My guess is that it would possibly be a newbie deep pocketed collector entering the market who recognized the DC brand, but have now decided to cut bait and run as the influencers have left the comic book market and there are better opportunities elsewhere. Too lazy to check the CGC serial numbers to see if these are possible regrades or not, as the only regrades I've seen so far were from Worldwide.

Finally at long last.................it's about time that these very early historic comic books which are the real roots of our hobby gets some much long overdue loving from the collecting base here. Especially since this $5,400 appears to be a relatively strong price for a Moderate Restored copy and pretty much double what it sold for in the Jon berk Auction a few years ago. More evidence of this strength is the Heritage archives here which indicates another four mid to low grade copies selling for multiples to condition guide during the past year. Definitely a pleasantly surprising but a welcome uptick in prices on these historic books as compared to back in the day when you could barely get guide for them unless you was really super lucky: https://comics.ha.com/c/search-results.zx?N=52+790+231&Nty=1&Ntk=SI_Titles-Desc&Ntt=1272337&ic3=ViewItem-Auction-Archive-PreviousPricesHeritageExpanded-081514 Looks like the Famous Funnies 3 with the first Buck Rogers along with the Carnival of Comics also didn't do too badly in this auction here as they also sold for multiples of condition guide value, even though they were in raw condition, albeit nicely presenting copies relative to their assigned raw grades. I still remember when Carnival of Comics was a real laggard and only able to sell at a discount to guide. Looks like the both the GA and pre-GA marketplaces are still flying high right now based upon some of these auction results that we have been seeing here.

Well, for those of you who's into the history of the comics and the early Famous Funnies, it looks like this might just be your lucky day as the Heritage Sunday Auction which just started up a few minutes ago have an early run of these historic books from Famous Funnies 1 through Famous Funnies 17 pretty much intact, plus a few more issues after that: https://comics.ha.com/c/search-results.zx?N=52+794+793+792+4294939899&Ntk=SI_Titles-Desc&Nty=1&Ntt=famous+funnies&limitTo=4294939899&ic=homepage-search-A-K-Y-071316 Might just be a good time to pick some of these up as most collectors nowadays only chase after the boys who wear their underwear on the outside and skip right past these critically important early issues.

Well, if you are comparing the chances for the Mask 1 meeting its first round price or more, as compared to the Eerie 1, i would definitely place my bet on the Mask 1. Especially since it's still the single highest graded unrestored copy to date while the Eerie 1 has 3 equivalent graded copies in the same CGC 9.2 grade and a whopping 87 unrestored copies slabbed to date so far and over 100 in total if you include the Restored and Qualified copies.

With the classic example being the first ever Joker cover in 'Tec 40 which is actually the splash page for the 2nd Joker story in Batman 1.

Well, based upon the fact that the Mask 2 did sell for $118,700 last summer, it seems that common sense should dictate that the Promise copy of Mask 1 should in theory sell for more than the $102K that it fetch in its first go round here. Then again, when it comes to auctions, it's quite possible that bidders might just take leave of their senses at times and it's hard to say whether this is what happened with the CL sale of Mask 2 or not. No doubt in part helped by the fact that CL appears to be the master when it comes to hyping their books in terms of their auction lot description: Offered here is the SINGLE HIGHEST GRADED EXAMPLE for one of the most coveted comics ever published, Mask Comics #2. From an advanced private collection where it's been for many years, and just recently certified by CGC, this stunning VF+ 8.5 sits alone as the single finest known example of this L.B. Cole classic. The colors on this book are the best we've ever seen, deep, rich and truly exquisite. Fittingly enough for the single finest example CGC has ever certified, the pages are newsstand-fresh White. It's redundant to say that this is an extremely rare, very special offering, of course. This book would make for a cornerstone in any advanced Golden Age collection and we're positively elated to make it a part of our Spring 2022 Featured Auction. Who in the world could resist throwing in a higher bid after reading that. Especially when the CL auction format is based upon bidders throwing in "blind" Hail Mary passes at the end if they really want to win a book and hope that no other bidder is also in there tossing the long bomb at the same time. Some evidence of this happening in this particular action for the Mask 2 by the fact that the bidding had jumped up from the $50K mark in the last 30 minutes of the auction and then finished itself off with four final bids in the last 20+ seconds of the auction with the book moving up from the $90K mark in those scant few seconds. I found it rather interesting to note that although they hyped the fact that it was recently certified recertified as the single highest graded copy, they didn't bother to mention that the CGC census population count for the 8.0 grade had dropped from two copies down to only one copy in the same time period that the 8.5 copy was graded and slabbed. Bottom-line though...........I would tend to agree with you that this book (even without going through the CPR process as per the norm for these Promise books) probably has a better chance to at least break even or possibly even to beat its previous price when compared to the other Promise books that are coming back into the marketplace for this upcoming Heritage Auction.

Well, never say never as there are some, pride notwithstanding, are still willing to give it a shot as evident by these 90 books and counting from the much heralded "Over Promise and Undelivered Collection" that's coming back out to market for their second go round in the upcoming Heritage March Signature Auction: https://comics.ha.com/c/search-results.zx?No=25&Nty=1&Ntk=SI_Titles-Desc&N=52+794+793+792+4294939359&Ntt=promise&limitTo=4294939359 No worry about possible loss of pride here, but let's hope they don't end up losing their shirt and pants as evident by my post from earlier this morning in another thread on the boards here: What I find absolutely surprising is that in this day and age of rampant CPR being the supposed name of the game when it comes to certification today, that virtually nobody save a small handful from Ritter at Worldwide even dare to resubmit these books for regrading prior to sending them back to market a second time. Or maybe not considering who the original submittor of all of these books for grading was.

Now, now, now..................are you really trying to tell us that this little beauty here won't be able to fetch a paltry $456K again, because it's going to take a lot more than your above statement to convince us of that: https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/detective-comics-140-the-promise-collection-pedigree-dc-1948-cgc-nm-96-white-pages/a/7244-93065.s?ic4=ListView-ShortDescription-071515

So, is Heritage really streamlining or downsizing their major Signature Auctions from 4 day down to only 2 days because the listed dates which I am seeing is only March 30 - 31? Guess we will have to wait and see if this is the right move for both their consignors and themselves to have smaller Signature Auctions and have in its place instead, bi-weekly auctions in the format of both their Showcase Auctions and their Sunday/Monday weekend auctions. Personally, I don't pay as much attention to these smaller more frequent auctions as there's simply too many of them around, what with CL and now CC also starting them up which makes it hard to keep track of everything.

Well personally, if I was planning to dish out that kind of money on an Over Promise copy of a DC book, I would much rather have gone for this copy of All-American 61 with the classic Solomon Grundy cover: https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/all-american-comics-61-the-promise-collection-pedigree-dc-1944-cgc-nm-96-off-white-to-white-pages/a/7244-93002.s?ic16=ViewItem-BrowseTabs-Inventory-BuyNowFromOwner-ArchiveSearchResults-012417&lotPosition=0|0 Relative to the other prices that some of the books from this collection received, I think the lucky winner is going to be looking pretty good going forward considering it went for only $138K right at the start of the auction when bidders were most likely still trying to "feel" what was going to happen with these books. As for the $156K for the Detective 114, I guess the double cover notation must have attracted a lot of attention for the double cover fanatics here. Then again, it's a case of to each their own, but since the interior cover was the one graded at 9.8 with the exterior being only a 9.4, I would certainly not consider paying 9.8 prices for a book that might suffer a bit of damage if you go to try to remove the outer 9.4 cover. Especially also considering that the Church equivalent 9.8 graded copy sold for only a mere $23,900, albeit in a different time and world back in 2009.