lou_fine

Well, that's probably because restoration was seen as adding value to a book back then, instead of the death knell that it is seen as today. Which makes me wonder how the marketplace will view pressed books 50 years from now when improving technology just might make it cost effective, easy, and fast for anybody to identify artificially pressed books?

Took a closer look and it would appear that a collector must be cashing out as they've got the entire 8-issue Frazetta run in this auction spread between Thursday and Saturday. If you are after the entire run which I doubt, $30K will definitely NOT do it since the set is already over $30K even without the BP juice in there.

Well, it would appear that these 3 haven't really moved up that much in the past week except for the FF 214 which is now at $8,500. Guess we are going to have to sit back and wait for the fireworks on Thursday when the big hammer comes down on these Frazetta Famous Funnies.

Not 100% sure about this, but I thought CC always had something like a $2,500 credit card limit amount in place for the longest while.

Supposedly one of the toughest Centaur books out there and the front cover of this copy sure presents nicely to the assigned CGC grade.

Probably already has as most of the so-called hot keys from these various ages are not only selling at huge double digit percentage drops from their recent highs, but also at huge discounts to condition guide valuations. Still nowhere close to the bone crushing 70% to 90% from their highs that many of the once headline grabbing high flying speculative stocks on the Nasdaq have been pummeled by though. For those of you used to putting in "bottom of the barrel" tracking bids, best be careful since you just might end up winning the darned books.

Taking a look at the underlying book itself, I would definitely tend to agree with you as that big number in the top left hand corner of the slab is a total shocker indeed. I guess the winner here must be buying the label, as opposed to buying the underlying book itself.

Yes, that gorgeous high grade San Fran 9.2 graded copy of Wonderworld 23 would also be from the Jon berk Collection. It would appear that the toughest to find in grade for these 2 major later Fox titles would not surprisingly be the issues where there were no Church copies in the collection. This would include the short runs from Mystery Men 21 to 23 and Wonderworld 23 to 24, with both the Mystery Men 22 and especially the Wonderworld 24 being the toughest to find in grade due to their low census count (6 Universal & 5 Universal respectively) combined with the fact that a mid-grade CGC 5.5 are still the highest graded for both of these books after all these years.

The real big question when it comes to missing pedigrees is where are all of those San Francisco Nedor's?

Congrats on your Allentown copy of Mystery Men 16 as the Allentown books are so few and far between with a meagre total of only 135 books in the entire collection. From looking at the Allentown listing, it would appear that your copy of MM 16 is the final issue in the Allentown Mystery Men run and the WW 17 would be the final issue in the Allentown Wonderworld run. No other Allentown books in the Mystery Men and Wonderworld runs after those two mid-run issues. As for any other pedigree outside the Church books, the only other major one that I can think of with any level of consistency would have been the Larson copies and even there, the Larson List indicates only a scattering of 4 issues after Mystery Men 16 and also another 4 issues after Wonderworld 17. So, this goes a long way to explain why there are so few HG copies of these later Fox books outside the Church copies.

Yep, almost impossible to find and get these later Fox Church books after Jon sold them off in his auction through CC some 5 years ago. If it weren't for these HG Church copies from Jon's collection, it looks like the census confirms that almost all of these later issues (the few that there are) exists only in low to at best mid-grade condition only.

Totally agree with you here, and the exact reason why I was shocked at some of the dramatic increases Overstreet put into this year's edition of the guide for some of the so-called hot BA and CA books, only to now see them selling at huge discounts to condition guide valuations with the cooling of prices in the marketplace from their recent highs of last year. Makes me wonder what he is going to do for the next edition of the guide when it comes to some of these books, especially since we know that he absolutely hates to ever show price decreases in his guide.

Since it's DC though, a better chance to be their Inhumans or Eternals.

You can most definitely say that about this years edition of the guide, especially when it comes to the so-called red hot, but readily available BA and CA keys from last year. What was once selling for multiples to guide in the past few years are definitely not doing so anymore after the spectacular jumps they took in the guide this year. Combined this with the cooling in the prices for these readily available books that shows up with multiple copies in every single auction and you now having them only able to sell for often times only at huge double digit discounts to condition guide price.

Well, maybe this is one of the price points that Overstreet had used when he did his first price guide and set the top of guide value for Action 1 at $300. Of course, apparently most people then referred to it as the Overprice Guide since the feeling was that nobody in their right mind would ever pay that kind of price for an old used comic book.

Yes, just an auction listing of Dr. Brody's 31 GA books coming up for auction, but still no actual back story or info on the collector himself.

Not sure why you would be using prices for new comic books when this is really more of a back issue comic book website more than anything else. And as such, shouldn't we be using something like the price for a copy of bellwether book like Action Comics 1 which our very own @Mmehdy had brought for the headline grabbing price of $1,801.26 back in 1973, as compared to the 3 highest recorded sales of Action 1 to date so far ranging from $3.18M to $3.2M or an inflation multiple of something like 1,800X. By this formula, that's like spending over half a million on comics.

I am quite sure that the mere fact of having two copies of the book in somewhat close mid-grade condition didn't help the results at all.

Well, instead of having to wait until after your retirement to only minimize your taxes, you can simply move to a much more exotic place like Hong Kong, Singapore, Monaco, Switzerland, New Zealand, Belize, the Cayman's, etc. and enjoy your wealthier lifestyle where the capital gains taxes can be eliminated completely as they are set at zero.

Yes, but an even much better sign of the absolute best time to sell is ALWAYS whenever @tth2 is selling, because he ALWAYS ALWAYS times the market exactly right.

Decades? I had both around 10-15 years ago and in the same grade, they were about the same price. Not sure about 10-15 years ago, but I do remember picking up my copies almost 30 years ago and the 'Tec 36 cost me slightly more money than the 'Tec 37, even though the latter was in slightly better condition. Maybe that was also because Overstreet had a slightly higher valuation on the 'Tec 36 even back then, and if you check the current edition of the guide, a huge valuation difference with 'Tec 36 way ahead of the 'Tec 37 FWIW.

Well, as per their previous experience in the other collectibles field prior to entering the comic book hobby, set up your business model to ensure that it's not a one and done deal. Set it up in such a way that you can subtlety tweak your undisclosed grading standards, labels, slabs, or what have you over time in such a way as to significantly impact submissions so that customers will not only happily, but hurriedly rush back to you in order to throw more and more money at your feet in order to resubmit the exact same book back to you time and time again.

I believe you need to reread my post as I am agreeing with the previous boardie who said that the old label books indicates a much lower chance of the book having been pressed which means it should generate interest from more bidders and hence a higher price.

Well, since both of these issues are not considered to be classic covers, then the mere fact that 'Tec 36 has a rather significant first appearance in the form of Hugo Strange has definitely and rightfully given it a big bump over 'Tec 37 for quite a few decades now.

Never quite understood the rationale for this, especially when many boardies here have this opinion on the first generation slabs: If this is the generally accepted opinion with the first generation slabs, does this not meant that they should encourage higher bids upon resale?