lou_fine

Another Centaur that did real well was this copy of AMF V2#5 as my high bid from this morning did a sexturple by the time it was all said and done: https://www.comicconnect.com/item/967640 Closed with a bid of $30,500 which came out to a final price of $35,075 which represented an almost 50% ROI on the $23,655 that this Larson copy sold for back in 2019. Definitely a much stronger return than the huge negatives which we have seen on 37 of the 43 Promise Collection books that have come back into the marketplace on their second go round to date so far.

He most certainly did if he's the one that bidded $60K for the book which means a super strong final price of $69K with the 15% BP juice in there. Looks like this book along with the other Centaurs just keeps on rocketing up as it sold for $38.5 on its first go round as a CGC 7.0 graded copy in the original Jon Berk auction back in 2017 and then resold for $54,002 as a CGC 7.5 graded copy in 2019.

Any bets that most long time boardies here would be a whole lot more financially secure and a lot less stressed if we were allowed to have invested our vintage comic books into our 401K's or into our RRSP's or tax-free savings accounts (i.e. TFSA's) for those north of the border, instead of the more highly volatile equity stocks.

Now, this is definitely a good smart approach to buying books in today's comic book hobby and marketplace.

Any idea if they had what would then be seen as the rare OCD collector type mentality of today and had kept all of their books in pristine condition or were they like the typical readers back in those early days of comic fandom who simply read their books to the well loved beater condition that most GA books are found? Now, with these realatives being part of the later early SA collecting generation, maybe they had a much better chance of keeping their books in at least a little bit nicer shape after reading them.

Hey Tim; I believe you are 110% absolutely correct with respect to this $23M figure for the Promise Collection because Heritage is certainly no fool when it comes to making money and this would have been pretty much a guaranteed money loser for them with this kind of figure here. Especially although Heritage did indeed managed to fetched several million dollars from the first couple of Signature Auctions with these books, I simply can't see the rest of the collection with their 3rd and 4th tier unheard of titles having the "legs" to bring the total auction proceeds up to anywhere approaching $23M even though collectors were still bidding ridiculous crazy monies for them which Heritage could never ever have expected. I was rereading the Heritage ad in Al Bundy's private reading library last night before I went to bed and it appears the basic gist of the ad is that while Heritage is best known for auctioning items from consignors, they also wanted people to know that since some collectors and heirs prefer to sell outright, Heritage does also purchase individual collections. Probably just bad wording on their part or bad reading on my part here (more likely), but most likely they meant that they have spent $23M in total (i.e. not on just one individual collection) to date on purchasing collections from collectors and heirs over the years. So, probably the rest of my story might still have some ring of truth to it what little there is, just that the figure which Heritage paid is lower, but signficantly large enough to bring the total that Heritage had paid over the years to seem enticing enough to incorporate into a full one-page ad for them into the Overstreet Guide. No idea what the number would have been for them to purchase the Promise Collection outright, but shall we say most definitely much more than the Church-like $500 based on 5,000 books at brand new full cover prices for what are really nothing but old used smelly books.

Hey Mitch; Yes, for this Promise Collection, there clearly appears to be a sharp 180 degress change in the MO of how Heritage has handled the sale of this collection from the beginning consignment/acquisition stage right through to the final auction stage for these books, as compared to how all of their prior auctions have worked out. Pre-emptive word of warning here, for all boardies who don't want to be bored to death reading about my theory on what might possibly have taken place here, please skip right to the next post instead of having the usual hate-on for me. Now, remember back to the original thread on the Promise Collection that was started back in March of 2021 and quite a few boardies speculated on the origins of this Promise Collection and if the family was still involved in it by the time it came to market last year. Some speculated that they might have sold it off some 20 odd years ago to a dealer while most of us here assumed that it was simply nothing more than a regular consignment and that the family still had direct ownership of the collection when it came to market. It seems that nobody here really knows as the question was never ever answered, so anything is possible. Now, consider this possibility here................I was flipping through the latest Overstreet Guide and noticed what I thought was a new one-page ad from Heritage whereby they proudly claim in bold red that "you should know that we have purchased individual collections for as much as $23 million, with immediate payment in full." I then went back to the Overstreet guide for last year and noticed that they also had the exact same ad in the 2021 edition of the guide, but no such ad in any of the prior editions of the guide. Now, in the last year and a half or thereabouts, has there really been any other single individual comic book or comic art collection that Heritage might possibly have purchased outright for $23 million? I can't think of any on the comic book side and I will leave it to others when it comes to the comic art side since I know zippo about that market there. The only collection that I can think of on the comic book side is this Promise Collection here, unless the other other possiblility is another new collection which they purchased but are holding off on auctioning it off which from my POV would seem highly unlikely. Good point Definitely a good point and a strong one for all prior auctions since Heritage was just the auction house auctioning off these books on behalf of their consignors and collecting the auction fees on the subsequent sales. From a strict corporate business POV and for the realization of business synergies due to their linked ownership structure, it would definitely be good to maximize their top and bottom lines for the head honchos if you could get revenue from the same book not just once, but multiple times and from multiple streams of revenues. Now, would your MO change if you consider the other possibility........................namely that the auction house is not only auctioning off these books on behalf of a third party consignor, but is itself the direct owner of these very books here, whether they had purchased it directly from the family itself or from the so-called dealer who had purchased it from the family some 20 odd years ago? Wouldn't your game plan change and it now serves your best financial interest to ensure that you get the absolute maximum price for all of these books right off the bat on the first go round because ALL 100% of the money will be going right straight into your top and bottom lines. As a direct seller now, do you really want to leave room (i.e. "potential') in there for the buyer to simply go through the CPR process and collect on the easy money or are you going to use your intra-corporate connections and influence to ensure that the path is cleared for you and not the subsequent winner/purchaser to get maximum dollars for YOUR books. I believe the fact that we have seen absolutely zero attempts at a resub for these 43 Promise Collection resales in this heavily CPR focused grading environment kind of gives us a strong indication of what most probably took place here with this collection.

*trademarked or is that *copyrighted? That should actually be the tagline for the entire collection and go right in the centre of the CGC label itself under where it says "The Promise Collection".

Bang on with the Promise copy of Seven Seas 5 because once I saw that one come back to market, I knew right off the bat it would sell for more. Then again, I guess it had a better shot than most since the Seven Seas 5 was front and centre for the promotion of the Matt Baker Auction.

Hey Mitch; Nothing less than the usual fantastic and top notch analytical work that we have come to expect from you. Very well done!!! Only one thing that I noticed here in your chart. Why only one column in there for the CGC grade or are you trying to imply that all of the grades for the 43 books in total remained unchanged from the first go round. If this is the case, isn't this really rather surprising in this day and age of certification where most flippers are into playing the CPR game, that not even a single one of the resellers here dare even tried to play the game with these Promise books here. I really think that I need to go back to my dictionary and check up the meaning of words such as "independent", "unbiased", and "third party".

Yes, but are any of us here except for @Mmehdy really that surprised with these secondary sales results that we are seeing to date, considering the over and above market prices that were paid to acquire these books on the first go round. In addition, trying to flip any books and make a profit in such a short turnaround time is usually never a winning combination and actually a pretty tough game to be playing. I actually thought the hit would have been much more substantial given the current macro economic conditions and the fact that prices on most collectibles have followed suit accordingly. My bet is that if more of these Promise Collection books than just 43 of them had come back to the market so soon in the interim, the numbers would be even worse than what we are seeing here. Especially since the owners of some of these over bought books clearly know by now that they had over paid for them in the first place and simply are not willing to take the hit if they are placed back into the marketplace at this current point in time. Like another boardie here had alluded to before, this collection is really a classic case of Over Promise and Under Deliver.

One of many comic book related junk mail that I get on a regular basis and one which I really should get around to unsubscribing from as I never ever open any of the ones from Schmell. Besides the daily barrage of emails which CL sends out for their auctions, the other one which I laugh at is CGC's almost daily announcement of another so-called private signing when they can't even get their own turnaround times back to some semblance of control.

Well, if there's only a single book from that collection that you want, then I also envy your collection because I want virtually every stunning eye-popping book that Richard has in his amazing personal collection.

I second that motion.

Most certainly as don't you also get those neverending email messages from Doug Schmell (i.e. Pedigree Comics) every month announcing another new uber high grade SA Marvel Collection that he's picked up and now available in his next auction.

Any truth to the rumours that one of the collector/dealer (i.e. Joe Krolic) who had assembled the Winnipeg pedigree collection only let his undercopies go and actually still have his top copies for all of the early SA Marvels still residing in his personal collection?

If you are concerned about some old guys sitting on their GA collection, just think about a much much greater number of not quite so old guys sitting out there on their high grade SA collections.

Yes, better to buy a thicker GA book or one of those early 100-pager World's Finest or even better yet, how about a 196-pager Complete Book of Comics and Funnies since they'll keep your fireplace going a lot longer than that skinny little Hulk 181.

Well, rumour has it from people in the know is that the CGC 9.9 graded copy of Hulk 181 suffers from a bad case of SCS damage.

This really only applies if you are buying into the market. Since you say that you are not involved with the secondary market anymore, I hope this means that you are selling your books off which would then mean the falling Brirish pound sterling would be working in your favor here.

STOP! You're making it worse Well, here's a thought to make you feel better than.....................just think of the captial loss you can now claim for income tax purposes.

Oh yeah without a doubt. That bad boy ain't getting a 9.9 if not for that interior untouched cover. Even much more so with a double cover, that's one of the reasons why you can't actually grade a book unless you have it in hand. Then again, I am not so sure about the CGC grader's terminology when it comes to description of defects: Grader Notes Front Cover Shadow Right Bottom Front Cover Crease Top Back Cover Small Crunch Although I can certainly see a crease affecting only the surface cover, the word "crunch" kind of leaves me with the impression of a defect that's a bit more penetrating than only skin deep.

Was over on the GA boards and just wondering if this is also SCS damage (likely??) or just the grading standards at the time (yikes!!!):

Or what's even worse, somebody may have scrawled their shopping list on the front cover and defaced the book:

Breaking records still seems to be the name of the game for some of the HTF and classic cover GA books, but definitely not so much for the relatively common but once red hot BA and CA keys from 2021 where you now have multiple copies showing up in HG condition in every single auction.