lou_fine

Well, I most certainly would not be calling 1960's Archie's #1's in Curator quality HG condition as "crapola" books.

And John also got some crapola books. These little books he got were often sold to the "little people" like me.

Oh, so I guess that explains why the early birds like Brulato and the like got the best part of the Curator Collection and the late comers like Hauser got the leftover dregs that nobody else really wanted.

Thanks for posting a link to that old thread re: how many OG board members are still active. I had forgotten that people like JC were not longer active, unfortunately. Yep, and for those too lazy to click onto the link, here's what he basically said in a nutshell:

Would this copy here pass your sniff test as qualified for "taking off": https://comics.ha.com/itm/magazines/savage-tales-1-marvel-1971-cgc-nm-mt-98-white-pages/a/7248-95131.s?ic4=ListView-ShortDescription-071515 Sold for a rather astounding (at least to me ) record high of $37,200 back in November of 2021.

It's actually been interesting to read some of these posts as it's been pretty much a full year since I was last on this thread, and the sentiment on the X-Men 1 book here sure seems to be on a roller coaster ride for much of the time.

The part that I find strange and a bit irrational is that usually the same people that say they wouldn't pay a dollar more for a book with one othese stickers are usually the same people who would then go out and spend multiples more for a book with a higher CGC graded label even though the book clearly does NOT appear to be as nice as one with a lower graded label. Especially since I know a number of collectors who have brought the books with these stickers and then simply resubmitted them back into CGC for regrading and ended up with a higher graded book at a much cheaper cost by just paying for the regrading fee. They claim it's almost a guarantee for most books (i.e. not every single one) if they go further and CPR the book and they sometimes even come back 2 or 3 grade increments higher defect upon the defects. Sounds as though they are using the stickers to help them identify potential CPR qualifiable books and figure the battle is more than half won if it has one of these stickers on it, if you are into playing the CPR game. Yep, totally don't understand why collectors would pay mutiples more for a slightly higher graded labeled book when it doesn't appear to be as nice or in line with the CGC grade. Especially when a dollar value is a fixed known amount, whereas as history has clearly shown us over and over agin, a grade is just a subjective (albeit a so-called expert one) when the book crosses a grader's table and might come up with a different number if on a different day. What makes it even worse is all of the manipulation that can take place as we have seen books moved right up from a CGC 9.0 to a CGC 9.8. I guess it's really a case of to each their own, and that's why I tend to go more with the overall eye appeal of a book as opposed to a sometimes very changeable CGC label. Especially since I am more of the old school pre-CGC generation of collector who doesn't need to own the highest graded copy of a book for my own personal collection.

I would tend to agree that both are trying to achieve the same purpose on behalf of their consignors. If you compare the Qes and the CVA sticker programs though, I would prefer the QES sticker more since it at least comes up with an individual listing of why that particular book receive the QES sticker in the first place. The CVA sticker, on the other hand, is just a sticker with the same blanket general explanation applied to all of the books that supposedly qualifies for one.

For speculators and investors who always say that Overstreet is years behind the market, it looks as though you sold your copies for even less the guide valuations in the new Overstreet that came out a few weeks ago. Overstreet had the first issue of the Adventures of the Super Mario Bros listed at $150 in top of guide, $200 for the Legend of Zelda, and a whopping $450 for the first issue of Super Mario Bros. All I can say is that he must have had some big shot CA advisor really bending his ears because he also kind of went ballistic on the Grendel related books and to a lesser extent, the early Usagi related books.

Well, from an availability POV still much better than those "common as dirt" Spidey 300 and Spdiey 361 where you see every single dealer at a con having mutiple copies of these books in HG for sale when they probably really belong in the quarter box.

Yes, whatever happened to good old JC as I remember he used to be so active on these boards here when they were filled with new posts from an almost endless stream of boardies who used to post here? I imagine he probably left the hobby awhile ago as it's been years since I last saw a post from him. What a defference between the good old days and now when the boards are pretty much like a masoleum and you can now go for hours before seeing a new post on some of these forums here.

Well, I guess that's what can happen when the supply of these in-demand books starts coming out of the woodwork and ends up showing up in every single major auction on a regular basis.

Well, maybe somebdy needs to assure that he gets a couple more copies into his personal collection which he also wouldn't be able to sell then.

Well, if I was Sonny Boy here, instead of simply sitting back and taking it on the chin, I would have taken an offensive jab back at him. I would have asked him if his former partner in crime at Via had used these copies as a practice run in order to perfect his technique. Especially since according to the CGC.data website, virtually every single one of these books were graded right when CGC first opened their doors and long before they knew what was going on.

I would tend to agree with you here since the lower graded CGC 9.2 Truckee Meadows copy had sold for $150,150 on Heritage back in April of this year and their latest CGC 9.2 graded copy in their current Signature Auction is already sitting at $150K with still another 3 weeks to go.

Well, that's probably because it's about the one and only single SA book that I've ever really wanted after I started vintage comic book collecting back in the 80's. I probavbly would have gotten my fix if I was lucky enough to have run across a copy in the used bookstore back in the day, but was never ever so lucky even though I wouldn't have known the significance of the book at the time.

Are you tryin to tell me that all of those early Usagi related comic books that Overstreet jacked up in this year's edition of the guide is going to drop like a rock because unlike so many complaints about his guide, somce of those guide valuations sure seems to be high compared to the current marketplace?

That's not what the title of the thread says.

Yes, I was actually at a local con a couple of months ago and was kind of suprised as I noticed that some of these early pre-hero Valiant issues were actually going for quite a few hundred dollars.

It certainly can't hurt in the short term, but if it's Doctor Fate, I would rather go after More Fun 56 with his classic cover first appearance. Even more so if you factor in the price point and the relative rarity factor for MF 56 when compared to MF 55. First thing I noticed was the grease penciled "S" mark on the right hand side which made me wonder if this book came out of that high grade grease penciled "S" collection that had some of those early HG Fox books like Mystery Men and Wonderworld from around that same time period?

From the Grader Notes for this copy of Combat 1, I guess this is why it received only a CGC grade of VF 8.0: Grader Notes crease bottom of spine through book breaks color light staple rust transfer stain back cover I guess this is when a back cover scan would have helped to see how bad the transfer stain is, but being CL, all you get is nada.

Well, I guess that's because they decided to go with this one first in order to hopefully pump up the price for the CGC 9.8 graded copy: https://comics.ha.com/itm/modern-age-1980-present-/albedo-2-stan-sakai-copy-signature-series-stan-sakai-thoughts-and-images-1984-cgc-nm-96-white-pages/a/7279-92107.s?ic4=ListView-ShortDescription-071515 Makes you wonder just how many good old Stan has stashed away, and a definite blunder to accidentally preview the CGC 9.8 copy first because bidders might just hold off from bidding on this lower graded CGC 9.6 copy here now.

Would you by any chance be referring to this CGC 9.4 graded copy of Cerebus 1 that sold for $29,130 on CL back in February of 2021: https://www.comiclink.com/auctions/item.asp?id=1453575 If so, I am quite sure this copy of Albedo 2 will finish higher considering the crazy money that has come into the marketplace since that Cerebus 1 sale plus the fact that this is a highest graded CGC 9.8 copy here. If nothing else, with the label also stating that this copy is "From The Collection of Stan Sakai" should be more than enough to push this copy over the top as the market (i.e. collectors, speculators, & investors) will just throw crazy money at what they will perceive to be a special unique copy of the book.

Like you, I also contacted John about 15 years to pick up about 8 to 10 of the cheap Gold Key/Dell #1 issues from the Curator Collection. Nothing expensive at all as they were all at less than $100, save for the Total War #1 since I wanted a nice copy to go with the Files Copies which I had for the Mars Patrol 4 - 10 portion of the run. They were all pretty much at guide and included low demand books like Toka 1, Naza 1, Tarzan Lord of the Jungle 1, Jungle Tales of Tarzan #1, Gunmaster 1, etc. Certainly nothing special at all, but just to get a small sampling of the Curator books at a very reasonable price. As for their condition, although they are might techically up there from a pure CGC grading point of view, they just didn't seem to be as bright and glossy as the Mars Patrol File copies or the Dell Office Files copies which I had from back in the late 30's. To each their own, but I guess I am much more about eye appeal which you can see from a distance, as opposed to the tiny technical barely perceptable (but improveable and hence revenu generating) flaws which CGC is so focused on nowadays. I guess I also got the impression that there were probably multiple copies of these later Curator books as they were certainly sold to me at a very reasonable price and I had figured how is this possible for a big name Curator pedigree, since I found it rather unlikely that everybody else and their dog had passed on them already since this was several years after the collection had come to market. Still, like you have stated in your post, glad to have them as I now have them safely stored back into the same packing box which they came in.

It’s better than the s and p has done. Just like any asset there will be market highs and lows- if it only just went up in a straight line it would be a bit bizarre. Or some of those high flying big name speculative Nasdaq stocks which have dropped by anywhere from 60% to 80% down from their highs.