lou_fine

Yes, I guess these kind of books do sometimes tend to move in cycles because wasn't it only a short couple of years ago that Overstreet used to have the Suspense 8 at a noticeably higher price point than both of the Mask Comics. And yet, if you look at the most recent edition of the Price Guide, he's now got Mask 1 perched at $30K while Suspense 8 is still sitting at only $8,900 in top of guide. Then again, it's kind of hard to guage the true valuation of a book like Suspense 8 when it still appears to be tightly held and locked away in private collections with its rather limited 2 or 3 sales (if that) a year, as compared to both of the once thought to be HTF Mask Comics which has seemingly shown up in almost every other major auction during the past few years.

Well, although it's true that I must definitely be getting old, I guess still not old enough to pull out Chuck's Mile High Catalog to see that he had both the Mask 1 and Mask 2 graded as NM+. What's even more interesting is that he had the Mask 1 listed for $30 and the Mask 2 listed for only $25 and looking for takers which I guess was not so easy back then.

Well, have you ever heard of another couple of L.B. Cole classic cover books, namely Mask 1 and Mask 2, which have seen parabolic prices increases the past few years as they have been finding their way into the marketplace? Especially since many long time collectors consider Suspense 8 to not only be of equal quality and desirability as these two Mask Comics, but definitely much much tougher to find in the marketplace during the past several years. It's quite possible that collectors might feel that they missed the boat on the Mask Comics and don't want to end up missing the boat on the Suspense 8 while the ship is still "sitting on the dock" when compared to where the two Mask comics are?

https://www.comicconnect.com/item/947349 Most definitely a very strong and healthy price, but even more so considering the rather innovative and unique strategy used to achieve this price point. Then again, it is what it is and if it works, who's to argue against it. Note to self before selling a book: Tear a piece off the back cover, then tape it back up, send it into CGC for a lower grade, then net a triple bagger from its original purchase price upon resale: https://www.comicconnect.com/item/716268 Yep, getting $71,300 for a CGC 5.5 graded copy is definitely a real winner when you paid only $22,500 for the exact same book when it was a CGC 6.5 graded copy a few years ago.

A bump for those boardies and collectors here who are into low grade raw copies of Fox books like Wonderworld as Heritage has 19 issues of this run ending in their Monday evening auction tonight. Highly doubt there's going to be any sort of a steal on a deal here as virtually all of them are already at multiples to condition guide from the cheapest one for now being this Poor condition copy of Wonderworld 27 at a paltry $60 including the HA juice: https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/superhero/wonderworld-comics-27-fox-1941-condition-pr/a/122226-17869.s?ic16=ViewItem-BrowseTabs-Auction-Open-ThisAuction-120115 to this VG listed copy of Wonderworld 5 currently sitting at a not so paltry $1,380 to this point in time with the Heritage BP juice in there: https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/superhero/wonderworld-comics-5-fox-1939-condition-vg/a/122226-17856.s?ic16=ViewItem-BrowseTabs-Auction-Open-ThisAuction-120115 I would definitely have been a lot more interested in some of these HTF Wonderworld books here, but sadly no Wonderworld 24 or 31, and the Wonderworld 22 which they have listed is only a rather weak Poor listed copy with a few too many significant defects to my liking.

Or if you want to , you could put it another way....................the insanity of the "CGC label chasers" strikes again. Especially considering the fact that the Church copy which is supposedly a NM+ copy has yet to come anywhere even close to a CGC grading table and into the marketplace.

I think it would have been an total shock and absolute surprise if prices did NOT drop from the crazy town levels that we saw last year with some of these books here. Not so much in the case of some of the HTF GA books that hardly ever shows up to market, but definitely so with the much more common recent books where you see multiple copies showing up in every single auction. Especially when these "common as dirt" so-called key books were being snapped out not to be put into the purchaser's collection, but brought solely on the basis that prices would keep going up on the book in question. Nothing to deflate a market faster then the "greater fool" theory when it is exposed for what it is, with the CGC storage warehouse in overflow mode and bursting at the seams as these overhyped books keep flowing in.

There's good reasoning behind your observation, although this may be an outlier since there are at least two other graded 8.0 copies (not to mention several higher graded copies) competing for speculator bucks. With respect to the Phantom Lady's and possible outliers, I tend to think time will eventually show us the biggest one will be the CGC 9.6 graded Promise Copy of PL 17 at something like $456K or whatever it was. It's going to take a long time for the marketplace to cartch up to that parabolic price point . Especially since the slightly lower CGC 9.4 graded Phantom Lady copy of PL17 appeared to be a superior looking copy from a strict visual condition point of view, without having the actual book in hand.

Do you really mean that Heritage is willing to foot the bill to send Roy all the way from Toronto to attend this con of ours out here? Why, only a mere 105% of the hammer price........has Heritage never heard of the concept of a loss leader as 125% of hammer sounds a lot better. Especially when it comes to those rare graded B&W books like Geriactric Gangren Jujitsu Gerbils, Marvel UK titles like Death's Head, or Malibu's Ultraverse line of comic book characters, etc. etc.

Well, if you take a look at the 3 main GA heroes from just the DC Adventure run on its own, it appears you would be dead wrong here. Especially since Hourman is supposedly already slated to be featured in his own solo movie as part of the DCEU movie franchise. Actually, not sure if this will ever happen since it's been in the works for awhile now, but then his Hourman character has already appeared as part of the JSA in the DC Legends of Tomorrow TV series. Same with Starman who also appeared in Legends of Tomorrow and now also has a key part in the current ongoing Stargirl TV series.

Any truth to the rumours that Heritage might even be sending a couple of their newbie employees to scout out this PNE show tomorrow?

Yes, you most definitely would have to go all the way back to the early pre-hero days of New Comics. Sadly, definitely not the easiest books to find especially when you come to the early issues such as New Comics 2 with this CGC 2.0 graded Billy Wright copy being the highest graded universal copy out of the handful of copies that have been graded to date so far:

Tot each their own, but if you are referring to the Sandman covers only, my fave would be Adventure 42 since I love the moodiness of the cover image brought on by the nice combination of colors and the shadowing caused by the lantern:

When it comes to Miller, most collectors tend to talk about his Dark Knight series and his first run on Daredevil. To each their own, but from my own personal point of view though, I tended to prefer Batman Year One over Dark Knight and save for Elektra's introduction in DD 168, always thought his later Born Again storyline was better than his first run on Daredevil.

Gotta pick the right week of the year. It rained so much in Germany my first year there that the joke was there was only 1 sunny weekend that year, but unfortunately I was the duty officer that weekend. I usually like to go on vacation because I get so tired of the rain at home and this time was no different as it seem like months since the last time I saw the sun. I've actually been very lucky on all of my trips so far as I've been to over 40 countries in the past 15 years and only had serious rain a couple of times, once in Alaska and once in Naples. In fact, it was bad enough in Naples that my cell phone stopped working after getting wet from taking pictures. Had to wait until I got back home and tossed it into a sack of rice overnight in order to suck out all of the moisture before it was as good as new and working again. Actually, never knew that I had gone to so many countries until I had to complete my most recent visa application for China a few years ago and they asked you to list all of the countries you had gone to in the previous 5 years. Funny thing is their system wouldn't allow any more than 25 countries and I was only on Year 4 by then.

Not sure about solving any world problems, but probably more like causing them as I noticed the financial markets all went pretty much into the crapper while I was away. Bad enough this time that it seems to even be creeping into various segments of our comic collecting world from looking at some of the Heritage results last week along with some othe other recent auction results, especially when it comes to SA and BA books. Nice to be back, but for some boardies it must be a nice vacation break from my usual biitching and complaining when I am gone for a few weeks.

When I was there last, I don’t think the sun shone… Lucky for me as the sun was definitely shining and the beach plus the 2 main shopping streets was jam packed with both tourists and the locals as it was a nice hot Saturday weekend. Funny thing is that all of the busloads of people that paid a few hundred dollars for the shore excursions were biitching like heck that they got stuck on some kind of long boring detailed tour and were then taken into Weymouth and told that they only had less than a hour to spend in the resort town before heading back to the ship in time for its departure. Cheapos like me with my trusty Pokefi in hand so that I wouldn't get lost got off the ship after breakfast just in time to see the courtesy shuttle buses Portland dock waiting to take the passengers for a free 20-minute ride into Weymouth. Managed to spend a super nice day in Weymouth before hopping the courtesy tle bus back to the ship in time for a lae afternoon English style fish & chips meal and then a nice prime rib dinner in the main dining room after a quick shower and change. I guess it's really a case of to each their own, but could never really understand why so many people are willing to pay hundreds of dollars for a locked in shore excursion when you can simply get off the ship and do pretty much the same thing and usually a lot more on your own at a fraction of the cost.

So far, so good last I looked and it was really not that cold at all as the first 5 days or so was only in Iceland before the ship started to head South for Ireland and the rest of the U.K. Funny thing is that I had no expectations when the ship docked in Portland and then Weymouth turned out to be a surprising delight and and an absoutely beautiful seaside coastal town equivalent to any on the Californian or Florida coast.

Well, I guess this is what happens when Miller does his art while in a drunken stupor and can't draw a straight centered white line, and then to top if off, misses the potty and ends up dumping his piece of black poop onto the top left hand corner of his artwork. Otherwise, it could have hit 8-figures just like this piece of artwork which sold for something like $43.8M back in the pre-pandemic days of 2013:

FTFY Yes, I hope he meant an amazingly low price because it certainly read like the guys from the OA thread thought $2.5M would be absolutely scraping the bottom of the barrel on what was perceived to be the most iconic piece of the OA to come out from the 80's. From reading that thread , it sounded as though most of the OA boardies thought it would go for $4.5M or thereabouts, with quite a few of the OA boardies thinking it might even get as high as $7.5M.

Although true, it's still a lot of fun to spend time on the boards here with fellow collectors like you and the rest of the boardies here. Just came back from spending some time near the top of the world where the sun didn't set until after midnight and then rose a couple of hours later after 2 AM, and even then, it never got dark at all while the sun was set. Still, definitely nice to be back on the boards and enjoy the camaraderie after being away for almost an entire month.

Batman #1 4.0 went for $336k, the 1.5 for $103.2k Well, that sure seems to be a relatively large difference between the Goldin results and the similarly graded recent Bat 1 results from Heritage. Looks like the Palos Verdes CGC 4.0 graded copy of Bat 1 was able to fetch only $264K at Heritage earlier this month, and yet at the same time, their CGC 1.8 graded copy was able to fetch a very strong $180K when compared to the Goldin CGC 1.5 graded copy that sold for only $103,200.

Exactly bang on here, as clearly evident with the latest recent surge in real estate prices, and yet the supply of real estate listings is at an almost record low as sellers don't want to list because they think prices will only go higher next month.

Not sure what you mean by the All-American 61 overachieving when lower graded copies have sold for more money on both the Heritage and CC auction platforms earlier this year?

Not really that surprising since I believe even lower graded copies have been selling in this price range during the past year or so. What I find rather surprising is how this cover has risen to near the top in the eyes of collectors recently, when nobody except for me had listed it as one of their Top 5 favorite covers in a CBM survey back in the mid-90's.