lou_fine

There's been a lot of talk that the video game market was artificially inflated. This might be the result. This plus the fact that the video game market simply doesn't have the same long established history of buying and selling that the comic book marketplace has in order to more strongly support these kinds of prices that we've been seeing from last year.

15 copies 8.0 and above is my estimate. My thinking is that it might be at CGC 7.5 considering that Goldin was able to auction off their CGC 8.0 graded copy of Bat 1 for some $1.47M last September and now it's being offered for fractional purchasing through Rally Road with a total market cap of something like $1.8M. Then again, the $1.47M price point might just be an outlier or dare we say since you don't believe in it, the Larson pedigree status for this copy might have also helped to push the price upwards to a slightly higher than normal price point. BTW: Does anybody here know how Rally is doing with the sale of this Batman 1 or have they not been able to sell all of their IPO shares to this point in time.

Never heard of this Zach guy, so I assume he must be a newbie working for them. Since your books needed grading first why didn't you simply give it to them to submit it in for you since it seems that CGC tends to go quite "soft" when it comes to grading submissions from Heritage?

Wowza, double digit count for the number of potential Batman 1 that could sell for a cool million. How far down the grading scale would that take us down to as I imagine it might take somewhere around GC 7.5 based upon how hot the current market is?

Looks pretty dead around the Heritage booth in your picture here and I guess nobody handing million dollar books over to them as per the sign. Any idea who these 2 guys are and since Calgary is supposed to be so much busier than Vancouver, they'll probably change their mind and skip the show in Vancouver in the end.

Says the guy who started us all off on this lascivious path here with yout post below, so it's really all on YOU then:

Maybe he's super flexible. Not sure about Supes being super flexible as that's more like Plastic Man or Elongated Man, but he does have super speed, so I am sure that he's doing BOTH of them at the same time in preparation for his threesome later on.

No you weren't. It sold more recently. Any idea when and what it sold for and I imagine it must be some buyer with a speculative day trading mentality in order to try to flip it so quickly?

ebay auction (Pristine Comics) that sold in 2017 for $936,223 Went to a couple dealers (brothers) who bought all 3 WW books in that ebay auction. Listed it on their site with 2Mil asking price for some years. Well, if the SF copy of Cap 1 sold for only $915K back in 2019 and then was successfuuly resold for $3.12M earlier this month, why not give it a shot with the single highest graded copy of AS 8 that sold for some $936K back in 2017.

Well, that's because I never said that about CGC grading because it would be wrong to generalize and say that it has to be either one or the other. What I said is that CGC grading has shifted and rather quite different from the old school grading in place prior to CGC in that they are seemingly a lot tighter on what you call the 1%, while at the same time seemingly a bit looser on what you call the 99%. Although I would generally agree with you about the makeup of the defects, I believe the numbers are probably more like 90% and 10%, but your general idea is right. As such, that's why I prefer the old school grading because the grades seems to be much more proportional or in line with both your percentage quantity of defects along with how severe and egregious they are. Not sure, but maybe it's just me, but CGC's current grading system seems to be more in line with the types of defects and seemingly hitting harder on the defects which they deemed to be "fixable" and able to eliminate. Like I said, since a picture is worth a thousand words sometimes, another example of this would be this book here: Grader Notes light bends to cover light spine stress lines breaks color Once again, maybe it's just me, but this seems like a pretty tight grade on a book where they seem to be hitting your 1% defects, which are in some part or to a certain extent probably "fixable" for a price of course.

Your guess would be as good as mine's when it comes to cover artwork, but there are a lot of long held private collections out there.

Good to know. Will email him with a $1,000 offer today I already offered to double his money when I was in NYC a few years ago, so I think you might have to offer him at least a triple if you really want a shot at getting it.

Didn't want to come right out and say it since I thought the side by side photos were pretty self evident, but something akin to what @batman_fan was alluding to in his post. Everything that you and I as regular collectors submit would seemingly end up being graded tightly relative to the book's visual defects. Everything that Heritage submits would seemingly get the benefit of the doubt and seemingly end up being graded loosely relative to the book's visual defects. Then again, the Gangsters Can't Win 2 seems to be the poster child for overgrading when it comes to the Promise Collection, and maybe boardies like me are overstating it a bit since nobody's perfect including the CGC graders. Shouldn't really matter in the end anyways, since I imagine most bidders would use their own eyes and bid according to the book relative to the subjective CGC grade. Perfect case in point being this copy of Ace Comics which I thought presented quite nicely relative to its assigned CGC grade: From the Graders Notes, it would appeared that the cover tanning along with the cover creases and the nicks out of the front cover really killed the grade on this copy here. I guess if it was just a rat chew on the corner from cover to cover throughout the entire book, it would have ended up grading higher. Unfortunately for me, even though I was bidding well into double digit condition guide value for this book, somebody else was obviously thinking the same way and I just couldn't see myself bidding more than the 20X condition guide that it might have taken for me to win this beauty of a book. Don't you just absolutely hate it when you are bidding on a book that you think presents nicely relative to its assigned CGC grade, and other bidders are doing the same thing instead of focusing on just the CGC label like they should in this particular case here?

Metro has OA to Tec 28 and 30 The cover artwork for 'Tec 28 is front and center when you enter the Metro offices as it deserves to be, but both that one and 'Tec 30 are non-Bat covers. Then again, I absolutely love that cover for 'Tec 28 and would take it over many of the later Batman covers and if I am not mistaken, Fishler mentioned to me that he had paid something like only $800 for the cover way back in the day.

Hopefully not, but shall we take a survey to see which gets done first, the Edgar Church movie, the Pedigree book, or my guess here which is Neither of the Above?

Totally agree The prosecution rests. Counselor; Looks like you are still thinking on the basis of one size fits all and that CGC treats all defects in the same manner when it comes to grading. Personally from my own POV, this could not be farther from the truth, but since a picture is worth a thousand words sometimes, maybe a visual picture will help to show the difference: Grading Scenario #1: Can you feel the soft gentle swishing of the CGC grading whip as it comes down to caress your book with that clearly visible rat chew, edge tears, spine wear, indented staples, color breaking creases, and what have you? Grading Scenario #2: Click link below to view: http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/ejeW00YcZIc/hqdefault.jpg Can you feel the hard blood letting, scar inducing cracking of the CGC grading whip as it comes down to bludgeon your book with that near invisible tiny NCB spine tick that can only be seen if you hold the book up to the light or that unflattened still fresh looking book with still just a hint of the natural bow that comes when a book has been stored properly, especially when all of these additional revenue generating defects could have easily been taken care of if only you had been willing to open your wallet a bit wider so that we could have lighten it a lot more for you ? The defense rests.

I guess you missed my point that I was simply trying to be sarcastic here or it just flew over your head when you was reading it.

Of course people didn't realize this because up until this practice was outed on these very boards here by Dupchak, Masterchief, Redhook, etc. back in 2005 or thereabouts, the "pressing out of wrinkles" as per the Overstreet Guide had always fallen under the restoration umbrella and acknowledged as such by everybody within the hobby and marketplace at that time. Little did we know though that Borock and CGC had changed the definition of restoration somewhere along the line to exclude this procedure which actually had no conservation value at all, but sadly failed to inform the rest of the collecting base about this key change in their definition. With the exception being a cabal of insiders or people in the know who knew about CGC turning a blind eye to this manipulative procedure and needless to say, ended up rolling in the dough and making huge bank by laundering what was then still restored books into an unsuspecting marketplace. But then, this is a history lesson that all of us here pretty much know about anyways and certainly represented a very controversial time for CGC as their integrity was brought into question and for good reason.

Although it's not one of the 59 CGC pedigrees listed on that link, you can see it if you hit the "Browse by Pedigree" drop down box and then simply scroll down to Williamsport where you will see some sample copies of this "pedigree" that other collectors have uploaded.

I believe you are thinking of the Larson AA16. I just checked my copy of the Larson List and it was indeed the AA 16 with the coupon cut out from the centerfold and also notes water stain on the back cover, otherwise a VF copy. Wonder if it was Lamont himself who cut these coupons out as I was talking to Pat Kochanek down at one of the SD Con's and he mentioned that the More Fun 56 with the first Dr. Fate cover was an absolutely beautiful book, except that it had a coupon clipped out from one of the stories. According to the Larson List, at least it looks like it is from the Radio Squad story and not from either the Spectre or Dr. Fate stories, but still. Any idea how much this drops the value of a book since I believe GA books with clipped coupons would end up in one of those Green Qualified slabs?

Actually, if this was true wouldn't we expect that most of the early key Marvel SA first appearance books should have the highest graded copies coming from the more recent time periods if grading was becoming much looser as compared to the very early years. Especially with most collectors being Marvel collectors and who would end up submitting these keys for grading due simply to their high demand and subsequent huge value in the marketplace. And yet pretty much nada after some 2 plus long decades. And yet rather surprisingly, but very interesting is that after some 22 years of grading now, virtually every single one of the highest graded copies of those key Marvel SA first appearance books were the ones that were graded pretty much right when CGC first opened their doors back in 2000. From the CGC census, it would appear that the only exceptions to this were CGC 9.8 graded copies of Daredevil 1 and Tales of Suspense 39 that were graded in the latter half of 2010 and 2016 respectively that finally surpassed the prior 9.6 highest graded copies of both these books which were slabbed when CGC first started up. If grading is indeed becoming looser in the more recent years, shouldn't we be seeing these early tightly highest graded copies be resubmitted back in for potentially even higher grades. Somehow, I highly doubt we will see this happening after all these long years, but I guess only time will tell.

Will wonders never cease as I clearly remember holding each of the books up to the light at just the correct angle for that first submission to Greg Manning because I most certainly didn't want him to get my best books from both a value and condition POV since it was just geared as a first run test of the new CGC grading system back then for me in 2000. Since I had over a dozen of the File Copies from the late 30's and early 40's in my collection at the time and which I still do, I ended up picking out a few of them for this first submission (not the worse, but certainly also not the best) including a CGC 9.6 Crackajack Funnies 21 which I remember because it sold for what I thought was rather silly money at the time. Little did I know what would eventually come. Anyways, being a File Copy from not only the same time period, but also the same title, my bet is that my copy of Crackajack 21 which graded out as a CGC 9.6 copy at the time back then most likely had the same types of defects as this one here which we were discussing back on Page 241, especially since I kept the better ones for myself after I held them up to the light: Interesting to see the Graders Notes for this book as detailed below, courtesy of a fellow boardie since I don't have access to them: Grader Notes light finger bends front cover light wear all corners breaks color light wear right center of front cover breaks color light writing indent center of front cover As expected with a File Copy from the late 30's, all of the nasty fugly defects are right on the front cover and clearly visible and must be post production defects as evident from the assigned CGC 8.5 grade, while that "gorgeous" Promise Collection copy of Gangsters Can't Win 2 with the exact same equivalent 8.5 grade must have all been production related defects to be ignored upon grading. Boy, do I ever wish you are right that books are graded much looser nowadays as compared to before because that would mean all of those CGC 9.2's to 9.6's that I got on my first run would grade higher now. But I somehow highly doubt that as it is really based much more upon the specific defects on a book now and whether they can be monetized for Mother Corp or not.

For your reading pleasure, the story is right here from the Allentown thread which has now been resurrected here:

EXACTLY, as it's now (and has been for awhile) all about maximizing both the top and bottom lines for the CCG ownership group. Needless to say, it pretty much came at the expense of the old school grading standards with the additional revenue generating defects moving right to the top of CGC's hit parade chart when it came to their undisclosed grading standards. Totally agree, and especially when it comes to defects caused by bad pressing which they try their best not to see because they certainly wouldn't want to scare potential customers away from that huge pot of gold at the end of their rainbow.

No story per se relatively speaking, and yet I would still take the Allentown copy of the same book over all of the other pedigrees you listed, save possibly for the Edgar Church copy depending upon the 2 copies and their comparative grades.