lou_fine

Superman's "what?????".........at least with Hugo Strange, he plays a much more dark and prominent role, especially when it comes to Gotham:

I would tend to agree with you here, as simply looking at front and back cover scans allows you the capability to see when a book is possibly overgraded just by the visual defects alone. And yet visual scans on their own don't provide you with the same ready capability to see when a book is possibly undergraded, and it's quite possible that there are indeed some undergraded books in the Promise Collection. Just hard for us to see and determine given what we have.

Many of the most desirable Edgar Church books have not been slabbed. These are owned by long time collectors who, for various reasons, have elected not to slab their books. Exactly right as most long term collectors don't see any real reason to grade and imprison a book until it comes time to sell them. Then again, that might have been a big mistake considering the continuing egregious price increases CGC have been putting in for grading your books.

Actually, I remember a post here where some boardies were analyzing the surface scratches on the Gangsters Can't Win book and determined that they must have been production scratches and as such, therefore explained why the book received the grade it did. All I can say is that I hope the graders are still thinking that exact same way whenever I get around to sending some of my books in for grading, and hope they don't see these same scratches and spine corner tears as post production defects when it comes to my turn. I wish!!!

If that's true, and I have no idea if it is one way or the other, then it renders the first two graders useless. Not necessarily so since I believe the Finalizer does take the grade input from the previous grader(s) into account, but does not have to use them in the determination of the final grade if he finds something that the previous grader(s) may have missed in their assessment. Since he is the Finalizer, and in this particular role, he does have the final say in what the grade on a particular book will be. In theory, this should not present a problem in a perfect world if the graders do not know who submitted a particular book for grading. In the real world though with large collections and/or six or seven-figure books being sent in for grading, it would be virtually impossible to maintain this level of true anonymity. As such, it's bound to raise possible questions of unintended biasness or unintended influence if you place too much responsibility in the hands of just the Finalizer.

Yes, but that's only a front cover visual difference between two equivalently graded books. and as we all know by now, you really can't accurately grade a book unless you actually have it in hand. Although it does appear to be night and day from the front cover scans, it would definitely be interesting to see the Graders Notes in hopes of shedding some light as to why both copies received CGC 8.5 grades. Especially since Dell File Copies from the late 30's and very early 40's are usually individual office file copies as opposed to the bulk warehouse file copies from the late 50's and 60's, I would supsect the interior of the Crackajack Funnies to be pretty much immaculate with all of the grade defects being limited primarily to cover defects. But that's just my guess since I don't have access to the Graders Notes.

Unlike some other previous collections, the exact reason why we have seen so very few of these Promise Collection books re-enter back into the marketplace to this point in time. Based upon the prices paid for these books, that's why I also think we will see very few of them come back into the marketplace for at least the next few years, unless the winners are willing to take a chance on losing money on their Promise Collection purchases.

Well, I believe the large majority of the Marvel Zombie Collecting Community don't collect any of the Marvel books prior to FF 1, let alone go all the way back to the Timely books.

Most definitely it's possible to lose money in this marketplace, especially if you are a deep pocketed investor where money is seemingly not an object and you are willing to pay almost anything to acquire a book. This would certainly appeared to be the case with Gary Keller who was the buyer of this book at the time, along with a whole slew of other overpriced GA and SA books which he was willing to buy at way overinflated prices at the time. Unfortunately for Keller (similar to Jay Parrino), he took a huge bath on most of his comic book purchases as he ended up reselling too early due most likely in large part to the real estate market taking a huge crash dive at the time. Really nothing new here as it has happened on other occasions before in the past, and any bets that it will happen again going forward when buyers end up clearly overpaying for a book and then not willing to wait the reuqired amount of time that it takes to correct their purchasing mistake.

As per the previous discussion on the comparison of Graders Notes for equivalent graded books, I wonder if it's the same type of situation with the above Gangsters Can't Win 2 being flagged for Very Light spine stress lines while the equivalently graded, but visually nicer presenting File Copy of Crackajack Funnies 13 from way back in 1939 as pictured below was possibly flagged for Moderate spine stress lines and creasing: Almost makes me wonder if both the Gangsters Can't Win and the Crackajack Funnies were submitted by the same consignor or not.

In all honesty, the first thing that came to my mind when I saw that so-called CGC 8.0 Batman 89 sell for $10,200 or a mere 16X condition guide was that at least it wasn't that bad in comparison to this so-called CGC 8.5 book that sold for $10,800 or over 40X condition guide valuation:

No doubt with the strong able body help and eagle sharp eyes of his grading assistant here:

Not real breaking news here as XM 94 has consistently been selling for much higher prices than GSXM 1 in CGC 9.8 ever since last summer. No doubt in large part due to the fact that XM 94 is relatively much harder to find in CGC 9.8 with less than 40 copies total in the census as compared to well over 200 for GSXM 1.

I don''t believe the final grade is based upon an average of the 3 grades like before in the prior grading regimes, as I have heard from some other boardies here that the final grade is now determined by the Finalizer and it's up to him whether he takes the grade input from the other graders into account or not. If this is actually the case which I find rather hard to believe and I certainly hope not true , then it really raises all sorts of potential issues from my own personal point of view. Then again, maybe that's just me once again and nobody else here is concerned with this.

Hmmmmm..................Very Light spine stress lines breaks color: As compared to Moderate creasing to cover and Moderate spine stress lines to cover: I really do believe I need to go to my little dictionary and check out the definition of Very Light versus Moderate here.

Certainly does not appear ro be very light spine stress lines on the Bat 89 to me, but for comparison purposes, what are the Graders Notes on the Planet 44 with CGC serial number "3766065006" since it also received the same equivalent CGC 8.0 grade?

Hey buddy.................................CGC wants to know when was the last time you went and got your eyes checked. There's absolutely zero visual difference between that beautiful green cover CGC 8.0 Bat 89 from this horrid looking green cover WP Planet 44: https://www.comiclink.com/Auctions/item.asp?back=%2FComicTrack%2FAuctions%2Fauctions_first.asp&id=1457891#detail

Well, the world's fine and everything's in perfect balance then....................winner paid 3 grade increments up for a book (if lucky) for a book that should actually be graded 3 grade incements down.

Not only am I shocked at the price here, but also shocked at the grade considering what I am seeing here down the entire spine for a CGC 8.0:

The deep pocketed bidders on the first 2 days don't want to be seen bidding on an "incomplete" book, while the weekend flea market bargain hunters don't mind bidding on these so-called "entry level" copies.

Especially when compared to the rather abysmal showing of both the 'Tec 29 and 'Tec 33 a day earlier. Must be the raspy screechy "run out of the room" voice of the live auctioneer, as compared to the hynoptic soothing bid enducing lull of the computer generated voice.

Nice to see this much overlooked book as compared to Suspense 3 finally get some long deserved loving with an all-time record setting price: https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/horror/suspense-comics-1-continental-magazines-1943-cgc-fn-55-cream-to-off-white-pages/a/7270-96151.s?ic16=ViewItem-BrowseTabs-Auction-Archive-ThisAuction-120115 Sold for $11,400 or something like 4X condition guide valuation, with only 5 copies graded higher than this nicely presenting copy relative to its assigned CGC 5.5 grade.

Although he indeed might be, I think this particular situation was really all about the power of Jada's thumb and Will acquiescing as always.

Looks like the so-called death knell for restored PLOD books is probably a bit over rated when you see results like this one here: https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/superhero/detective-comics-36-dc-1940-cgc-apparent-gd-25-slight-c-1-off-white-to-white-pages/a/7270-96049.s?ic16=ViewItem-BrowseTabs-Inventory-BuyNowFromOwner-ThisAuction-120115 I imagine the Slight resto rating helped a bit here, although the work was listed as a Poor "C" job, and yet it still managed to sell for almost double condition guide value.

Well, I guess not so much when they come graded and slabbed and consigned to the premium rink side seats of a high end HA Signature Auction as opposed to being raw and low grade and booted to the nosebleed cheapo seats of a HA Weekend Auction where they still stand out: https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/more-fun-comics-35-dc-1938-cgc-vg-35-slightly-brittle-pages/a/7270-96086.s?ic4=ListView-ShortDescription-071515 Sold for something like only just a bit over double condition guide for a higher condition graded copy or less than 20% of what a raw lower condition copy sold for less than 2 weeks ago at something like 20X condition guide. As for the More Fun 45, I guess I can't show the scan here since it was graded by the boys from across the street. Pretty much the same thing with an absolutely gorgeous Slight to Moderate Restored copy selling for slightly lower than condition guide at only $1,500 or only about 30% of what a much lower graded water stained G+ copy sold for less than 2 weeks ago at something again like 20X condition guide: https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/more-fun-comics-45-dc-1939-cbcs-restored-vf-85-slight-to-moderate-p-white-pages/a/7270-96088.s?ic4=ListView-ShortDescription-071515