sfcityduck

You protest too much. The only reason I made that post was because the poster to whom I was responding, was cautioning people against saying anything that would hurt the final sales value of a book at auction. Why? Because he asserted the FAMILY would take the financial hit. Hence, my comment that we don't even know if the family gets a dime from the upcoming auction.

I think that buyers are entitled to the truth about a collection, not marketing hype. So we're entitled to discuss and verify what we can - including the backstory, the grades, etc. At this point, we don't know if the collection is being sold by the family or by someone who bought the collection from the family. The Heritage ad on Bleeding Cool states "The consignors of these comics wish to remain anonymous, but Heritage Auctions has revealed some details behind the origins of the Promise Collection and its name." It does NOT say the family are the consignors.

We've seen this story before. Tom Reilly. Never verified. It is naïve to think that if you put out a story to hype a collection you want to sell, to create an emotional reaction, no one is going to attempt to verify the story.

If they wanted to ensure their anonymity, there would be no story. The story they have told likely gives up too much information for the family to stay anonymous.

They gave up too much information to keep their anonymity.

I've thought the same thing. I'm sitting on around 400K in United miles. But, while the auction would be cool, Dallas in late June is not my top vacation desire. I think there will be other auctions I'll want to attend more as they get past the "dazzle them!" phase and move into the meat and potatoes.

Maybe not anymore.

Comparing those two books, I'm beginning to think this is a marketing promotion by CGC to encourage everyone to resubmit their books to take advantage of the new grading standards being established by this collection.

I'm guessing Jon Berk could answer those questions. The book, in the same holder, sold for $393,000 when he put it up for sale in 2017. So it wasn't scaring anyone away. I would think they'd likely have been period appropriate staples because I don't think they are hard to find

That was a good buy at a good time.

Tom Reilly type story again? Hope CGC and Heritage document it well.

Action 1 CGC 5.5 (conserved) - the conservation is ""Conservation includes: cover cleaned, cover reinforced, staples replaced." I think it presents nicely. The only bothersome things are (1) it looks like some rust might have been scraped off from around the staple area which caused paper loss in that area and (2) the cover cleaning method is not specified (might have stripped the gloss). Cover reinforcement (if reversible as is very likely the case) and staple replacement are non-factors. It's probably a $500K+ comic, and I'm not seeing anything in the Promise Collection of that magnitude yet. What's the record for a conserved copy?

One observation: The most valuable comic in the June auction is not going to be from this pedigree from what I can see.

Great idea! My love of comics of the late 40s and 50s arises in large part from the fact my dad gave me his collection, and because his collection included not only decent shape issues, but also a healthy amount of "remaindered" comics undoubtedly obtained by my grandfather, the manager of a Woolworth's. I read a huge amount of later 40s to early 50s comics and gained a love of that period of DC, Fiction House, Duck books, etc. that still firmly resides within me today.

I hope it is not one of the Hammer's.

Also some nice Harvey's and Better's.

Especially since Timely's Ms. Fury is a newspaper strip reprint comic, right?

Check out the pedigree coding on this book!:

I'm beginning to think that this thread title, "They're Still Out There," refers to the record long time my Fast Track Economy and Standard Books are stuck on "Scheduled for Grading."

By definition, it could only be one family.

181 is a "classic cover" and "first cover appearance of Wolverine"

Uh ... no. My definition is that an appearance has to be in the editorial content of the comic, and a house ad is not that. And, really, that's the way it has been for the 60+ years of comic fandom. But, go ahead and try to swim upstream if you want to.

House ads don't and never have counted as "appearances" to comic collectors. Superman's first appearance has always been viewed as Action 1 by the comic collecting community even though there are house ads which predate that comic. When I was a kid in the 70s, we knew that Hulk 180 was Wolverine's first appearance, and some years it even was worth more than 181, but the 181 cover and greater focus on the character made 181 the more desirable book even back then before CGC came along. Folks these days are so simplistically hype driven they don't seem to realize that the desirability (and value) of a book is dependent upon a lot of factors and "first appearance" is only one of them, and not necessarily the most important in some cases.

"X" only is a Roman numeral when written. Any confusion that "Weapon X" as written in Hulk 180 meant "Weapon Ten" was dispelled in X-Men 109 when Wolverine is called "Weapon X" in dialogue by "Weapon Alpha" (also a letter). the notion "X" mean "10" is a much later retcon. The back story in Hulk 180 continues as a key part of Wolverine's origin in GS 1 and which was spooled out slowly during the Claremont/Byrne run, including the intro of Weapon Alpha and Alpha Flight.