sfcityduck

That Hit is of the Golden Gate Bridge. The Brooklyn Bridge is made of stone with two divided arches on the supporting tower. The GG is made of metal, has stacked arches, and has the same art deco design above the Arch as in that picture. The GG bridge is reddish orange, not reddish purple, but the Brooklyn Bridge is grey.

DC, Fawcett and Dell were clearly better at patriotic and war bond covers than Timely. But, if what you are looking for is superheros battling NAZIs than Timely is the best. How often, though, do you see realistic WWII images on WWII era comics? Not very often. This is a great one:

I have always viewed Overstreet as serving three primary functions: (1) It is a great compilation of key non-price information on comics books (e.g., dates, publishers, issues, first apps, origins, etc.). (2) It is a great resource for dealers to use when buying comics (e.g., the prices are skewed to benefit dealers). (3) It is intended to stabilize prices (e.g., Overstreet is very hesitant to drop prices and, as a result, is very hesitant to boost prices too quickly). For me item (1) justifies the price of admissions and makes the book indispensable. Items (2) and (3) inhabit the borders between good and evil.

Good question. The implied point that we should respect Verzyl's family is a great one. I am not trying to start rumors or cause his family concern or embarrassment. I hope I didn't do that. Sometimes the problem with attorneys is that they look at everything as a hypothetical question with interesting legal implications, and here I am guilty of that. The only reason I care is that I've been giving thought recently to how older collectors should manage their collections and plan for their passing. I started thinking about this when SOTIcollector posted on what he is doing in that regard. Verzyl's unexpected death (and perhaps also the death of the seller of the current offering out of Chicago) brings home that this is a real issue. The obvious issues are whether you should liquidate the collection yourself (as Berk did), put in place a plan for post-death liquidation (as SOTIcollector elected to do), or just leave the books to your heirs to deal with (what many inadvertantly do). These issues are all beyond the basic questions of whether you need a will or trust, and what tax implications may come into play. My interest was piqued because the comment up thread that Verzyl and his wife divorced brought into play a whole new consideration - dissolution law - that I hadn't even considered. So my post above was just me thinking out loud as I identified issues that could impact a collector's estate planning. Whether Verzyl's ex-wife specifically has an ownership interest in his comic business or collection or just the kids, is no concern of mine as I won't be trying to pester anyone to try to get books out of the estate. But, I see how this could be a concern as there probably are dealers who might want to do so. By selling so quickly on Heritage, the family may well have just protected themselves from precisely that. If anyone calls them up, they can now say we've already got a plan.

For those who were not forced to take Estates & Trusts when in Law School, Rose and John are both legal children of Verzyl as the law does not recognize a difference between adopted and genetic children. Thus, his two children would be his sole heirs, unless he remarried. HOWEVER, even if he did not remarry, it is possible that in the marital dissolution Verzyl and his ex-wife agreed to some sort of joint ownership of Comic Heaven and its stock. If so, then the ex-wife could be be a 50% owner of the comics with the children each owning 25%. I can imagine that the divorce could have been complicated if Verzyl was married in California, a community property state with convoluted marital dissolution laws. Parts of what we might view as his "personal" collection were likely his "separate property," but arguably nothing he bought after the marriage (and it might be hard to document what was bought before and after), unless there was some sort of pre-nuptial agreement that provides otherwise.

Thanks for sharing that information. I don't think anyone should be shaded for selling books at Heritage that Verzyl was trying to sell at conventions. Especially, if the heirs have other careers and don't want to run-off his business (I have no idea one way or the other). More so, I really don't think there is anything wrong with heirs trying to quickly and efficiently liquidate a part of, or all of, an estate. That's their right. From the perspective of this board, I'd think that everyone would celebrate Verzyl's personal books coming back to market (although some may regret it if they are not selected to be the ones to expedite that process).

I thought he had a daughter. Maybe I am not remembering that OPG ad correctly.

Are you implying Verzyl?

Someone is offering me a Robin 3: Cry of the Huntress: Part One of Six, with a moving cover, and blank interior pages. Error? Promo? Any help appreciated.

Amazing collection!

Aren't all guesses "unsubstantiated"? After all, a "guess" is defined as a "suppose (something) without sufficient information to be sure of being correct" and "unsubstantiated" means "not supported or proven by evidence." LoL! But, hey, since one point of a message board is to entertain, I'm ok if my guess about the identity of the consignor causes the auctioneers to have a bit of a laugh. They can always quash any confusion caused by my guess, assuming it is wildly wrong (and based on my March Madness bracket I CAN be wildly wildly wrong), by just saying so. So could the poster who indicated he knew who the consignor was and threw out the hint that he was shocked the consignor had died so young.

I'm more than a bit confused by why Metropolis thinks the above paragraph will hope promote the collection when they don't identify the deceased seller. Folks DO want to buy books because they were owned by important collectors (Don & Maggie, Berk) or famous people (Cage). But, I'm not sure why Metro thinks talking about how much an anonymous deceased would have loved to see his collection auctioned and what a great guy he was is going to help sell comics. The fact that they are keeping the seller anonymous makes this sort of testimonial seem more than a bit strange. You'd think if Metro really wanted to promote what a great guy the seller was they'd say who he is. This just comes off as very curious puffery that's not even about the goods being sold. For what it's worth, my guess based on a hint about the collector dying unexpectedly and relatively young is that the deceased seller is Jack Cummins: http://www.multiversitycomics.com/news/rip-jack-cummins/ But, it's just a guess. Could easily be wrong. Anyone want to confirm or deny this guess?

Stocks and comics are an apples to oranges comparison. Their is no "Dow" index for comics. Further, while ever share of Nike is the same, ever Action 1 is not. Even so, the 8.5 Action 1 which sold for $1.5M in 2010 is going to have to garner about $5M to outpeform Nike stock, which is not going to happen. Obviously, you can pick many other stocks which have had greater appreciation. I think for a lot of collectors, the fact that GA comics appreciate in value is the icing on the cake of being able to own and enjoy the comics.

Saw it last night and enjoyed it. It is definitely NOT the book. That is both good and bad. If you are a devotee of the book, the movie will feel like a bit of a cliff's notes version (most movie adaptations do) where someone got the events out of order. Having said that, probably the three best things in the movie did not come from the book: (1) the greater focus on the characters and events occurring outside of the OASIS, (2) the jade key test (which for me was almost worth the price of admission alone), and (3) the Iron GIant. I saw the movie with three people who had not read the book. To my surprise they loved it. I thought they might not because they didn't know the back story told in the book. But, it turned out that didn't hamper their enjoyment at all. In fact, it may have enhanced it because they weren't disappointed by the lack of that back story (including the back story would have made for a very long very expository movie, which already had a lot of exposition in the first ten minutes). The special effects may be the best ever done. Short of giving the book the multi-movie Hobbit treatment, I think this was about the best that could have been done with the story. I give it a thumb's up. Just realize that it is a loose re-telling of the story in the book (notably re-told by the book's author).

I can't wait to see it! Will be doing so tonight. So far it is getting far better than average reviews, and the geeks I know who saw it earlier loved it. I was a teen in the early 80s, but I don't need a faithful adaptation of the book. Most folks are saying the movie improves on the book by the way the character relationships are changed. That was a major goal of Spielberg, and I trust his gut. I know they can't get the rights to do a straight up adaptation, and since the author was a principal screenwriter, I'm not concerned by changes. RP1 does not have a Harry Potter following who demand strict adherence to their bible, so there was no pressure to follow it note for note and that would have made a boring movie. I am psyched by the use of the Iron Giant (a great great great late 90s movie), and won't lament them eliminating a two hour Pacman game.

Thanks!

Interesting. Makes me wonder if Hariri bought it in 2010, since he bought the Cage 9.0 in 2011 and wouldn't have had the same motivation to hold an 8.5 as he does for holding both 9.0s.

I completely agree with the conclusion that art and collectibles markets are "inefficient" in the sense that information disparities are at work. Uninformed sellers are taken advantage of and sell at prices well below "what the market will bear." But, these inefficiencies don't come into play in a major auction setting. True auctions (as opposed to BIN) in the major auction venues (eBay, Heritage, CC, CLink, Hakes) are the very definition of "what the market will bear" because the pool of bidders is deep enough and sufficiently knowledgeable that information disparities really don't come into play. Prices can, however, be inflated by fraudulent sham bidding. Having said that, the notion that there are "true values" for art or collectibles is an illusion. Art and collectibles have zero intrinsic value beyond the value of the materials they are made out of. They are only worth what the market will bear, and markets are changeable. The significance of the decline in purchase price for the Billy Wright books when re-auctioned was not that the original prices were "inflated" by some sort of fraud, they weren't. The prices realized for those books were what the market would bear at the time they were sold. The problem was that one of the bidders creating that market had stolen the money he used to fund his bids. When he exited the market, the market became weaker. Which proves that in an auction market, the exit of a single bidder can radically deflate prices. This should not be a revelation to anyone, because we've seen the same thing happen multiple times with regard to comics. Notable examples include the collapse in Flash Comics prices when a strong buyer sold his collection and the collapse in Duck prices after a buyer who had been driving up prices in competition with others completed his collection and no longer was buying. Which is why I'm curious to see how the exit of the two buyers responsible for the top three purchases of Action 1s, including the purchase of this 8.5 back in 2010, impacts the market for this 8.5.

Hmmm ... well one of the co-owners of Boom and a comic collector, a Chicago resident I believe, recently died at the age of 50.

The description of the collector as being someone who died recently and relatively young would fit Verzyl ... but I don't think that is right. He doesn't appear to have been secretive about the big books he owned.

Couple things wrong with these statements. First, I don't know any comic collectors who are using the stock market to finance their comic collecting. I do know of people who, when the market starts to downturn, decide to sell their stocks and move some small portion of their cash into collectibles as a hedge investment. So your initial premise does not work for me. Second, in the early 1990s and the 2008/2009 time period, interest rates declined. So, there is no reason to think that "borrowing costs" increases occurred in the relevant time periods which would have impacted the collectibles market. For that matter, I can only think of one person I know who borrowed money to fund a comic purchase, and he borrowed from his family to fund that Action 1 acquisition. So I don't agree with the second theme you assert above either.

Thanks!

Yep!

The purpose of this thread is to follow up on old stories relating to comic collecting. Specifically, I'm curious about a story I read in a 1974 newspaper article about attorney Donald Maris. It mentioned he'd bought a "Whiz No. 1" for $230 sometime around 1970 or so. But, what caught my eye is that the newspaper article states: "Last year, with another friend, he bought 3,000 comic books, some of considerable value. Originally they were collected by Gold Key Comic Book Co. to keep tabs on other publisher's products." Anyone know anything about this? Were there Gold Key or Dell file copies of other publisher's comics?

Seems to me that the "logical" thing to do if you want to pay $3M for an Action 1 is to offer that $3M to Hariri for his under copy.