sfcityduck

Not worth it. Promise Copy has perfect centering, better registration, and white pages, albeit with a slight dust shadow (probably should not be a 9.8). Your copy has a miscut and worse registration that does not look like a press would improve. Since it is already a 9.6, I'd not mess with it. Grade might go down:

I have always thought this exchange from back in 2007 at the beginning of BangZoom's Golden Age Collection thread between "Learnedhand" and "Bangzoom" makes some very good points about pedigrees that still resonate today: Just for the record, I agree with much of the above. I wish that kind of talk had never started. It seems that when collectors mention pedigree today, it's a quick jump to talking about money. In theory, I like the idea of comic pedigrees, unfortunately in practice it becomes a little less fun for me. Probably 95% of my collection was purchased from original owners. The 'pedigrees' in my collection are not known by fandom, they're only known by me. When I look at most of my comics, I can spot the Kolmorgan, Foote, Starr, Clarke, and Gilchrist issues immediately. It makes the collecting a little more special. Having said all of that, I do understand why there is so much ruckus about prices and potential appreciation. Collectors today spend so much money on their hobby, they'd be foolish not to give some thought to possible downsides in their investments. Almost all my buys were 30-40 years ago. I think the most I ever paid for a single issue was $55 for Superman #1. It was purchased from a dealer who advertised it in the old fanzine, The Rocket's Blast. The market must have been slow back then because he gave me (13 years at the time) 30 days to raise the money. Things have sure changed.

One of my favorite theme collections on this board is the pedigree type set. I am not saying there is anything wrong or stupid about collecting pedigrees. They are a cool artifact of fandom and some of the associations add desirability. I am saying that the original utility of the concept, to emphasize unusual high quality and provide comfort to remote buyers, is better provided by other means today.like HD pics, the internet, and third party grading. If third party grading, the internet, and HD pics had been a thing back in the 1960s, I do not think we would have the pedigree concept in the hobby today. There would have been no need.

Bill, Many thanks for visiting this thread I started. I love comic history, and you are one of the early generation of comic collectors who paved the way for the rest of us. I'm glad to hear you still have your collection! Great to see you visit! That your grandson has an interest in comics, must be a lot of fun for you and him. I personally love the late 1940s DCs in large part because my father gave me his collection of late 40s to early 50s books. Always have had a soft spot for Robin in Star Spangled - viewed as strange these days. Feel free to share more stories!

To my eyes the Action 1 CGC 9.0 white is superior to the KC pedigree copy CGC 8.0 o/w. If they both came up in the same auction, I'd expect the CGC 9.0 white to beat out the KC CGC 8.0 o/w. No idea of what the Larson looks like. If it is higher quality, I'd expect it to go higher, regardless of whether it is a pedigree or not. Is that crazy? I think not.

Because they are great copies. Not because they are deemed a ped. You are buying the book. But, if you see a copy that you deem as a better issue that is not a ped, you'd take that over the Allentown - because it is a better issue. DA has this right. Side by side and take the top copy. Ignore the pedigree if all that matters to you is "best."

Agree with that.

That's not a story at all. That's just grades. The 100 some odd Allentown books, a volume that originally was too small to be a ped, include some of the best quality books around. But, there is zero story attached to that ped. We don't know the OO, we don't know anything about the books other than its a small group of really nice books. Hell, the Rocket Copy of Action 1 has more of a story. So do the Billy Wright books. With Allentown we get nada, other than grades. With Okajima we get a story of the Japanese internment. With MH, we get a story of the creation of the whole ped concept and a revolution in the marketing of comics in this hobby. With Gaines we get industry association. With SF we get a story of parental heartbreak and WWII (not verified). With Promise we get brotherly love. Allentown is not like some others on the story front.

I get your argument. But the pedigree bonus is an artifact of Chuck's brilliant marketing and the quality standard initially set by the Mile Highs. Chuck figured out how to leverage the quality of the collection to provide comfort to buyers that they were getting a super high quality books that they were buying sight unseen. He built the model. But, it is a pre-internet model. Chuck didn't have the ability to send HD pics. Today, we don't need that model. Today, the big pedigree bonuses are based on the story. That's why the Promise Collection was sold by Heritage and CGC as a new Okajima, not a new Allentown. Mile High's also have story value. Allentown copies get great results in the marketplace because they are just phenomenal quality copies and rare, not because they have an Okajima quality historical value or a MH quality comic historical value that will make up for low quality. You know that the top two Action 1 results were non-peds. The peds didn't pass them up despite the .5 deficit and the upgrade history of the CGC 9.0s. I think that pretty much shuts the door on the argument that ped matters more than CGC grade and perceived quality. You know that DA's copy of Superman 1, if it is better quality and gets a higher CGC grade, will blow out the MH copy because it will be the "best." We are in a new era now from back when Chuck was doing mail order sight unseen. We have the comfort of HD pics and CGC grades. Being a MH does not mean it is perceived as the "best" any more. But the Okajima results show that a good story tied to significant history or comic history can trump grade and perceived quality in the lower grades. To me, pedigree matters more on the lower end than it does on the higher. Not a denigration of peds. Obviously, many peds are in the top echelons of the census. Some peds are just super cool concepts.

If you want the best copy and the Allentown is the best copy, you get it. But the Allentown pedigree adds nothing to the value for me beyond the quality of the book because it has no story or history of significance. I'd take a better non-ped over an Allentown because these days you don't need the pedigree rep as an indicia of the book's quality. With the internet, even remotely, we can side by side and evaluate books from incredibly high quality images. Now the ped concept is just puffery unless it has a good story.

Hariri is not a comic investor. His attachment to Action 1 is deeply personal - a fond memory of his father who was assassinated.

TTA 27?

I wish. Just reported over on the GA board the (or is it "a"?) AS 8 CGC 9.4 is coming to auction at Heritage. So we'll get to see what the present auction value is.

I like rare GA comics that are historically important. But, I don't see the point of manufactured collectibles.

I don't recall him ever posting he has no Action 1. He did post he didn't acquire an Action 1 in the 2,000 books that came from the garbage can in D.C. But that was just a part of his collection. As that pic shows, he literally posted walls of comics that make clear his collection is LOT more than 2,000 books. That cabinet contains no Actions or Tecs, even though he had them (what's in the other cabinet to the right I ask myself). He also stated he acquired other GA collections that he likened to his own private pedigrees - even stating the last names of at least five OOs. The 2,000 lot of books was just the best quality of those collections he'd picked up I think. And it is hard for me to believe that a guy who was actively collecting and attending cons (and doing some dealing) at least as soon as the early 1960s did not acquire an Action 1 for his collection given that he went to the trouble to acquire things like the check from D.C. to Shuster for work on Action 1. But, I've never met him, and can only go by what he said on this site. Folks who know him might have a better understanding of whether he has an Action 1..

Fixed. It appears the AS 8 CGC 9.4 entered the $1M club last year in a private sale Roy brokered for an undisclosed price (he just brokered this year the MH Supes 1 sale).

My potentially related question: Same buyer as the AS 8? If so, looks like Roy's become a big time buyer's headhunter in much the same way Metro was doing for Hariri.

Pssst - the $4.5 Action 1 rumor was someone confusing leaks about the Superman 1 sale with a sale of the first Superman appearance. Easy misstake. Another poster stated the original deal was for $4.5 net, and the price was topped up to $5.3 (a 15% increase) to account for the gain tax.

They are just things. If they give you pleasure hold. If you want money to buy other things or enable experiences - then sell. There is also pleasure to be gained by letting others buy your books to achieve their dreams. I don't see a huge point in holding the D 1 CGC 8.5(R) if you had thoughts of selling. Financially, if you paid $10K over 20 years ago and it is now worth $100K, then your rate of return is less than 10.5% per year. That beats the Dow at 7.09%, but if you'd bought a blue chip like Amazon you'd have made an !8%+ rate of return (over $400K value today) and not paid for any insurance. If you're having thoughts of selling, then that suggests the pleasure is not worth the hassle.

The BZ D31 might have a chance given some of the crazy numbers paid for traditionally less valuable Promise books based on covers that might not rate as high for GA collectors as D31

Maybe the BZ copy will, but I am not betting it will be next: :

Someone can check this and confirm, but as best as I can tell the first house ad showing the right badge and membership card design was in CA 4 -- which is consistent with badges first rolling out in April or May, I think..

I wish!

A lot of things about comics publishing and promotion makes no sense to me. For example, there were comic publishers who started series with issues numbered 5 or 10 because they wanted the readers to think it was an established series. But here, I think it is fairly easy to make sense of what happened. First, I suspect that it is easiest for the printer to print sequential numbers by having the same number of digits. So if you plan is to print up 20,000 membership cards, and you want the numbers sequential, your choices are to start with 00001 and go to 20000 (which looks funny until you get to 10000) or start with 10,000 and go up to 30,000 (which looks like you have more members from the outset than you really do) Second, I don't believe anyone's ever seen a membership number below 12,000. Have you? Third, the Von Hake envelope is hand addressed. I don't believe there is another hand addressed envelope anyone's seen. I really doubt that they hand addressed 12000 envelopes between February and May. That's a lot of envelopes, especially when they were also addressing an equal number of postcards. And to my knowledge no one's ever seen another hand addressed envelope other than the Von Hake envelope. That suggests that envelope was done very early in the process before they started shipping at a higher rate. Fourth, there's the post-cards. There are only two that have come to light. The fact that they sent the acknowledgment postcard implies that they weren't in position to send the badges immediately. Postcards like that are a bid for time. It makes sense that only a few would have survived if they were only used for a limited time. Finally, there's the Timely philosophy towards business. I don't think it odd at all to think that Martin Goodman would not front the money to buy over 10,000 metal badges until he knew that kids were going to send in their dimes. My guess is that he did not order the badges when the comics were first sent to the printers. Instead, my guess is he waited a bit to confirm the scheme would work then put in the order and the badges were ready a few months after CA 1 was on the stand. Is there any support for my guess about Goodman? Yes. A little known fact is that the first appearance of Captain America was not the cover of CA 1. Instead, CA first appeared in two house ads in Human Torch 3 (2) which GCD has hitting the stands on December 10, 1940. Both ads (supporting your point that I was wrong in thinking the first house ad was CA 2) reference a club called "Captain America's Junior Sentinels" and a "badge." The first is this one: The second talks about "Captain America's Sentinels" and is more notable because it has a picture of the badge: As you can see, the badge is not the design that Timely went with. I don't think they'd have gotten the badge design wrong if the order had already been put in. Also, the membership card was clearly not ordered until after CA 1 because it shows a round shield. As do the envelopes. I think that very persuasive evidence for my theory. (But, hey, we all know I've been wrong before!) To me, that they started with 10,000 or 12,000 just makes more sense. But reasonable minds can disagree and I don't know how we'd figure this one out.

Good point! With the pointed "A" being the earliest version.