AJD

Great collection your daughter has. I'm sensing a theme here. Is there a Jane Foster Thor in her future?

On 9/20/2023 at 2:20 PM, OtherEric said:

The Australian editions are digest size?  Planet was standard pulp size the whole US run.

Oh, my bad. You're right, that one is pulp sized. I was thinking of this Australian title with the same cover and contents! This one is bona fide digest - it's 13 cm x 19cm (or 5 1/8" x 7 1/2" for those of you stuck in the 19th century )

On 9/19/2023 at 10:33 AM, twoseezy said:

It has come to my attention that a coverless copy of Action #1 was given the 0.5 grade designation back in 2003. Let's discuss it!

There's nothing to discuss. That was standard practice until 2008, when the NG designation was introduced for coverless and substantially incomplete books.

On 9/17/2023 at 11:18 AM, Telegan said:

That being said, I was looking at the grader notes on them and noticed the 8.5 reincarnation got knocked for spine and staple issues that I don't believe the 9.2 did.  The 8.5 on the lower staple seems to show issues that the 9.2 doesn't, but it's hard to tell for sure.  I'm wondering if the cleaning and possible pressing caused those issues or not.

For reference

9.2: light cover tanning, light shadow full right of front cover, very light crease right bottom of front cover

8.5: crease right bottom of front cover, tanning interior cover, small spine stress lines, very light staple tears

Looking at the GCD credits for this issue, most don't seem to be known. And it's a collection of multiple short stories by different people, so credits would be unwieldy. So I'm not surprised. (And the grade looks fair to me - why did you expect lower?)

On 9/16/2023 at 9:12 AM, Kromak said:

I always have been a fan of this Dumbo cover

Yes, I agree, it's charming.

On 9/14/2023 at 1:35 PM, shadroch said:

I received Origins of Marvel comics as a Christmas present in '74 or '75. I was really looking forward to reading the first Thor, as I'd never read it and didn't own any of the JIM run. I'll just say I was disappointed.

I don't recall it being that bad, especially by the standards of the time.

Some more antipodean four colors

G110 (1958) Four Color #858

G106 (1958) Four Color #833

G102 (1958) Four Color #668

Golden Age artist Fletcher Hanks was ahead of Kirby in the mono-expression stakes

The living one. Duh.

There are quite a few Australian Four Color reprints in a collection I just bought. Here are a few from the Film Preview (FP) series. Some of them have locally produced covers, for reasons no doubt lost to the mists of time.

FP18 (Four Color #973)

FP22 (Four Color 1024)

FP24 (Four Color 966)

FP 39 (Four Color 1210)

FP42 (Four Color 1226)

FP43 (Four Color 1282)

On 9/13/2023 at 1:15 PM, Point Five said:

Sheesh, how could I leave out Heritage? Excellent source for tough GA books, and in the last two years I’ve spent more there than anywhere else. (I guess I think of them less as an online store and more as a second mortgage somewhere where having a spare kidney is handy.)

 

FTFY

CGC should do away with 9.2, 9.4, 9.6 and 9.8 grades. Anything currently 9.2 becomes 9.0, while 9.4 and 9.6 become 9.5. All 9.8 and higher are 10.0

(I know that's really not in their interest, so it will never happen.)

On 9/12/2023 at 2:50 PM, tth2 said:

Boy, it hasn't been getting better with time, has it?  

Given the rate of inflation in the past couple of years, it's even worse than it looks in nominal dollars. Deflating recent sales by 12% (two years of 6% CPI increase, being conservative) only makes the pain worse.

On 9/10/2023 at 12:56 PM, tth2 said:

I imagine the consignor would expect to get paid every dollar of the reported hammer price, as well as whatever rebate was negotiated on the BP, so if the crazy prices were all some big scheme by Heritage, then they've lost their shirt in the resales.  Whatever remaining fee they earned on the original consignment wouldn't have been enough to cover the losses in the resales.

Which would mean that Heritage somehow contrived to lose money on the biggest find to come to market in the last 20 years.

I must be missing something. 1. Original consigner sells books through Heritage, and people buy them at nosebleed prices. Heritage takes a cut, albeit (you are assuming) a significantly reduced one. 2. Buyers from step 1 then sell them through Heritage and Heritage takes an unspecified (but probably larger) cut. Where does Heritage "lose their shirt"? Or are you saying that some of the first round sales were to N P Gresham, not real punters?

Australian G176 (1960) reprints Four Color #988

This restored toasty example is a CGC 3.0 PLOD. It fits into my GA war bonds collection, and I have an ambition of restoring it to a whiter more supple condition some day.

On 9/6/2023 at 3:25 AM, HemiGTX said:

Is there some sort of mathematical formula that is semi standard to use?
 

I have a curve fitted to data that gives a reasonable estimate for gold and silver (I haven't tried it on other ages) if there aren't factors like highest graded, pedigree etc. Here's a screen grab of the values table.

Using your example, the ratio of a 9.0 to a 7.5 would be 80/41 (RH column), so for your example a 9.0 would be $1050 x 80/41 = $2050. In your case since it's a pedigree, I'd expect to get more than that.

On 9/6/2023 at 10:54 AM, Jesse-Lee said:

 

Oof, the way he's perched above those books, ready to fall on them...

 

Crush, crease, destroy!

Plastic man to Plastic Man

On 9/3/2023 at 4:03 AM, Cat-Man_America said:

I believe this guy was active in fandom to some degree, turning out regular B&W newsprint reprint fanzine's called Captain George's Comic World in the late 60's and early 70's.  I'm sure someone could verify my recollections on this. The fanzines were fairly random reprints covering both vintage newspaper comics and GA comic books.

 

Yes, and he cast his net widely. I think he was probably first among overseas collectors to notice some of the better Australian GA material. His Comic World fanzine covered some of that ground.

On 9/3/2023 at 9:20 AM, OtherEric said:

Ever since I got this "5.0" I've been joking about their grading...

 

I know what you mean. I bought this 5.0 from MCS, and I was disappointed when it turned up, because it is spot on a 5.0 IMHO, unlike pretty much everything else I ever got from them. What's the world coming to when MCS sells you a 5.0 and it's actually a 5.0?