RareHighGrade

100% of the slabbed population:

Now that is a rare book. It's the only copy I've ever seen.

I'm enjoying the postings of all the MH and Larsen copies. I love how there are pedigree copies of so many uncommon books.

I agree, there are far fewer books that would make the list now compared to only 10 years ago. Several of the early DCs still make the cut. I believe that the ones with the lowest census numbers are All-American 4 and New Adventure 15, which respectively come in at 3 and 4 census copies. There are several other DCs that have only 5 or 6 copies on the census.

Based on this scan, it looks like CGC is giving the collection a designation: "The DC Universe Collection."

I love how at 23:03, she nonchalantly passes over an Action Comics #1 without even mentioning it. The interviewer doesn't even notice.

Foxes and MLJs also had the "D" coding.

How does a book that's been resubmitted retain its original CGC number? I've seen countless examples of "improved" books getting a new number.

Actually, the Church/Mile High coding started in 1937, not 1938. It was not consistent, however, and many Church books are missing it. The presence of the coding is highly prized, at least by me, because it's one of the best ways to help verify a potential Church copy.

The Promise books took a bath. Some relatively rare books, on the other hand, did quite well. For example, the 9.0 More Fun 10 and 6.0 Zip 22 each went for $20K, and the mid-grade Big Book of Comics went for $15K.

Yes, I've tried on many an occasion to get some of your awesome winners, but to no avail.

A lot of the comments here are assuming the 7.0 Superman #1 was bought by a collector. I question that. Why would a collector pay an all-time record price for a book and then sell it only a year and a half later during a down market? A more logical explanation is that Goldin bought the book with the express plan to flip it as part of its efforts to expand its business into the comic memorabilia market. It needed high profile books like the Superman #1 and lower grade Action #1 to draw attention to its auction and to be perceived as a big-time player in this niche.

The most surprising aspect of this is that the 8.5 looks nicer. Not only does the 9.6 retain all of the original flaws (small crease in URC and slightly smashed bottom of spine), but due to the pressing, the front cover no longer covers the top of the pages on the right side.

Ian de-slabbed all his books, so it's been my assumption that Ian's copy is the de-slabbed 3.0. Do we have any evidence to the contrary; e.g., that his copy wasn't graded when he bought it?

The DA #1 and the high grade copies and color proof for DA #2 likely came from the Sol Harrison estate. The 2-3 known lower grade copies of DA #2 were probably the product of a limited distribution.

Either Double Action 2 or New Adventure 26 is likely the rarest DC. Because of their perceived rarity and related values, almost all known copies of both issues are slabbed, so the CGC counts of 7 and 8 issues, respectively, are fairly accurate, although there is at least one unslabbed copy of each still out there. From a purely CGC census standpoint, New Adventure 15 is the least common, with only 2 slabbed Universal copies (4 copies total).

Possibly. Another one of the rarest DCs is the Big Book of Fun Comics, a copy of which just happens to be available in the upcoming HA auction: Big Book of Fun Comics #1 (DC, 1936) Condition: FN+.... Platinum | Lot #92029 | Heritage Auctions (ha.com)

It's a shame that the owner is not using one of the big auction houses (HA, CC, Clink) to sell this collection. The collection, with its extraordinary completeness, is too important and valuable to sell in a relatively unknown venue that will not be visited by most of the hobby.

For those of us who are not on Facebook, can you quote the article/post or give further details about what it says?

Richard had that big stack of comics in front of him, but only showed one of them. What the heck?

Most if not all of the More Funs from 1938 are extremely uncommon. Some of them (e.g., #35) have only half as many copies on the census as #31.

That's a nice copy. Many copies have foxing or dust shadows on the right side. Your copy doesn't.

It's official: MLJs have become the new Foxes.

This one in particular was well done and very entertaining.

I think that mjoeyoung's point is that an ungraded vg copy of MF 47 sold a couple of days ago for almost as much as a 7.5 graded copy sold for a year ago. But the explanation is not that the recent sale was unusual, but rather that last year's sale was. This is an issue that is very uncommon and highly prized by both More Fun collectors as well as early DC collectors. Whoever picked up the 7.5 Cosmic Aeroplane copy got a steal.