buttock

Top 3 OA Bernie Wrightson Frankenstein page 1. This sits in front of my desk where I can look at it every day and never disappoints. The Franklin Booth in the clouds is great, but the dark texturing of the entire central figure is just wonderful with elements of Booth, Coll, and of course Wrightson. Virgil Finlay, 'Transient' illustration. Looked for a long time for a Finlay. Part of the problem is that there's so much stuff. I held out for one that really took me, and this was it. I should have just bought one 20 years ago and saved a bunch of money, but I have no complaints. Russ Heath SSWS 72 Frogman page. Heath was a diver himself and took particular interest in drawing scenes like this. I've passed on a ton of Sea Devils pages, but this one was too good to pass on.

Top 3 comics: Headline 8 needs little introduction, but finding a copy where the cover isn't gray is next to impossible. Cap 77 is absolutely impossible to find in decent shape. This may be the nicest copy in existence of this issue, which has the awesome anti-commie part. I love this cold war stuff, and it doesn't get much better than this. Marines in Battle 2, finding Atlas war in 9.0 or better is a rare feat, much less a Russ Heath flamethrower cover. White pages to boot.

Both please.

Snyder and others were buying primo Church books and turning a profit quickly early on. Again, the individual book matters.

That's why I said, "I'm not saying that's the case". I only said that to highlight that this isn't a random selection, which was to answer your question. I ended up with 3 promise books. I'm pretty certain that I could make a profit on 2, the other I just kept bidding until I won it and I would probably lose money, but might be able to profit. If I sold all 3 I wouldn't say that there's a 66% likelihood that other Promise books will turn a profit. Whether or not any individual Promise book would sell for more or less at this time is a function of the individual book. The generalizations just don't work that way.

Not to mention, simply the fact that any book comes back to market defines it as different than one that comes to market. The weirdness of statistics, but the 290 books that did get resold were resold for a reason, whereas the ones that haven't been resold were held for a reason. Therefore different animals, at least statistically. Maybe the seller(s) of these books chose to sell them because they felt they overpaid. I'm not saying that's the case, but all of that factors into the definition of randomness.

Big swaths of Bat books & other similar items that were bought by one buyer who didn't seem to care about prices. If you took the Timely books and resold them they would probably fetch as much or more than the first round. But that wouldn't make me think that all of the Promise books would turn a profit. The bottom line is that a lot of the books sold for silly prices, some would sell for less, some would sell for more, but what has come back around isn't a representative cross section. And a lot of them weren't bought for the quick flip. This is the same conversation people had about the Mile High books in 1977. Chuck wanted 4X guide and the collecting community thought he was out of his mind. Time has proven him right against the opinion of the masses.

That's true assuming a random selection, but this wasn't a random selection.

Take

If you are being ignored it's because of your lack of understanding

So you think that everyone bought those books on speculation? And you think that because the most overpaid books in the whole collection were turned around way too soon and lost, that every other book will have the same result? You think that 5% is a good representative sample to make broad generalizations (what about the books that sold for more?)? And you think the GA board is silent on this? There were like 3 or 4 threads discussing it just last week.

Not everyone has foresight.

290/5000 is 5.8%. So 94.2% haven't been resold. I know a bunch of people who bought Promise books, and none of them bought for a flip. Anyone choosing not to sell for fear of loss is ignoring the whole concept of opportunity cost, but that's a really bold assumption when the more likely thing is that -- as is true for MOST purchases -- people bought the comics because they want them, not to resell them. Do you really think that most people bought these for a flip? Do you think that's true for most auction sales? What's the evidence that that's the case?

There were also some pretty amazing books that hadn't been seen in those grades/availability in forever. The Timelys in particular stand out. You can talk about different elements that went into the books going for crazy prices, but the fact remains that the overwhelming majority of the ~5000 books haven't turned back up because they ended up in terminal collections. They were special.

I'd bet a large amount that this isn't true.

Who are these dealers who "know" this?

Most of the big SA/GA books are from another collector.

"Don't worry, it happens to everyone"

Don't sell yourself short. You've grown.

It's so weird to see this new Roy.

Yes. I think most of these books ended up with the same person who now appears to be selling them.

All the superheros in the movies have the same powers. Completely interchangeable. Huge battle scenes where they're all just fist fighting and zapping force beams, yet nobody ever gets hurt.

I think there's a difference between "least popular" which a lot of these obscure ones are, and "most unpopular" which implies actively not liking the character. To be unpopular you have to at least be recognized. For that reason, I think Aquaman has a legitimate claim to "most unpopular".

I bought an ASM 1 in late 19/early 20. When the value tripled a few months later I immediately sent it to Bob Storms along with a JIM 83. They sold within 24 hours and haven't fetched the same prices since.

That's the same Superman 1 that was sold recently, no?