Gatsby77

Finally arrived! 4 books, submitted on-site via Economy on June 20th. Received Oct. 17th. Just shy of 4 months, soup to nuts.

Yeah - mine were "scheduled for grading" shortly before Labor Day.

I found a decent CL buy today. ~2,400 Bronze/Copper books. Nothing spectacular, with a lot of 2nd/3rd tier titles. And they'd clearly been picked over - no ASM, no X-Men keys among the 180-260 run, etc. But a decent find at a fair price. Some Atlas # 1s, Shadow 1-10, the Byrne FF run, Night Nurse 1-4, etc. Best part was, the books stopped precisely at 1990, so while no NM 98, no hundreds of true 90s drek either. Just $.35-$.60 cover drek.

No - you'd have to call. I have the same deal - submitted at wizard world Philly on 6/20, but I didn't have my member number with me, so I can't track online. Suffice to say it's been 13 weeks & I'm still waiting...

I was the underbidder on the Comiclink OAAW 83, so pushed it about $350 higher in the last 45 seconds or so. In retrospect, wish I'd pushed to $2,600 or so. Maybe war books are in a seasonal slump? I sold about 10 other OAAW issues from 86-100 in last month's Clink auction and every one of them was soft & sold for under what I paid a few years ago. Just thought the OAAW 83 was weird because every other book I looked at went a stupid over-GPA prices. While this one was technically over-GPA for the grade, still seemed like a bargain.

Economy - submitted at Wizard World Philly on 6/20. Didn't have my membership number so I can't check status online. Called them Friday and was told "probably another three weeks." On the plus side, at the con I also submitted a raw book to Comiclink to get slabbed before auction, & they've now received it. Graded exactly as expected. Hard not to get excited to know how these books (my first CGC submission) grade & get them back in my grubby little mitts. When I was 9 years old I remember collecting the necessary proofs of purchase from five Star Wars figures in order to send away for a free exclusive figure of The Emperor. Waited 4-6 weeks. This...this feels worse.

Interesting points about how "highest grossing" actor can be irrelevant. I love The Rock & think he's grown into a legitimate actor. But he's yet to prove himself as a lead box office draw (see Hercules). Still, he elevates things like FF and GI Joe. Perfect example of this is Bill Paxton. Because he's essentially a character actor who knows James Cameron, he's got an absurdly per-movie box office gross record (Terminator, Aliens, True Lies, Apollo 13, Twister, Titanic) but no one _ever_ goes to see a flick because he's in it. He's good, but his presence (or not) has little impact on the film's success.

Clearly Seanfingh.

Has anyone mentioned how most of the high-grade Bronze market has tanked since 2004? It's not that the books have "tanked," it's that, in general, the CGC census has matured since then. 10 years ago a bunch of books were rare (1/1 or 1/2) in high grade; now? not so much. Marvel Spotlight 5, CGC 9.6: 2004 - $4,250. 2014: $3,250 Werewolf by Night 32, CGC 9.6: 2004 lone sale: $1,125. 2014 low sale: $900 Green Lantern 76, CGC 9.4: 2004 lone sale: $3,761. 2014 high sale: $3,585 X-Men 94, CGC 9.6: 2004 average: $4,500. 2014 average: $2,500 Even ASM 129 in CGC 9.6 is off more than 25% from its 2004 averages Were a comparison even possible between blue label & yellow labels, you'd also have to benchmark it against the average decline in high-grade bronze key prices over that same period. And from that courtesy, 5 minute check on examples above, -15% is on the good side relative to some other Marvel/DC keys.

JayDog, what's the value of a TMNT # 1 in 5.0? Is it worth more than a Hulk 181 in say, 9.0 (90 day GPA average: $2,048)? GPA (last sales, all from 2013-2014) looks like this: 4.5: $142 5.0: $2,700 5.5: $1,080 6.0: $2,850

Um..._of course_ the value of the 9.2 Cerebus today is speculation, as the only concrete sales figure you will accept in that grade is from 2005. So we speculate based on the 2013 9.0 sale, the 2014 9.4 sale, and the knowledge & experience of multiple comic dealers, both those who've testified in this thread & those polled, en masse, by Overstreets.

Apologies, JayDog. You never characterized the $9k 9.4 Cerebus sale as an outlier. I just checked, and that was Rcheli, way back in the thread on Aug. 28, when he tried to equate it to the Hulk 181 9.9.

It's the Cerebus folks who are "shouting loudest"? Jaydog's the one who has posted more than 90x in the thread, singlehandedly keeping it alive for the last 20+ pages. Word counts-per-post lose relevancy when you simply outpost everyone else.

This thread is awesome. At various points, you have - called both the 2014 9.4 and 2013 9.0 sales "outliers" that should be discarded, - missed, misinterpreted or ignored the (albeit slight) upward trend among 8.5 copies, - argued that no Comiclink sales should be included because of the quirk of the "Sales Pending" language that they report for _all_ sold books, - and used a blanket "lack of demand for lower grade copies" argument to support your incorrect assumptions regarding demand for high grade (i.e., 9.0+) copies. And, to review, the count is now five folks who have posted _in this thread_ that they'd take a 9.2 Cerebus over a 9.2 Hulk, in addition to the >2:1 margin in favor of Cerebus among the 32 folks who've weighed in on the poll. Keep on trucking, man!

Given the most recent 9.0 blue sale of $2,500 & the most recent 9.4 blue sale of $9,000 (each within the last year and a half), why is it unreasonable to presume a 9.2 blue sale would not fall somewhere in the middle of these? Your statement above seems to imply that you would value a 9.2 blue at less than $2,500, or less than the realized 2013 sale of a 9.0 blue.

Why is it valid to use 8.5 sales data to extrapolate a 9.2 value, when it's not equally valid to use the 9.4 sale to extrapolate a 9.2? We have a 9.4 Cerebus sale from this year that sold for more than double what 9.6 Hulk 181s have sold for, at least per GPA. Further, at least 3 posters on this board (two of them dealers) in this very thread have said they would trade a 9.2 Hulk for a 9.2 Cerebus straight up. (Here's a hint - it's not that they are Cerebus super fans; it's that the book is simply worth more.) 8.5 =/= 9.2 for 90% of the books out there.

See - here's where your wrong. This _entire_ thread is based on the premise that it's _unreasonable_ of Overstreets to list a higher value for Cerebus 1 than Hulk 181 in raw NM. The snark is in the title ("Really Overstreet?") And the answer, as much as it irks you, is Yes, really -- As supported by the data and (as we learned, polled opinions of all the Overstreet Advisors on valuing the Top 10 -- including a heads-up between the Cerebus & the Hulk). And every dealer who has weighed in in this thread has said they would a) take the 9.2 Cerebus over the 9.2 Hulk and b) price it higher. And among the readers of this thread who have still hung in after 100+ pages the fact that Cerebus still wins out by a greater than 2:1 margin. All of the above points to an answer: yes, really. It's not at all unreasonable for Overstreet to value Cerebus at higher than The Hulk. Finally, how is it not supported by "sales figures on the year?" Even if the only source you will accept is 2014 GPA, we have comps in 9.4. Cerebus 1 sold in 2014 for $9,000; the Hulk 181 has never come close to half of that. Yeah - the discussion's centered around 9.2 raw, but we have GPA-approved 9.4 sales that indicate (gasp!) high grade Cerebus > high grade Hulk.

24 hours into the poll. Seems I was wrong, only 15:4 in favor of cerebus being more valuable than hulk. I'm not the best at math, but I think that reads better than a 3.5 margin in favor of the cerebus. Oh, and overstreet, who polls dealers re. appropriate valuations for the boons in 9.2.

Wait..what? The assertion is that Cerebus # 1 is an $8-$10k book in 9.4. GPA (which tracks a vast minority of sales of a vast minority of extant books) shows a copy of Cerebus # 1 in 9.4 already sold for $9k in March of this year. If you're going to extrapolate, it needs to be from that number, advanced six months to today.

Can we just set up a poll and be done with this? My count right now is 17 to 3 or so in favor of Cerebus being the higher-valued book in 9.2, including all of the well-known dealers (who make their livings selling these books) as well as OSPG - whose only credibility is based on presenting conservative realistic values of 9.2 raw (unslabbed) books. I'd love to hear some new pro-Cerebus voices other than Jaydog, BronzeJohnny or BlazinComics, who collectively have kept this thread alive for the last 20 pages by baiting RMA and well...everyone else. And again - at this point I think Jaydog's just messing with us, trolling the collectors, dealers, and well...comic book community at large for his amusement - it's the only explanation I can fathom for the every-other-post rebuttal in the face of overwhelming sentiment and logic espoused in near-solidarity from this audience, composed of many of the most advanced &/or informed collectors around. For that good sir, I bow to you.

Just reiterating some of what Dale Roberts, a well-respected dealer & boardie, has said within the the last three pages: First, that he knows what a 9.2 Hulk 181 sells for, because he's sold several copies this year --none of which was online (which means _not in GPA_). And also: vs. Cerebus 1:

There is a slight premium for the run of the mill pedigrees. There's a couple auctions Ive been watching where they seem to command 10-25%. The FP 1 Twin Cities 9.8 commanded a premium to the 9.8 that sold on connect. $1675 vs $1400 roughly. The Dr Strange 172 BG pedigree in the comiclink summer feature has already set the all time high for the book with 7 days left in the auction. They do add some value. How much is up for debate. In these two cases the pedigree copy is also the highest graded, which probably makes it the most desirable. Not all of them add value. It exists for some, but for all intents and purposes, it's been replaced by the slab, outside of the "famous" Peds. How has CGC taken the place of pedigrees? And what are the pedigrees that fall outside your "famous" criteria? See explanation in a post above. So the slab replaced the function of the pedigree? So the history of the pedigree becomes irrelevant? What world do you live in? Umm...that'd be the real world. RMA's dead-on here. CGC has _vastly_ reduced the appeal of pedigrees, as we now have a credible 3rd-party grading system that can tell you whether a normal, non-pedigree book is of a higher grade (and, via GPA, more valuable) than lesser-graded pedigree books. _Many_ collectors want the best-available copies, and would take a non-pedigree 9.8 over a pedigree 9.4 or 9.6. Further, all pedigrees are not created equal, and only a few (probably ~1/3) still carry significant premiums (Church, Allentown, White Mountain among them). I've even heard as much, in person, from CGC reps themselves -- Twin Cities books? Yes - but Savannah, or even Crippen? Not so much. Even Gaines File Copies have normalized somewhat, with higher-graded non-Pedigree copies of some books going for more than the lesser-pedigree counterparts.

Except that it does. At least 7 different dealers have testified in this thread that, given the choice, they would take the 9.2 Cerebus over the 9.2 Hulk in a heartbeat. Which means, that they all believe they could sell it for more than the equiv. Hulk. (And they're right) Okay, technically, it "would," as we don't have a recent price for it. But I trust the voices of more than half a dozen dealers, whose business is a) profit and b) knowing the market & relative liquidity. BTW, Wolverine is my favorite character, and the first comic series I ever collected back to the beginning, after buying # 17 off the shelf due to the kickass Byrne cover. My # 1's signed & personalized to me by Al Williamson, and my # 182's signed & personalized to me by Trimpe. I own zero issues of Cerebus. (Just some anecdotal context that's irrelevant to the logical debate)

He's a good actor, but yeah - his box office record is spottier than his talent indicates. He was phenomenal in Pain & Gain, but that wasn't exactly a big-budget blockbuster.

Would this be a good time to point out that the latest CGC 9.4 sale of Hulk 181 (i.e., from three days ago) was a whopping $2,800? As in, less than the 90-day average, 12-month average, and 2013 average? Now, I'll admit it's an outlier, but even if so, it reinforces the extent to which the much-trumpeted CGC 9.2 $3,200 sale is just as much of an outlier (but on the high side). Either way, it shows both the pricing volatility of such a common book and the folly of trying to build a valuation argument based on one extreme sale. Again, within a three-week period we have verified GPA reported sales of Hulk 181 9.2 for $3,200 and a 9.4 for $2,800. Quick, let's all arbitrarily pick one or the other to argue our opinion!