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Shaun C89

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Posts posted by Shaun C89

    Bronze age comics that are heating up on eBay...

    in Bronze Age Comic Books

    Posted

    On 3/2/2022 at 4:51 PM, Sweet Lou 14 said:

    Honestly, I'm not sure if I should be bragging about this or embarrassed by what I paid.  But here you go.

    1484980271_AmazingSpider-Man101CGC9.6.thumb.jpg.9d25c7a2e3a384b7506271fb5bc236ed.jpg

    I am fully aware that this is probably the WORST possible time to buy ASM #101.  I thought long and hard about staying out of this auction and waiting for another copy after the movie hype dies down.  However, there were a few factors that made me go for it:

    1. I am soooo close to finishing my goal of upgrading #101 through #150 to 9.6 WP.  With this book in the collection, I am down to just four more (none of which are keys -- #121, 122, 124, 129, etc. are all checked off the list already).
    2. This book almost never comes up with white pages.  In fact, off-white seems almost as common as OW/W.
    3. This book is also notorious for centering / wrap issues.  No, this wrap isn't perfect but honestly I can be happy with a thin, even strip of white.  I really dislike when the wrap is crooked and you get a triangle of white, which again is very common on this book.

    So, the market for 9.6 has been anywhere from $9,000 on the low end to $12,000 on the high end, but this book was sitting at over $11K as of February 22, one week before the auction close.  I have bid on enough auctions to know that this meant it was going to take at least $13,500 to win this book.  I also knew there would be at least one other person out there thinking along with me that this was a very nice 9.6 and that there's no way to know when another WP copy was going to come around.

    So I prepared to "go nuts" and bid somewhere in the high $15,000s -- hoping and praying that I was overshooting by a bunch and I'd win it for $12,500 but knowing that all it takes is one other person thinking the same thing and I would get a much more painful win.  And then, no joke, with about 8 seconds to go I just had this feeling that there was going to be someone willing to go to $16K.  So I bid $16,387.

    I won the book for $16,387 because sure enough, somebody bid $16,222.

    So -- had I lost, I would have been sitting there with no book and having helped set the market at $16K on this book and I would have been banging my head against the wall.  Since I won, I am sitting here with a book (that is a big deal, the adrenaline rush and the dopamine hit are real) but I also know I've overpaid.  I can console myself with a few thoughts ...

    • This is a real nice book and I am very happy to have it.
    • I'm going to sell my 9.4, hopefully quickly, and that will take some of the sting out of this if I can get a good price.
    • If I look at the (many many) books already in my collection, and the prices they are going for, I know in the big picture I'm doing fine even though I might have taken a bath on this one book.  Just to take a handful of books I was watching -- ASM #2 through #5 in 9.0 -- all four sold last night for a LOT more than I paid for my 9.0 copies.  That helps me cope with the pain of buying in the current market.
    • In the past, when I've paid what felt like way too much for a book, it usually didn't take long before I was actually thankful I got the book for what I paid.  There's some hope that I'll feel that way (eventually) about this book.  The Morbius movie sounds like it might be a good one, so maybe the character has more "legs" than I wanted to give it credit for.

    As for the books I lost:  Avengers #93, Avengers #94, and Captain America #118 -- all in 9.6 WP, and all of which sold for what I frankly consider to be crazy numbers, though I came in third place on the #93 and second place on the other two so I guess that makes me part of the insanity.  I don't know how to feel about any of this, but I'll get over it.  You're just catching me when it's all still very fresh and I figure what the hell, why not lay it all out here as a little snapshot of what I'm thinking at this moment in time.  I hope at least some of this sounds familiar to others who are trying to navigate this incredibly overheated market.

    Beautiful copy, congrats!