SOTIcollector

You're correct, valliant! I'm so glad you brought it up. You gave me an excuse to open up the magazine you sold me and photograph it with what I presume was some of its source material: the May 29, 1948 article by Wertham that was published in the Saturday Review of Literature. Here's Wertham's article, which is illustrated with the cover of Jo-Jo Comics #15 (May, 1948) and the infamous needle-to-the-eye panel from True Crime Comics vol. 1 #2 (May, 1948). On top of the Saturday Review article is the German article. What intrigues me is that the German article also includes a photo the panel from All-Top #14 with people strung up by their wrists. I had assumed that the German article (from 1951) took Wertham's 1948 article as its primary source, and that the illustrations all came from the Saturday Review. However, that All-Top illustration didn't make an appearance in Wertham's anti-comics literature until much later, in Seduction of the Innocent (April, 1954). If memory serves, that All-Top illustration was used as part of an anti-comics art exhibition in NYC, so perhaps some coverage of that exhibition served as the source for the German article's illustration.

And a few related items just for fun. Peter Penny's 1948 sequel. The 1958 edition. Some Peter Penny tchotchkes. A "Dime Saver" with Peter Penny inside, a matchbook cover, a spending calculator, and an odd little stand-up.

I believe my Peter Penny collection is complete, thanks to the great comic book detective, Ken Quatro. Ken’s selling books from his collection, and I picked up his copy of Peter Penny & his Magic Dollar. I also have come to believe that there’s only one first edition of the book. For years Overstreet has stated that there are two printings of the book, one of which is “redrawn”, and the two printings can be differentiated by their size. I long ago came to the conclusion that the Overstreet information is inaccurate. I’ll steer clear of ascribing the word “printing” to any of these books, because unless somebody uncovers information from the book’s printer or the archives of the American Banker’s Association, we’ll never know how many different PRINTINGS there are. In fact, each bank that purchased copies had their logo custom printed on the back. Was each of those a separate printing? Could it be that they printed, say, a quarter million copies with a blank back, and then ran those books through another printing process 5,000 at a time to customize the back covers with a specific bank’s logo? There was some discussion earlier in this thread of using the term “state” to refer to the variations, but with what I know now I think “edition” better conveys items with different content. I can state with certainty that there are three different editions of the book, since I’ve owned at least two copies of each edition. The content varies slightly between editions, and the sequence in which the editions were created is obvious. The first edition is the one that has three panels at the bottom of the cover. Subsequent editions omit those three panels. The third edition, which has been called “redrawn”, would more accurately be described as “partially redrawn.” The lower portion of many panels was added by somebody with a fraction of the artistic ability of the original artist, making it easy to spot the portions of the art that were added later. Within these editions there can be variations. I had thought the first edition had two versions of differing sizes because Marty Mann’s first edition (a CGC 6.5) was slightly narrower than the copy I have. I was calling these two versions "John" and "George" a few years ago in this thread. However, now that I have two first editions in hand, I’m reluctant to say that there are different printings or versions of varying sizes. There’s only a small variation in size (up to 1/4 inch), and one of the first edition copies I own has a right edge that wasn’t cut parallel to the spine. As a result, the amount of difference in size between my two copies depends on where you measure. They’re about the same size at the top, but ¼ inch different at the bottom. So unless other information comes to light, I’d say "John" and "George" are the same book. I have found one copy of the second edition with a size that differs rather significantly from the size of the others I’ve found. I haven’t found variations among the third edition. Here’s a description of the copies I’m aware of. This is compiled from the books I have owned plus photos, descriptions and measurements of Mary Mann’s first edition. First edition: Distinguished by the three panels at the bottom of the cover. Second edition: Distinguished by the fact that it doesn’t have the three panels at the bottom of the cover, the airplane on the cover is printed in solid blue, and the interior panels don’t have partial redrawing at the bottom. Third edition: Distinguished by the fact that it doesn’t have the three panels at the bottom of the cover, and the airplane is shaded with a dot pattern rather than a solid blue, and interior panels have lower portions that were clearly added by a different artist from the one who drew rest of upper portion of the panels. There are numerous ways to distinguish a second edition from a third edition, but the shading of the airplane on the cover is one of the easiest to describe. Another way to distinguish second from third edition is the teacher's wrist in the first interior panel. Her right wrist is absent in the second edition but present in the third (partially redrawn) edition. Here are photos of the various editions and some identifying characteristics. When I compare the wider first edition to the narrower first edition, I see that it's a small variation. I believe these aren't separate printings. Here's what it looks like when I place the narrower first print on top of the wider one. With the spines aligned perfectly, the difference in the cut of the right edge becomes noticeable. At the top of the book, they are nearly the same width. At the bottom of the book, there's a quarter inch difference. Below is my second edition that is a good deal larger than the typical second edition. This larger one is 1/8" wider and 5/8" taller than the typical one. It doesn't appear that the book was intended to be printed in this taller format, because the taller book just has a bunch of out-of-place-looking extra white space at the bottom of the cover and at the bottom of every page. Keep scrolling for photos of the plane and the teacher's wrist that can be used to distinguish second edition from third edition. Here are the second and third editions in the same photo, with a view of the plane on the cover of each. Close-up of the planes. The second edition is the plane on the left, shaded solid blue. The third edition is the plane on the right, shaded with light blue dots. Second edition plane: Third edition plane: Here's the first interior panel of the second edition, along with the first interior panel of the second edition. The new/redrawn art is evident in the third edition. In the second edition, the teacher's right arm is visible only to the middle of her forearm. In the third edition, the teacher's right arm extends to the wrist. Second edition, teacher without a right wrist is on top. Third edition, teacher with a right wrist, is on bottom.

Interesting. Thanks for sharing. It looks like they went to my site (lostsoti.org), took my list of SOTI books, and added their own photos. If you compare the two, you'll see that I used the correct cover photos at my site. The Comic Book Invest site has incorrect photos for Ideal #3 and Wild Boy #10.

Holy guacamole! How is it that I didn't know you'd find Matt Baker art inside Lassie? Indeed a nice pick-up!

Kramer vs. Kramer

I second that emotion!

That certainly an interesting gross misinterpretation of what I wrote. Have a nice day.

I cannot understand how it is that a person would think wasting other people’s time, just to feed a sad and desperate desire for attention, is humorous.

Hi, Kenneth, I'll be happy to help with some suggestions, but I'd first need to know what you're trying to accomplish by "put[ting] those books on the CGC website.” Are you saying you'd like to offer your 15,000 comics for sale here? That is an option. This is a great little online collecting community, and you can sell here for free, but to do so you need to abide by the rules. If this is what you're looking for, and you'll abide by the rules, you can post in one of the sales forums. Comics Market - Forum Only Selling Area - CGC Comic Book Collectors Chat Boards (cgccomics.com) Are you saying that your 4,000 "keeper" books are graded by CGC, and you'd like to upload them to the CGC registry? If so, you can get there by navigating to CGC->Registry on this page. Are you saying that you'd like to submit your books for grading? There's a guide here. How to Submit | CGC (cgccomics.com) Are you looking for something else? Please be specific, and you'll find people who are willing to help you get started. Warm regards, Steve

Welcome to the boards! I'm curious about what you have, because I've never seen any issues of Dark Knight Returns sent from DC. Dark Knight Returns wasn't typically a mail-order book. It was offered through direct-market comic shops. Was there also an option that allowed collectors to order the books directly from DC? Or is this something that DC mailed to somebody on their "comp" list? It would be helpful to know more about why DC mailed these particular copies. A quick Google search didn't turn up anything, so I'd love to see pictures of what you have. If there's a way for a buyer to know that these are indeed first prints sent by DC, and to determine their condition (because unread/uncirculated can literally be any condition from poor to NM), they'd likely command a premium over non-mailer copies. However, there's not enough information here yet to know whether grading would be a good route.

This, and the rest of DougC's reponse, is 100% correct. In general, the market values CGC Signature Series higher than a book with a C.O.A. That's because with a CGC SS book, a buyer has a high degree of confidence that the signature is authentic. A non-SS book will typically sell for less because a signature can easily be faked, and many certificates of authenticity can easily be faked as well. Even if a third party certifies that they believe the signature to be authentic, there's still a greater chance the signature is a fake than with a SS book. Years ago, to illustrate the point about how easy it was to fake a signature and a certificate of authenticity, I created a signed Classics Illustrated Tom Sawyer comic. I signed it "Samuel Clemens" in sharpie, and I printed a fancy-looking certificate for it. If you read the certificate carefully, it indicated that the signature was NOT authentic. And of course it was not authentic because Twain died decades before the comic was published. That book came in handy in disucssions of "should I trust a COA?" Should you stay away from non-SS books? That's up to you. If you have a high degree of confidence that a signature is authentic even though it's not CGC SS, and you really want it for your collection, then you may decide a non-SS book is for you because it'll save you a few bucks over a SS book. Perhaps you really want a signature from a creator who has never done Signature Series books like, say, Wallace Wood. Perhaps you want to still read a book that's signed. There could be plenty of reasons why you may decide to buy non-SS signed books, and they all focus on your personal reason for buying the book.

You have done your research. Yes, it's true that the bag can cause premature aging of the paper, which gives you a checkmark in the "unbag it now" column. It's true that comics bagged by the publisher and still in the original bag CAN be rare and can sell for a premium, and that may give you a checkmark in the "keep it bagged" column. So I understand the conundrum. I was collecting comics at the time it was published, and although I'm not 100% certain I am reasonably confident that Marvel didn't put any copies of that book in a hanger bag. I'm also confident there are others who are more knowledgeable about that specific book than I am, and they will correct me if I'm mistaken. It seems likely to me that the retailer you bought the book from put it in the hanger bag. Do you recall if ALL of that retailer's comics were in hanger bags? If so, then that would pretty much confirm that it was the retailer who bagged this comic and not the publisher. If indeed it was the retailer who bagged the book and not the publisher, then the bag would add no value. You would have nothing to lose by removing the book from the bag. Removing the book from the bag would allow you to put it in a Mylar bag with acid-free backing board, which would protect it for years to come. It would also mean that you could have the book pressed by a reputable presser such as @JoeyPost , to remediate the pressable defects such as the non-color-breaking spine tics. If you remove the book from the bag, you could post it in the "please grade my" forum. Take the average of what boardies think the grade will be, and that's *approximately* the grade you can expect if slabbed.

Welcome to the boards! There are lots of reasons why somebody might slab a comic. Maybe they like the way a slabbed book looks, maybe they want to be able to hand it around the dinner table at Thanksgiving with limited risk of it getting gravy damage, maybe they think (erroneously) that a slab automatically adds value, etc. Maybe it's a high value book and they want the restoration check that comes with having a comic graded. However, money is probably the most common reason people ask about grading a book. Are you wondering how to tell if you'll make more money by selling a comic book raw, or by paying to have it graded and then selling it? If that's what you're looking for, here are the steps you can take. This is assuming you'd be trying to sell the book at retail yourself, probably on some online venue such as eBay, Instagram, Facebook Marketplace or in this very forum. 1) First, figure out how much the comic would sell for raw. For the most common comics, you can often look at completed sales on eBay to find out how much things in comparable condition have sold for. There are also online price guides with varying degrees of accuracy. It's important to compare condition, so it's a like-for-like comparison. It's also important to recognize that there can be a large difference between an eBay asking price and a selling price. If there are 5 copies of a book on eBay at $99 each and nobody's buying, then you can tell that $99 is higher than the true market value for the book, but you can't determine from that $99 price tag whether your item is worth $1 or $98. 2) When you know what your book might sell for raw, try to figure out how much it would sell for if graded. If you aren't comfortable estimating what grade the book would get if graded, you could post it in the "please grade my" thread in this forum to see what the experts think. After you have an estimate of the if-slabbed grade, you can estimate the value using the same approach as #1. 3) Calculate the cost of grading. The pricing schedule is here. CGC Services & Fees | CGC (cgccomics.com) Add what it would cost to ship the comic to Sarasota, plus the grading fees, plus what it would cost to have it shipped back to you. There's the grading cost. 4) Do the math. Is the amount you'd net from a graded comic, after expenses, significantly greater than the amount you'd net from selling the raw comic? My personal rule of thumb is that the grading costs a minimum of about $60, with shipping both ways and grading fees. If having a comic graded only adds $60 in value, then to me it's not worth having graded. Not only that, but all of the above are just estimates. I have to be pretty confident that grading will add, say, $100 or more to the value of a book. Otherwise, I prefer to sell raw. That's the way I see it, but your mileage may vary. After you know how much (if any) additional money you can make from grading, you can decide for yourself what your personal threshold is for having something graded.

Wow. My SOTI collection needs this, but it’s miles from my budget . Time to buy a lottery ticket.

Welcome to the boards! The short answer is no. CGC does accept any third-party authentication for CGC Signature Series books. In order for CGC to slab the book with a yellow label, a representative of CGC would need to witness the signature and the book would need to remain in CGC's possession from signing to encapsulation. There is also a less-common scenario in which CGC can give a yellow label to books that CGC receives directly from the creator who signed them. A CGC yellow label means that the signature is authentic according to CGC's standards. A yellow label from another company, or a certificate of authenticity, indicates that the signature is authentic to that other company's standards, but not necessarily to CGC's standards. If CGC receives a book with writing on it, and the book doesn't qualify for a yellow label according to CGC's standards, then the book will either receive a green label (an exception grade) or will get a blue label and will typically be downgraded due to the writing. There is a lot of great information about CGC Signature Series on the FAQ page. CGC Signature Series Requirements FAQs | CGC (cgccomics.com)

I am confident that there would be a significant expense in labor, as well as other expenses. However, even if that's not the case. Even if the "only" added expenses are, as you claim: extra ink and paper, the question boils down to "why doesn't a for-profit company spend more for the service they are offering, when spending more won't bring in more revenue?" At that point, the answer becomes evident.

In my 40+ years of collecting, I've never encountered a person or company that had created an exact science out of grading. Grading follows some generally-accepted guidelines in the industry (see the MyComicShop page noted in prior post), but ultimately it's a subjective assessment based on the presence or absence of defects and deviations from the ideal, at a particular point in time. Every grading company utilizes their own proprietary standards to assign a grade that generally falls within industry-accepted guidelines and they often provide graders' notes that give a general idea as to why a particular grade was assigned. Ultimately, each grading company is being paid for an opinion. What, in their professional opinion, is the grade of the (comic/coin/whatever)? I'm sure if they found there was a market for a more fact-based assessment, listing every perceived variation from the ideal, they'd be willing to offer that as a service as well. Such as service would be very expensive because of the labor involved and other factors. My guess is that grading companies have determined that there isn't enough demand for such a service that they could make money on it.

There are several reasons. 1) Insuring an expensive comic book costs more than insuring a cheaper one. 2) The level of scrutiny that goes into grading an expensive book is greater than that of a lesser book. A book that was published last week won't need as extensive a restoration check as a million dollar book. The person with the million dollar book may have the resources and will to attempt types of restoration that are hard to detect. A person with last week's book does not. It stands to reason that a grading company can, and should, put more effort into grading more expensive books. 3) What the market will bear. They know people will pay more, so they have a business model that is built on charging more for the more expensive books. The same thing happens in many service industries. Why does an airline charge different prices to different people at different times? Because they know they can, and they built a business model around it. Why do hotels charge different prices for the same room depending on the night of the week and the season? The list could go on and on.

It’s not a dumb question at all. Everybody was new at one time. CGC does not do verification of signatures they did not witness. Neither photographs nor certificates of authenticity will change that.

Indeed you have a comic that’s rare. The word “rare” is used, and I would even say misused, frequently in this hobby. But it is a word that applies to what you have. There are very few copies known to exist. In the comic book world, rarity isn’t the only determinant of an item’s value. For an item to command a good price, it needs to have a certain amount of scarcity, and also be in demand. You are fortunate that the item you have also is in demand. It is an anti-VD comic that was published by EC Comics. EC Comics is a legendary publisher, and many collectors are actively looking for items published by EC Comics. If you go to the Heritage Auctions website, and search for past sales of “K. O. Punch“ (the periods are important), you will see that there have been two copies auctioned at that site. One copy, in nicer condition than the one you have, sold for just north of $5000.

My intent was not to put you down, and I understand how it could be taken that way. My sincere apologies.

If I'm reading the question correctly, there is a COA sticker directly on the comic book. CGC considers both the writing and the sticker to be damage. You would get either a blue label with a grade that is significantly lowered by the damage, or you'd get a green label that indicates the damage. So slabbing the book would not add resale value to it. If your goal is just to preserve the book:

Although greed and speculation are significant factors in the market, there are also thousands of comic book collectors and sports card collectors who say that their collecting has nothing to do with greed or speculation. There can be many reasons for collecting something, whether comics or cards or anything else, that have nothing whatsoever to do with perceived future market value. With either comics or coins, a common motivation for collecting is the content of what makes up a particular item: a popular sports figure, a popular character who is known worldwide, historical significance. There are large numbers of people want the first Spider-man comic, or the first Superman, Venom, or whatever, because they have an affinity for the character, not because they think that buying one will make them money. If you don't understand this, then you won't understand the comics market or card market or most other collectible markets. You have asserted that a collectible's value should be determined solely by scarcity and not by something about that collectible that differentiates it form others in the same category. That's an interesting perspective, and I think it means coin collecting is a good fit for you, whereas other types of collecting might not be right for you.

The key is that the contents of each comic change, but the print runs among similar-aged issues don't usually vary much. The value of any collectible is determined by supply and demand. Demand among a small range of, say, Morgan dollars, is constant. There aren't really significantly more people who want San Francisco-minted dollars versus Philly, or 1881 versus 1882. So supply there is the only driver of price differences among similar coins. With comics, demand does change significantly between issues. The supply of Amazing Spider-man #128 is virtually the same as the supply of Amazing Spider-man #129. However, the demand is based on the contents of the issue. Far more people want the first appearance of the Punisher than the number of people who want a non-key issue. The dynamics of comic pricing are more similar to sports cards than coins. Why does a 1952 Mantle rookie sell for so much more than a 1953 Mantle, or another 1952 card from an average player on the same team? Does that help?