Bookery

On 3/16/2024 at 10:58 AM, jimjum12 said:

One thing to be aware of, before one decides to "bet the farm", on paperbacks, is that saving paperbacks was MUCH more common during the "golden age" of paperbacks, which is usually assigned to '40's through '60's. Comics were usually tossed by Moms everywhere, as they were "kiddie stuff", and PB's were a welcome change. While some PB's will invariably enjoy a surge in demand, it will likely be less meteoric than comics. Because of the aforementioned, it is even more important to perform your due diligence and to focus on what you like, so you aren't caught holding the bag, with stuff that was merely flip fodder.  Despite the cautions, book collecting can be a fun and profitable hobby, as it has for centuries. GOD BLESS ...

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

I think the pressure is going to really be for high-grades.  It's almost impossible to read one of these older paperbacks, even in their day, without leaving some wear.  That means truly VF paperbacks have to have never been read.  And even if they were never read... some publishers like early Dell (lamination that peels off on its own) or Hillman (poorly made) can be excruciatingly hard to find in top condition.

Look, it doesn't matter how many copies there are.  It comes with 80 exclamation points (yes, I counted) so it's gotta be a fantastic deal regardless.

On 3/11/2024 at 12:30 PM, Darwination said:

 The real question is how much the purple is gonna ding the sales price which is hard to tell because I'm not getting a feeling yet for how the grading/boxing is affecting the sales prices either (besides them being generally jacked)

Pulp collectors seem to be a hardier lot than their comics counterparts.  They've not only dealt with, but embraced The Man in Purple, The Purple Cloud, The Purple Empire and the Purple Scar.  I suspect they won't be too daunted by the Purple Label!

On 2/23/2024 at 5:54 PM, Darwination said:

Still, it will be a cold day in hell when I put a pulp (or a comic) in a slab, but y'all do you

D'oh!  

On 2/23/2024 at 10:17 AM, jimjum12 said:

This, coupled with the stellar referencing, makes your guide quite indispensable, unless someone prefers to collect in ignorance. A large amount of Pulps are sold at auction, and due to their scarcity, those prices can be outliers, as the internet broadens the buying pool to an almost unrealistic parameter. I, for one, thank you for your admirable effort. As they say, there are those who do, and those who complain. GOD BLESS ...

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

Thanks for the kind words.  As for the bolded part above, I do caution newcomers about taking auction prices with a grain of salt.  Truly expensive and ultra-rare pulps may be more accurately represented at the big auction houses, if for no other reason than this is often the only forums in which they appear for sale.  But there is definitely auction-exuberance with more common material.  For instance, I'm currently tracking auction data continually for my own uses, as well as in case there is a 4th (and final) guide.  I see a number of science-fiction pulps, for instance, going for 2x-5x the guide prices at Heritage and other auction houses.  Yet simultaneously, the same books can be bought off eBay or mycomicshop.com for at guide prices or smaller premiums up to 1.5x.  

On 2/17/2024 at 5:49 PM, waaaghboss said:

Think I got your copy, found last year on ebay.

Yep, that's it!  I often wonder what happened to some of the items I used to have.  Most were purchased while I was gathering final data on the original 2001 guide (probably bought 1998-2000), and I concentrated on issues I felt were scarce.  I sold nearly all of them off a few years later during one of the PulpCons back when it was held in Dayton.  I had 3 different copies of the "rare" Vice Squad Detective, but I didn't keep scans of them.

On 2/8/2024 at 8:08 PM, Yorick said:

I was assuming as much.  Cover artist and "important" story author(s).  We shall see as some slab images are posted...

If you are searching for specific authors, check out Galactic Central ( http://www.philsp.com/ ).  You can sort by author or by story, and print off a list of your favorite writer to use as a search/checklist.

On 2/3/2024 at 5:53 PM, OtherEric said:

Keep us posted, if you can't find a publisher a crowdfunded updated guide would probably get a respectable amount of support from those of us here.

Thanks!  I appreciate it.  But it's not a funding issue, but a practicality one.  I've had enough track record to know pretty much how many copies can be sold, so there'd be little risk in self-publishing another one.  But I no longer have the time and desire to box up and mail all of those copies out.  That's why I went with Heritage Press (Ivy) on the last one... they did all of the production and distribution work.  Unfortunately, they only produced 500 copies, which was insufficient for the market (I sold 1,000 of the previous self-published one, and that was without anywhere near the promotional resources they had).  I've got some resources in mind.  But it's not quite there yet.  But in the meantime, I'd be happy to share some data here from time to time.  But, as I said... not just me.  There are also a number of others here that have lots of experience.  

Also, I forgot to mention to the OP... there's another thread already in this forum that posts some of the auction sales from Heritage, PulpFest, Windy City, etc.  It wouldn't help if you need info on a specific issue at any given time... but is nevertheless a good resource to keep an eye on.

On 2/1/2024 at 9:20 AM, Westy Steve said:

The key word in your question above is "experience".  Comic book prices have been moving up for more than 80 years, so anyone with experience is going to give you the same answer.  Historically, the only time it ever made sense to bet against the 80+ year trend was in the short term.  But you're asking about the long term.  Furthermore, at no time in the entire history of comic book collecting, was it a bad idea to buy on the dip.  So my own person logic is not to bet against the market.   

All that being said, my analysis is based on the classic books.  Not the flavor of the month in a 9.8 slab.  However, I've been around long enough to see even some of the "Hot dreck" go cold, and then get hot again a couple decades later as people feel nostalgic about the old dreck that they speculated on in their teen years.

To be fair, 80 years is a bit of an exaggeration.  That would mean people began paying collector premiums for comics as early as WW2!  I don't think that's true.  The earliest ads I've seen promoting back-issues at premiums to cover price is about the mid-1960s.  And there were the beginnings of small gatherings of collectors at the time, though I suspect more was traded than was actually bought outright.  An actual comic book "market" probably got established with the Overstreet Guide in the early '70s, however.  But in those first few years, the Overstreet price increases (which were fairly small year-to-year) were likely more a reflection of the Guide pushing a market than necessarily reflecting it.  Regardless, it soon began to take off on its own.  So an honest nationwide comic book market is really only about 50 years old... meaning it didn't really get underway until someone like me was in high school.  That's not a very long time. 

Comics are essentially still a young market.  Rare books have been bought and sold for 500 years.  Coins have been collected for centuries.  Stamps have been collectible at least since the 1800s.  And those didn't have movies and TV shows hyping them.  Unlike fine art, or Ming Dynasty vases, or Faberge eggs, "pop culture" seems to always be ephemeral.  It can be "hot" for as short as a few years (Beanie Babies) or last several decades before beginning to peter out (Tarzan ephemera, much of Disneyana, Coca-Cola merchandise, Big Little Books, Bettie Page, etc.).  A few "key" or especially rare items are always exceptions, of course, and nothing dies out completely (there are still collectors for "dime novels" -- though both of them are getting up there in years ).  But by definition "pop culture" is something that is special to a specific generation, or two, or three.  And then, eventually, something else becomes "pop". 

On 1/15/2024 at 9:49 AM, Superman2006 said:

As an offset to potential shill bidding is the fact that some bidders look at the actual book and not just the big number on the top left of the slab, and for a book that has been swapped that has more wear than normal for a 9.8, they will bid accordingly, or not bid at all, which would bring down the sales price.

Not that it's my call, but I don't feel strongly one way or another as to whether GPA should exclude such sales; maybe an asterisk would be appropriate, but can understand why GPA might deem that to be more trouble than it's worth.

No here is a point I hadn't considered, especially for ultra-high grades.  I was thinking of the swapped Marvel-stamp books when I posted, but this is definitely a consideration that could affect bid prices, even if the buyers were unaware of the books being switched.  Thanks.

On 1/15/2024 at 8:50 AM, jas1vans said:

I think, and I could be very mistaken, that some of the issue is not just the book swapping, but also shill bidding by the people that are at the center of this. Swapping out the books and manipulating slabs is the headline, but the shill bidding and price manipulation are also a key component of the overall.

Side note: as a non-slabber still learning about the hobby, I'm happy to see all the "Joined" dates with two zeroes popping up in this thread.

Shill bidding is a separate issue, and of course GPA wouldn't want any of those type of sales included, if they discovered them.  I was only addressing price vs. book-swapping.   

On 1/15/2024 at 8:46 AM, comicwiz said:

It's a lot more complicated than what you are describing (esp the part I bolded). The issue is that this whole situation is continually evolving and is nowhere near being finalized. That 350 list continues to shrink with books being struck off the list, and I continue finding books not on the original list. The other part of this is that certification numbers are being purged from the CGC Verify Certification look-up. No redacting or manner of explaning why, no connection at all to these books, serving in some instances as a donor book to a swap. The reason I posted the examples and matrix with Project Green to Blue was to capture a glimpse into the manner this was being monetized, often with donor books being purchased a month or several months prior to the blue example selling at a factor of two or in multiples of the donor. The other things I've only spoken of is the way certain books would repeatedly be sold, and this is something that needs to be reconciled at some point, but it is VERY early in the investigative stages. It could be even worse than some of the things we've talked about, with more than just two books sharing the same cert number. I'd like to see CGC reveal some of their own findings. They've become so comfortable letting the community do the grunt work, discovery and fact pattern finding that expecting some level of collaborative back and forth is a pipe dream at this point. But we definitely have the evidence showing the subversion of more than "holder tampering"; rather, the very real problem with downstream impacts this has had on their certification look-up and systems we use for pricing is that CGC is showing an unusual penchant for quietly purging information in the background without explanation. Some of the information being purged is vital to the ways an investigation is able to gather a chain of evidence, which in itself seemingly reveals a pattern of tampering with evidence. The discourse needs to focus on the latter, and the reasons why this is happening, rather than the down the line impacts of the other ways this incident has manipulated the market. 

Oh I understand that it's plenty complicated in terms of CGC.  That's why I haven't posted previously in this thread.  There are others such as you that are far more qualified to discuss the ramifications of all of this.  My comment wasn't about the CGC/scammer issue at all, per se.  It was simply a comment about if a sale is listed in GPA that later turns out to be a book that was switched, it doesn't really affect the averages because it still represents what a buyer thought they were getting and agreed to pay for.  But others pointed out some things to consider in this as well.

On 1/14/2024 at 5:24 PM, davidking623 said:

Dayton looks to have a population of around 136,000 . Is there quite a bit outside of that area also ?

Yes.  Lots and lots of suburbs.  That number is for just Dayton proper.  What they call the "greater Dayton area" has a population over 800,000.  There are also quite a few universities in the region... University of Dayton, Wright State, Wittenberg, Wilberforce, Antioch, Clark State.  Add in the Columbus and Cincinnati areas (within an hour's drive) and the population is several million.

On 1/13/2024 at 11:02 AM, Cat said:

Wh-what's the rake got to do with anything? 

It's the same unscrupulous one that kept attacking Sideshow Bob.