Phill the Governor

The book would be graded normally, no note of detached cover on the label, but likely in the grader's notes. Tape, archival or not, is never the answer. Especially for a book like this. Only time tape is acceptable is for a beater, worthless book that only has sentimental value to read or something like that. Tape, even archival, will only cause more issues down the line.

Yep

I should have said "makes me sad". This sale just rehashed my feelings: https://boards.cgccomics.com/topic/505573-unreleased-photos-of-the-captain-america-comics-1-san-francisco-copy/

This book, specifically, just makes me so sad now.

To an extent I agree (especially since I'm happy and fortunate to have my low grade copy already). But I don't think prices are all over the place. Definitely a 3.5-4k price floor for entry level copies.. with 3.0-4.0s going for 8-12k. 4.5 grades and above account for only 20 total copies.. so prices certainly seem to start climbing from there on up. It can be easy to overlook that while there are (only) 60 total unrestored copies of #1 on the census, not all grades are created equal based on pg quality and more importantly defects. $11.4k for the 4.0 seemed pretty spot on to me.

The CD was sent so I could view pictures of the book after it was brought up. Based on the photos alone I had decide if it was worth the risk of buying the plane ticket and going to view it in person. Yes. But again at the time, his $500,000 price that I was going to get him was guaranteed. He had no notion of the grade/nature of the book to begin with, just that it appeared to be high grade. So from our conversation he was well aware he could just take it to Heritage and consign the book himself, but by doing so if the book went for say $450,000 he'd be out 50k + the associated fees. So the "safer" thing for him to do was take a cash offer that was guaranteed (and at the time already a record price). He knew it was worth a fortune, enter in his $500,000 idealized price. I do not know who actually consigned the book, whether him, or someone else he decided to sell the book to who then consigned it directly to Heritage.

Yeah I didn't feel necessary to disclose every detail, merely my small portion of the story and some photos of the book in a bag without a backing board. 1. & 2. The owner of the book would have met us at the bank. 3. The specialist from Heritage would be trained to grade the book and find restoration if it were there. I work on books myself and trust my eye 100%. 4. & 5. The Cap was auctioned in 2019 very shortly after it was consigned, as per my story. The other part is completely unknown to me. I do not have direct contact with anyone at Heritage and the story was only relayed to me by one person. If I remember correctly, the consignor (presumably my client) split the selling price at some percentage with the original owner who it was originally stolen from. So I just assumed it was true and moved on. I would say it's a stretch to say the other books were in question too since the validity of the Cap being stolen in the first place is in question, let alone if it were the client I was selling the book for, or the person who sold it to him, or the previous party, etc...

Heritage did not know the identity of my client at the time, only my partner and myself. I would not shoot myself in the foot like that.

Congrats on the pickup! I did the work on this copy, it's a beautiful book in hand.

Hey everyone, Enough time has passed for me to post this. Here's the short version: A few years back I was in contact with and working on selling some books for a guy over in Cali. There were a few nice GA books he had, 4-5 figure books which I sold for his asking price, and sent him the payment once the books sold. Everything was going well, and after a few sales he goes "I've got a really big book, I think it's time to sell, think you may be able to find a buyer?" With the build up, I just assumed it was a high grade Action 1, Tec 27 or Bats 1. To my astonishment, it turned out to be the Captain America Comics #1 San Francisco copy. He wanted $500,000 cash for the book, which at the time only a few years ago would have by itself been a record price for Cap 1. Cut to a month later he finally sends me a CD (A CD!!!) with about a dozen photos of the Cap 1 on it. After reviewing it and discussing the book with my partner, we agreed that the $500,000k seemed realistic. There was a brief conversation with Heritage, and the plan was to go to Cali, have a conference room reserved at a bank, and my partner, a rep from Heritage and myself would inspect the book (since it was raw) and decide if the book was indeed the real deal and unrestored, and the deal was amenable. Heritage was going to front the $500,000, and my partner and myself would split the profits that went over the cost of the book. We were basically a day away from purchasing plane tickets... and the owner of the book told me that he was going on vacation for a few weeks and would get back to me. Well needless to say, several weeks later I see scans of the book up at Heritage. After my work to negotiate the deal and set everything up, I was down the creek without a paddle and had to watch the sale of the book go through as a observer. Which really sucked. I have no way to know exactly what transpired other than the book obviously going straight to Heritage (by himself or someone else). I was told by my partner, a short time later, that when the initial press release came out Heritage was contacted by someone claiming it was stolen (with the police report to corroborate the story) but at this point I have no way to know the validity of that. Every time I see this book, or any Cap 1 for that matter, I am admittedly a bit salty. I am still a younger guy, and this deal would have changed quite a bit for me. But other things happened outside of my control to prevent it from going through. I can't imagine I'll have another "almost" catch like this is my lifetime. Here are some of the photo's that were sent to me on that CD, which I still have.. If you notice, aside from pressing there were also staining removed from the back cover. '

On the contrary, I've had more than half my submissions coming back with inner wells that are so tight, there is now new damage from the stress of inner well of the book/ warping in the case, at the very least Even worse, other books that I included written notes for, regarding the conservation work I had done, hoping to ensure the correct Conserved labels. And yet, those books were graded UNIVERSAL - unrestored. I literally told CGC "hey, these books were conserved and had this conso work done..." and they still incorrectly graded them as unrestored. Insane. When you're doing work on books, subbing them and they come back Universal, it makes one think "hey, how many other books are in Universal slabs with undisclosed conso or resto work??".

It is usually HTF. As it can go, a good chunk of time can go by without a copy for sale anywhere. And then suddenly... several up at the same time. I'd wager that at least one of the copies up on HA goes for a relatively "cheaper" price. In a year or two when there aren't 3-4 copies up for sale it will look like a bargain. Timing is everything. I'd love to upgrade my 1.0 Universal to a 2.0, at least, but sort of tough to find someone willing to downgrade their copy.

The only reason we're talking about this is because of the sale price. If this piece went for $800 it wouldn't have broken the news.

Interior page has sold! Thread is now closed.

The interior page is on hold. Cover and DPS still for sale! Preferably looking for $$, but willing to do $ and trade if that helps out anyone on the fence.

They are known for having prices so high, most collectors just pretend their website doesn't exist. And yeah, you're seeing crappy stats on non-color matching paper that they print up and put on any piece they can. Which (for some reason) they think makes the art look better. But in reality it just cheapens the look of the piece.

Agreed.

In the wake of investment companies, and books regularly breaking 1mil, I would most certainly say prices would not have reached where they are now without the manipulation. My only option as a collector (and I am a collector. I love comic books and art and the hobby as a whole) is to buy books I like that are within my budget. I am savvy enough to take advantage of time payments. But that said, I am priced out of many books that I would have liked to get a copy of at this point... when entry level copies of key/desirable GA & SA issues are now regularly 4-5 figures.

I'd like to think I'm more just salty about the shill bidding aspect of the hobby. It certainly sounds like others have done quite more research into the depth of this than me so I digress from my ideas of how the collection came to be. It still doesn't change the overwhelming amount of people that feel that many books are overgraded, and vary in enough ways that it makes you second guess the legitimacy of the story. Knowing what I know, I admit to having a higher degree of cynicism when it comes to shady business practices/conspiratorial incidents in the hobby. For example, I know of several creator "File Copies" that are in fact not file copies at all. They were from bound volumes that were otherwise less valuable than regular copies. But everyone likes a good story..... and those books are out there with labels that say "...File Copy" to this day.

In one regard I agree, that's the complicated part of the lie becomes true. The scenario of gun-to-your-head, however, isn't representative of what's actually going on. No one is forcing anyone to bid. What's happening is far more insidious If you want a book and for the last 10 years you've been comfortable with thinking it's a $100 book, what's the stink if it suddenly goes for $200? No big deal right? There are certainly price corrections for books all the time. What if $200 is still affordable to you? You can afford the extra $100, so you buy one for $200. But what if you were told later that the $100 sale 10 years ago was really one bidder who got into a bidding war with the house and didn't know it and drove the price up to $100; they were intending to only pay $60 (but could afford to go higher). That one person unintentionally created a false perception of the relative FMV of the book. But technically they didn't overpay, they paid what they agreed to bid. Once you realize the nuance of the situation, it gets even more complicated once other people that own a copy of the book now say "I won't sell my copy for less than $200" once the new record sale happens. The lie became truth because over time, new people who want the book say "$200 looks good to me, I can afford it", just like you did! And those new buyers and sales are legitimate, so now the manipulated sale helped the new jump in price go higher than it would have. Most importantly, none of this erases the manipulation of the price from $60-$100, it just happened without anyone noticing. In another time-line, perhaps the book's new record price was increasing from $60 to $100, not $100 to $200. I guess ignorance is bliss? The more I think about it I think you're right. Probably just took some time to track down missing copies of the big key books they sold when originally purchasing the collection 20 years ago.

You throw the words "believe" and "speculation" around fairly regularly in your answer. In that respect, I can reasonably rephrase my initial statement of "sliver of truth that was intentionally extrapolated upon" to clarify there is a big range of how much "truth" is actually in the original story. That sliver may be 20% of the collection, maybe it's 25%, maybe even 60%. But there is no way, absolutely no way that near all 90%+ of this collection came from the same original owner. But ultimately, regardless of any speculation- I'm not alone in knowing that many, many of these Promise Collection books are over-graded. I also know for a fact, 100%, that the three big auction houses engage in underbidding on as many of their lots as they can get away with (legality aside). This one, this fact, that is staring us all in the face, should make many collectors angry beyond recourse. This is the lie that becomes truth as soon as any other like-sale happens, supporting the shilled sale. And the scary thing is that because of fear of missing out/ the addictive nature of collecting, many buyers buy and sell at the new "made up" sale number because they feel confident in the integrity of the system to not question the legitimacy of the "new record price". This is not to say there aren't real record breaking sales, but I've seen with my own eyes enough that I know were manipulated to, once again, push forward the "lie that becomes the truth" situation. So when a story of a Pedigree comes out, where there is decent range in page quality, writing/marks, condition, and capacity- to the point where there is some consensus amongst the collecting community that something looks off- it probably is. As the old saying goes, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. Couple that with the WATA/Heritage scandal that should be headline news, or at least not speculation (all the proof of market manipulation is there) and people should be skeptical. And its a shame because on their own, many of the books are remarkable and beautiful. But once again it seems that greedy people at the top are making normal, decent collectors pay handsomely for books. Some of which would be marginally cheaper, but many/most of the books from the "Pedigree" would be much much cheaper.

Individually, I think certain books, pedigree aside, can be appreciated- based on scarcity, condition, etc... That said, it appears to me that the Promise Collection Pedigree was assembled by various individuals, and that the official story (like many official stories) has just a sliver of truth that was intentionally extrapolated upon. I'd bet some portion of the collection is original owner books. But based on page quality, writing, condition and capacity, there are way too many red flags that call out it's "true" pedigree status. Like any good conspiracy, we don't need to prove what happened: just that the official story has too many holes and inconsistencies to remain unquestioned. As the story almost always goes: follow the money. Seems far more likely that this collection was assembled by one or more collectors/dealers in order to maximize profits from many, many books that would have otherwise gone for fractions of the final selling prices. Who ever it was, however, did not plan for internet sleuths to start picking everything apart, revealing the gaping hole in the legitimacy of the story. In the same way that WATA and Heritage did not plan for an independent journalist to dive into the 1mil Mario NES sale. The only difference is the amount of available information that calls everything into question.

Just wanted to put it out there. I know the asking prices are on the high end, but there are also no other real comps for each one. There are only around 20 all or mostly all zombie DPS pieces from the series like this, and all the others are in collections (90% of which are unknown). Liklihood of getting one in the future is almost certainly a shot in the dark. The cover to 150 went on clink a few years back for $8900. It is fairly similar, a little more ink, but a later issue with the later version Rick. This cover has the OG Rick, and is priced at $8250 on CAF. The interior page zombie bite is the only early zombie page I've seen in years on the open market. Let alone a bite/death page from a well known setting! Willing to negotiate in order to work out some sales.

Thanks Bob!

Closed.