fantastic_four

I've been laid up with a bad back most of the last few months and have been unable to scan a bunch of great new Spideys I've gotten, but here's one I just had to get scanned. Quite a nice endcap for my Spidey run!

Yea me wantey

I'M JEALOUS! Nice pickup! This copy changed hands twice the last few months...it sold on ebay in August for $1400, then it sold to you on ComicLink for less than that. Not a good flip for them, but a good one for you! (thumbs u I almost pulled the trigger when it was on ebay, but $1400 seemed slightly high, and I've got a raw copy that could get a 9.6, I've been lazy about submitting raw books the last few years. Here's hoping the lower prices we've seen the last few months continue into 2010!

NICE BOOKS! I've gotten a bunch of nice ones in lately I'll eventually post, but I've been laid up for 4 weeks with a herniated lower back disc, haven't been able to sit upright to use a scanner. It also caused me to miss those nice copies of #2, #3, and #4 that hit ComicLink late last month...I slipped the disc like 4 hours before they got posted on the site.

He's a great debater with clear thinking and I'm really glad he's here, but you're right. It's tough to debate with him because he's more than in love with his own thoughts, he's in absolute LUST with them. Threads get littered with the spooge from his mental masturbation, and everyone else's counterpoints are treated as fuel to be burned in the fires of his imagination. Or put more succinctly, he debates to be right more than to arrive at truth, which is too frustrating to participate in for long.

That's a sound analysis for ya.... Empirical evidence, exhibit A: Spiderman #5, previously graded 9.6, deslabbed, sent back through the grading process...having nothing done to it...receives a 9.8. Book is exactly the same book that went through the first time. The only difference? The opinions of the graders on that day. Empirical evidence, Exhibit B: New Mutants #98, out of my personal collection. Sent in in a lot of 8 copies at a 9.8 pre-screen. 7 pass, one rejected. Rejected copy sent back in at a 9.8 pre-screen, having had absolutely nothing done to it...it passes, and receives a 9.8 grade. Same book. Same exact condition. Do you want more examples? There are hundreds, if not thousands by this point. Very sound analysis, although obviously I didn't present it in this thread and since you joined long after I went through my intense CGC reverse-engineering phase on these boards, you probably haven't seen it. I've spent years here trying to reverse-engineer CGC's standards, but you can't do it without defect examination. I think you alluded to some analysis of defects allowable in the 9.9 and 10.0 grades...do you recall where you or others did it? Or do you mean you've examined the defects on 9.9s in person? I can do a keyword search for it myself if you saw others do it on the boards and you recall some titles and issues and if possible how long ago you saw it. There can be no discussion of whether or not a book is accurately graded without a defect inventory--to do so at all is to pull ideas completely out of your . Right now, the only two people that should be talking about the Amazing Spider-Man #5 or the New Mutants #98 and the merits of their grades are the people who have had the books in hand and know what the defects are. What percentage of books do you estimate CGC misgrades? 10%? 50%? 90%? If they misgrade 30% of the time, is there any value in knowing that a book has a 70% probability of being accurately graded?

Post it.

A board lurker who has no forum account but does have a Registry account named "NewEnglandGothic" just sent me this via Collector's Society mail: What are IDW books?

I've seen a lot of what appears to be presumptious dismissal of CGC's 9.9 grade in this thread. Has anyone actually done much analysis of CGC 9.9s and 10.0s to determine whether or not they tend to truly on average have fewer defects than 9.8s? We all know CGC's margin of error can be a single notch, but that doesn't mean you automatically assume every book is overgraded or undergraded. I have to think there's some actual objective truth in the superior condition of most 9.9s and 10.0s just based upon my experience with their grading of books below that level, but I don't own any Mints, so I can't really say--and I'm not sure anyone else crapping on CGC's Mint grade have empirical evidence to make their claims, either.

I'm seeing softness across the board, with desirable issues occasionally, but not always, still going strong. The price on #59 doesn't surprise me here, as there's a high grade copy of this book in 9.6, 9.8, or both in EVERY ComicLink auction, literally. Gotta be part of a warehouse find.

I've always felt this way, but I tend to overlook the fact that it's the first Fantastic Four crossover. Similar crossovers in other titles that came after this one are more highly valued...the FF crossover is probably more important than the issue being the first appearance of J. Jonah Jameson.

Easy $50K I'm thinking... $85K.

before pressing, maybe, after pressing, no. just look at gi joe 21 as an example and that book is older. Your example confounds me as there are no 9.9 copies of GI Joe 21.

Even when they're no longer reprints and they're the originals because the monthlies stop, something about the physical format seems tough to collect. Maybe I'm just too tied to floppy, thin comics and I'm wrong, perhaps people would've been collecting TPBs today if that's the medium that had risen in the 1930s instead of thin comics.

If you're making the comparison with '98-'99, perhaps...perhaps not. Any other time period? Not a chance. Late 80s and early 90s, there were LCSs absolutely everywhere...and all of them stocked 1,000s & 1,000s & 1,000s of back issues. Hell, a good proportion of their income was generated this way. These days? Try to find a LCS. Try to find one with back issues. Taxguy says there are more collectors post-eBay...and you offer the fact that local comic shops barely stock back issues as evidence against that? I'm not saying he's right, as I have no way to measure the size of the collecting community, but the primary reason local comic shops are barely selling back issues now is because collectors no longer sell to them, they sell to each other directly...and guess why? eBay. Every shop in my area tells me the same thing, they used to have collections walk into their doors unsolicted throughout the 80s and 90s, but that slowed and eventually stopped after 1999, so their stock sucks now. The only local comic shops I've seen with decent back issue selection are the ones where owners actively seek collections out as opposed to waiting for collections to come to them.

You're partially right, but printed comics will change in a way that will make them effectively uncollectible and break the tie to the kind of comics we collect--trade paperbacks will replace the monthlies. Trade paperbacks don't seem to lend themselves to collectibility, but I can't put my finger on why I feel that way.

CGC and the Internet have definitively increased the population of one segment of the collecting market--high grade collectors. If it wasn't so easy to get a complete collection of lower-grade books via eBay and dealer sites, I would have never gravitated to high grade so quickly, or perhaps ever. And even if I had started collecting high grade with no Internet to push me towards it, if certification wasn't around, undisclosed additive restoration could have forced me right back out of high grade years ago. Pre-CGC, guys hunting through longboxes for 9.6 and 9.8 copies were as rare as the chupacabra, as everything above 9.0 was about the same to virtually the entire grade-conscious collecting community, with a few notable exceptions. Today, you'll find them all over the web and at every con.

Logging onto Pedigree and ComicLink setting insanely high record prices the last two years.

What empirical evidence leads you to believe this? I know new readers aren't coming in, but I don't see why people wouldn't rediscover comics today at the same rate as they have in the past...I would think the opposite is true SPECIFICALLY because of the films.

Why wouldn't the superhero movies of the 2000s reconnect these people to comics? I got forced out of comics in the mid-90s myself, but the X-Men film in 2000 pulled me back into them. The easy availability of them due to the Internet intensified my interest, much as it has intensified the entire market.

If not for the small scan, I would have bid higher than that on that book.

Why's that, just because of the length? I enjoyed the additional scene where Nite Owl I was killed, as well as the scene where Nite Owl II beat up the random gang member who was sitting nearby when he heard the news.

Agree. I enjoyed the film quite a bit, but mixing low-quality animation in with vibrant live-action film sounds like a formula for some truly crappy montage.

WTH! Every one of those looks like a 9.8 - 9.9!

Spidey 33 is almost ALWAYS miswrapped with the front wrapping to the back, as was almost every single issue from Marvel that came out the same month. FF 48 came out that month too. Kinda obvious Marvel's printer had a lot of problems that month and that they improved it fairly fast, as Spidey 34 (and FF 49) aren't nearly as often miswrapped.