fantastic_four

Luckily, Matt Nelson has shared most of this information with the world in his CBM article published a number of years back, and he's planning on sharing it all in the book he's working on. You can read his old article here: http://comicrestoration.freeservers.com/article1.htm Up until America entered World War 2, Tom Reilly bought comics from the stands himself, but after he went off to war, the local store he bought them from were putting them aside and his parents would go buy the saved issues from time to time. The store owner probably kept saving them after his death in 1945 because I'm sure he wasn't informed right away, but how much longer, I've never heard defined. What year were the books from that you say were published after his death?

Now that I think about it, he definitely meant that the preservation is just one factor in helping to identify San Francisco or Curator. Were the SF books marked? I can't remember. With Curator, and a bunch of other Silver pedigrees, I'd imagine it's more provenance documentation than anything else.

Haspel told me he thought he could identify them...he said they have more gloss, whiter pages, and nicer colors than he's ever seen on any other Silver age books. He said he can identify San Franciscos in almost exactly the same way--they exhibit a higher degree of preservation than any other pedigree. I dunno, though...he knows a lot more than I do, but I can't imagine you wouldn't mis-identify some books using that technique. No list as of yet--not to say it's impossible to compile one with a bunch of work. The original owner consigned them to a shop in her hometown and the shop sold most of the comics off before Hauser got to them...the ones Hauser got hadn't been given over to the shop yet for consignment. I think the idea of the pedigree designation only came a few years later after Hauser and/or Brulato submitted theirs to CGC.

No markings, so you can't, that's why we'll never know what the collection was like in its entirety. You can guess its from the same collection based on preservation, but that seems like an unreliable way to do it.

I hear Pacific Coast is a totally complete run of Silver Age with all books from all publishers present, which is why it's often called the "Mile High of the Silver Age".

I haven't seen Curator described anywhere on the web except in these forums, so I doubt there's a link to anything other than another thread around here. Most of the copies that are known to be Curators were sold to one person by John Hauser in the late 1990s, but that one person doesn't own most of the comics that were actually in the collection because they were sold off with no records kept before Hauser got to them. The one collector owns a bunch of the Marvels, but a famous comic book creator owns the FF 2 to 100 and he wishes to remain nameless so people don't bug him to buy the books. Hauser believes the collection was both Marvels and DCs, but he only got some of the Marvels. The curator actually owned complete runs all the way up to the modern age, some of which Hauser still has--you might still be able to buy those now if you asked him because he was just auctioning off his remaining Curator Daredevils a few months ago. He tried to get CGC to pedigree titles such as Marvel Team-Up, but they wouldn't give the designation to books that new--something they also refused to do for parts of the Western Penn collection. It's remotely possible that Curator rivals Pacific Coast in terms of completeness and quality, but we'll probably never know for sure.

Spine roll is caused by folding back the cover and interior pages. Everybody's seen people do this; it's the way a lot of people read magazines in such a way that they can hold it by using only one hand. It's called a "roll" because the back half of the book gets bent in such a way that it "rolls" over to where the spine used to be when the book was brand new. A lot of low grade books are like this, with the whiteness on the back cover heavily visible on the left side (and I don't mean from printing miswraps). I know what you mean about the spine curving that occurs from comics being in a stack for too long...I personally call that a "spine curl" just to distinguish it from a spine roll. Spine curl is an almost nonexistent danger in my experience once comics are bagged and boarded. When you stack up a bunch of unbagged comics, you can see the side of the stack where the folded edges are sitting visibly higher than the side where the reading edge is, but in my stacks of bagged/boarded comics, they tend to lie flat. You can't even stack unboarded comics very high because the stack tips due to the raised spines, but I can stack boarded comics quite easily.

Ah, you're probably right, the earliest Overstreet I have is #3 and it shows Action 1 at $1000 so it makes sense they were lower in #1 and #2. That's quite a big jump over a year or two though...from $300 to $1000 in two years. Either the hobby was changing at an extremely rapid pace then, or he underestimated their value in the first guide.

I believe the Gold keys were listed over $1000 in the first Overstreet guide back in 1970, so they've been highly desirable for more than a decade. I figure there's got to be a close parallel to comics out there that have been bandied about for more than just the 20th century; tulip bulbs, Internet stocks, or land sound too different from comics to be a good comparison. They're not entertainment-related cultural items. Art comes to mind, but since it's only the originals that sell for much, they're not a good direct comparison since comics have multiple copies. Stamps, and possibly first-edition novels, might be a good comparison. Wonder how much first editions from the literary greats from previous centuries sell today...I think I should spend some time browsing the Christie's and Sotheby's auction results. Maybe old Civil War-era statuettes of Robert E. Lee or Jefferson Davis exist out there and are highly prized by some people out there. E-Bay is probably a good place to do this kind of research on how much people are still willing to pay for useless [!@#%^&^] from centuries past. There must be cultural items from the past that commanded a premium during their time that have been forgotten by most people today...but since they've been mostly forgotten...probably none of us know what those items were! Wonder who you could ask that would remember something like that.

Definitely a good thought that made me think about what I meant. There's a huge difference between losing $49 when a $50 book goes back down to $1 and losing $960 when a $1000 book goes back down to $40. Even a little kid can afford to take a $49 hit, but only the affluent can claim to not care about a $960 loss. I wonder whether some of the early Golden age comics which are uncommon but haven't been featured in any kind of media for a long time will eventually lose their value in 30-40 years once the people who grew up with them have passed on. I'm sure there must be period pieces that have gone up and then back down in the art world that could be comparable to this.

Does anyone know of specific examples in any collectibles field (painted art, statuary, stamps, coins, cards, etc) where a massive loss of value occurred comparable to a drop from $1000 to $40? I'm only familiar with comics myself and can't think of such a drop in their history to this point, but I'm sure there are examples of this in the more long-established fields. I'm sure there are lots of examples of this in the art market; anybody know of any specific drops?

Couldn't agree more with this; I've had this idea in my "about me" ebay page for about two years. It might be 10 years, or it might be 15-20 years, but eventually, standards will tighten a bit and sellers will be reslabbing their 9.2 to 9.6 books. Since I've been buying with the idea I'll keep most of my books for a decade or more, this is why I don't pay the huge multiples for just any 9.4 to 9.8 book...it's gotta be an exceptional copy in EVERY way before I'll do it, with all "eye appeal" defects that CGC barely downgrades for factored in. I figure that if I hold books to higher standards than the general industry does at this point in time, I've got a better chance of my books being worth the same amount or more once the tigher grading in the future hits. How many people who bought books a decade or two ago thought they had NM books only to have CGC tell them they're really VFs? Too many; I don't want to be in the same situation as those unlucky people once the next generation of grading hits. One of the changes I'd love to see is greater grading consistency. I've said this several times before--the 25-notch scale is too ambitious if even the pro graders have a margin of error of 1 to 2 nothces on that scale. The standards have to be more well-defined, and grading on the 25-notch scale has to become a consistently repeatable process. Somebody asked whether CGC has been ISO-certified earlier. I assume from their revenues the answer is 99.99% likely to be no, but still, they do need written, documented internal guidelines to make sure all the graders grade the same way. They may have this, but they may not; I haven't heard them say anywhere that they do. And based upon some of the inconsistency I've seen, they must not have them, unless they've been changing those guidelines and I saw one book with a defect before the standards were changed and another after the change. If the back-issue industry ever gets consistent on the 25-notch scale, or if the standards actually get so good that we go back to the 100-point scale Overstreet proposed in the early 90s that we eventually realized was too ambitious, then without a doubt, these early CGC books will be looked at as a risk and reslabbing will have to occur to have a shot at getting fair market value or better in the future.

hehe, you don't have to validate yourself...you're pretty much like the rest of us. Most of us would resubmit a book we thought was undergraded if we were gonna sell it. It's just that one statement you're having to validate, that there are collectors resubmitting just to validate themselves or the book. They're out there, yeah, but I can't imagine that they amount to any more than 10% of resubmissions, 20% at most. Heritage's resubmissions alone likely dwarf collectors who resubmit books they know they're going to keep. I can see resubmitting a few times to validate your grading, but once you knew you and CGC were on par, future resubmits would likely be to maximize value. Collectors who submit their own books they have no intention of selling are in the minority, and amongst those, people who resubmit books they're going to keep are lesser still.

Do you still own any of those 3 books you resubmitted? If not, it sounds like you're fooling yourself a little. The vast majority of the time, people resubmit to increase the value of the book. If you're gonna keep it, it's the same book no matter what the label says. As a pure collector who has very few books I want to sell, the restoration check matters, but the number on the label doesn't matter much. I have a few 9.0s I bet would get 9.2 or 9.4 upon resubmission, but since I'm keeping them, no need to. If I ever get better copies I might resubmit, but until then, why would I? That's where most of the resubmission thinking comes even amongst collectors; they resubmit on books they think they're gonna keep to maximize profit in case they decide to flip or trade once they get a better copy. If you're confident in your grading, then there's no reason to resubmit.

"fairly positive" an 8.5 exists? Why I oughtta...you young whippersnapper Bronze/Modern collectors and your fancy-shmancy "commonly and comparatively cheaply available in 9.8" supply of comics tick me off.

My data entry forms are web-based and not a part of the database, so this is probably a better "template" to take than mine is. Plus mine has some proprietary business rules in it that I may eventually turn into a web-based comic book business, and ripping those rules out to make it appropriate as a template would take some time. I'm currently in the process of moving the business-related parts of the database over to SQL Server (or eventually MySQL if SQL Server web hosting keeps being too expensive), and I'll leave the functionality to manage my personal collection in Access. After I'm done with that (which probably won't be for 6-12 months) my Access database would probably be sharable with other people.

Why's that? Does FileMaker suck that badly? In general, databases should be faster at retrieving the data from disk than Excel would be, and the disk accesses take longer than the calculations do.

That applies to nobody on clobber's list except Parrino. Brulato, toychef, Josh, and Bruce are collectors aside from being dealers, they were buying long before CGC, and they still buy both slabbed and unslabbed books. How do they differ so greatly from Geppi? Geppi has probably been doing it so long now that there's very little left he even needs or wants anymore.

He didn't say collectors, he said "big wheels" with no qualification...that could be collectors or investors. There's at least one, maybe two, "big wheel" collectors on his list who were buying big before and after CGC, and one HUGE investor who has probably put more money into comic book back issues, graded and ungraded, than Geppi.

What does the two different lighting levels (substage and top) on your scope do for you? Also, which zoom level have you found to be most useful for comics so far--20x, 40x, or both? I'm wondering what the maximum useful magnification for comics is.

I can't believe how many stereo microscopes there are on E-Bay that cost over $200 ! They must be used by some mainstream scientific or medical practice...who buys them mostly, do you think? Eye doctors?

Have you been able to get a feel for the features on a stereo microscope that are bare-minimum must-have and which are boy-I-sure-would-like-to-have-THAT! You mentioned zoom--does the one you bought have a single level of magnification? This one looks like the type I want regarding a boom, but I have no idea if it would be lacking features I would later regret not having: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2519281270&category=26411

Yours cost a few hundred? Where'd you buy it? I see them on EBay all the time, I figured I'd be able to get one for between 100 and 200 if I looked long enough...I've just stopped looking. Need to start again.

I've been considering one of those; I know CGC has one also. I've been holding out for one with either a LARGE base, big enough to move a comic back and forth on, or with no base at all but a "boom" or swivel arm that allows you to move the eyepieces back and forth over a surface. What were you using for magnification before this?

Welcome!!! Glad to see you finally joined us. The main reason I've been wondering whether shortwave would be useful is because stamp collectors use it. When I went looking for a UV lamp in my area, the first place that I found who carried it was a stamp store, and I had a long conversation with the owner. He demonstrated for me a stamp he looked at under a shortwave light and a longwave light to demonstrate how certain types of materials would fluoresce under shortwave but not under longwave. What type of material was he looking at? I don't know. Would shortwave be at all useful with comics, or is there something particular to stamps that would only make it useful there? I don't know, but I do know that in general, hardcore stamp collectors use more science in their hobby than comic collectors do. The very fact that I was able to buy any kind of UV lamp at all at a store a half-mile from my house when almost none of the dozens of comic shops in my state carry them tells me volumes about the state of stamp collecting versus comic collecting. I guess the general idea is that stamps have been worth big money and been susceptible to fraud 50 to 100 years earlier than comics have, which explains why their hobby has developed better scientific techniques to detect fraud. So I have to wonder whether shortwave could be useful. Is it harmful if you stay on the opposite side of the light and keep your body parts out of the rays? That, I don't know either.