miraclemet

with the talk about Batman 227 being a classic cover I searched for this (thank you google for being an actual functional search tool) is there a more "updated" list or is this still the definitive list of CGC "Classic Cover" designations?

Felt like I was rescuing this from the pound on ebay this weekend. Guy who was selling it bought it for 5x what I paid on Sunday (I was the lone last second bid at his opening price)... poor guy. You'd think this black cover would have color touch (considering its a Restored label), but nope. Someone trimmed the bottom edge of the cover, apparently. Still a beautiful Jones cover none the less...

Two new books to end the week on. Got both at a great price for the grade... the ASM #77 would be higher but it looks like it spent too much time in the Florida Sun (CR/OW pages and a very tanned back cover). I just got rid of the last of my ASMs and a new one shows up. Think I'll be switching gears from my recently departed slabs from the 100s to some favorites from the single digits... The X-men 142 was part of my 1000 points in $100 challenge. If I can find a good priced 9.6 I'll probably be upgrading this one soon. Small ding near the URFC keeps this from being higher...

Latest addition to my "Lady in White" Gothic horror themed collection (ok I know this one is in purple, but its too sweet to ignore!) Its a little off center (left to right and top to bottom) but it met my centering criteria of having the full DC bat on the left and the full CCA on the right, which is tough to score in these horror titles from the 70s.

hey I was going to bid on that! Glad it made it to the board!

"Please explain to Mr Fett why your homework assignment is late. And dont say your sarkacc pit ate it...."

The colors are very bright on that copy. Congrats! I hope it looks so good in hand.... would have loved to see a scan vs a picture, but it cost the price of a nice lunch, so what the heck...

Love seeing a book go up for sale here in hopes of selling before a high outlier price gets normalized in GPA by a more reasonable market price in the weekly Heritage auction. "Strike while the iron is hot" is the phrase that comes to mind. And when the iron is crazily reported in GPA. And when the iron is probably going to close for a more "in-line" market price at the end of the week.

Ugh, late night, may have had a few adult beverages, jumped on ebay saw a book I liked was ending in 37 seconds and was cheap so I threw it a pitty bid and ended up with it... I love this cover: Spidey + Lizard + Human Torch = awesomeness Got it under GPA, but its a 7.0 with Cream to OW pages....

she's still running.... So Im two weeks into my new collecting target, and I've hit the ground running. I have 3 CGC slabs in my collection, one on the way and a raw Batman #227 that will get submitted for encapsulation very soon for my Gothic horror collection. Some of these books have very low #s on the census due to them not being super-collectible so when a book does come available I have to jump at it. There are a few low run/hard-to-find titles like Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love and Sinister House of Secret Love that can be found slabbed, but get pricey once they get to the 9.4+ grade. So far my purchases have been very affordable, but that will be changing soon as the low hanging fruit are being plucked, but I will try to exhibit paitenece. A collection was not built in a day. I've walked away from three books so far that got up to "full market" price. Im all about the deal... So far I have not hit on any of the "iconic" gothic covers (except for Batman #227). I would love to add one of them soon, espeially House of Secrets #88, which is easily the most recognized gothic horror cover out there, and is by the master Neal Adams. I've attached my collection to date, my Batman #227 is a "mockup" just for consistency sake of the slabs.

A buy here on the boards and a buy online. The Batman was right in my "affordable" sweetspot. It was sold to me as a 6.5 and has some spine creasing that I'll have to live with, but theres a nice inch long non-color breaking crease (FCBR) that could disappear if I wanted it to.... Either way its getting submitted for grading after I read it. The House of Secrets 89 is just an 8.0 (again how it was so affordable) but it has unfortunate cream to OW pages, and some back cover staining. But it presents well and is actually well centered (has both the full DC bat on the left and full CCA on the right) which is tough to find in these 70s horror titles.

I bought a Silver age book from Sharron, it arrived fast and was spot on grade-wise and well packed... it was also delicious. oh wait that was the cookies in the package...

Who did that cover! Its awesome! Looks like Steranko, but no notations.

There are just 5 Nick Fury books on my Want list (1,4,6,7,& 11) Got one of them this week at a good price and a good grade (still NMish w/o breaking the bank). Also this issue seems to be notoriously miscut/off-center, and this one is nice and squared!

"Topps" on the box makes it soooo collectible to the Base Ball Card collectors who like to have displayable items.

There's definitely a subsection of the art collectors community that collects artist portfolios, and there is a pretty penny put on rare portfolios and early portfolios (especially pre-big 2 signing). I'm sure there's value to the portfolio, you might want to post a question over in the Original Art forum to see if anyone has an opinion, you might also find some other owners of the same portfolio. Be warned, the "limited #' can be misleading. All it really tells you is how many were printed up of that batch. Some artists would do a second printing of the same portfolio if they ran out mid-con-season, and not necessarily note that it was a second printing. Most of the portfolio collectors have figured out how to spot the various printings (some had different color cover stock, others just different printing companies listed on them)....

Purchased here on the boards. My first Signature Series. I love Simonson, and when I saw the promo art they were using for this cover I knew it was a home run... getting his sig on it just sweetens the slab!

On the cover...

What % of your funds go toward the Non-Profits operating costs (i.e. travel to cons for promotion of charity, I dont know if you draw a salary in your NP or not, etc, storage space rental for the kids comics prior to distribution, etc) and what % go to buying the comics that get into a kids hand? (i.e. If I donated a slabbed book that sold for $100 would that buy $100 worth of kids comics, or does some of that go toward operating expenses as with other non-profits?)

Wow, that's cheap! Over here in the U.K., custom die stamps cost £50 (and they're not interchangeable between different binderies) that price typically includes a "gentlemens agreement" that the bindry can use the dies for other customers and keep them in their inventory and advertise on their website that it is an avialable die. Ones that you want to keep private usually cost more cause they are "one time" and the only way you can interchange your dies between binderies is if they are your dies and you can have them sent to another bindery, as I did when my first binding shop closed down in Texas a few years back.

The great thing about binds is you can include the covers/ads if you want! My 80s nostalgia binds included the ads cause that was part of my memories. Gradewise a VF book is perfect, but you can get away with a FN. to me its about page quality between the books. The bindrys I mentioned earlier (Hauchen and Single Bound Studios) has a lot of die stamps that can be used on the book covers and on the spines. Bigger binderies can make their own die stamps, but it costs ~$50 for one.

Hey guys, I bind too. Have about 10 binds completed and another 20-30 prepared for binding once I get back in the money. There are lots of options for binding here in the states, you can find most of them mentioned in the link Kenners provided. Some of the better know ones are Single Bound Studios (with the great David Banks), Hauchen and others. Its a good idea to investigate if there is a book binder who would do your binding projects locally since a decent part of the cost ends up being shipping (even when using media mail, which some binderies do not). As far as bound collections being worth more than the sum of their parts... well its very hit and miss. The biggest example was a Miracleman binding that went for (if I'm remembering correctly) around $1000. The guy probably doubled his money, depending on how much he paid for some of the key issues. But since there there have been multiple binds of the same subject so their uniqueness is going downhill. Most binding collectors are trade readers so the more valuable binds are those that have a lot of interest, but for some reason have no TPB/HC collections (or they are long OOP, like Miracleman). Of late I've seen single binds of low-interest material (Ravage 2099) go for $16 on ebay (and thats was with a Stan Lee signature in it!) which doesnt even cover the costs of originally shipping the comics back and forth from the binder, much less a basic bind ($30ish) plus the cost of the books. Similarly a bind collection with lots of interest (an Avengers run that chronicled from Disassembled all the way thru Heroic Age) may not have interest because there are ready made HCs available (this collection of 10 binds went for over $300, but again didnt cover cost of production and materials) There are the occasional binds that hit the perfect spot of interest w/o available trades and enough bidders to drive up a price to $100 for a book. But again when you factor in the cost of the 20-30 books ($1ea or $3 off the shelf) plust the cost of binding ($30) and two way shipping ($20) you just break north of even at $100. Binding is a lot of fun, and theres a sweet spot of books from the bronze/copper age that arent old enough to have nice Archives made, and arent new enough to be part of the modern TPB/HC collection churn. Or there are events from the past that dont have collections "the way you want" to read them, so you can do a custom bind. My collection is sporatic at the moment including: 2 volume DC Who's Who, 3 Volume Gotham Central (bound before they started finally collecting this), 4 Volume Star Man (again bound before DC started collecting it), and some random love like: Atari Force, Resurrection Man, Human Target, etc... My biggest bind is yet to come is a 15 or so volume collection starting with Green Lantern #90 (first post-Neal/Denny issue with Mike Grell) and running up to present day containing all Hal Jordan-centric comics (so skipping Kyle's time as GL).

Two purchases arrived today as part of my "Lady in White" gothic horror collection (read my journal!) Not super high grade, but hey thats how they were affordable!

Amen: Treat a thread like a store or a con table. (the internet makes many fearless!) If you are at a table and disagree with the prices or grades, you just keep moving to the next table. I don't know anyone who just stands at that table all day telling people that this guys books are overpriced or over graded. His books, his deal, his problem. If they are over prices/over graded the market will bear it out (and the crickets will be deafening). Similarly you dont walk into a store and start yelling that the merchandise is overpriced and people can find it cheaper at WalMart... thus I conclude, treat a thread like a store or a con-table. On the GPA front. Anyone can get a GPA subscription, so its available data for anyone with $10-2 to use. I list what I think is relevant GPA data on my sales threads (the GPA data that helps me determine my price). If the 90 day average helps me determine the price, I include that, if it skewes the price one way or the other I dont, heck I've provided GPA prices before where I pulled out a HIGH price outlier that drove up the price! I don't provide a spreadsheet for every book I list, and I dont think anyone wants to spend their day looking up possible buyer GPA questions ("what did it sell for in 2006?, "how many sold last year?" what does the grade above sell for?) There are a myriad of ways to use GPA data, so if its important to you, get an account, if its not ignore the GPA info and go on your own pricing guideline. Prices, like condition are subjective. Plus what they are subjective to cant be seen in a scan (what did the seller buy the book for originally? is there a particular $$ amount the buyer needs to make it worth selling the book? how quickly does it need to sell?) All these things can factor into a price setting, and none have to be disclosed.

My CGC Gothic Horror journal I will be journaling my discovery, hunting and purchasing of my lady in white, Gothic horror covers of the 60s and 70s. To see old comments for this Journal entry, click here. New comments can be added below.