Filter81

As far as whether or not it's ok for one dealer to criticize another, I would argue that if a dealer's actions rise to the level of fraud or criminal misconduct i.e. coollines, Danny Dupcak, etc other dealers should (and even maybe have an obligation to) share this information with others. The other day I asked Chris to post something for me about a negative experience I had with Coollines (After going more than 3 months without being able to get any response whatsoever from Coollines via E-mail, website, or phone call I asked Chris to post about it since Chris is well known in the OA community and I am not as well known yet. And yes, I had heard negative things about Coollines prior to making the purchase and as a result maybe I deserve what I got. But if I'd known at that time that Coollines had any history of being intentionally dishonest with regards to what was being sold, I would never have spent any money with that company.) I keep learning more and more how different OA is from comics. But in comics if a dealer develops a reputation for scamming people, the community typically looks out for each other. As an example, when Dupcak was selling restored comic books as unrestored I'm glad there were dealers / CGC / board members etc making sure other people (like myself who was new to the hobby at the time) were made aware as quickly as possible when they were coming into the hobby. It was both the right thing to do, and it was good for the hobby because it limited how many people Dupcak was able to chase out of the hobby as a result of bad experiences they may have had. In my opinion it's the same thing when Coollines sells fakes / recreations as originals, or when Coollines says something is done by one artist when it was actually done by someone else (like the MCP cover by Purcell they have listed on eBay as being done by Romita Sr, or the NM cover they sold me as a Liefeld when it was really a fake done by unknown) I know I'm posting about two threads in one post, so just for the record, if Coollines wants to price their pieces at multiples of FMV, more power to them, it's their art to price however they want. But as soon as any dealer starts substituting recreations for originals or restored books as unrestored (especially when that behavior turns into a pattern) they should be called out on it if for no other reason than to make others aware so they can make more informed decisions. (And I'm not discounting anyone who has had a good experience with Coollines. Plenty of people had positive experiences with Dupcak, Ewert, etc. But it doesn't make up for all the people they ripped off either) My anyway... (end rant)

I had two Kirby pages I was thinking of consigning somewhere that I think I'll hold off on until it becomes a little more clear what exactly this all means. In the meantime, if a Kirby page I wanted came up for sale this would not stop me from bidding. I would guess less supply = temporarily higher prices on whatever does hit the market? But I'm definitely no art expert.

I sold a 4 figure golden age book to Joe. Very friendly, quick communication, paid right away. Great person to deal with!!

I just completed another deal with Ioannis and everything went perfect, same as last time. He's a great person to deal with! Very friendly and very easy to work with!

Ioannis bought two high $$ books from me, paid right away, and was very friendly, responsive, and easy to work with. Thanks for the great transaction!!

$15k?

I bought a $2000 book from Dannyboy. He was very easy to work with. Prompt communication, fast shipping, well packed, and a really cool book. Thanks!

I wasn't sure if I should post this (I don't want to beat a dead horse, Jim has already written me and apologized so as far as I'm concerned, over and done with) But just so that there are no misunderstandings, since I don't want anyone thinking there are or were any shenanigans going on, I figure I should respond in a little more detail. (Thank you to everyone who chimed in earlier today while I had limited computer access and was stuck trying to type on a cell phone!) We were set up at the Nickel City Comic Convention this weekend. Prior to leaving I had been working on listing some no reserve eBay auctions (including the Cap 255) but since I didn't finish them I scheduled them for a random later date and forgot to reschedule them. They were never intended to go off last night. (we aren't talking big books, so I would have left them up, but we will be in Chicago next week and unable to ship them when they end, so when we got the notifications that a few books went live on eBay last night, we ended the listings immediately with the intention of relisting the books when we got home from Chicago in a week and a half or so. I had no idea that one of the listings (Captain America 255 CGC 9.8) had already received a bid of $10 before the auction was cancelled. The first time I was aware a bid had been cancelled was when Jim wrote us this E-mail through eBay at 9:40 AM this morning. Good Morning, I placed a bid on your Cap 255 CGC 9.8 and found out just now my bid was cancelled. And now the "Item is no longer available?" What gives? Thank you. (Unfortunately 9:30 AM was when the Nickel City show opened today and while we were setting up I wasn't able to check my E-mail right away) That message was followed up by the next message from Jim at 10:42 AM saying: "Me again. I see you are a member on the CGC chat boards. I also see you have a feedback thread. If I don't receive an explanation as to why you cancelled my bid (other than the item is no longer available), I will post in said feedback thread as to what happened and questioning your ethics." By the time I was able to step away from the booth long enough to respond to Jim's concerns and explain to him what happened, (which didn't occur until an hour or so later) apparently he had already posted in this thread and in my kudos thread (both posts he has since deleted.) He did send me this follow up Email an hour later: "Adam, please accept my apologies. As for the ethics, when I see a seller cancel a bid and then see the item is no longer available, I immediately think that a behind the scenes deal was done. I spoke with an eBay rep this morning and as she explained it to me, if a seller lists an item for auction and doesn't see it through until the auction end, then the seller should not have listed it in the first place. But like you said, your listing post was an accident. Sorry for the ruckus. I will remove my posts. Again, my sincerest of apologies. Jim" So as far as I'm concerned, over and done with now, and I believe Jim feels the same way. So in the end no harm done. I just thought it was important to post because I didn't want anyone thinking any eBay rules were being broken or that anything unethical was going on. Hope this clears everything up but I'm happy to answer any questions if it doesn't.

My understanding is that he is a very well respected member of this community. Sometimes these things happen especially when you sell many books in different venues. Not making excuses but seems like you might be making a mountain out of a molehill by adding him here. I wasn't sure if I should post this (I don't want to beat a dead horse, Jim has already written me and apologized so as far as I'm concerned, over and done with) But just so that there are no misunderstandings, since I don't want anyone thinking there are or were any shenanigans going on, I figure I should respond. (Thank you to everyone who chimed in earlier today while I had limited computer access) We were set up at the Nickel City Comic Convention this weekend. Prior to leaving I had been working on listing some no reserve eBay auctions (including the Cap 255) but since I didn't finish them I scheduled them for a random later date and forgot to reschedule them. They were never intended to go off last night. (we aren't talking big books, so I would have left them up, but we will be in Chicago next week and unable to ship them when they would have ended, so when we got the notifications that a few books went live on eBay last night, we ended the listings immediately with the intention of relisting the books when we got home from Chicago in a week and a half or so. I had no idea that one of the listings (Captain America 255 CGC 9.8) had already received a bid of $10 before the auction was cancelled. The first time I was made aware a bid had been cancelled was when Jim wrote us this E-mail through eBay at 9:40 AM this morning. Good Morning, I placed a bid on your Cap 255 CGC 9.8 and found out just now my bid was cancelled. And now the "Item is no longer available?" What gives? Thank you. (Unfortunately 9:30 AM was when the Nickel City show opened today and while we were setting up I wasn't able to check my E-mail right away) That message was followed up by the next message from Jim at 10:42 AM saying: "Me again. I see you are a member on the CGC chat boards. I also see you have a feedback thread. If I don't receive an explanation as to why you cancelled my bid (other than the item is no longer available), I will post in said feedback thread as to what happened and questioning your ethics." By the time I was able to step away from the booth long enough to respond to Jim's concerns and explain to him what happened, (which didn't occur until an hour or so later) apparently he had already posted in this thread and in my kudos thread (both posts he has since deleted.) He did send me this follow up Email an hour later: "Adam, please accept my apologies. As for the ethics, when I see a seller cancel a bid and then see the item is no longer available, I immediately think that a behind the scenes deal was done. I spoke with an eBay rep this morning and as she explained it to me, if a seller lists an item for auction and doesn't see it through until the auction end, then the seller should not have listed it in the first place. But like you said, your listing post was an accident. Sorry for the ruckus. I will remove my posts. Again, my sincerest of apologies. Jim" So as far as I'm concerned, over and done with now, and I believe Jim feels the same way. So in the end no harm done. I just thought it was important to post because I didn't want anyone thinking any eBay rules were being broken or that anything unethical was going on. Hope this clears everything up but I'm happy to answer any questions if it doesn't.

Can't post for long because we are at a show. We accidentally had some books go off last night on the wrong date and time so we immediately ended the listings within minutes of them being listed not realizing one of them had a 10 dollAR bid on one of them already. I explained this via email to the poster in question within a few hours of him emailing me for the first time but never got a response back from him. When the convention we are set up at now is over I'd be happy to go into greater detail if necessary

Kevin is great to do business with, both as a buyer and a seller Very responsive to PMs and very easy to work with!

Booth 1006. We only make it out to the West Coast once every 3-4 years lately so we're hoping lots of people stop by and say hi!

I just bought a Hulk 181 CGC 9.4 from Jon. He was very easy to work with, shipped quickly, and packed the book extremely carefully. Thanks for a great transaction!

I agree 100%. I think this is the case for a lot of GA keys right now. It was only a few years ago when unrestored copies of Action 7, All Star 8, Captain America 1, Detective 38 etc would sit unsold sometimes for a long time, even when priced pretty fairly. Definitely not the case at the moment though. My theory is Action1/Tec27/Sup1 got out of reach for most collectors. So then collectors started looking at "common" GA keys like Cap1/Bat1/Flash1/AllStar8 or "cover" books like Tec 31/Action7 which all also got out of reach in nice shape for most collectors. So collectors have started looking at the next tier down (1st Aquaman, 1st Robin, 1st Lex Luthor, 1st Justice Society etc) which I think will be the next group to really jump in price. (Except 1st Aquaman which I think jumped too much too fast already and i'd be a little afraid to own right now) Lately it seems like people really don't want to part with any of these books and they are getting harder and harder to replace. Low grade / beat up / restored copies still seem to come to market. But nice presenting, unrestored copies are hitting the market less and less often. As someone who is trying to put together a collection of nice presenting unrestored GA keys, I'm taking a lot closer look at books like Action 23, Tec 38, All Star 3 etc than I would've in the past because getting any unrestored golden age key in nice shape is getting more and more difficult and often there are no Sup 1 / Bat 1 / Cap 1 / Action 7s to buy. So a nice Tec 35 or Tec 38 looks more interesting than it might've in the past. As far as this copy, I view $22,500 as pretty close to the $26k for the other copy. I don't think this sale says much positive or negative about the direction of Tec 38 in general. (If anything, maybe neutral) I would have bid this one to around $22,500 myself but had to bow out earlier due to sales tax. That number would've been $25k if the PQ were better. I don't normally care about PQ much which I think can be pretty subjective when it comes to CR/OW vs OW vs OW/W etc. The exceptions for me are White pages on the one side and light tan or worse on the other. In this case when it says light tan and one corner looks like it could have some brittleness in the scan that's enough that it will start to affect my bid. (If the bottom corner looked a little nicer I might've been more willing to overlook the PQ)

I could be wrong because I don't follow this book too closely, but it looks to me like the combination of eBay as a venue, NYS sales tax, Light tan pages, writing on the cover, and what looks like a slightly brittle corner put together equals about a 10%-15% drop in price. All things considered the result might have been a little soft but I think it fell pretty close to in line with where it should have. A different 3.5 might have done a little better.

Just bought an X-men 1 from Ray. Received it quickly and well-packed. Thanks!!

Just a quick correction... the list currently puts Hulk (slightly) ahead of Wolverine. (thumbs u Right. It wouldn't be possible to buy every slabbed copy of any of these books without the market reacting to the decreasing supply as you try to catch 'em all. But, the same thing is true about trying to buy every outstanding share of a particular stock... it wouldn't work with the market price changing. Market cap is a calculation that people like to use in stocks even if the reality is that you can't buy 'em all at that price. (thumbs u Books like Marvel Comics #1 are interesting though... because there just aren't any on the CGC census. Why not? Are there truly none available to slab? If so... is the price due for a significant increase, or is the market too high for the number of buyers in that stratosphere? I didn't look at the others as closely, but I mentioned the Marvel 1 specifically because the $1mil value seemed off. Just a really quick look at the census I think even if every copy on the census hit the market all on the same day all at fair market value I'm not sure $3mil would buy them all. (Change 3mil to 2mil if you're only counting universal, but if you're looking at universal only that adds one more variable in that certain books are more likely to be restored than others which could skew the results on some books/eras compared to others) I still think it's really cool how all the biggest 1st appearances work out to just about the same amount. Either the comic market is a lot more efficient than it would seem at first glance or that is one really crazy coincidence.

That is a really unique way of looking at the market. Kudos for all the time this must have taken to do. Very interesting that when you multiply the number of copies available times market value you wind up with a list that values the first appearances of Spider-man, Superman, Batman, Wolverine, Hulk, X-men as 1-6. I wouldn't have thought the market would be that efficient. Very cool... (A few of the later issues seem unusually low though. I don't think you could buy every slabbed Marvel 1 for $1mil)

Great Buyer! Fast Payment. Very friendly! Great to do business with!

I would leave it alone. I think the cover has additional resto that's going to get it a purple label anyway so no reason to mess with it. If you're going to be in Tampa though CGC might be willing to take a look and tell you for sure. If you bring it to CGC and walk it through, they'll have it graded for you the same day.

First off, congrats on the pick-up! I saw that cover back when it was first up at $10k (No offers allowed) I didn't see they had it relisted accepting offers. At the time I was willing to pay $6k myself (and my interior is in much worse shape than yours.) So if you got it at anywhere near that price IMO you got a steal. As far as the resto questions, I think if the glue is not doing anything on a GA book and is the only resto you'd get a blue label. I'm not 100% sure about the left edge, but I would think it's the same scenario there. (since the cover was cut off and not intentionally trimmed) However it looks (from the pics) like the cover has additional resto work so if submitted to CGC they'll probably include the glue & trimming with the other resto notes. Congrats again on the pick-up and welcome to the club

I won it in the November auctions. Unfortunately they were sewn together instead of glued so they all have tiny holes down the spine but they look like they were mostly NM copies before they were bound. This was my first time reading early Batmans, the stories were actually really good for the time period!

This thread looks like it needs a bump. These are from a bound volume I picked up a few months ago.

Some of my favorite pick-ups from 2014 (and I think a few from 2013)

Detective 37 missing first two wraps.