CentaurMan

If only there was a way to assemble these books together, so that people didn’t focus on their spines but instead on everything else. Some sort of “binding”, perhaps…

Yeah, I owned the Church copies of some of those books, and when October & I compared them to these bound copies, we basically agreed that the center-right of the bound covers were comparable in color, shine, and brightness. But the spines… oh well

Those are mine. Really nice for the other structural 90% of each book (but for the spines); good pages, bright covers, etc. Untrimmed (unlike most bound copies). They’d be solid 5.0-7.0 copies otherwise, and some of those issues are impossibly rare. Unfortunately, saying “but for the spines” is a real “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?” kind of quote, so they’re much less desirable than they’d otherwise be.

I sold my entire Centaur run privately to a collector. Whether they still have it or not is an open question, but I haven’t seen any of the key books for sale since then, so I suspect that they do.

Not sure, probably around an 8.5? Here’s the book:

I did! I have my Tarzan All-Story, my Larson copy of Action #7, and my Superworld Mile Highs. Also, all the comics I bought off of newsstands and back issue boxes in the 1970’s-80’s (my core collection from when I was a kid/teenager).

Check my post at the bottom of page 205 in this thread

Thank you! In their own way, the Wonderworlds yesterday were equally impressive. Most of them went for $4-5k in that same 2017 auction. I remember being surprised I won as much as I did back then. Usually I place bids just to “price enforce”, but I was getting hit left & right.

Yeah, just had to pull up my old invoice.

Fabulous book. Sold previously in the June 2017 Berk auction for $19,200.

Absolutely! I’ll let the board know when it opens, and what the secret password is for insider status 👍

Thank you! 7x my original purchase price, and >$100k more than the highest private offer I had gotten for the book. I am definitely pleased. In terms of letting it go... 26 years ago, in 1998, for the first time in my life I paid four figures ($1000+) for a comic book (a raw restored More Fun 54, on eBay, sold this past weekend at Heritage). I was SO NERVOUS for its arrival, hoping that the shipping would be ok, that it was as-advertised, etc. While I had been collecting books since the 1970's, the advent of the internet finally made it possible for me to truly "collect", as opposed to just buy what I could find in random back issue shops around the country. Over the next 20 years I went all-in on pre-1941 comics (basically, the hardest-to-find stuff), with a focus on scarcity. I wanted books where money was irrelevant; the copies were next-to-impossible to find. I supplemented that with a love for pre-1941 Church and Larson books. I assembled a full run of Centaurs, pre-Batman Detectives, pre-Green Lantern All-Americans, pre-Sandman Adventures, pre-Spectre More Funs, etc., and met hundreds of amazing people. One of these people was John Verzyl, and like he did with everyone, he spent countless hours with me talking comics. His passion for the hobby dovetailed perfectly with my own. Our one difference was that he was grade-obsessed and while I liked raw books and cracked every slab I bought. Regardless, though, his untimely death occurred at around the same time that I had "completed" essentially every run that I had been interested in pursuing, while the hobby's focus on grade-maximization techniques was proving off-putting to me. I haven't purchased any new books in years (except for copies of Blue Ribbon Comics #7, my favorite Golden Age cover), and I had lost one of my favorite collecting friends. Fast forward to today: My youngest daughter just graduated from high school, leaving us empty nesters, while my job moved from Chicago to Columbus, putting me on the road for business travel 120+ nights per year. I really don't like the idea of leaving a million dollar collection in my closet at home while no one is there for potentially weeks on end, and I've been expanding my real estate portfolio towards Ohio (I own a bunch of multi-family apartments west of Chicago, but am now in the process of buying a commercial building in Columbus where I can open a craft cocktail bar with some friends of mine here, with apartments upstairs where I can live myself). As such, the time felt right to let other people enjoy the books that I own, instead of just stashing them away somewhere that they wouldn't see the light of day.

So anyway, as a few you may know, that was my Action #1. The same comic that many, many boardies have flipped through and taken pictures with at the CGC Chicago dinners over the years. It presents really nicely, and I hope whoever purchased it cracks it out of that slab and enjoys sharing it as much as I did.

It’s all right, I’ve got 50 more books in tomorrow’s session 👍

No, by definition the one I thought had the best chance to be the worst (King Comics #1) had the least amount of room to fall short of my expectations. The WAY worse one was one I didn’t see coming. I had high expectations for the Mile High Air Fighters, but it never got going. I’ve never sent a book to CGC before, but Heritage did before the auction and the 7.5 killed it. I was thinking it was a $15k book and it went for 1/3rd of that. On the flip side, I had bought that Mile High National 7 during the financial crisis for around $8k, and was hoping it would go for $30-35k. $65k floored me. So the two books combined exceeded my expectations, but not in an enjoyable way. I’d rather have just gotten a combined $70k. They say that winning money creates about 1/3rd the positive reaction, emotionally, than losing money subtracts (thus most people’s risk-aversion). I’m logically very happy with how the day went but am bummed about the Air Fighters specifically.

The difference is that equities represent ownership stakes in businesses which produce cash flow, and that cash flow can change over time (mostly grow, over longer time periods). Same with real estate, same with bonds, etc., so there are formulas for estimating the value of those assets depending on the prevailing interest rate environment, forecasted macro factors, etc. There’s clear record of what people were willing to pay for Nvidia 11 months ago, or any time period ago, in the stock charts/histories. Collectibles of all types (artwork, coins, baseball cards, NFTs, etc.) are essentially only worth what people are willing to pay for them, and thus a book/record citing those values is especially relevant, as you can’t value them based on their intrinsic cash flows (there are none). It helps to always have some sense for the market’s opinion of those assets.

I sold 8 books today, my first ever live auction Heritage sales. 1 did WAY better than I expected, 1 WAY worse, 3 in line, and 3 stronger than my forecast (but not insanely so). In aggregate my net results were about 22% higher than the total I predicted yesterday before the auction started. Ain’t gonna lie, not sure I enjoyed seeing the live auctioneer try to drum up money for my consignments, despite the outcome. I think I prefer the experience of just logging in later and seeing the results.

As some of you guys know, with both my daughters now out of school, my wife & I becoming empty nesters, and with my new job located out-of-state, I’ve been selling my collection off. A lot of the rest of it is in the current Heritage & ComicConnect auctions (although quite a few of the books have already gone in various Sunday sales, etc.). There’s some really obscure stuff in there that isn’t worth a ton & not in great shape but is practically impossible to find, and I hope it goes to great homes ❤️

Way too young. Very sad. I'm glad he was able to enjoy his last months with friends and family.

Very sorry to hear of his passing. An absolute giant of a collector and a man.

Oh wow, Rick, just now seeing all of this, going to the boards to see whose collection this is. My heart aches for you, buddy. I don't "need" those books in CC, per se, but I'll do my part to make sure the loss of one Centaur under-bidder won't lead to a profound revaluation. Even forgetting the horrible circumstances for a moment, your accomplishment in assembling these books deserves full compensation. Please let me know when/if you'll be in Chicago for the con this summer.

rarehhighgrade's quote "He was the most kind, generous and thoughtful person I ever had the pleasure of doing business with" is beautifully said and 100% accurate. I haven't brought myself to tell my daughters yet. They're going to be so sad. Every year when they dressed up at the Chicago con, they did it partially so show off to him & the entire Verzyl clan, who would take pictures and ooh & aah over them. They even would send us framed pics afterwards. He was a genius in many ways, but he was an even better person. We miss you, John.

The world was a better place with John Verzyl in it. My wife and daughters loved the man. He was so wonderful to them, whenever he visited Chicago, and even sent them Christmas gifts knowing their interests. We love you, John.

Fantastic to check in on this thread. Wonderful books! And a big thank you to Gator and buttock and all the other boardies who helped me knock the publisher out. I kinda don't know what to do with myself now that it's finished.

I don't need it and am sitting this bidding out. My copy is a restored 1.0 (amateur), brutal technical condition but reasonably presentable, so I'm not going to go nuts paying for the upgrade. I consider this one of the true toughest Centaurs, harder than the Keen Komics #1.