mwotka

Wow Rick, you are on fire with the Planets. I saw that 58 went for pretty cheap considering how nice it looks and wondered if you'd got it. And great scores on the 1 and 13. Let me know if you want to let go of any undercopies after all your recent upgrades! !

What a great achievement, thanks so much for sharing all these with us. As someone chasing runs of Startling and Wonder, along with picking up random issues of other titles when I can, I'm drooling over here. And I can't wait to see your runs coming up! I've seen a number of amazing achievement threads on here, and this has to rank right up with the best of them.

Congrats to Jason, Rick, and Comcav, what a sales thread!! What an epic showdown as well, I think the OK Corral was quite a bit duller than this exhibition!

I take my dog for a nice hour walk and look what I miss! Nice scores to everyone, esp Rick! Sad I missed the 51 as that is a hole in my run, but ah well.

Exactly. For it to look that bad, they either should've left it as it was or had it professionally redone. Any way you slice it, the book has been worked on. That 1.0 presents way better.

I picked up my incomplete copy middle of last year for less than $200, so here's hoping it does well again!

Just received these in the mail a few days back, from ebay. Got some tape and spine issues, but I love em.

Picked up a few Planets from Karl and everything was awesome! Well packed, great communication, a pleasure to deal with. Thanks again!

Take Black Terror, Subby, and Thrilling per PM.

Great review and pics! Thanks so much for the great reporting!

I had a great time for my first visit to C2E2. Got to hang with Richard, Leroy, Gator, (Jay)Zolnerowich, Dom(uhnator), Dan(raze), and a few others who are regulars on here. Really fun to put some faces to names. And picked up a lot of great books. Was able to fill a few holes in my Planet and Rangers runs from Richard (thanks again!). Also a great Showcase 17 from Leroy and a Fight 1 from Harley. And getting to see Metropolis and New Force's displays of incredible books was truly a treat. I'm in for next year!

Sad that I missed that one!!

Congrats on the Planet run! What an achievement! And mostly in higher grade. Hope you share some scans! I'm only 60% there myself.

Cityduck covers it above pretty good. I tried finding an article about this but came up empty. I believe it was a guy who had perpetuated some large scale corporate fraud and he bought a number of issues from the first Heritage Billy Wright Auction. Then he got caught and I believe they became the property of the company or group he had scammed, and they put them back up for auction with Heritage about a year later. I just checked some Heritage records and notable books that sold twice in a year and went for less were Adventure 40, Cap 2, Batman 2, and Detective 18. However I also noticed the Action 1 was resold and it went for $100K more, so apparently it wasn't always true on the resale.

I think you misunderstood my point. Or perhaps I wasn't totally clear. I didn't mean to imply that collections were/are financed off of stocks, just that when a buyer is looking at a big chunk of his nest egg (or whatever you want to call it) being down 25% or some big drop, he is probably less likely to spend his free cash on high ends things, like GA comics. I could be totally wrong on that though, and I agree that other external factors could be at play besides the overall economy. I do think collectibles can be a good hedge, and I think that is a good part of recent prices, as the markets seem topped out. But not many investors are good at selling when things are starting to turn down. I also didn't mean to imply that interest rates correlated to the market drop times I mentioned, obviously those things can move at different times. But I think you are wrong that collectors don't finance. Many buy on credit cards, and I'd be willing to bet some buyers and dealers have Lines of Credit that they tap, like when a big collection falls into their lap. Makes sense that deals have to be more favorable to the buyer at higher interest rates. One must also consider the alternate use of funds idea, whereby a buyer must feel confident that his investment in a high dollar comic must outperform an asset like a bond, which will pay him back more at higher interest rates. And I'm fairly certain these factors have historically impacted all manner of collectibles. It is certainly true that studies haven't been done on the comic market. But they have been done on art markets, and speculative bubbles and boom/bust cycles have certainly been observed. It has also been observed that art markets are inefficient, which means that prices don't always reflect true values. Seems the case with comics as well. just because one book at one time in one particular grade sold for a certain price, it doesn't guarantee that all other prices should be based on that. it could be as simple as having the right two bidders. Once one has had his need satisfied for a certain book, then the next auction will find less buyers pushing the book higher (obviously some buyers like certain books and keep buying multiple copies; I can think of a few that have commented already). I noticed this trend with some of the Billy Wright books that were bought fraudulently. When they went back up a year or so later, they usually went for less. This is a very interesting discussion. There is no certainty in any of this, especially as relates to comics, which don't seem to have been studied extensively.

I too was high school age during the mid 90s bust. I didn't pay attention to GA back then, so I'm curious how prices have behaved. But it seems to me, that given the dollar amounts involved in GA (at least for key or very desirable issues), the pricing would more closely mirror the behavior of the overall economy and by extension financial markets and interest rates. So when someone's stock portfolio crashes, like things did in 2000/01 and 2008/09, there should be a corresponding drop in GA prices (similar trends are observed in art sales, I believe). When buyers are suddenly very short of cash, makes sense to find dealers that can't move their inventory. And when borrowing costs rise dramatically, you lose the portion of the market that wants to finance a large purchase, and prices stagnate or drop as well. I think the modern era busts have more to do with fads fading out, a la beanie babies, where the millions of buyers suddenly realize they can't sell a common item they paid way too much for, like the millions of copies of Valiant Deathmate and the death of Superman (still have mine). Wondering when this will occur for Walking Dead. And folks that deal in comics, while they might not lose too much in GA value, if they have significant inventory of (now relatively worthless) modern stuff, they too will be forced to sell scarcer assets in a soft market at lower prices to stay in business. So busts in one area can certainly affect another. But I too have faith in things of quality that are scarce, certainly over the longer term.

Wonderful books, congrats on the upgrades! I would be curious about any under copies, if available!

Beautiful book! I'm trying to think of a more vibrant purple cover and I'm coming up empty. Puts my poor VG copy to shame... GLWTS!

Crazy numbers on some books this week. I have been continually smoked on everything I tried for. The All Stars did well, the Tecs (notably 22 and 35) blew past me, the Mystics went very strong, and I struck out on some Subbys I was just chasing. But finally pulled one down with the Superman 17, still looks pretty good, even with married cover. And never boring with Suspense 3!

I didn't know the man personally, but reading these stories and memories here is a wonderful look at who he was and it is amazing how many he clearly touched. Thank you all for sharing. RIP.

Great selection! I look forward to seeing what you have tomorrow...

What a set of books! Wish I was in this collecting stratosphere. Between Brian's Grail thread and this one, I've been dumb-struck over and over! Such a pleasure seeing these books offered. GLWTS!

You all have nailed most of the big ones, my favorites being Schomburg, LB Cole, and Lou Fine. But you've left out my other big favorite, Creig Flessel. His early DC covers are so visually arresting. I have a hard time passing those issues up when they come available.

Wow, that one is fantastic! I heartily approve! Blows my 1.0 out of the water!

Tec 29 sold for $47,500, not certain if that includes 20% premium or not. Looks like a nice result for an ungraded book! Hope someone on here got it!