mwotka

Zolnerowich has so much great work.  The Planet teens alone, sheesh.  But I always come back to the 10.  So wild and crazy.  I love the lightning coming out of the green guys' eyes.  The evil queen.  The captured girl.  And Flint Baker has it all under control.  Zany golden age greatness.

With Eisner hard to argue with Spirit 22.  But this one is really great.  

Don't think we've seen Howard Sherman yet but I love this cover.  The 61 is equally good.

Flessel is so great and I have many favorites, particularly the MF 35, which I don't own but love the playfulness and fun of it.  And the Tec 18 is the masterpiece.  But I think the 15 is a very strong contender.  

My fav Jack Binder.  

I agree the standards need some tightening, but I suspect they are adjusting to the new reality of being ten or twenty or however many times larger than 20 years ago.  I just saw a modern key book at a local show yesterday, which should supposedly have a tighter standard than GA, and it had spine ticks breaking color down the spine 2-3 times worse than the Batman 89 and got an 8.5 (new label too).  I was honestly shocked looking at it.  The Gangsters Can't Win also is pretty rough with those color-breaking surface scratches.  However that top corner damage could be a production defect, a common occurrence back then, and I've heard of/seen those top and bottom binding tears being somewhat overlooked.  But I think this is good feedback for CGC to hear.  And the flip side is I was talking to a dealer a few weeks ago that sent some books into CBCS to get a quicker turnaround and all the labels didn't even reflect the correct issues, and it was for like an X-Men 4  so he was kinda on hold with dollars stuck in unsellable merchandise until they corrected them.  It think it was 4 books in one grade lot, he was pretty annoyed.  They of course copped to it and fixed it for him, but still that is pretty basic QC.  I would imagine it is hard to find competent graders everywhere, just like most all industries are struggling to find competent employees of all types.   More good reason to buy the book and not the number.  

Also did you all notice some of the crazy numbers realized on some of the Four Color cartoon and photo covers yesterday? Several thousand each, but it seemed to me that the ones that said single highest grade got the biggest bump.  I like Davey Crockett alright, but $3K for one??  I really feel like a lot of this mania is label chasers.   I know a local guy who has some deep pockets and his biggest thrill is showing off that 9.8 highest graded copy.  They legit think they have the best one that exists and the idea there might be others out there that haven't been graded yet doesn't seem to occur to them.  

On 3/26/2022 at 9:05 AM, Gotham Kid said:

Not all 2.5s are made equal...

Yeah great copy, front looks like a 5-6.0 and all the damage is on the back and CF.  Would love to look at that thing all day.  Nice result for a 2.5, glad to see it is getting some love.

A few observations on the overall auction so far.

First, the 15% on some items, they need to get this figured out. I can't tell if it is added on with the price or not, and looking at closed sales I still have no idea.  To have spent all that money revamping the website to not account for something that is basic functionality on an auction site is mind-boggling.

Second, I was experiencing some severe site lag while trying to bid.  Pages loading very slow, bids taking up to ten seconds to register, etc.  I tried it on different computers at home and work so I don't think it was a local issue, I'm surprised I haven't seen this mentioned yet (perhaps it was several pages back).  Inexcusable for a site selling million dollar items.  I sure hope a lawsuit occurred between Metropolis and whomever redid their website.  I still pine for the old version.  Why they changed it so I have to click twice to watch an item instead of once is such a time waster.  And just the act of watching an item was taking 5 seconds with the site lag.  Very annoying.

Results wise, I agree there were certainly some strong numbers, esp for early Timelys and key books.  But also some signs of weakness.  Starting 49 in 9.0 for $20,763.  A 7.0 went for $19,000 on HA two months ago.  Someone is mad about this one.  Seemed like a lot of the lower graded Timely/Atlas stuff went pretty cheap (but I got a few deals so happy about this!). 

I thought the More Fun 52 was a nice result.  Not sure I'll ever have a chance at this book now...

And the Flash 1 in 1.5 for $80K.  Wow.  MMC 9 4.0 with tape and ct for $33K, impressive but a tough book.  All Star 8 in 4.5 for $56,879 seems cheap considering a 5.0 just sold on ebay last month for $93,500.  Much better eye appeal on that one, a sign the discerning buyer is paying more attention to the book than the number, which is a good sign. 

And then the head scratcher of the day/week/year, the Action 1 cover piece that says #1 for $7,100.  Really now.  Makes that bag of pieces from last year for a couple hundred bucks seem like a real steal.  I wonder what just the staples would go for?  Crazy world...  Makes the half-eaten Tec 27 back cover seem like a real steal by comparison.  

Anyways, should be fun to watch the rest of this end, good luck.  I hope that Whiz 1 gets some life to it at half recent sales right now...

Darn it, wrong Comic Auction thread, moved over now...

On 3/11/2022 at 1:45 PM, Nic8612 said:

Snagged this on eBay. Unless I stumble across an affordable low grade copy that looks better than this, it's here to stay. Don't have it in hand yet, so I'm still not sure how it's graded so low

Congrats, I made a good run at it.  The Brittle designation held me back a bit.  Would be curious to see what it looks like in hand.  I don't see any flakes so that is always a plus.  Looks very nice otherwise.

On 3/12/2022 at 10:25 AM, rjpb said:

That Corliss Archer may just be missing the cover, as Fox books started their stories on the inside front cover. Check to see if it has 32 pages.

Yeah he is right, it is just missing cover.  And it is actually #2, at least from what I'm seeing on Comic Book Plus.

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=26900

On 3/9/2022 at 10:23 PM, buttock said:

It's related to an ad on the inside FC.  Pretty much every copy of that book has the same fading to some degree.  

Ah good point, here is the interior cover, which has a great ad for Wings 1, but the angled yellow seems to line up with the fading pretty well.

On 2/26/2022 at 2:06 PM, Spyder! said:

The Flame #4, raw .5 incomplete missing centerfold. Tough book only 9 on census.

Asking $135

I'll take this.

Timely topic.  Just got frustrated with a seller yesterday, had over a dozen cool GA books ending that I was trying to bid on some of.  But had all of the auctions ending at exactly the same time.  I messaged them that they are leaving money on the table not staggering end times by a few minutes, and they wrote back that "95% of our buyers don't bid manually anymore" and to use a snipe program.  I think that statistic is completely made up, although curious what you all prefer to do. I like watching the end myself so I know right where things are ending at.  But if they want to make it harder to bid, whatever...  I just see most sellers stagger end times.