Roger66

It is also why you have to READ - blue purple label notwithstanding.

A priest, a rabbi, and a minister... Are skinny dipping in the forest one day. Joking and talking philosophy and such. Suddenly they hear a large group of locals walking down the path toward them. To their dismay, they realized that they left their clothes hanging on branches on the other side of the path and would have to run past everyone to get them. The minister gets out of the water, covers his junk and runs as fast as he can past the oncoming people to get his clothes. The priest, in turn, gets out of the water, covers his junk and runs as fast as he can past the people to his clothes. Finally the rabbi gets out of the water, covers his face and runs as fast as they can to his clothes. As they dress the priest turns to the rabbi and asks, "Why did you cover your face and not your genitals?" "Well I don't know about you guys, but in my congregation they know me by my face."

A person can both be objective and opinionated. Comic collecting has a long rich history going back over 7 plus decades. Video game collecting is an infant in diapers in comparison. Yes a video collector might have less than a zero interest in comics but that doesn't change the fact that comics stand on a granite foundation built on a substantial history, which has been further enhanced by Hollywood. IMO video games might turn out to be a flash in the pants hobby, which in time will plateau and then crater or perhaps not. The same cannot be said about comics. Comics also can be read and often have have continuity of character. Video games are IMO as boring and more hype than substance. I say buyers beware there but you do you and I will do me.

Agreed. I find this whole thread somehow off-putting. This is video games we are talking about not a home for one's family, medicine or food. Greed and avarice is at play here no doubt and everyone participating in this particular market - buyer, seller and advertiser are all guilty to some degree IMO. Guilty of what? Anything from being naïve all the way to perhaps a felony. Until and if an independent authority or auditor investigates this - it is has to remain conjecture, speculation and assumptions in our minds. Justice via the internet is a dangerous tool because its' blazing eye' only needs to focus on you and your livelihood to understand how mob rule works. My lousy-2-cents.

Man O' Man if I had to spend 250K (assuming it was sitting in my bank) within 24 hours and you asked me for a detailed list of what I would spend it on - I can promise you this of the potential 10,000+ objects-things I would include in my list - a sealed video game(s) would never make my cut. Perhaps I am showing my age and/or ignorance here but I just don't see any future upside to this suddenly if not insanely highly valued and now 'questionable to some' collectible. It feels as if hysteria & mania is driving this particular market with a loyal mob in tow. Only time can prove me wrong. My lousy-2-cents. "It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor." - Neil Gaiman

A not to uncommon practice on eBay is where a Seller lists a lovely & desirable collectible at 99 cents on a 7 or 10-day auction and you can see one zero-feedback Buyer constantly pushing the bids up and up and up only to bow out towards the end or retract his bid. Whether that bidder owns the same item and wants to manipulate the market in his favor, is a friend of the Seller or works with the Seller - I see that often enough but guess what? If I really want the item - I will bid to my max and win or lose I sadly accept that shill bidding as part of the free yet manipulated marketplace on eBay. To me the KEY is to bid with commonsense, some restraint and use your intuition. I imagine the biggest gripers, complainers, whiners and babies here are those who expected to flip the winning item for either a quick profit or post it in their store for an expected 30% return in time AND when the item just sits and sits on the shelf gathering dust or the flip doesn't materialize fast enough - that is when the Buyer becomes pissed. In the end citing GPA on such a sale or putting out a YouTube video on it only promulgates the façade, which others buy into on the next auction and so it goes....a conspiracy of dunces.... My 2-cents.

I cannot help but skim though this 50-page thread and just smirk if not wince with derision . We are talking about video games, which not too long ago were not worth much. The sheer greed and finger-pointing that oozes from these pages with a sense of righteous judicious indignation is laughable if not ironic. Right now it seems the next rage is sealed VHS tapes, next year it'll be old cereal boxes and the year after that Wacky-Pack cards, then in 2026 it'll be happy-meal toys and so on and so forth. Everyone angling to make a buck off articles of our past and capitalize off everyone's avarice, regret for not saving said throw-away items and lust. No one puts a gun to any bidder's head regardless if the auction was fixed or not. Every market to some extent even those in a free democratic society has some higher-up controls in place that to others might seem manipulative if not price-fixing. When does personal responsibility and freedom of choice come into play in this or any collectible market for that matter? When does someone stand up and say enough is a enough - this item is not worth $1,000 or $10,000 or a million and simply turn their computer off? The answer is likely never as long as there is another fool to pay more than what you just paid upon the final hammer's call. My lousy 2-cents. “In a marketplace, perception is more powerful than reality.” ― Naved Abdali

Hi From some research I have done I believe there was close to 350,000 to 400,000 copies printed in 1974 of this glorious key. My best guess and using intuition - I suspect the total amount of surviving copies in the world today (talking blue label graded and raw and excluding all incomplete copies, including missing MVS and restored) is maybe 50,000 population copies now. Keeping in mind the CGC Census reflects under 12k copies (universal) and of course does not cover the other grading companies copies or raw copies, which is tough to figure since you would imagine most raw copies would be graded. I would love to hear from anyone, who might have more specific knowledge if not a better understanding of how Marvel Comics published in the 1970s and their personal viewpoint on the potential surviving population of this iconic yet common KEY. Roger

Amazing Spider-Man 50 3.0 OW - I will take it per PM

"One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.”― Aldous Huxley Regardless of who may be wrong or right here or whether the truth is a hybrid patina of grays - the fact remains we are talking about video games not medication, not housing and certainly nothing that is deemed essential in anyone's lives. The fact that there has been an unprecedented meteoric spike in the value of what was essentially a fraction of today's price not so long ago - should have raised flashing alarms if not sirens in most peoples' minds but of course it didn't because "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good." I am in no way condoning fraud, lying and unethical behaviors but pointing out a simple fact - you need 2 people to pull off a crooked transaction for a non-essential - the crooked seller and the naïve gullible buyer. From my point of view - I never believed in video games as a collectible but respect those who do. I also know as a comic collector, I draw the line on paying a certain price point on certain books. I refuse to allow the market to dictate to me what I have to spend when I intuitively believe something is over-valued and over-hyped. I have zero sympathy for anyone allegedly negatively impacted in this current discussion be it a scam or a false-alarm because "you should have known better." My 2-cents. “It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving, it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.”― Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

That is terrific. Great to be able to hold this and read the stories too. Iconic.

Metro. gains a significant amount of positives by your addition to their crew. All the best - to one of the best.

Many people are simply born suckers and their pre-programmed desire to believe is like an infectious drug to them. The death of intuition and commonsense is often the reason for such (in hindsight) obvious greed, deception and out and out criminal activities. How many unknowing and unsuspecting people make money off of such manipulative activities only to call out the criminals IF in fact they are left holding the hot-potato once the gig is up. Since man first entered the market place and bartered for a sheep or some eggs - there have been shameful activities and it has only gotten worse during the age of the internet. No matter the century, no matter the forum, no matter the product; people often choose to wear blinders and refuse to trust their gut or consider if something is overpriced if not misrepresented. I need no video or exposé to know when something is overvalued. Excuse my cynicism if not sarcasm / hubris but "buyer beware" is as meaningful now as it was when it was 1st uttered. Some folks will never learn. My 2-cents. “Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous.” ― Frank Herbert

The market is as the masses believe despite the prophets' posits and the profiteers' posturing's. As long as there are 2 high-rollers in the final seconds of any auction pushing each other up and up and up (and assuming no shill bidders and scams) the sky is the limit on certain holy grails. In the end AF15 was always the Action #1 of the SA and in time only a very small fraction of comic collectors will be able to afford even a lowly point 5. Plus when I see collectors dishing out 1k plus for an incredibly common 2005 key in CGC 9.8 - a book I intuitively feel is worth perhaps 1/10th of that - I think these grail prices make more and more sense. Lamenters and lamentations aside - this particular key-gravy train has indeed left the station for good IMO ----- hence the crazy prices on raggedy ugly copies. My 2-cents.

add BATS 251 to my pile per PM

take showcase 34

Take X-men 12 per pm 👍

Someone (not me) once wrote that the difference in time between 1940 to 1980 is the same as from 1980 to 2020. It hit me hard because in 1980 I was a teen-ager and 1940 at that time felt ancient as in history class-WW2/FDR and pre-moon landing ancient. Thus it was really only a matter of time before golden-age, silver-age and early bronze-age comics became truly vintage and more valuable investments - sort of like a fine wine reaching a peak. If you love this hobby for the pure read and enjoyment - stick to hit - IF you want to be in this hobby for making wise investments, flipping and speculating AND you are starting off now - IMO - you missed the boat big time . My lousy 2 cents

HULK 181 is and shall always remain to me a bellwether comic. My 2-cents. A bellwether is a leader or an indicator of trends. The term derives from the Middle English bellewether and refers to the practice of placing a bell around the neck of a castrated ram (a wether) leading a flock of sheep. A shepherd could then note the movements of the animals by hearing the bell, even when the flock was not in sight.

Culminative defects are counter-balanced by what appears to be a bright, solid and supple book - I would say a solid 5.0 with a lean up.

Flash139 take-per pm

TAKE ADVENTURE 247

Actually I won it. I sent it into PGX. It came back a 9.2 White (not a reprint) and I sold it privately to a guy in Dubai for 1.2 million. p.s. I am not sure why anyone would bother bringing to our attention, what is obviously a scam. I mean seriously it shouldn't take more than a second to know it was fake.

Take Strange Tales #180 CGC 9.4 per PM V is for Van