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Wow, just Wow. I honestly thought I could be spending six figures this week and ended up with only a single win. I'm a hunter of high grade classic covers and the prices keep shocking me. Sorry to those of who I may have run up a bit I did take this little beauty as an upgrade copy (thanks to the under bidder for FINALLY dropping out ):

Do you think the CGC census numbers are inflated due to collectors freeing the books? If so, to what extent?

There are variants of publishers. The stand out (IMO from what I've found) seems to be the Jubilee variant. CGC has only graded 2 and the cover is slightly different. I believe most of the variants have the letters "LNC" in the upper left: http://comics.gocollect.com/guide/view/335540 The Jubilee variant does not. It has "SND" running vertically down the top, left side: http://comics.gocollect.com/guide/view/993403 (you'll need to enlarge the pics in those links to see)

Sure thing - found it in the links of sales in the 8.0's: http://comics.gocollect.com/guide/view/112887 It looks like Heritage has sold it a couple times over the years: https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/jo-jo-comics-8-9-fox-features-syndicate-1947-cgc-vf-80-white-pages/a/7137-93107.s https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/jo-jo-comics-8-9-fox-features-syndicate-1947-cgc-vf-80-white-pages-it-s-a-good-thing-that-the-girl-on-the-cover-has/a/805-5319.s

Great book - Congrats on the pickup! I really wanted to chase this one down, but I just couldn't get over what appears to be it's recent grade increase form an 8.0 (old holder) to a 9.0.

Last second bid. With CL I generally wait until the clock hits about 15 seconds and then drop my "max." In all honesty, I didn't think this one was going to top out as high as it did. If it was a bid war format, I likely would have taken it into the low 40's. Oh well, I guess that frees up some cash for the next few days

Aaargh! $37,500 I wish this one was a good ol' fashion bidding war. My under bid was exactly $1k less, so I'm assuming the buyers max was at least a little higher. Amazing piece - congrats to whomever took it

I've read a lot of debate about who does it best. And there are always a lot of valid points for all sides. I'm not asking who's got the best platform. I'm really curious to hear what features you think would make for the best hybrid solution. Maybe one (or all) of them will listen... who knows, maybe a new player will be taking notes. I think part of the issue at hand is that only one of the major houses seems to be large enough to have their own dedicated IT/development staff. I owned a wed development firm (working for clients) in a past life and know that often times the logic of "it's not broken, don't fix it" takes a strong hold. And a lot of folks that have had online businesses long enough have been burned by bad development, so there's a nasty creep of fear when it comes to updating. BTW, this is the thread that inspired me to ask:

I have to let you a little peek behind the curtain to answer this one. The Fair Market Value areas are ridiculously complex. And, unfortunately, only work when there's enough sales data available across enough grades on a given book. So we have an administrative ability to add a "value" for a given grade/book/date combination in order to help that algorithm out a bit. When that's used, the value isn't systematically tied to a specific auction house. But FMV doesn't care who sold it, so that's not necessary. As an example - when one of the major houses sells an Action #1, we would likely manually log a dated value for the sale, because that book rarely sells in any grade. Or a couple specific examples - Clink sold a beautiful 9.0 AF15 a few months back for over $400k. We manually logged a dated value on that book in order to assist the FMV algorithm. And I tend to log my own purchases for fun too - I bought the 8.0 Terrific Comics #5 from Clink a while back for $37k and logged that value. Some of those books don't have enough data to even hold FMV's yet, but the logging should pay off over time.

Thanks a ton for the feedback! Regarding missing sales... We only stretch back on eBay to about 2012/2013. There (obviously) were a lot of sales there before then. This is also a reason I'm personally a GPA user too. GPA also lists sales from various sellers that GoCollect does not. But because they don't state the site that a sale came from, it's tough to tell what's what (or where GoCollect may be missing). I don't want to throw GPA under the bus at all, but it's that lack of transparency that made me want to begin gathering my own data. Gathering the information for my own use was the original intent, but it eventually got to be a big enough database to share. Regarding dead links... This should happen very minimally with HA and CC. Clink does take a lot of their stuff down, but it doesn't generally happen right away. One thing I find helpful is to place a "Watch" on the books I like to follow. That way an alert pops up on the Dashboard when a new sale is found. Granted, as a regular buyer/seller it makes little sense to Watch everything so it's a bit more tailored for the focused collector. And if I could stand on my soapbox for a minute... As GA buyers, we should have a lot of pull with these major auction houses. I personally spend well into six figures annually across the big three and I'm sure that's not at all unique with the crowd in these GA boards. Will you help me help you? Contact your reps at these houses and ask them to start allowing GoCollect to display the same information that GPA does. I have a team of designers and developers (GoCollect isn't our only property) that would love to do more with the site. I don't say this lightly - I could create some pretty amazing tools with the added sales data. There's no reason we can't have comic valuations essentially resemble your online stock trading account. We just need the major sellers to agree to release the data. That level of transparency and interactivity wouldn't just be better for each of us, it would attract more people to the hobby.

Got the Marvel Tales 95 today. While it's an absolutely gorgeous copy, I can say the Heritage picture is definitely amped a bit. It's not as bright as their picture had it, but it almost seems to make the people on the bottom stand out more.

Thanks! I actually just went back and referenced OPG and see what you mean. Given the tools I've had created for myself within GoCollect, I rarely reference OPG for prices... love their information though. Your comment prompted me to go back and dive into past sales. You're right - I think I actually did pretty well on these I guess I'm so used to paying premiums lately that I have it stuck in my head that everything I want badly comes at a hearty cost.

OMG - Is that the OA? I've yet to wade in the scary OA waters. I fear I'd be jingling a cup on the street corner in a matter of months.

I honestly thought I was going to pick up 213 in this auction. But my last bid topped out at $4,200... I was very surprised at the final hammer. I think there must be others like me that are trying to assemble high grade runs of this set. Most of them are "out there" in the 9.x grades. The 213 just isn't. I'm assuming at least two people have been trying to upgrade for a while and finally found this one. I felt like I paid elevated premiums in the recent Hake's auction for the 2 below, but they were nowhere near the premium for that 213. 209: https://hakes.com/Auction/ItemDetail/224070/FAMOUS-FUNNIES-209-DECEMBER-1953-CGC-92-NM-BUCK-ROGERS 210: https://hakes.com/Auction/ItemDetail/224071/FAMOUS-FUNNIES-210-FEBRUARY-1954-CGC-92-NM-BUCK-ROGERS Frazetta's ability to capture motion always mesmerizes me. My two favorites are 210 & 216, but I love them all!

My fingers are crossed too. Heritage does a great job of taking pictures. Once in a while they don't pop quite as much when I get them in hand. But often, I'm shocked the colors are actually as good as they seemed. I'll post back when I get it.

I didn't think I'd have to go that high on it That means there's someone out there almost as wacky as me! But IMO, it's a truly amazing copy, tied with the Church for highest graded... and has colors that pop unlike any other copy I've seen... This copy: https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/horror/marvel-tales-95-marvel-1950-cgc-nm-94-off-white-to-white-pages/a/7189-91058.s Church copy: https://www.comicconnect.com/bookDetail.php?id=568866

I hope I was battling a boardie for the Blue Bolt #105. Well done

Any combination of "classic cover" and rarity is white hot... especially when the grade of the book is within the top ~40% of known graded copies. Also, higher grade copies of classics that come up often, but only in lower grades. Try picking up a reasonably priced copy of Crime SuspenStories #22 in a 7.0 or higher. There's plenty of them out there, but they very rarely surface for sale. And, of course, the genres others have mentioned. The fact is: We have a high demand coupled with low supply, so prices are elevated. I can't help but wonder what will happen if more folks from the main stream of alternative investments get involved. There's some really cool history here that I think is still undiscovered by many.

Great list. Thank you for sharing! GA collecting is such a fun hobby for me, because so many of us have different focal points. I get such a charge out of the wide variety of cover art from the golden age. That's where I'm rooted in the hobby. So my hierarchy would look so different that I wouldn't want to diverge the thread. But I'll definitely be enjoying the conversation

A bit of a snoozer for me too. Silver lining - I'm still recovering from the last auction so I might save a few bucks this time around.

@Ricksneatstuff I'd be curious for your thoughts on what you'd like to see on the GA side. @thunsicker here are some answers... can you tell me more about your model? Each comic has its own model. The theory is based on Gerber's RVI method. The difference is that Gerber assumed all comics would sell in a relative fashion by grade (i.e. Very Fine (0.62 RVI) would always be valued at 1.55 times a Fine (0.40 RVI) graded copy). The sales data proves very different. This is all really tough to see in GA books because any given issue sells far less frequently then its change in demand. If you were to do some lookups on Silver/Bronze books, the variances become much more apparent. See how the models of AF15 and Hulk181 differ in the screenshot below (anyone can generate these in the Modeler section of any comic). So the system first attempts to find the relative values of a single comic by grade. Once those relative values are found for a comic, Gerber's rule applies... where you can then take any given sale to determine the value of another grade. have you had anyone do a data dive to try and get relative prices for grade differences? Yes, but again it's flawed for GA books due to sale frequency. Your further questions are getting to the best answers (unless I'm misunderstanding your question). Relative prices for grade differences dependent on age of comic? Now you're speaking my language! But, as of now, we're not doing any cross-comic relative modeling. It's definitely on the radar, but we're waiting for a more comprehensive assignment of comics in the GoCollect database to comics in the CGC census. A census association is the cornerstone for a lot of the modeling we do. Once that's more complete (it's getting close), we'll look to incorporate this analysis. We may even bypass it and allow machine learning to interpret. The key is finding the right books to compare... and year isn't always the best measure. Imagine Spirit #22 relative to Western Love #5. We'll get there. Relative prices for page quality? We don't track page quality as a data point. However, we do have millions of image associations so it is a possibility down the down with a bit of image interpretation. Speaking of which - I hope to roll out our CGC barcode scanner soon for easier in-person value/census lookups.

We display all sales prices for eBay and Hake's (and photos and listing info). None of the other sites have provided "permission" for us to list sales prices, but it's been a couple years since I've asked a couple of them. FYI - there's a lot of functionality under the "Analyzer" button area that's not in the main comic page. If any fellow GA fans subscribe to see all the features and don't like it, just shoot me a PM and I'll happily refund you.

For those who don't know me - I own GoCollect and am an avid GA collector. I've used GPA for years (and still do). I made GoCollect, because GPA fell short for me in a few areas. GPA has one main benefit over GoCollect - displayable sales data from the most popular online sellers. GoCollect gathers from eBay via automated methods and uses employees to manually harvest data from HAKES, HA, CLINK and CCONNECT. GoCollect does not display sales prices, but does list the sales and links to the original sale. IMO, this is fantastic for doing research on images of the books being sold. It never ceases to amaze me how often I find a book I'm interested in at auction that's now in a new holder with a slightly higher grade. The images from eBay are always included on-site. Since I'm posting on the topic, I'll give GoCollect a plug regarding what I see as some of the other benefits... Integrated CGC data (charts and such plus a really nice cert lookup tool) Easier to search (search for a comic with the number instead of having to find the series first) We track "the other guys" too Mobile friendly Pictures of the comics you're trying lookup A valuation modeling tool "Modeler" (I made this as a GA collector that's based on Gerber's valuation method - would love feedback) The ability to "watch" for sales And other things - I'll stop now - thanks for listening Thanks for the question @Chicago Boy

Hey everyone - Jeff Meyer here. As a Golden Age addict collector, I'm generally only responsive in the GA boards. But I do try to monitor GoCollect discussions. @thunsicker thanks for sharing my email. Everyone should feel free to use it any time. If I'm unable to help, I'll direct your message to the appropriate employee at GoCollect. For some reason, Rhane71's requests got flagged as spam by our email software. Obviously they were not. Looking at our audit logs, he sent many multiple using our contact form. I've never personally experienced our detection software isolate a single email like. Our inability to receive those messages was unacceptable. Please accept my apologies. Rhane71 was ultimately able to get a response out of us via Facebook this morning. If anyone finds themselves in this same situation in the future, emailing me directly should get you a timely response. GoCollect has a thriving user base that continues to grow every day. We're very active on the site, maintain a popular speculation blog with multiple posts per week, and are always looking for ways to improve our service. Thanks a ton to all of our users out there. You're very appreciated. Happy collecting!

Great list in this post: And this site did a good job gathering some of the CGC designations: http://goldenageclassics.com/index.html But nothing seems to be comprehensive.