jhm

4 hours ago, october said:

I crack all of mine. Slabs are bulkier, heavier, uglier and prevent me from reading the book. I do slab books for resale, but if I am being perfectly honest, I hate them. 

3 hours ago, catman76 said:

The real question to me is, why would anyone keep a comic in a slab and not take it out? I sort of get the idea that buying a slabbed comic makes sure you wont get ripped off if you are buying something expensive, but why anyone would keep a comic in a slab after buying it is beyond me. To each their own, but I have comics to read and look at and smell and hold. To me it's like buying old records to not play or buying books to not read and just have them sit on a shelf. Makes no sense to me.

2 hours ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

So you can feel then, look at them, thumb through them, read them.

I've never understood the appeal of having slabs, which take up lots of space, hanging around of books you intend to keep. I'm with Catman completely.

If you want or need to sell...slab 'em. If you don't...free those babies!

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)

On 8/30/2018 at 1:03 PM, Frank Grow said:

 Ignorance was bliss!  Would you share your knowledge of this book's past with me?

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

10 hours ago, Frank Grow said:

Damn those Planets are awesome!  Great prices too.  The colors and creature on #2 are something else.  
I barely took this one- closed just a hair under my high bid.

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.

9 hours ago, lou_fine said:

As a fellow boardie, extremely sorry to hear that you wasn't able to snag this unbeatable possibly once in a lifetime copy of a truly classic GGA cover by L.B.Cole.  

Just wondering, did you put in your bid at the last second or was it from a prior max bid that you had placed before the end of this auction listing?  

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 

On 8/16/2018 at 1:52 AM, Gotham Kid said:

already at 15K after less than 24hrs

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:

On 8/21/2018 at 3:51 PM, october said:

I understand why you can't show the prices scraped from auction houses that have not given permission, but are you allowed to account for those numbers in your FMV estimates?

In other words, if CLink sold a copy of Adventure 210 in 7.0 recently, but no other venues have, will the FMV estimate you give be near/at that number?

The big selling point of your site is access to data from sites that don't disclose to GPA. I don't want to pay for the same raw data through two services.  

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.

On 8/4/2018 at 11:38 PM, lou_fine said:

Well, let's hope for jhm's sake that the colors are truly that bright in real life on the book and just not on the scan.  

Just wondering since I can barely make out the CGC label on the top right due to the bright glare, as compared to the label on the Church copy which is much more distinct and clear.    

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.

15 hours ago, lou_fine said:

Congrats on your 2 beautiful pickups here.  

Not sure what you mean by elevated premiums though, as you managed to get both of them at discounts to condition guide, especially in terms of the Famous Funnies 209.  

 

Interesting to see Hake's pre-auction estimated valuations on these 2 books.  They had the FF 209 with a pre-auction estimated valuation of $2K to $5K, and then had the FF 210 one full tier lower at the $1K to $2K valuation range (or at only 35% to guide for the bottom range).  Not sure if I would want Hakes to be the consignor for any of my books, if I had a say in it.  

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.

42 minutes ago, adamstrange said:

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!

7 hours ago, lou_fine said:

Well, let's hope for jhm's sake that the colors are truly that bright in real life on the book and just not on the scan.  

Just wondering since I can barely make out the CGC label on the top right due to the bright glare, as compared to the label on the Church copy which is much more distinct and clear.    

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 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.

1 hour ago, CKinTO said:

I appreciate the info. I haven’t been a subscriber since before the big site redesign. To be clear, you no longer display the historical sales prices, even though you now track those other sites besides Ebay? That seems odd, is it a licensing issue? 

I would’ve thought if you had everything GPA did (including sales prices), but added the photos / searchability / other benefits you listed, that would be a definite advantage in my opinion and reason enough to switch back from GPA (not to mention you’re cheaper)

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.

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.