VintageComics

Metro's image makes that book look horrid. This is what it looked like when I slabbed that book over a decade ago.

I wasn't picking on anyone in particular. People are being programmed by social media to expect too much from everything and everyone. We see a video of a shooting in some town and we think the town is burning down. We see someone post something about their opinion on social media and we extrapolate them into being at some extreme end of a spectrum. By extension, we see one auction result and assume something wasn't right (or a high result means there's a new baseline). I think the book did just fine and not ever result will exactly the same. I sold a 6.0 about 12 years ago for something like $8K on these boards and sold a 6.0 for $55K about 3 years ago. It's really important to keep reminding ourselves that in perspective, to keep values in a range rather than as a stock ticker and that this was a great sale even if it was just a little below the last one.

Me too! The proud owner's probably too busy to post here because he or she is prepping for the Bezos space flight. I'll never tell.

And his exit was apparently because he had another massive investment opportunity which from what I heard, dwarfed his opportunity in comics. Jim has always been a comics collector.

Now THAT'S the spirit of the forums!

Now THAT'S the spirit of the forums!

Now THAT'S the spirit of the forums!

I can't believe you guys are making excuses on an $85K sale in AF #15 6.0 Same thing happened when a 9.4 'only' went for $800K Wow, tough crowd!

But if his pay was getting cut because he was putting so much out, that is not OK. I was literally in the same position as Kirby with a parallel in my industry (and it wasn't just me they did it to, it was anybody who became good at what they did). I was employed at Mercedes Benz as a tech. They had a book of arranged prices they paid for each job. After I started, I became one of the most efficient techs in the country. There were weeks when I was earning as much as 3 times the average pay (and regularly averaged at least double) of my peers. And I did it through hard work (long hours) and ingenuity (created my own methods and tools to increase efficiency) and was doing jobs in a fraction of the time they were paying (and with a high rate of quality control success as well, meaning very low comeback rate). When corporate head office realized that techs were making so much money they started cutting what they paid for each job. In effect, our reward for being good at our jobs was to make less money. How is that OK? It isn't. But there was nothing I could do. I had to take it or leave it. If they indeed did that to Jack it was theft, pure and simple.

Kirby reminds me of that character that a lot of stories have where he's this good hearted workhorse wasn't too business savvy but put his heart and soul into whichever relationship he was dedicated to. The incident of when he stepped in to protect the Timely (or was it Marvel) offices from some goons who came with physical threats speaks volumes to me about the type of person he was. He asked for little and gave a lot and trusted in others to help him with his future. Drawing comics 'The Marvel Way' seems to be as much a business arrangement to ensure Stan's income as it was a culture for creating. Not sure if that was Stan's intent but it certainly seems to be an arrangement a very smart business person would have in the modern corporate world. 100% true. It may have been 'inequitable' but it wasn't stealing. Unfortunately, some people just leave money on the table because of their own nature. What a great What If? issue this would have made. I'm afraid you simply don't seem to have any idea how the real world works.......pure hyperbole. Or, he understands how the 'real world' works but wishes it was different. This is how the real world works: This is how the corporate world works. It happened to me personally and it is one of the reasons I left my old career and became a comic dealer. I worked in a pay by the job career and when I made 'too much money' they started cutting my pay even though it was my own ingenuity and skill that caused me to succeed. Eff that. Up the irons and I left.

@Mmehdy I was asking what the previous Heritage comics auction record was to see what the multiplier was and to see what the correlation was with individual comic prices, which seem to have gone up from 2-5 X depending on the book.

What would have been a previous auction record for comic books?

It's such a subjective discussion because art is appreciated differently by everyone but what draws me to Neal is the same thing that draws me to Wrighteson and Frazetta and that is how they are able to translate a character's humanity in their work. Facial expressions, body anatomy, hands (hands are so hard to draw properly and for me it's always been a litmus to an artists's accomplishment - just look at all the great artists in comics like the ones mentioned above and compare how they draw hands to lesser artists - it's also something I loved about Michaelangelo's work) all of these things transfer emotion and motion in such a manner that it puts them a cut above the rest IMO. Ditko was great at it too, from facial expressions to the flow of the clothing of his characters. Eisner and Miller are another few. Other greats like Kirby were amazing at creating action and layout but not as good as the subtle and nuanced detail that the above artists were at expressing a character's humanity.

He actually came on here to talk about it for a bit and then left.

Monetary and economic policy is the answer IMO. I've been saying it for months. How much crypto profits were pulled in during the recent correction a few weeks ago? $1Trillion? @delekkerste would have a better idea. Think about that. The US GDP is $20Trilion. What are the GDP of most countries? Much less than $1TRIL. Wal-Mart alone has a GDP of 0.5Trillion or about the size of most mid-sized countries and they are one of the wealthiest families in the world. We also saw TRILLIONS pumped into the US economy through relief programs. Not all of this money was needed OR went to saving businesses. Much of the Covid stimulus money is being spent by people on themselves. I spoke to a person who deals in extremely high end collectible assets in Los Angeles (I won't name the asset or collectible as I don't want to open a can of worms but it's not related to our hobby) about stories circulating. He told me that people were coming in and signing over massive stimulus checks and buying things with stimulus money that did nothing more than stimulate their own shopping therapy. I don't think we can understate how much liquidity is floating around right now. This is the only thing that makes sense about the prices realized in every single hobby that you can think of.

What a change from a decade ago when multiple auctions of fresh collections actually ran the market dry for a bit and caused a dip across the entire hobby. I remember the days when people constantly said that the boards only made up a small percentage of the discussion. I think that stopped being true about a decade ago. Most info travels so quickly it's everywhere in a few hours or days and this place is a central hub for the hobby, whether it's a hub of info being shared on Facebook or Facebook is sharing info that started here. There's way more silent people here than most realize. It's all types doing the buying. You have noobs with fresh money, noobs from other hobbies, old time collectors, old time collectors with fresh money. There's no single type of buyer that covers all of the purchases. The two things that are universal to what's happening are economic and monetary policy and that the hobby has a huge focus on it right now.

Lots of moments like that. So many old school collectors and dealers were so critical of that sale, and yes, maybe in the short term it seemed like an overpay. But this hobby always seems to absorb the quantum leaps and move onwards and upwards. I also remember when the Diamond Run CGC 9.4 AF 15 sold for $80k (I want to say it was Bob Storms' sale), and people thought that was nuts, because it represented a doubling of the infamous WM sale. Who'd wouldn't want to take a time machine back to that sale now? Between the Diamond Run AF #15 and the million dollar AF #15 9.6 sale, around 2009 or so (can't remember the exact date) was the $200,000 (or was it $220,000 sale) of an AF #15 in 9.4 on Clink. I remember these forums erupted when that sale happened and nobody could believe it. It was borderline fiction at the time. Now that number won't even buy you a VF.

Everyone is on heritage auctions What I've noticed is that lots of people don't want to pay a price for a book until someone else does. You can shop around a killer book and it will grow cobwebs. But as soon as one goes for more at auction everyone wants it at the price you shopped it at 2 weeks ago.

That was an exemplary copy. It looks like a VF/NM type book. Looks like some foxing and a popped lower staple kept the grade down.

Glue notation, tape notation, bug chew. I'm not sure I'd use that copy as one to set a baseline on. What, are ya' new to comics?

Don't you mean 'What?' Sorry, fixed my typo.

Tony Starks' sock.

You don't think that driving people to pay for higher tiers may be a calculated business decision? Isn't that how capitalism works?