VintageComics

If this book fetches $1MIL I'm going to take a picture of me with my undies on my head and post it on social media. Wait, I'm not sure if that sounds like a threat or more incentive for someone to bid it to a million.

There was a time when people didn't whip into a frenzy when there was a Marvel key on the wall. I remember when a LCS had a VG/Fineish copy on the wall for $4500 over a decade ago and I was on the fence about whether it was worth buying or not. I was worried I'd lose money on it.

Price is a very personal matter. Collectors can be picky and dislike literally anything about a book and that will affect the price they want to pay. I also understand not wanting to throw a price out because you're now 'bidding against yourself' as Borock used to say, because you paint yourself into a corner and prices can vary wildly on some books even in the same grade. Some feel more comfortable being upfront with what they want to spend and that's fine but others may feel more comfortable negotiating. I chalk that up to personal preference so I wouldn't demand a what someone is willing to pay in a WTB post. The free market will decide what they pay. But I think the BARE MINIMUM work required should be either a price or a grade (or a range) of what you're looking for just to eliminate people wasting their time. Oh, you want a Batman #1? Do you want a $30K copy, a $100K copy or a $1MIL copy? You want an Astonishing Tales #25? Do you want a reader copy for $20 or a 9.8 copy? I don't understand how someone can take the time to put out a WTB post and not at least outline some idea of what they're looking for with a grade or a price range. To me it's a symptom of laziness that the internet has bread over the last decade or so. I don't bother replying to WTB posts like that.

Really. The guy paid for the book April 12th. This week, it will be a full two months. It's obviously too much to expect them to follow thru on a small thing like this. It sucks that people feel the need to defend bad behavior. The bizarre thing is responding to a refund request by saying metro should refund the money and be done with the OP. Sometimes simple logic is too much to ask.

The book has doubled and tripled in price in the last 1-2 years. I'm not sure being stagnant or another price increase are really a warranted.

That's a pretty serious statement you're making. While there are a lot of stories and cynicism in the hobby, I've only known Clink to be straight as an arrow. If that book is listed as sold on the site, I'd personally believe it's a real sale.

Nothing. Most times that I've contacted a WTB through the boards I didn't make a sale. People don't want to buy what you have, they always want what you don't have.

Yes, but did Tony Stark's sock appear in this issue? No? Worthless! All credit goes to @seanfingh

OK, Joe Collector.

Thank you, Captain Obvious. There have been some strong booms in recent times. There was a massive price increase for Marvel keys in the Guide around 2006 or so which was probably a compensation by the OSPG for the CGC market boom that started in the early 2000's and that lit a fire for prices. I remember seeing an Avengers #4 CGC 9.4 sell for $6000 and I thought the world had gone mad and yet here we are. There was the AF #15 boom of 2009 or so and again in 2017 where the book went sharply upward for a few months. There were also various 'booms' including Pre Robin Batman Tec's, Pre Code Horror and even Bronze Age horror back in the mid 2000's. We've had a Baker boom for the last 4- 5 years. I remember buying them up at $50-100 a copy and wondering why everyone wasn't buying them up. Now we're paying $1000's a copy a few short years later. Remember when an Action #1 CGC 6.0 went for $317K in 2009 and people were gobsmacked? Part of the phenomenon IMO is that we've been desensitized to growth after being shocked with market record after market record and some people have just come to accept that records are going to continue to happen. Yes, I understand that a cultural shift on perception will also add to fueling the markets and also potentially creating a correction. I'm not saying it's great. I've already said the rise is unnatural and also, I've been vocal about not beeing a fan of the movie 'pump and dump' market for over 10+ years now in case you missed it. All I'm saying is I'm going to stop predicting anymore because I was convinced 10 years ago that the end was nigh and it never came, so I'll just continue to work in the market I have and not the market that I think is coming. And I will repeat what I said 2 or 3 months ago, this rise is happening in ALL hobbies (wine, cars, watches, cards, real estate, etc) which means it's not a comic-centric thing. It's universal, which means it's a monetary phenomenon not a hobby centric one. Let me ask you: How predictable has monetary economics been over the last 10-12 years? Completely unpredictable, right? Just a look at the Gold is $500 thread in the WC shows that nobody knows what's going on anymore because fundamentals no longer matter as much as they used to in any market. There's no point in predicting anything, anymore in this current market. Where did this dealer say it was healthy? You always were a little over-dramatic. It is what it is.

Are you sure? I'm well aware of the market dynamics. I've been talking about it for years. I do think that all of these 'faux' first appearances will correct. I am not so sure about the actual keys. If you have hedge fund investor types buying books for a long haul (which is what is happening in some cases) and these copies disappear for years then I'm not sure what the outcome will be. There's NOTHING about ANY market that's normal anymore (and there hasn't been since the advent of the internet / digital age) so I've also stopped trying to predict what's going to happen in the markets. They've been doom and gloom for as long as I've been here (which is a heck of a long time now that I think about it) After the world economy didn't collapse in 2008 like is should have I've stopped looking towards past performance as an indicator of future performance.

The card market is a different animal in a few ways. For one, many more cards are available and many of the radical price increases were for newer cards (I mean, how many Jordan and Kobe cards are out there?) While I agree with you, WHERE the money coming from matters. Apparently there's a lot of money coming in from other hobbies were population (or census) numbers are much higher, making comics look attractive to them. And some of the big money is rumored to have holding power, meaning they may not need to sell to fund something else for their collection. If that's the case some prices may stay high as those owners will hold until they get their number.

As do CGC, Comic Connect and some other dealers I know. I probably should have said 'images' as opposed to scans but old habits die hard. One disadvantage to scanners is that they take a while to scan each book, which is fine if you're scanning a few books for your personal collection but if you're scanning 1000's of books every month for inventory the time adds up. Still, the differences in representation are easy to see. Some auction houses use darker images than the actual books and some lighter. It's a challenge to image books properly.

Money has never been so 'cheap' as it is now. I'm sure there are MANY people borrowing to make purchases in all fields.

I think the main problem with scanners is that the CGC holder lifts the book OFF the surface of the glass and this prevents a lot of quality from transferring digitally. Books scan differently when they are raw or through just a Mylar than through a CGC slab, which lifts the book a few millimetres from the scanner glass.

I don't think it's intentional. Scanner technology has changed a lot in 20 years. In fact, it's nearly impossible to make a scanned book look exactly like it does in real life. Most scanners exaggerate something about the book that's being scanned.

My guess is that the book has high grade, NM structure but those shadows wouldn't be allowed in NM grade range so they went as high as they could without putting the book in the NM range. Personally, I wouldn't grade the book an 8.5 but what do I know?

I can help a little here Generally, we do not post FMV data if there is not enough data to pull from. We do, however, use the sales of some grades to factor in the estimations of grades that haven't sold recently. For example, there are Golden Age comics that may have quite a few recent sales for lower grades while very few higher grades have recently sold. If we have enough stable data, we can use those lower sales and apply an algorithm based on similar books with more data to provide an estimation of the higher grades that may not have data on them yet. So if 3.0's - .5's stably climb in value which causes the 3.0-.5's FMV to rise, statistically, that's going to make a 9.0 a certain amount more valuable so that would be reflected in the estimated FMV. Typically, if there is no sales data for a grade, but we formulated and estimated FMV, it will be marked. All fair points, but I think that in some cases the extrapolation is unrealistic and as someone who keeps a close watch on the market, this is an important point to raise. Interestingly enough, there was a SA non-key listed at $1.3MIL in 9.8 but that has now been adjusted down to $850K - still an unrealistically high number IMO because the book would NEVER sell at that number even in this current market as far as I'm concerned. The other problem I'm seeing is that in this new market, even though there is no pricing history for some books people are now unrealistically valuing their books at the prices these algorithms post. And what is happening is that people's expectations for some books are rising faster than the market is, based solely on this speculation alone.

That would have been the rough time frame.

I vaguely remember that. When did Doug buy them? Maybe it was shortly after that, that Dan realized there was a market. Doug has a way of opening your eyes. Towards the end, Dan was only left with a lot of coppers and moderns. He had a fire sale before he moved to Florida IIRC

I tried to find the thread but couldn't. But he argued that Moderns were going to be like Bronze and Bronze were going to be like Silver. I remember a lot of people ridiculed him for saying that. My point was that nobody really knows which way the market will go. He was just slightly before my time. I think he was just getting out of comics as I was becoming a dealer so I never really met the guy but I did bid on his stuff on eBay a lot back in the day.

Does anyone remember when Dan Greenhalgh (formerly of Showcase New England) came on here over a decade ago and said moderns were going to go through the roof and everyone laughed him off the boards?

They weren't the same copies. There were also a few other copies that sold cheaper in 2018 and 2019.

Unfortunately, that's not always the case...in fact, I find scans often are not representative. Auction houses use various imaging quality but they're more interested in scanning 1000's of books quickly than getting every book accurately imaged unfortunately. IMO, Comic Connect's pics are often too dark. There was a time when Heritage's books were too light and also a time where their images ghosted defects into the books that were not actually there. Even CGCs previous images were far too dark and they accentuated even the slightest darkening of paper making it look brown when it wasn't. I slabbed that X-men #1 CGC 9.6 many years ago and this is the image I used after I slabbed it. I think the book looks more like my image than Comic Connect's unless something about the book has changed. I remember the book looking pretty white.

GoCollect really is all over the place. It's just an algorithm and often has no basis in reality. I've looked at a few books with no recent sales and they really are off the mark so I wouldn't really bank on these numbers with no support.