VintageComics

Except when you auction them off and they disappoint with low results. There are so many factors - how much commission, is the market hot or not, will 2nd and 3rd bidders show up or will they be putting their kids in bed while the books are ending, etc etc. They may have sold the collection before the market popped these last few months and Pedigree just happened to windfall and get lucky with a rising market. One thing I've done for some time now is I stopped looking back and see how much money I 'could have made' if I'd done something differently. If I made money, I move on. Looking back does no good. I could have lost money just as easily as made it and there are no guarantees in anything. If it was so easy to make more money everyone would be doing it...but when it comes down to making a decision each person makes the decision that works best for them at that time.

I remember the 8.0 for 250k (I think). It was about one a half to two years ago. Don't think it was 4 years ago. Seems like I'm splitting hairs but just trying to get a correct timeline on this 100-grand stuff. Based on a personal purchase made in 2017, I can guarantee an 8.0 didn't sell for 250k four years ago (according to Vintage) During the summer of 2017 there was a surge in AF #15 prices and we were all shocked. They doubled and tripled in one auction (Comic Connect) and 3 books in particular went for record money. There was a 4.5 that went for mid $30's and a 5.0 that went for $57K (can't remember the 3rd copy) Then Clink (IIRC) sold an 8.0 copy for $261K or something like that. A few other 8.0 copies came to the market after that and they went for about $200-220ish. I also sold a 7.5 for a boardie for $175K during this period. Reece's recent 9.0 copy I had forgotten about but that must have sold, and I also heard of several other really high grade copies (9.4+) started changing hands as well. There was a slight pullback (as there always is) and it looks like the climb has begun again. I'm not saying that an 8.0 is worth $345K (only the market can decide that) but I'm saying in light of recent sales it really doesn't seem like a strange number when everything else is kept in context.

1st app of Tony Stark's sock.* *credit given to the great @seanfingh

It's actually not that crazy. The 9.0 (was it Curator?) sold for $566K on Clink. I do believe another 9.0 sold privately for over $500K And 8.0 was a $200-260K book 4 years ago. In light of that info, $345K is a lot but it's not outlandish considering the book is likely worth well over the 2017 prices we saw.

I can confirm that's a real sale. I know the buyer.

It's also the silly lemming mentality. There are books that are sitting with slightly high BIN prices on eBay but nobody has the courage to pull the trigger. But when bidding buyers seem to feel much more comfortable in raising the ceiling at auction and then what happens is the eBay copies either get bought up or repriced. So it's probably a combination of things including credibility of sellers AND the courage to set the market. Also, Dave is a dork.

I have seen multiple books sitting on eBay at lower prices only to have Comiclink prices go through the roof. I can't explain it but it happens. And that doesn't mean the Comiclink sales are not real. I would bet money that the majority of them are. Josh runs a pretty tight ship from my experience and takes his reputation very seriously.

Fair. But no precedent in the Marvel books, unlike all the other characters, right?

Pretty much every Marvel Silver Age character came from a previous variation of some sort. Iron Man, Doctor Strange, Spider-man, the FF, Hulk...only one I can't really remember any previous inspiration for was Daredevil. Are there any Daredevil 'protoypes' that I don't remember from the original, early 60's Marvel heroes?

I think the graders were also concerned about the black spots and they had as much to do with the grade as the shadow.

Gang, I should have done this years ago. I'm now vintagecomics_com / vintagecomics.com on IG - follow me with your comic buying and selling accounts and I'll follow back. This is the business page, I have another page for personal followers at radovan_roy_delic if anyone is interested.

I recognize both the auction copy and the current exchange copy. I slabbed them both years ago. JIM #83 is one of my favorite books of all time.

Considering a 5.0 sold for $350K (2 copies, actually, as I sold a copy for that amount after the copy sold for $350K on Heritage) and a CGC 3.0 sold for $192K in the same Heritage auction, I full expect this copy to sell for well over $160K. The market seems to be set for this book at a new baseline.

Pretty sure the entire chat forum has me in ignore by now.

Or there was something on the press that was tearing that entire corner off. Kinda like Marvel Chipping but on steroids. At high speeds you could have that happen 1000's of times before someone realized it was happening and stopped the presses to correct it.

I do it in a similar manner, but I look at the defect and try to peg the range that this defect would be maximum allowed in. At first look at the Subby book with the missing corner ( @lou_fine THAT was the book I was talking about) I couldn't see how a book missing an entire corner could be taken out of the VG range so I personally would give the book the maximum VG grade allowed, which is VG/Fine. And THIS might be why CGC went with the grade it did. If this is a common bindery defect for that issue that would have very well been factored into the grade. There are MANY books with printing defects that are allowed in the grades that wouldn't be on other issues. If that's the case, I can fully understand why they graded it higher than most would. They treated it like a miscut rather than a chew. And we've seen lots of miscut VF+ books from the GA. I'm guessing they just attributed all of the missing paper from one corner into the grade the way another miscut book might be missing paper along an entire edge.

Not everyone falls into that category. The graders likely do get wind of conversations on the site and it's not a stretch to think that they may factor it into their adjustments in the grading room. There was talk on the boards about 5 months ago that CGC was very tight. They seemed to loosen up a hair (at least on my own submissions - I did think they were a bit tight for a while) and the combination of being slammed with submissions from the new collection and the hype currently in the hobby along with the complaints may have caused them to loosen up a bit. Speaking to another high volume dealer, it seems CGC has tightened up recently. We'll see what the coming weeks bring. I think I'm fairly consistent with my grading, but then I only mostly submit high grade bronze and silver so I don't have to factor as many variables into my grading as someone who runs the gamur from low to high grade and all eras. .

I couldn't remember his name. Thanks for reminding me! When I typed out the 'they sold for a lot more after' I was specifically thinking about Verzyl buying them up when they came around the 2nd time and reselling them at his booth in San Diego. They were priced pretty strong. It's possible and even likely that many that went back through the auction houses sold for a loss even the 2nd time around...appreciate the insights.

Moderation has been extremely tight lately. Threads that wouldn't put a blip on the radar in the past are now getting locked often.

My post was pretty harsh but I still feel the same way about the grade. I remember seeing a SA key top out at 7.0 or 7.5 because there was a piece missing (likely from production, but really irrelevant how it got that way) inside affecting the story....you couldn't even see it from the outside. The book looked like a VF or VF/NM copy in the holder. I remember another SA key book top out at 7.0 (I think that's what it topped out at) because there was a round hole punch through the FC. I don't see how you can have a portion of the entire book missing all the way through and still keep it in the VF range. It seems illogical to me.

What I find most interesting is how different a well preserved comparable graded 9.6/9.8 can be from each pedigree. The San Fran copies from what I understand (and from the copies I've seen) are very high grade, bright and white but they feel very different than Church copies. They have a 'stiff' feel to them. The Church copies have a supple 'new comic' feel that is not as stiff as the San Fran copies. I wonder how these compare to both of these Pedigrees above. I realize that only Heritage and CGC have seen the Promise books but @Timely you've handled quite a few books. Do you notice a 'feel' difference in Peds? Any other characteristics that differ between them?

Ok! Lesson learned. No one bid on any of the Flash Comics. Especially the 104, avoid it. Bad investment. The return of those Mile High books (if my memory and timing are correct) was when someone lost a ton of money on the real estate market after the crash and had to dump his entire runs of Mile Highs to generate capital and cover his losses. That was an unnatural dip because he bought bidding against all collectors at the peak of the economy (he was throwing around money like a drunk sailor) to assemble the runs and then dumped them all in one shot. Those books were bought by dealers (Verzyl bought many of them) and they resold for WAY more after. It was an unfortunate incident but not indicative of a normal market.

Not sure when it hit the census exactly but there’s been a cgc 9.9 mad 1# for a while ... too bad so sad for the people who paid close to 100k for their 9.8s I guess. People get angry when a higher graded copy hits the census but do they get angry when a stock or some other asset like Real Estate depreciates the same way? I understand the game well in all aspects of economics but it's important to remember that life is not about only wins. If it was, we wouldn't appreciate the wins and learn from the losses. It's the contrast that keeps things in balance. And in the long run most collectors are winning more than they're losing. That's the important point to remember.

If you want to REALLY nitpick, the image on the left looks like two different artists drew the hands. The hand on the left looks like something Simon and Kirby would have done. Very un-feminine. The hand on the right looks very Bakeresque and feminine. Artists often corrected things among each other and it's entirely possible there is more than one (or even two) artists on any given image. We'll probably never know the truth at this point.

Correct. And there's a range of interpretation even within CGC.