VintageComics

I thought about this as well, and I wonder if you'd include Tales Of Asgard #1 in this group. I never thought about it but I just had my first copy go through my hands and realized that it was also a 1968 one shot. Would never have considered it before this thread was started. Not sure I'd personally include the 1966 Spectacular Spider-man magazine. 1968 was the year everything changed. 1966 seems like a stretch.

There was a lot of talk about this copy because a boardie held it raw and even tried to buy it raw. But I don't think anyone on here said it was upgradeable. I did say that it may have looked like an upgrade candidate to the buyer, and hence the strong price or that someone simply wanted a spectacular copy for the grade and bid the heck out of it (just like PeeWee did when he bought his FF #1 years ago and set a record). @peewee22 was this your copy? https://comics.ha.com/itm/silver-age-1956-1969-/superhero/fantastic-four-1-marvel-1961-cgc-fn-65-white-pages/a/825-45157.s That copy went for DOUBLE what previous copies were going for in grade and then the market took off for that book as well simply because of that one sale. But it eventually slowed back down until the market caught up with that price point and has started to exceed it again. Just like you're seeing now with AF #15. The problem with the way the market is viewed by the casual observer is that copies that do upgrade (or copies that look extremely good for the eye appeal) set new benchmarks and then everyone just assumes that's the new bench mark for all copies.

It's all a matter of timing. Some copies set record prices and the next few sales will follow. If many copies come to market the buying pool gets shallow until they're absorbed. Normal economic cycle.

It adds to speculators thinking they can squeeze out more money when they cant get the 9.8s they want and keep getting 9.6's and think 'gee-if I can get a 9.7, at least I could double my money from a 9.6!' Which would not happen of course you would still see a huge price discrepancy between a 9.7 and a 9.8. Then our speculator will think 'gee-if they could just give out 9.75's!!! It's a fool's game fueled by frustration over them 9.6's they keep getting. So you don't have speculators trying to increase prices when the grades were just a 10 point scale? Remember, the original OSPG had 3 grades and that increased over the years to the 25 point scale CGC uses now (and down from the 100 point scale that some used previously). The grade increases are a necessity because of how valuable comics have become. But you can't stop progress just to stop speculation.

Because no rise is straight up. The book did the same thing about 11 years ago when it surged and pulled back. But specifically, I already explained why this book surged 2 years ago but nobody listened. Guys like @Jaydogrules tried to argue with meaningless points but time does prove all things. As I said 2 years ago, I suspected that all of the copies that sold for record prices were potentially upgradeable copies and so they sold for outlier prices. The market will only sustain fair market value and so once those copies upgraded and came back to market, the price point dropped. But the book hasn't bottomed out. It continues to rise. It just corrected as all markets do. If you plot prices on a graph and draw a line through the recorded prices, it's still rising. It's normal market dynamics. If you don't see that, your timeline is too small for proper perspective.

It is. It's like serving Pate' de Foie Gras at the Hobo's luncheon. I absolutely abhor when people use 'to' instead of 'too' and you just not only caught me doing it, you quoted me.

Grader's notes are not meant to be exhaustive. They never were. They were originally an internal communication between the graders so that they wouldn't miss something as the book passed from one grader to another. As customers called in, graders would recall the notes to help better explain to customers why their books graded the way they did. Eventually, grader's notes became a a public thing unexpectedly and eventually CGC decided to monetize them by making them available to the public if you purchased them a) because they generate revenue b) so that you didn't have to bother graders, who were on the phone constantly reading notes. But the important thing to remember is that notes are not exhaustive and each time you submit the same book the notes will be different. Those are just empty internet comments from people who can only see a small picture on their phones. They have no way of knowing whether a book is graded properly or not without holding the book in their hands. I shake my head at those comments because the post may only have a front scan showing but the back cover could be missing for all we know and yet people think it's absolutely undergraded and worth a resubmit. Absolutely. And that is why there is a market for color touch removal. If there wasn't such a disparity in price, if people were more educated in spotting color touch then you wouldn't have the disparity and you wouldn't have a market for people removing CT off of books. But I will say, I do love the way you typed out your post. Waaaaayyyy too classy for this place.

Last book left at 15% off (shipping included) This book is available at 20% off shipping included

Going to be putting these up for sale soon. Two 35 cent price variants, a nice Showcase #22 and a gorgeous GSX #1 You can message me with any questions.

I emailed Jeff last week. Thank you.

I'm posting this here because i have spoken to several board members who no longer frequent Comics General and did not see my post in General about the theft. Posting here in the hopes that those who missed it in General see it here. There were 5 books in total that were stolen in the Baltimore area. High grade copies of all of the following (all were in Mylars - the CGC graded books were cracked out) Amazing Spider-man #2 CGC 8.0 (cracked out) Amazing Spider-man #11 raw high grade Avengers #71 Incredible Hulk 141 X-men #15 CGC 9.2 (cracked out) The pictures posted are the only pictures I have of the books. If you come across these books, please contact me. A reward is being offered. I appreciate anyone's help.

I've managed to recover pictures of some of the stolen books. Keep in mind that these books are all currently raw and not in their CGC holders.

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It depends on what you want to accomplish. If you're a collector you don't care. If you're a reseller you cash in. But it's a cycle that's been happening for as long as there has been a market. Any market.

Back in 2009-2012 the pressing / comic crash threads were coming to a climax and pressing was blamed as the major contributor for a depression in prices because supply was increasing of higher grade books. I brought up several facts that people dismissed out of hand, that I thought were very valid. 1) fear drives behavior and simply the discussion of pressing spooked collectors into spending money. It's simple logic. Not enough time had passed for the census to swell but word of pressing could and would move faster than the actual census itself 2) we had more 'SA/BA Pedigree' finds during that time period than any other that I can remember. I can't even remember them all. Sucha News, Twin City were two of them. There was the Mound City find. We had the Billy Wright Pedigree come shortly after. We literally had several HUGE pedigree finds in a very short period of time. I argue that simply the wealth of material coming to market alone would have depressed prices as several issues of the same book in high grade started to appear. 3) I argued that the depression of the world economy (remember the crash of 2008?) caused many people to either stop buying altogether or start selling their collectibles to cash in to pay bills as people lost jobs, homes, etc. Either one of those things would cause a depression and both together would definitely affect the market Here we are years later. The Pedigree finds have slowed down and the market seems to have absorbed it all.

That's normal economics. It happens.

Who says that? Nobody. This was a strong narrative before Bedrock posted and shared how some dealers were pressing books in the 90s and Lou_Fine was implying it. Literally nobody would be pressing books if it wasn't worthwhile. The 'cottage industry' is a product of normal business supply / demand economics. There is more demand so they filled the supply. Simple as that.

There's always a story behind the story. Avengers #4 is a very interesting example because about 10 years ago a 9.6 copy sold at auction for about $96K. We talked about it on here indepth because it shocked everyone. Because of that sale, the marked popped for that book for a while with everyone thinking their 9.6 copy was worth $100K In fact, if I have my details correct, the buyer of that book purchased it thinking it was going to upgrade to 9.8 and paid the price to roll the dice on it. Since then the market has settled back into a steady, upward climb for the book. I remember watching an eBay auction for an Avengers #4 CGC 9.4 back in the early 2000's when I was new to eBay and was utterly shocked when it sold for $6K! Today, about 15 years later it's a $13K book. Has the market crashed or did it just correct after the small bubble that the 9.6 sale affected the market with?

I'm unsure of the point you are trying to make. Those that dislike pressing try to say that there wasn't pressing before CGC but it's been proven that there was pressing before CGC. We known for sure that at least two major dealers had books pressed pre CGC - Marnin and Greg Bulls, which doesn't tell us how many books were being pressed - simply that they WERE being pressed well before CGC 'made it acceptable' We also know that there weren't as many books being pressed because it wasn't financially viable to press everything because they were worth much less. If you want to blame any one thing on the increase of pressing, blame it on comic values shooting through the roof. As comics (all comics) became more valuable, it became more financially viable to press more books. Necessity is the mother of invention and there is no way that people were not going to find a way to flatten pressable defects considering collectors have been trying to do it since their childhood with encyclopedias and other methods.

Just a bump. No new details but if you see high grade copies of ASM #2, #11 (both tough books in high grade) or an X-men #15 in the 9.2 range come to market I'd really appreciate a heads up.

Did you eye ball your books for upgrade potential before you sent them in? Or did you just send everything in blindly?

Agreed. CGC downgraded for poor pressing before CCS was acquired. Defects introduced into pressing (from books being too flat to other defects) have been listed in the grading notes for as long as I can remember. I remember talking to Haspel about it years ago. But to be clear, the grading notes are not meant to be exhaustive and notate every defects. Most people don't realize that.

And why is there an explosion of people doing pressing? Certainly not because everyone became altruistic. It's because the large increase in values since the 90's now makes it much more feasible to press books that you normally wouldn't have even given a second through to trying to have pressed. People are pressing books now that used to be considered bird cage liner books.

Hilarious.

If they had Bizarro Boardie of the Year, or Reverse Flash Boardie of the Year, you would have won it every year. Is that because Park backwards spells kraP?