october

I used to liberate comics all the time, but it's too pricey now (along with many other things). A few examples that were freed from prison many years ago.

My drooling is considered fashionable in some circles. If you love the Promise books so much why don't you marry them dork.

Just because someone holds a book doesn't mean they didn't overpay. If anything, it's probably the opposite. I tend to pay much more aggressively for keepers. This collection was a perfect storm. The height of the asset bubble, comic mania, free money, etc. They sold in the biggest venue, hyped to the moon. It's shocking to me that ANY, literally ANY, Promise books have resold at a premium over this short timeframe. People did well buying Chuck's "overpriced" Church copies, but holding them for years/decades was likely the key...as it is here.

What's not random about it? The list I saw was a good cross section of publishers/grades/prices/genres. There might sample bias, but without information on who resold, how many people resold and the circumstances that led to resale it's all speculation. Comics are an opaque market and we can pick apart any given dataset, but the list I saw was enough for me to conclude that most Promise books haven't/wouldn't perform well on resale if sold right now. Maybe you know more about the consignor(s) than I do.

Yep. I think it will take years for me to sell my collection, if and when it happens. Thanks.

Here are my top 5 for the year, all bought in the first half of 2023. Goals for 2024: buy nothing and hopefully start selling off pieces of my collection. Probably won't happen, but going to try.

An N of 290 is more than sufficient for drawing conclusions about the whole data set. We don't need any more sales to reasonably think the majority of Promise books would be in the red if resold right now.

His story is pretty interesting, if you have some time to delve deeper. He was not a comic artist at all, total accident that he ended up on some St. Johns covers. More of the story.

When I look at the data the takeaway is that the new money, the dumb money, the speculators that got caught up in the hype and needed ASM 300 in 9.8 or the bored guy at home that spent his PPP check on FF 48 in 9.4....those guys are gone. Poof. Likely never to return, or at least not for decades. 2021/22 was a perfect storm of easy money, free money, lockdowns, boredom and excess internet time. FOMO driven specubois inflated the obvious/high profile portion of the comic market (along with video games, sports cards, etc) and immediately ghosted when prices dipped. Classic bubble. The collectors that have been at this since 1997 and want to finish a low grade 10 cent Batman run? Still here. The fanatical top grade pre-code people? Still here. The well-heeled collectors building Fox or Centaur or Ace or Chesler runs? Still here. Those prices never went parabolic and they haven't dropped either. Plenty of collector-centric portions of the market still humming along, oblivious to the flaming wreckage next door.

Have non-key Ditko ASMs and Kirby FFs fared much better though? I see prices at 25-50% lower than a year or two ago. Not the huge nosedive of most commonly traded keys, but it's not roses either. Virtually every Marvel book I commonly buy and sell is significantly lower than in the recent past. Maybe some uber high grade rarities are excluded, but that's a tiny sliver of a tiny slice of the "market".

He's second only to William Ekgren for famed interior work.

Nobody reads LB Cole anymore? He was always primarily a cover artist. He only did a handful of interior work during the Golden Age and most of that was stuff like Young King Cole or other snoozefests. Bizarre example.

Yep. Silver and Bronze still a bloodbath. Doubt it's done yet either.

Disney never misses a chance to miss a chance. Their brand image inches further into the negative by the day.

Has to be an error by two bidders that didn't look closely enough. That's like 12x what it's worth, and it's not a rare book. There's a 9.6 for $4k on eBay BIN right now!