lighthouse

I doubt it’s all that rare. But this was the romance book that got me starting collecting them. I have a half dozen catfight covers. But this one is easily my favorite. (image is not my copy, I’ll dig mine out at some point)

You might notice the “409” written on both Actions. There are a couple dozen Actions all with that same pencil/pen notation. A mystery I’m unlikely to solve.

There’s a much longer thread about the collection in the Silver Age forums, but I’d rather not spam the SA section with GA books. Here are a few recent returns from the collection. Just like the SA books, these went in a closet in 1965 and didn’t come out until this winter. But unlike the SA which is low-mid grade original owner from 1955-1959 and improving to high grade original owner from 1961-1965, the golden age books were acquired secondhand in the early 60s. Every SA book so far has white pages. The GA is so far a mix of OWW and W. There are around 300 GA total. Some will go to Heritage, some we will sell directly. A very few I plan to keep.

It’s a beauty.

Nine copies in the census (now). This one is the new top census 8.5, sitting in a box waiting for me to get home to unpack it. Special Edition Navy #1 (reprinting Action 80)

Shameless cross post from another thread. But here’s some love.

Completely agree with this. I was the consignor on the $1.5m FF 1. For a short time I get to brag that I have a tied for all-time top 10 highest price ever paid in a public sale. And while I’ve described it that way, that copy of FF 1 isn’t even in the top 100 most valuable comics. It may not be in the top 200. It’s one of the few in the top 400 or so that have recently changed hands, and the market responded to it. I’ve told many folks in my circle since the auction ended Thursday that just because you see some record broken, don’t leap to the conclusion that said book is the top of the mountain. If the “best” copy of Action 1 came to market today and sold for $25m, I wouldn’t even blink. Heck I’d probably think that was light. If you’re comparing where Supes1, Bat 1, Cap 1, etc compare to each other, compare coverless copies rather than this 9.4 vs that 8.5. How hard do people go for a coverless copy just to join the ownership club? Much truer test. And by that measure Cap lags behind.

Agreed that releasing images before shipment is a terrible idea. But (now) 14 business days after shipping? Not much better than terrible.

Greggy reacted to multiple posts in this thread with something other than confused. Can we have someone go do a welfare check? I’m worried he might be in trouble.

I’ve submitted a few thousand books to CGC over the years. But had never paid for imaging until a couple submissions last month. I had assumed (without actually researching) that I would receive the images the day the books shipped out. Or maybe the next day. Obviously the images have to be taken before the box gets packed. And the “processing” after that is minimal. Even if they needed cropping (which wouldn’t make much sense… you just shoot the images at the size you’re going to send them… easy to do when the process is the same thousands of times over), it can’t be more than a few seconds per image. You already have the email address connected to them (I’m clearly getting email alerts when boxes ship out). Current status on my two submissions with imaging? Books shipped March 24th and March 25th via registered mail. No images yet received. In one case I’ve had the books back in my possession for 13 days already. In the other I’ve had them in hand for 6 days (sometimes registered mail gets really slow). I emailed customer service about them four days after my books shipped, since I assumed by that point they were already late. It took two days to get an email response and the response was: ”Imaging is running about 10 business days in addition to the regular grading. You should receive those via an email by the end of next week.” I admit I’m more confused than anything else. I assumed I was buying the ability to share images of books well before I had the books in hand. And $5 a book seems a bit high for that service but I was willing to pay it in this case. Mostly I’m confused about how there can possibly be a backlog of (now) 13 business days to email out images that were taken before the box was packed? If that’s the turnaround time going forward I doubt I’ll be ordering it again. And maybe that’s a goal for CGC, to discourage people from ordering images because it’s not profitable. But I have a hard time believing it’s not profitable to have someone pressing a button to email images at 5 bucks a pop. If ever there was a task that screams “automated task” it’s that one.

It may in the future. But right now it’s absolutely dead. I can sell Akira. And I can sell a little bit of Lone Wolf and Cub. But literally any other comic-size manga there is no traction at all from manga customers. In their eyes it’s just not manga. I’ve tried putting out boxes of that stuff and encouraging folks to check it out. I may as well be offering 8-track tapes for the blank looks I get.

Someday slabbed manga will be a thing. And some people are going to get rich.

I haven’t done much. But there are a LOT of manga selling at 3x-8x cover price on eBay. Random titles go out of print for a few months and prices skyrocket. I’ve had customers tell me “yeah I just bought volume 1 on eBay for $80, I was so happy you guys still had volume 3 at cover price”.

I think it’s briefly mentioned on our website. But usually it’s just people calling and asking if we have a manga section. Barnes and Noble is still far and away the area leader for them. And I redirect folks there all the time. (We’ve taken a Macy’s Gimbels Miracle on 34th Street approach from day one. I send people to my competition all the time.) I can’t compete with B&N on inventory. They have preferred arrangements with Viz so that if production runs are limited, B&N will get their entire order and other dealers get nothing. So if My Hero comes back in print and my distributors have seven random volumes out of the first twenty? I don’t wait around hoping for volume 1. I just order whatever is available. And it sells anyway.

It depends on how much casual foot traffic the store gets. But I can tell you that for my store, all manga sells. All of it. My distributor only has volumes 4, 9, and 16 in stock? Order four copies of each. They will all sell. Volume 1 of (insert important title) is back in stock? Put me down for 40 of them. I have eight linear feet of wall devoted to manga. Starting at knee height and going to about 7’ 6” up the wall. That section generated over four months rent in sales in 2021. And it generated about 1.5 months rent during the first quarter of 2022 so the pace is still accelerating. Yes the obvious choices like My Hero and Demon Slayer and Chainsaw Man all sell. And anything Junji Ito will sell forever. But I ask customers all the time “what else should I carry”. One of them mentions Blue Period (new manga currently on volume 5 or 6). I order it in, gone in two weeks. I’m now on my fourth reorder. Manga sells.

Those prices are still available right?

I like GoCollect for a quick and dirty triage of which issues may be worth slabbing. The three big reasons to use a site like GoCollect or GPA are: What should I slab? What should I charge? What should I pay? The interface on GoCollect is better than GPA for the what should I slab question, in my opinion. It’s much easier to compare potential grades quickly and evaluate whether this books that might be 50% likely to get 7.5, 20% likely to get 7.0, and 30% likely to get 8.0 is going to be worth slabbing or should just be sold raw. GPA is definitely better than GoCollect on the what should I pay question, assuming you are targeting a specific book in a specific grade. Much easier to look at past results and trends. For the what should I charge question, they both have merits. I understand why more people prefer GPA. But I find GoCollect gets me to an answer faster on 80% of my books, and points out the 20% where I really need to take more time.

Any love for the Nembo Kid?

Was chatting with my consignment director today about upcoming books. He told me the April auction was a new record at $27m. I was $2m of it. It’s crazy to me to even type that. But there it is.

Those keys are VERY carefully arranged to be on top of the piles.

This is kind of a group shot right?

It really is such a great mix of colors on that cover.

Correct. The “big” book in June has never been offered in that specific grade with white pages. A separate piece of information is that two of the seven June books have just a lone copy above them in the census.

Never see a copy that well centered. Blue to the left of “Fantasy As You Like It” AND to the right of “Man or Monster”. Never see it.

That is one beautiful book.