Glassman10

On 2/26/2022 at 12:58 AM, lou_fine said:

Yeah, @Glassman10 is probably on his way back to the boards to let you know that his son's house which was paid in part with the AF 15 funds, has now gone up in value by $200K in the interim.    

Glassman 10 has no regrets at all. 

I still have all the JIM and Thor to read and marvel over the profoundly stupid story lines they came up with. The cardboard cutouts of Thor really being the best. 

I love Thor. 

On 1/21/2022 at 11:47 AM, shadroch said:

Excelsior is an exclamation. It is a sentence on to itself.   It's also the motto of NY State.

Well, Miriam Webster says it's also a packing material ( fine wood shavings). Given Stan's sense of humor, you never know which definition came into his head. Torn up or shredded comic books might meet the definition. 

The comics I always seem to not call comics were all the pogo books and I have every one of them still.  What Kelly was so profoundly funny and such an observer of politics.  I still think my favorite concern was from the cross breeding of a yew tree with a geranium.  Yewranium! Those are books I will never get rid of and I don't think my kids could care less about them  Albert the alligator, Churchy La Femme, molester mole.  Porky and Owl.  The named boats.  Great characters.  ... and the christmas carols!

On 1/20/2022 at 4:01 PM, paqart said:

I'm still smarting over the loss of my "pristine" FF5, a likely 9.8 by today's grading standards. It was in better shape than new comics straight out of the box from the distributor. I bought it and an ASM6 is the same condition for a total of $175 back in 1978 at a convention.

One of the real curiosities of the bus box find was the condition of a Spiderman 16#. It was simply pristine. The rest of the box not profound but never bad except the Avengers # 4 cover was torn ( and I gave that away!) . The 16 was like something that dodged all the bullets coming at it. I think, from that box that it went straight to CGC and pulled a 9.2.  That really just never happens. 

On 1/20/2022 at 4:31 PM, Artboy99 said:

did you ever strive to use "excelsior" in an actual sentence?

I think it's a packing material. 

'nuff said " was an entirely different matter. 

He's long gone now, and I still miss him. I mean what's a Dutch Reformist Church member whose father was the preacher going to do after all?  Comics were an easy target. That AF15 brought over 50K. He was just appalled ( but really curious!!) . Life can be pretty strange. 

well, judgmental parents are the root cause of these things having value.

My uncle was killed in a plane crash in '57 and we drove to the funeral in Michigan. My aunt Jane, who had five kids was not someone my rather straight laced parents approved of at all but she came out and gave us a big box of comics to read while heading back to California.  We were doing great for some time until my dad figured out what was going on since we were so quiet. He pulled up to  a fifty five gallon can along the road ( a precursor to rest stops) and threw out the entire lot of them. Too bad for him because now he had to endure "Are we there yet" for another 2000 miles from three bored kids whose backs were all sticking to the Naugahide.. 

I hid my comics as a teen  and lost it all in a pre dawn raid on my closet. I didn't really actively try to keep any until I had moved a thousand miles away.  They were just appalled when they found out how much I sold my AF15 for. Before selling and parking the habit for fifty years , I was on a tear absorbing anything Marvel that caught my eye, Mainly Thor, Spiderman and the FF#4. I loved Jack Kirby. I did not to my regret buy Dr Strange or the X-men then. I remember when Storms was here , there were tall stacks of comics all over the dining room and we were poking around in Overstreet and here Iron Man 55 jumped out with value.  I just went and looked in that pile, and there it was. He was here two days.  It was time to let it go. Quite the journey. 

I think that the memories of the moment, small boy, young man, older soul, are all to be cherished when you recall where you were and how you felt getting a particular comic.  For me, I recall going to what was then called "The little Store" in La Jolla Shores at about age 9 and getting a Flash comic and an Orange Crush and heading down to the beach to read it. I remember the hot sun on my back and me all covered with sticky sand absorbing the summer sun.  That was more cherishing comics than collecting them. 

when I got the load in San Diego, the man selling them had put entire runs into 3 ring binders, to my horror. All those stupid holes. 

Anyone remember buying from Howard Rogofsky? One of very few outlets for back issues of anything in the late sixties. 

I stopped collecting in 1974. I used to stop at the bus station on the third thursday of every month a put five bucks down. I had the opportunity in the late sixties to buy a lot of books in San Diego very cheaply and did. The AF 15 bus story is well circulated. I sold the whole collection to Bob Storms about four years ago now. I did keep all the JIM and Thor as well as a mess of Dr Strange. Thor never went up in value as did the others. I'm sort of stupid when it comes to Thor.   I don't miss it at this point . I can occasionally live vicariously right here

On 10/17/2021 at 3:56 PM, Pantodude said:

About 1.2K in XF40 (out of 70) condition for the San Francisco minted one.  

Jim sold them in the '70's. I remember the mint luster, a little blotchy. I have kept all of my stamps. I think they're fairly worthless. All British Oceania. 

I really don't know. At the time the price was a "family" offer but in general I think that American coins after 1900 were a disappointment as were stamps if you wanted to compare them to the meteoric rise in memorabilia  Those rolls are really memorable for me. Our cousin was being installed in a very dubious military academy after his father's untimely death and we were back there in the family  transition. My mom would let us get 50 dollar bags of pennies and we would go through them taking out perceived value and then would pay her the difference at the end. We had gotten the bag and were in the back seat and the sky just opened up pounding rain on the roof. 

Even by 1959 it was work to get payout on sorting like that but this bank was a time vault. Very few of the pennies were newer than 1945. Most in the '20's and 30's.  More than plenty dating back to 1910 and all in very good or better condition. I've never seen another bag like that one. We did a bag of nickels as well and it had a lot of buffalo nickels but few that were not Philadelphia minting , so, not as rare. S mint was unusual to find in the east and that mint shut down in 55. It was a charmed life. Father knows Best sort of deal, except for my cousin. I always felt awful about that.. When we left, my aunt Jane gave the kids a big pile of comics to read going to California and we were back there doing it and my dad found out. He stopped the car and threw them all out.  So I have tragic stories as well. I remember Challengers of the unknown, Green Lantern, Worlds finest. People like my dad made comics worth what the are today. He would never throw out coins. 

maybe not. It just becomes a more exclusive club with the really ugly ones being accepted into the fold.  I see it still going up as long as the number of people who think there is profit in it continue to bid. I continue to think that profit, not love is a bad approach. 

Mine was great because there was no profit consideration. I had this dumb stupid thing that people thought was valuable. I did that once with a 1909 S VDB which I found in a roll of pennies in Marion Ohio. I was nine years old and it had mint luster. I sold it to my brother for $75 bucks which in 1959 was a lot of money. Then I won at blaclout bingo with a bunch of Blue haired ladies with doilies on their heads for luck and took that $75 bucks and bought a three legged buffalo nickel  mint. My luck ran out on that . It was just too tempting to spend the quarters. and then I sat on the beach reading comic books.  When you don't realize that what you happen do be doing at an exact moment, life is a lot less analyzed.   I never would have thought that reprint Marvel Spotlights would ever have any value at all. Wrong apparently. 

It's all a game . I'm sure glad these guys could draw and write fairly dumb stories. I loved every one of them. 

It doesn't appear that that accounts for the buyers premium nor does it account for the sales tax.  Am I missing something?

Further, an auction guarantees you some publicity but it certainly doesn't guarantee the final price. 

When I sold mine through Bob Storms, he had an 8.87% commission. It took two months to sell it.  We sett the price together. I had no downside surprises as can occur at auction.  Selling at HA does involve a 20% buyers premium which is a lot if one considers the fee the seller is already paying. Then, in many states , add on sales tax and it's harder to justify going this route. unless you love the publicity. 

Annette Funicello, in a class of her own. 

It seems to me the argument about popularity vs high bidding price is comparing apples nd ranges. It strikes me that the number of AC1 in pristine condition has been pretty much sorted out based on time since publication as well as print run in the depression.  The AF15 strikes me as a book with unknown high grade copies since the warehouse and private   collections haven't really been accounted for completely. The number of AF15's in the wild is often estimated at 10,000 in all grades . I don't see estimates of AC1 in the wild being of any substance at all. Yet, I'm inexperienced at this.  I do have to wonder what would happen if 20 9.6's of the AF15 suddenly appeared. Where do you suppose the value would come down?  I don't anticipate that happening with AC1. 

This auction should have an asterisk after the final price.  Two irregularities jump at me. The first being the curious upgrade of it's CGC rating and the second surrounding the crash of the Heritage site during the live auction. It may be the Roger Maris record auction until something with cleaner records passes it. 

Right now, the only methodology to account for copies is the census and the census does CGC graded books. It doesn't account for private sales of raw copies and until the raw copy gets the good housekeeping seal of approval, speculation is just that- speculation.  I would certainly agree that there are a bunch of copies in the wild ungraded for AF15 but the numbers offered up are always conjecture. 

I would also certainly think that after all this time, that more Action 1 have had ample time to expose themselves. 

What is the case is that the quantity of high grade copies that are registered as 9.4 or 9.6 can be manipulated to change the census slightly. Then, we get to how to auction is to be paid for and whether it's truly an auction or a seller buying back his own book but in the meantime raising the value of other AF15's out there regardless of condition.  The whole thing, conjecture and all is quite fishy to me. But "Hey" Everyone who owns one is making money. 

On 9/3/2021 at 8:05 PM, Subby1938 said:

Obviously folks are watching the Heritage  auction on 9.6 . Do all grades push higher now because of these staggering numbers? Stats usually show it will . Any thoughts on what happens on low to mid grade copies ?

bob storms just listed a 2.5 for over $30K Indications for 5.0 are 65K and up. 

On 9/3/2021 at 2:54 PM, pemart1966 said:

Sometimes I think that it's just the NUMBER that sells...

Some wise guy said "Buy the book, not the grade."

On 9/3/2021 at 11:55 AM, peewee22 said:

We've all bought and sold. Depends on where we are in life. I once sold a WP'd 7.5 for 42k.

I'm still here on approval..

On 9/3/2021 at 11:11 AM, fishbone said:

good on you - you have to make priorities for what you enjoy in life, it's just too short !!    (and p.s., that 50K you banked a few years ago could easily have grown to 75K if invested correctly over that period .....)

bob wrote me this morning when I asked and indicated if he had a 5.0 it would be between 65-75K.  I think the folks who have the 1.5- 35's stashed will do quite well. 

On 9/2/2021 at 5:35 PM, fishbone said:

 I estimate my 5.0 is worth somewhere in the 75K+ range at this point if you extrapolate all sales above and below the grade ........  this is in the area of a 100% increase since your sale (if we all assume your's was a huge outlier sale at the time) , and that's a lot of movement in a few years

The book is just insane right now

Worth noting that Bob Storms just posted a 2.5 of AF15 for 33,5000. That's just a smidgeon below where the 5.0 was in 2017 It won't be long until the budget bunch is just totally crowded out.