Glassman10

6,.0

At one point I made the observation that the Rolex watch for $8,500 was utterly dead in the water following the crash in 2008 but the $250.000 dollar version was backordered two years . That quickly devolved into what watch everyone liked which wasn't really my point. Sometimes, people show off that "they can and you can't" Actually I don't even wear a watch but I used to buy tons of them at the lost and found auctions at UC San Diego and resold them all. $1.50 for a watch? There are people who can never have enough and I don't quite understand that driving force but it sure is there. For many, it's the simple competition as well. I don't have that DNA. I collect antique scales and didn't even realize I was doing it until someone pointed out that there were fourteen of them in the house almost all over one hundred years old. I have a feed store scale that is accurate to three grams. I verify this junk because I have one scale that gets calibrated professionally every year.

Well, look at the census for the extra .1. Some people just gotta have the best regardless of the price.

There are none. I consigned by choice. I have passed on many offers to sell it. No surprises anywhere I have made the interior shots available to Bob and he said he really doesn't need them. When my son tried to post those shots on reddit, he got shut down for violating copyright issues. Bob knows I have those shots and will supply them to any serious buyer. I liked it way better when I could read it. But fifty years was enough. It's still terrible artwork with a really unlikely storyline ( but not as bad as the Thor creation line) . I understand slabs but I'm a really old guy trying to give my son a down payment on a house and I really despise what has happened to it. I liked the pure joy. it. Actually, I love Pogo. Walt Kelly was the real deal. You had to be me on that bus in a wrecking yard in 1967. There was an avengers #7, an avengers #4 which I actually gave away two weeks back, a lot of X men early stuff. , all in that amazing box of fifty books. I was a kid. Even then I knew it was worth... 80 dollars!!. Sometimes we just have to get a grip and laugh at the entire show. As a kid I found a 1909 S-VDB in a roll of coins in Ohio. It had mint luster. I had a huge collection in the fifties but my mom made short work of it in one brutal afternoon. Mom's: why any of this stuff has value at all. "You print it, we'll chuck it." Never ever go to the beach if your mom is on a tear. Jeez I learned that too late...

thank you I think so too.

mine was a copy I found in a school bus in 1967. It's drifted in and out of conversation here the last year. What I have learned from Bob is the number of sales that occur without GA analysis. He seems to be doing just fine with his prices and I'm not in a hurry. The MIddle East doesn't spend time on GA. The investment hasn't exactly pressed for the sale. Bob got a lot of nice books from me, none as valuable as the AF15 but some I just can't explain. Why did I buy two ASM 129's on the news stand when it was .20.. I never even read them. I used to buy about five bucks a month worth of Comics ( not books) when walking home 1.5 miles every 3rd tuesday in Santa Fe in 1967 - 74. It was just magical to curl up with those comics and just read them . Jeez, the Silver Surfer was a hoot. The AF 15 at the time was worth about 80 dollars and I simply never sold it, decade after decade. . Actually, selling it would have been hard. Rogofsky was about the only dealer out there. The internet has changed everything. It connected every enthusiast and Charlatan in the world. Bob will sell his comics just fine. He has so far, just not as an ebay item. If there's one thing I don't understand, It's the level and depth of wealth in the world in the hand of a very few. Haven't yet doubt I will.

I can't really tell if this is serious or is some remarkable way of me getting punked. If I'm being punked, it's well done. But "Bob Warned me" ... "I told him it was no problem" Each call will be angrier than before". I guess that no good deed shall go unpunished should be a new mantra . All I did was to say I was impressed with how hard Bob goes at it and I continue to feel that way. I handed over my AF 15 to Bob and said "Go sell it". There's minimal paperwork. I trust Bob and his street reputation is impeccable. Patience is a virtue hard to come by.

I Have my 5.0 listed with Bob and he works crazy hard at his business. He immediately wanted to drive five hours to come grade my collection from Long Island to upstate New Hampshire. No one else seemed hot to do that. He wound up spending the night. I used to do just two shows a year selling glass but his pace would drive me to my knees. Right now? Off to London. Then? Chicago. Back from San Diego. I loved hearing his stories about people and selling books as we went through the stacks. I have a lot of confidence in him and the group of AF 15's he's amassed is really impressive. In a weak moment, I kept all my JIM and Thors but that's for a different thread.

chipping is scary. With my 5.0. I caused the single chip in the corner, creasing the book going back in mylar. That was about ten years back. In the winter, we were looking at the book and at that crease point, the color fell off. It went to CGC with the chip of color in a plastic in the packing with a note. It was graded and in being returned the chip did not return with the book. I have no idea where it could be. I've been told that it might be included inside the book and maybe not. What is clear to me is that this transgression probably cost me 10K. Live and learn. At least I found the comic in a box and cost nothing. It's such a weird way to make money.

Jeez, I had mine over fifty years. I'm selling because I'm getting old. It does strike me that if you are flipping the book that the premiums on auctions coupled with the potential cost of borrowing money to be in that game are factors that make quick flips less attractive.

Bob has my AF15 5.0 listed at 55K. It has a single chip on the corner. I took photos of all the interior pages.

that's an original CGC Frame. Just pre numerology. They were still making them out of wood. The grade is a VII.V

There's something going on on the back cover near where the guy is standing up on the bike and it hints at being a stain that's light but long. The lower staple on the front is causing some issue and there are small spine ticks. It's always far more difficult for me to read a cover at an angle as the corners stay slightly out of focus. It doesn't seem t lay quite flat. The pages are off white. The color and sheen on the cover are very nice. I concur on the 8.0-8.5

Anytime a parent has to bury one of their children is a terrible moment. What you describe is a collection that stopped about 1998 and began in the 1980's . If at that time you were buying occasional spiderman comics for up to $100 and he was avidly collecting Spiderman you do indeed have a potentially valuable collection and it's likely that your Private message box is lighting up right now. I found that using the Overstreet guide was adequate on some books and off the mark on many. Grading is the single hardest part of valuing the books since it defines what they're now worth. I find Overstreet to be really vague when trying to tell you a grade that means anything. Bomber bob's advice is spot on. Don't let anyone come and cherry pick the collection. I would urge you to take your time deciding who might handle the books for you. Just don't be in a hurry. The list from the computer is very useful except that it gives no grade but the very fact that the books are bagged on backer boards indicates they were treated carefully. If they are in actual plastic cases, that's a recognizable process establishing condition and implies the value as well. Best of fortune for you. It must be really hard.

It's sort of scary as an investment. A repeat theme I keep seeing here is whether an offering is a fraud. I see posts about boxes arriving stuffed with brown paper. Ebay looks like the wild west to me. Cutting corners seems rampant. The discussion is so frequently about whether the book has been trimmed. Simply put it's chock full of shysters. I have had a fair bit of contact with people who own the book. Many simply say they have a safe deposit box where they keep them. I hear from people who lost theirs in a flood or a fire. One in a tornado. Mice seem to be a genuine destructive force as is heat and light. If you've had the book over fifty years, those factors are a lot to consider. When we opened up the boxes with all the books, there were two, but only two books utterly destroyed by mice and fortunately books I didn't even care for. The persisting damage was just being kept in boxes all that time but in 1967 safe storage wasn't really a discussion. White pages didn't get recognition until the mile high collection. When I sold the books to Bob, I kept the JIM and the Thor which really have never done anything as thought of as value. That's really a relief for me in a odd way. I have the 125 Thors and JIM's in a single short box, on backer boards. I get them out now and read them . They will pass on to my son eventually if this old farmhouse doesn't burn down. I have photos here of my kid reading the AF15 back in December. Candidly, it's a relief to have it gone and I had expected to feel great loss. But I found mine. It was never an investment. I don't flip comics.

Indeed. I have a lot of VISA and MC I've gotten in the last six years. It has actually outperformed 'the books" and I can sell it tomorrow. I'm keeping the stock and selling the book but not for the same reasons. The stock makes complete sense as an investment. The book is really a passion. I've had that AF15 for fifty years. Any further arguments just aren't rational. Love what you love.

Indeed, I'm aware...

I've owned mine for fifty years. I found it in a box of comics in the '60's. I considered selling it every time there was a recession yet I never did. In 1968, I think it would pull about 80 dollars. In all this time, until now I've hung on to mine and after every recession, it just went up. I'm at an age where selling it will give my son a down payment on a house and I can't see keeping it having any real benefit for an old man. For Him? It's a golden ticket. So for me, I could see nothing good coming from keeping it. The artwork is terrible. He's a great kid and brilliant at what he does but like so many millennials, it's really difficult out there. So I decided to let the whole collection go except for the JIM and the Thor and even that stuff doesn't really shine for me anymore. I do find it pretty funny to see Jane Foster dreaming about giving Thor a haircut or Ironing his cape. So, I don't think it's going down anytime soon. If you really need the money, I'd recommend turning it over to Bob Storm. I'm not seeing an advantage in going to auction. If you don't need the money, a 5.5 is a good chunk of change and could list at 60K. But right now, that grade seems pretty fluid to me going up, not down. . So are the prices for a young couple wanting a home.

well, the AF15 isn't rare. It may be the case that's only being bought by speculators. I simply don't know. What I do think has driven the prices has been the simple notion of supply and demand. There's a ton of people who want the book compared to how many there are. I expect that the 7.5 and higher grades will not market frequently given the census but the lower grades are moving right now with competitors trying to get into that action before the easier to buy books get swallowed up. That at least is what I see in the 4.0 that went for $35K last month. The book cost has really jumped since xmas. I would not auction the book right now. There are a number of dealers that offer better terms to the seller and buyer as well. The notion of a sellers fee at 8% and the buyers being 19% is cheeky. Blazing Bob is handling mine and I'm in good hands. Those premiums at auction are driving a lot of the final price.

I certainly think that it won't go down anytime soon and would think it's possible that it will stabilize eventually. That being said, a 4.0 sold for 35K a month back. Buy the book, not the grade . It strikes me that the book is not rare but that it's the case that so many people want the book compared to how many there are. CGC show a 1.8 with tape on it right now for 13K and a 2.5 for $9,900 restored. Restored never do all that well and it's a well loved (how to put it) example of the lower grades. Lots of chips in both books. It seems to me these days that it's about 10K per grading point until you get to 7.0.Then it takes off and the census on all the grades shows the rarity of each grade. No matter what you do, it's pricey.

Highgrade comics currently has my 5.0 and it is offered at $55K which is the price Bob suggested and he did not think it would take long to sell. It will go to the London show as well as Chicago and he's happy to put it out there. . I happen to agree about not being able to see the interior pages but the trouble with monetizing comics through grading companies is there's no access. In its own weird way it's like having unopened baseball card packs. I had the AF15 for about fifty years and it was not slabbed. I think it was read twice in that time, most recently by my son last December. I can only attest that the core is trouble free . He took a ton of pictures of it and posted them on Reddit but Reddit took them down over the question of copyright issues as I recall. He just put up too many pictures. I'm glad he got to do that. It might be the case that he still has those interior shots in his phone and I'll ask him. Owning an AF15 and actually reading it are two very different animals. I did take a number of scans of it before it was slabbed but it didn't occur to me to shoot the interior. Kind of dumb on my part.

I can certainly get the tonality of the color on the cover to change by messing with the Histogram in Photoshop cutting the low points on both ends. I sold my entire comic collection earlier this week and I did decide to retain all of the JIM and Thor's which were about 125 books mostly bought off the newsstand when I was a teenager. I just loved Thor. Seeing the mention of JIM 97, and the "Tales Of Asgard". I had not read it in close to five decades at least. I went and got it out and went through my aging copy. I love being able to read them. None of my books are slabbed now. In the Asgard story there's an interesting mistake. On page 3 of the Story, the lettering refers to the "Front Giants" which jumped right out at me. By Page 4, all was right near the rainbow bridge and they became Frost Giants" again. Like the Zohan, you don't want to mess with Front Giants from the National Weather Service..

I have a print book on "Animals in North America" which was a reasonably respectable resource for naturalists in 1934. It has photos of the "Eternal triangle" The Possum, the dog and the southern Darky" We too have quite the embarrassing history.

I will confess, I sold my entire collection of 850 plus books on wednesday. I kept my JIM and Thor which is about 125 books. I bought most off the stands but my early JIM I paid such prices as 5-12 bucks a book and they aren't in great condition. None are slabbed and I don't have an '83 since it cost about 40 dollars at the time. But I do start at 84 and feeling free of the pressure of the sale, I started re reading these things today. It's great . Right off, Thor fights south american commies. They call them "Reds" . Three issues later, he's got Jane Foster dreaming of taking care of Thor. She imagines cutting his hair, ironing his cape and ... polishing his hammer... ( and it was still approved by the CCA) thor fools Loki with a plastic version of himself. It's really nice to have these things as raw, not in great shape comparatively so I can just lean back and read them and 'marvel" over the innocence these things once had. I love seeing all these covers you are all putting out there. . They look way better than mine. My boy looks forward to the down payment on the house generated by the sale, and the eventual ownership of all this Norse Stuff. I still own my AF15 but I think Blazingbob will make short order of that. Thanks everyone.