Glassman10

well, I looked at  a thread in selling a lot of ASM and I'm taking a long hard look at the grades and I think I'm harder on myself grading raw  than that thread, so now, I'm just that much more cautious. It took about an hour just to find all the ASM and get them in sequence. Now I have to turn a hard eye to grading well over 100 of them.  I've learned a lot about grading objectivity since December. My fundamental problem is that I really prefer selling as a title and then moving to the next one. As I said I'm not in a hurry. I continue to learn a lot and I can see the differing points of view about the sales. I still want someone who wants it who doesn't just want to move it to the next person. I've had that AF 15 for fifty years.  Think on that. That's a long time. 

And the tomb of Dracula #1 popped up. It's gorgeous.

10 hours ago, Artboy99 said:

actually money would make the trip easier, as to travel across the river form of Styx you had to give a coin to the dead to pay a toll so you could ride on the ferry.

well, when I kick off I had planned to be buried with all my remotes and some  fresh batteries.  Maybe that Tomb of Dracula #1 for short term entertainment. 

4 hours ago, bighairjer said:

.  Hopefully he'll start a kudos thread because he is a great guy to  work with.  Waiting for the epic sales thread 

See, I hardly know what that thread is and it seems to be a 60 some page cattle call. I have no notion of where a little collector turned minor seller fits in there.  The same holds true on Ebay. Without tons of sales, your credibility is suspect no matter what. So, the CGC monetizer becomes the arbiter.  The bulk of what I have can't justify slabs but it doesn't mean it's junk at all. 

The main thing that separates the wealthy from the poor in this country is bankroll, inheritance, whatever you want to call it.  It is clear to me that it takes money to make money and apparently money is the thing to be pursued in life. That fails to offer much consolation at 67 for whatever reason while being assessed as just an estate target. . Money won't make the trip across the river Styx easier. Kindness might. I cannot believe how fast the trip from a kid to an old man was.  Be kind, really.  Now? I need to go mow 14 acres. 

well thanks for that. I am somewhat computer challenged and have yet to figure out how to post from either a scan or a phone. At this point I'm pleased if I can send an email. 

I just sold my very first book to Jeremy, an ASM 129 in an 8.5. He was straightforward and very easy to deal with. He seemed to be a happy camper as well

Glasman10

33 minutes ago, KEY ISSUES Comics said:

Speaking for myself in my region only, I have to say that collections--complete collections of quality material--have dried up, or at least are more difficult to obtain due to increased competition. Everyone and their grandmother thinks they're a dealer these days. Flippers are everywhere now due to the increased awareness. 

Also, there are fewer collections being 'made' these days. Younger people with money are buying select keys and hype books that they in turn attempt to flip. They're not building runs and true collections like the generations that preceded them. Therefore, they have to much lose short term by selling to dealers because they haven't held onto these keys/hot books long enough for them to appreciate enough to the point where they are willing to settle for 50-70% of current FMV. Instead they sell them directly to the end user. 

Having said that, I think many small-time dealers will likely close-up shop in the years to come as the movie hype era dies down. Every character will have appeared in a movie and/or TV series before long and prices will reach a sort of equilibrium and there will be fewer opportunities for breakout issues for flippers to capitalize upon.

That's just my gut instinct. I could be completely wrong about this. What do you folks think?

well, i think it all went down hill when the Mom's of America stopped throwing all this stuff out when decontaminating Junior's room. That's what happened to my comics from the golden age. I was 1000 miles from home before I kicked in again in a mom proof closet. At this point everything from the '80's on have to be 9.6 to sell at all. So, that needs a slab and many think it needs a press. The reality is that thee's a bazillion copies out there. My AF15? One of about 110 at a 5.0.

Full collections would be tough. I remember when the Silver Surfer #4 failed to show up at the bus depot. I couldn't find it in Albuquerque either. So, I never had Thor and SS fighting over parking places or whatever. Low distribution I was told.  At that time recall that if you had marvel subscriptions, they indeed showed up every month- folded. Nice touch.  The number of dealers will be determined by demand and mark up plus at least an ounce of passion. In the art world, galleries are closing left and right as the people who collected in the '60's and '70's are trying to downsize, not get more. And candidly the internet has changed everything in marketing as well as total lack of trust.  (Read :"I'm not a professional grader but...). Googling virtually anything these days turns up some product. I was at Amazon yesterday and went for bee keeping outfits. There were no less than 30 entries. I would not want to do brick and mortar based on that. Comic Cons are a direct way to sell indeed. Holding the book in your hands is real.  But flipping books from the '90's and newer? I think you'd be better off flipping forever stamps from the post office. 

7 hours ago, piper said:

Well said. I hope glassman tries to sell some books on the boards.

It is a very good summation  and I don't disagree a whole lot with the argument as presented but I would point out that as buyers, if you expect to flip the books immediately, then there must be decent connections to that  FMV market readily available or you wouldn't buy any of them. So, buyers have entered a business model that relies on sellers being kind of desperate, which I'm not. I would think that marvel collection from 67-74 were in general pretty good stuff to have in decent shape

I would not want to be in a business flipping comics or houses or antiques in general unless I was willing to hold onto them for a long time but there's a lot of glee here when someone really scores on someone else's efforts or perhaps necessity .  I own stocks and they have gone up extremely well in the last 8 years and currently I have no basis to think I want to sell them . Eight years ago, I would have been devastated to have been forced there.

 Comics are different and it's simply the case that they don't age well. But there's a reality here on how they get monetized. First is paying to press something probably not worth pressing and then the fees for grading. A common book sells you the graders notes for five bucks. the AF15? That's fifteen bucks.  Why is that? A better pencil?  The system is structured to allow the barnacles on the hull to do quite well. I am continually fascinated by people slabbing books that bring a 2.0 and they weren't valuable to begin with. Slabs from the 1990's really? In actuality, I find the whole thing distasteful since I was simply a kid who loved Marvel superheros with feet of clay.  I am willing to pass that along to someone who would love them the same way if possible. 

But do try to keep in mind that the origin of this thread was "Collections drying up" with great mention of estate sales and old geezers coughing up stuff to be monetized but never cherished.  It's appears to be a big churn . I'll watch the WTB and kick in when I think it's worth it. I did that with the 129. I hope I can do it with the AF15 and a number of others . I would be interested if the 129 owner  will pipe up since his slab arrived there yesterday.  

1 hour ago, 1Cool said:

Isn't a ASM 129 CGC 8.5 a $1,000 book (per GPA) - so you sold your copy for 5% less then GPA and it was a deal? 

Given the amount I would have to pay either ebay or an auction house, it would nick me for $100, leaving me 900.00. $950 was in my mind the best I was going to do and the buyer was a happy camper. If I went with the vulture like assessment of value expressed here by some, which I think they need to run a business , you would think I should pay someone to haul it off. So, no, it's not full GPA. The replies I see here suggest that Overstreet is not reliable and I can certainly see that based on their descriptions of grading alone . If the value  in the book is only useful to the wholesale dealer, the book has relatively zero value for someone collecting beyond simple reference material. .

The question that I really have is whether the CGC board is inhabited solely by people flipping books or whether there are people who actually want to buy books and keep them but would like to buy at an attractive  price. That is how the sale of the 129 went.  I can see taking 70% of the GPA  on, say, an ASM 14 but I'd be hard pressed  to take 70% value on an AF15 given the demand. If the auction house is going to take 8 percent from the seller and then take another 15 percent more from the buyer It seems to me that there's room for everyone to find the happy price. It would only work if there are collectors and not simply jobbers. My sense of the board is that there aren't a lot of collectors here when you compare to the middlemen.  

So, if the collection is worth, say 40K theoretically, then take away the AF15 and figure the remainder to be at about 5K based on where I suspect this book could sell and I think it will likely continue to rise. I have enough other keys that would get me to the 40K number and I would still have 850 books left which it sounds like to me I could just chuck in a dumpster given the effort it would take to sell them.  It's probably the case that if I offered , say the entire ASM collection, or FF4  or whatever, that I have as a bundle that it would go OK. The AF alone will put me close to where I want to be.

So, now I've become my own enemy in the instant that I calculate... 

Actually, I consider" fair" to be 60 to 70 percent of list. This is mostly silver age and some bronze up to '74.

I prefer to sell  the AF 15 to someone who actually wants the book, not someone who wants to flip it.  That leaves me a lot of latitude on the others. I'm not in any hurry. It may go to auction, it may not. I sold an ASM 129 last week for $950 to someone who really wanted it in an 8.5. We were both happy with that deal. My 9.4 will cost more as will the ASM16 in a 9.0. It's not a junk pile. I can be selective too. 

11 minutes ago, piper said:

Some comic shops will sell on consignment.

I make glass. On occasion, I used to sell stuff on consignment to stores and galleries. I had a policy that I wanted to completely change out that inventory once a year to "freshen " the display. What was always interesting would be how slow the sales were in the months leading up to the big switch and there would be a huge flurry of sales that "Just happened".  Thinking about consigning that many books and tracking them puts bees in my head. 

25 minutes ago, 1Cool said:

Just curious - you had a dealer help you bag and board the books but they have not offered to buy them or connect you to someone who could buy them?  I thinking a huge group of people would (myself included) would love to have a Tomb of Dracula 1 in nice shape and would be willing to pay well for books like that.  If you had a collection of 1,000 books that contained books like complete sets of Cable or Power Pack then you would get picked to death since some people may want a Power Pack 1 but the rest are $1 books at best.  You should have no problem selling your collection at a good portion of current FMV if you think TOD 1 is a hard to sell book.

I think I responded to this in a PM. It became a very curious story once Shanghai got involved. 

I'm looking at selling my entire collection but  not at a drastic discount. I'm not in a hurry, don't desperately need the money and have about 1000 books from 1967 to about 1974. It includes some nice keys. Only a few are slabbed and most were kept in boxes over 45-50 years. Now with the great help of a dealer in Maine, they are all backed and bagged.  While the collection has  Highly sought after keys like AF 15 in a 5.0 slabbed among others, The real difficulty for me is the stuff that isn't super valuable but based in either GPA or Overstreet would pull 30- 60 dollars retail individually. When you have about 850 like that, it adds up and selling off is an issue and I'm not willing to do ebay simply because I don't trust it.  Selling individual books ( which I've done) bring a good price if I take off ten percent which I would have coughed up in auction or on the bay. Selling here would take forever and the books get cherry picked leaving stuff that technically has value but few want ( Tomb of Dracula #1 perfect anyone?).  There's the problem for me. Every time I bring this up, I do get inquiries  understandably. I plan to auction the AF15 around christmas since I think it will have a good return then . The rest, as a collection is what the initial post described. A good sized collection held by a 67 year old forever and wanting to sell it off but to not do it cheap. Fair, not cheap.    It's enough books that they still have yet to be inventoried.

So Heritage had an auction with an AF 15 in a 4.0 last month and it appeared to have been sold at about $35K. It went into a listing in GPAnalysis as a 35K. The sale date was I believe May 6th although I'm not positive. Then, earlier this week, the listing changed and it showed it was sold for $30,500 and I am assuming it was the same book.  Auctions are not something I particularly understand, especially after looking at this. Can anyone help me out and explain what occurred here? I understand the notions of both buyer's and seller's premiums but have thought the final price would include the buyer premium since that was the actual price paid.  Did some one default here or what?

A well loved book. I agree at 3.5

The ASM 121 has a lot of medium spine checking which to me is the worst near Aunt May. The corners are somewhat rounded.There is some sort of stain near the lower right of "Turning point" and it appears to extend up to Spideys foot so it's large. The upper right corner appears to have a slight color break. The back is dirty with reasonably good corners.  On the 121, I'd give a 6.5 to a 7.0 mostly for stains and ticks.

The 122 has some sort of gouging where the staple was going into that full moon. The back looks fine. The spine is better. Overall a better book than the 121 but the staple missing is a killer. 

6.0 or less. 

On my 129 I just sold I had two copies, one a 9.4 and one an 8.5  The one thing that brought the lower one down was a single small stain on the back or so I believe. I have both of the books you wanted graded and I've often wondered why they don't command a better price than they do. Given that, it's hard to justify a press. 

Ah, "Ticked off " comics. They need to be read more regularly...

It seems to me a this point that when a book is stored in a stack, particularly raw with no backer board That the spines are somewhat thicker than the rest of the book and cumulatively it puts some stress on the spine . Then, if you pick the book up holding the backside with four fingers and your thumb on the front cover holding it down- that's where spine ticks get a foothold. It crinkles the book just a touch but in older books that don't have the elasticity of brand new ones, it starts a tick, maybe two. Where they happen would I imagine depend on how the book was held. I certainly made the mistake of keeping my books in stacks of usually 125 or so. I simply had no idea and notions of protecting comics in 1968 were not something anyone I knew cared about.  So, over the decades in storage they deteriorated some. It's sad but  it's what happened.  I have quite a number that are still wonderful but could have been monetarily more wonderful if I had known how to keep them. I still dislike slabs a lot. I let my son read the AF15 before it went in one and I caught a lot of heat for doing that.  He was really careful . For around fifty  years it's just been in a box. At least it was in a mylar bag that's all yellowing now. I'm yellowing too. That's life. 

10 hours ago, SteppinRazor said:

.  I'm glad you have a couple.  And had the foresight and care to avoid spine tics for so long.  My comics seem to get them if you look at them too long.  I should probably stop doing that.

Oh, you're right. Enjoying them is out of the question..

On 6/7/2017 at 8:32 PM, SteppinRazor said:

The first one, I don't know how to judge the cover tears, but I'd assume with a complete book inside and an attached cover is at least a 1.5.

The second, if the bottom right corner is a tear and not a folded over corner, that's kind of a body blow to the grade.  3.0 is probably right on that.  If it's folded over, I think 4.0.

On the third, the back cover hurts you.  The non spine side looks creased.  Since it's in the mylar I can't tell if it's a reflection, but the bottom quarter of that side also looks like it has two small color breaks/tears.  I'll hold off until it's determined if those are reflections or tears.

Bingo

17 minutes ago, BuscemasAvengers said:

I'm at a 4.5-5.0 ... a few too many creases and ticks to put it as a 5.5 ... last GPA for a 5.0: $29,500.00 (that's a lot of bacon) ... best of luck!

last sale of a 4.0 was $35,500!

 That includes the pork chops.

Maybe the 21.00 was in pesos!

I do think it's better than my 5.0, not a lot, but enough unless I'm really missing something. The staples are not as good. I don't offer estimates unless I Own the book. 

bid the book, not the grade.

so far the critiques are fair and accurate. I would tend to a 6.0.

GPAnalysis shows in may , a 6.5 went at $515.00, a new low while the high this year is a $699.00

A 6.0 went at  $600 in june so the cost bump is not a lot. Pressing and slabbing will not be inexpensive.  If you went to auction, there's another 10%.

I have that book as a 5.0 and I think yours is a bit better than mine. There are no shots of the pages at all so a description would be needed as to page color and whether there are any tears on the pages and how the staples sit in the centerfold. The covers both seem to have some stains. None really severe but not small. The color checks are typical of a book in the 5.0 grade but it has no chipping. I can't tell if the color break above the "A" in Amazing is a color break or actually a tear. It matters.  I really don't know if the 21.00 sticker on the back hurts value.As it sits, a 5.0-5.5. I don't see where it could pull a 6.0 even if pressed and the interior could bring it down but we can't see it. 

Whoever owns it should be a happy camper. 

On 6/9/2017 at 6:22 PM, SteppinRazor said:

0 spine tics is a tall order for a book that old.

I think you're right. I just sold an 8.5 of this book and it has no spine ticks at all. I have a 9.4 that doesn't have them either. I cheated, I bought them off the news stand in 1974 and just put them away until this last winter. I've never opened the 9.4. I guess I never will.  It did get opened when it was slabbed and graded, or at least I assume it did. I wish I had bought every one on that stand but I limited myself to five dollars a month and comics had gotten expensive. I think at that time, my apartment rent was 80 dollars.