MAY1979

Big fan of this Aparo cover since I was a child. Love the scowl on Superman's face and the look of shock on the Flash. 

Perhaps Thor 282 would have become more of hot book after Loki TV, were there actually more than a small amount graded.  Almost like it was penalized for having a low census population

When mine came back from CGC in 2006 it was the only copy on the census.

On 10/13/2021 at 10:42 PM, MyNameIsLegion said:

if they had sold it, and not Albert, it would have come with fake cover dress, a sketchy story about "alternate cover"  and they probably would not have given his money back.

uhm, I have to go ask my brother.

Not sure why exactly but this has been a very fun topic to read. Thanks!

On 10/15/2021 at 2:48 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

Yes, and it's not even being marketed as the price variant it is. CGC missed it as usual too. It's the way of the world now, this sort of pricing, and it kills the average collector.

Excellent point! Those collectors are life-blood of the hobby. When (not if) the "speculators" and "social media hype crowd" dump and move-on, the loss of the hobbies life blood will be felt. Some will return, many will not.  When similar occurred in the 1993-1994 the effects rippled for near 3 decades. Comic Shops and new sales never recovered - never will. Changing paradigms would have done that anyhow but the 1990's speculation bust exasperated and hastened the effects.    What will the impact and extent of the effects the next bust be?  Especially with loss of hobby life-blood. It's not if a bust will occur, merely when.

On 10/14/2021 at 11:48 AM, valiantman said:

It has been a while since I updated the Direct vs. Newsstand comparison... here's the most recent 12 months on GPA.

Hi,

I'd really like to see the same chart for Thor 337. Please and thank u.   It's off-topic here but at NYCC and on eBay i see more 9.8 newsstands than direct sales. Likely for reasons we all know.

On 10/14/2021 at 1:25 PM, jjonahjameson11 said:

After reaching its peak at 8.5K for 9.8 blue, the book bottomed out around $5.5K and has steadily been on the rise to present day sales between $6.5-$7K.

the 9.8’s on clink will be interesting to note any strain on current upwards momentum.

Good to note the census increases as well. Seems to me each month many more ASM's 300's in high-grade are shoveled into the hobby. Won't take much of dip in demand to have that continuous never ending flow dilute the books value.  There won't be another Venom movie this January to stabilize value, I'd expect a drop.  Although the famous quote from John Maynard Keynes regarding irrational applies.

P.S. of course it's pretty much been a hot book for 34 years, however there are different degrees of hot.

On 10/14/2021 at 4:05 PM, Calm-Mix said:

I hear ya... I just thought with it being 20 years old,

Its pretty much 30 years old Time does fly...

On 10/14/2021 at 6:39 PM, valiantman said:

Here's a chart for the 26,000+ CGC graded copies of ASM #300, with estimates for the breakdown at each grade.

CGC doesn't identify the differences, and even if they started now, the CGC Census would always have 21 years of no distinction.

I'd be interested to know if the view from a convention floor for slabbed ASM #300 matches these ratios, or if dealers at conventions have a different sample than what's "out there".

I do recall seeing at least several Newsstands. Frankly the book was so ubiquitous, I just wanted to see something else, anything else

Other books that seemingly every comic dealer had multiples of CGC (and the occasional CBCS) 9.8's and 9.6's; ASM 361 (dirt common), Star Wars 42 (everywhere!),Thor 337, Secret Wars 8, Savage She-Hulk 1, WBN 1 most "high end" dealers had multiple copies,  ASM 362, ASM 316, ASM 301, Batman Adventures (first Harlequin).  Its why when i found a dealer who had not so common stuff I purchased a bunch of slabs The most common being a book with a 9.8 pop of 8.

I do wish the newsstand data was recorded by CGC, even if I'm not a direct sale era  newsstand collector, I'm just someone who happens to have a bunch of direct sale era newsstands.

I've been thinking about subscribing to either GPAnalysis.com or GoCollect. Do you have recommendation for a collector (not a dealer or a seller) that likes to analyze data? No issue if you'd rather not say. I was planning on trying each one out for month this winter.

On 10/14/2021 at 5:51 PM, valiantman said:

ASM #300 is almost like two different books, if you look at the counts and distributions for Direct Edition and Newsstand.  The fact that the prices are still pretty close at the high end is probably just a relic of the past, not an indication of the future.

On 10/14/2021 at 10:05 AM, MAR1979 said:

What I do know is this:

Amazing Spider-Man 300, 361 are the exact opposite of scarce. At a comic con there is nowhere you can point your eyes that you will not see at least 20 in 9.6 or 9.8 for sale. This includes the bath room stalls at NYCC where folks were hawking handfuls of CGC graded copies of those issues whilst I was releasing a brown trout into the wild.  Honestly there may not be 2 more plentiful books in high-grade on this planet.

Thor 337 also falls into the same category and that includes the Newsstand versions the only difference is they were not in the bathroom I used, only on the dealer floor.

 

 

 

But how many are correctly labeled and reported as newsstand?  Seems to me more a product of incomplete data.  

I have piles of CGC slabbed newsstands from the direct sale era not one denotes newsstand including my Canadians when I did everything correct on the submission forms - including adding a note!

I'm sure some will profit, or already are, on the incomplete data by claiming the newsstands are more rare than they truly are

BTW it was Thor 337 that my I mentioned the newsstands are common not the ASM's. I believe we both know reasons why for that book.

"Many years ago, I took a few days and made a note of which Gerber Scarcity Index went with which book in the CGC Census for my CGCdata.com database. "

Is that really your site? If so I owe you a debt of gratitude. I use it ALL the time.  Sometimes while eating lunch  

My sincere thanks for the service you provide!  

What I do know is this:

Amazing Spider-Man 300, 361 are the exact opposite of scarce. At a comic con there is nowhere you can point your eyes that you will not see at least 20 in 9.6 or 9.8 for sale. This includes the bath room stalls at NYCC where folks were hawking handfuls of CGC graded copies of those issues whilst I was releasing a brown trout into the wild.  Honestly there may not be 2 more plentiful books in high-grade on this planet.

Thor 337 also falls into the same category and that includes the Newsstand versions the only difference is they were not in the bathroom I used, only on the dealer floor.

Think this was at Heritage  Comic Connect/Metropolis

On 10/14/2021 at 7:59 AM, jaybuck43 said:

Ugh how did I screw up that price. Sorry!

Albert does put up some Eye catching pieces but it not common for him to "only" add a 10k piece to his wall. Unless we go back in time 10 years.

On 10/13/2021 at 2:34 PM, Jkelly said:

I hit up customer service to try and get an estimate and an explanation of whats going on with all these Moderns in the June range that have been sitting in G/E/I for weeks (If your submission was received in their system on June 14th, by my calculations we should have had our books back by September 30th. TATs were at 111 business days when we submitted back in May). 

Customer service gave me canned answers the first 3 back and forths and then they finally told me "End of November" would be when we get our books back. I'm not sure if they are just saying some far projection to get us off their backs or if that is real life. If thats true thats putting them almost 2 months past what their projections were back in June, and currently their TATs have gone down to 106. Nothing makes sense at this company. In my experience the past year, their TAT's are fairly spot on and I've never sat in G/E/I for more than two weeks on modern.

I have an order (25 subbed) sent early April - arrived to their PO Box April 22 , marked as received June 14, sitting in G/E/I  since Sept 17.

I do hope if CGC ever ships it back to me that they send it to the correct person(me)/address(mine) as have been reading some horror stories in other areas of this board

On 10/13/2021 at 1:36 PM, Bird said:

I definitely hold myself to a high standard regarding honesty.

BUT...

I once ordered some page from Tim Townsend, the inker. Chris Bachalo Spider-Man pages. I got a few but received two extra. I thought long and hard about whether they were a gift for the order (not likely, they were nice pages) or just a mistake. So after about 90 seconds of agony I realized they had to be returned. But it was a tough 90 or so seconds.

I did receive an extra page once from an Artist. Contacted him and was told it was gift for my large volume purchase.  It's totally plausible it could have been the case, and totally human to think what you did at first glance.

On 10/12/2021 at 11:26 PM, Varanis said:

I heard $10,000 but I'm not certain. Whatever the price was, it would have been a give away to most here it wasn't the original - not too hard to imagine someone less informed on the OA market thinking it was the real deal though.

Albert keeps much higher value items in the portfolios on the table.  Odd for him to keep such a "low" value item on the wall.

On 10/13/2021 at 1:12 PM, slowdowntubby said:

CGC has been informed. They are working on it.

The book I received instead of my actual submission is a 2015 issue of the Twilight Zone with 15 signatures.

So while it was likley a "labor of love" probably for an old-timer, still they may rather keep the 20K or so in books they received instead.  Not sure what the legalities are here given multiple countries involved but seems to me that the person will need to voluntarily admit they received the books then send them back. The former may never have occurred and if so difficult if not impossible to prove. 

All that said most old school COLLECTORS are honest.

FWIW I do very much hope the situation is resolved to your satisfaction!

On 10/12/2021 at 7:11 PM, wombat said:

There is no way on earth CGC isn't 100% responsible for this. It would be absolutely shocking if they don't make this right. 

CGC is riding very high on the hog right now, sadly as such I'd be surprised if anywhere near true current market remuneration  is provided. If they do actually make good without nickel and dime-ing the submitter, Kudos it will put them ahead of PSA in terms of Professionalism and Customer service/satisfaction.

On 10/12/2021 at 7:27 PM, Qalyar said:

For those curious about items like this, there were also 3 issues distributed by Lionel Play World. They are not common books.

None in CGC census. Not listed in Overstreet.  As rare as Elson's are, the Play World's seem much more scarce. My memory was of the Elson's however so glad i have one in High Grade slab. 

Found some images of the Play World, cover except for name in upper left corner are same as Elson's. The Series #1 copy is on uPay.

On 10/10/2021 at 4:42 PM, Rick2you2 said:

Not necessarily. The Ross Andru art advertisement showing the Phantom Stranger and Dr. Thirteen for $2,000 was something The Brothers weren’t able to unload for years at $1,600. And, that is a piece with low growth potential. 🦨

Was referring to market manipulation via shilling, thus the wink at end of the post 

But yeah like with Comics a good amount of DC stuff has low growth potential.  The way I look at it is; with exception for a few DC characters (Batman, Harley Quin, Joker and some others), major DC characters rank below minor Marvel in terms of growth potential. All that does not take into account artist and other variables but DC is simply not in Marvel's league. Wish it was as DC  represents probably near 2/3's of my art and comics collection. Of course the reason for that was lower price to begin with...

Only the newsstand would do for me on this book.  Was hoping for an older slab for aesthetic reasons but glad I grabbed it before it jumped in price.  The book seemed to jump overnight from $50-$75 to near triple that for the direct sale. 

As a child this was of my earliest direct sale books. So perhaps the newsstand is only a place holder? Actually probably not.