jimbo_7071

Dragon to dragon.

That price was just about what an 8.5 sold for around the same time, so that was a high price indeed. I don't think I've ever seen the 9.2 copy that's in the census. Does anybody know who owns that one?

12 to 13.

I agree that rusty staples should be replaced, but unfortunately the market punishes replaced staples more than it punishes rust.

Sure, you can make money buying wholesale and selling retail if you're willing to put in the time and beat the bushes for collections, but then you're a dealer; that's a different scenario. I've made money on some comics and lost money on others; I can say the same about stocks. I'm guessing you haven't been collecting long enough to know what a downturn in the hobby is like; you've only seen the good times.

Maybe in theory they could do that, but I've never heard of it. They don't care about collectibles. Their goal is high liquidity and low risk; comic books are the opposite. I don't think there's a money manager on the planet who's pushing comic books unless it's some guy who got his CFM certificate by mailing in Cheerios box tops and now works out of his parents' basement looking for clients on reddit.

I've never heard of any money managers treating comic books as a serious investment. Some collectors do, but professional money managers are way more risk-averse than that. Comic books are still very volatile. I've seen high-grade pedigree books lose two-thirds of their value over just a few years—I've seen it many, many times. Take the Mile High Green Lanterns, for example. I know that Bill Hughes and a few other guys have tried to push comic books as serious investments, but most people recognize the volatility. Mega keys were pretty safe for a long time (and probably still are), but most books are very, very risky as long-term investments.

I don't get it. I don't even buy books with cream-to-off-white pages. I've bought raw books that turned out to have C/OW pages, and I don't throw them away or anything like that, but I've never purchased a slabbed book with a cream-to-off-white designation.

Weird Tales of Terror to Weird Horrors, 8 back to 7.

Number 3 to number 4.

Fire to water.

Punch to punch.

Bookend to bookend.

Skeleton hands to creepy hands.

White hat to black hat.

Turbans to hoods.

Tiger Girl falling from a tree limb to Sheena well balanced on a tree limb.

DC Romance to DC Romance.

Bookend to bookend.

Not a well drawn one, anyway. The lantern jaw on the character in blue makes me think it was meant to be Mussolini, which might suggest that the other two characters were meant to be Hitler and Hirohito or Tojo. I'm undecided about that one and about the Speed 16. The German soldier does appear to have a square mustache, but I'm not sure that automatically means it's supposed to be Hitler.

11/45 to 11/45.

Flame to flame.

Cold to cold.

Arabia to the desert.

It sounds like the book meets the criteria for a FAIR, but the protocol in the hobby, for as long as I can remember—granted my memory doesn't go back as far as yours, fifties—has been disclosure of significant defects like pieces missing or a split centerfold (which probably means that the pages are brittle). In the old (catalog) days, all significant defects would have been noted; now that scans are the norm, sellers might not be expected to note defects that are visible in the scans, but interior defects should still be noted. One of my biggest gripes about HA is that they don't note the page quality of raw books. (To me page quality is more important than grade.)