jimbo_7071

1. Church 2. San Francisco 3. Ohio 4. Lost Valley 5. Billy Wright

It looks kind of weird. To me it looks like a tape pull that somebody tried to color touch, but I don't think that CGC wouldn't have given it a blue label if it were that.

What's going on with the L in the logo? Tape pull? Resto removal? I can't tell.

Armored tank to armor.

There are no flies on most long-time collectors, so with the high prices, I think you'll see a lot of guys selling any books that aren't essential to their collections. I'm very tempted to do that, but I've gotten too attached to my books, even the lousy ones.

I used to own two copies of ASM 252. (I sold them for a few dollars each over 20 years ago when I got out of Copper/moderns.) That was a book that practically every Marvel collector was saving from the day it showed up on the rack. I don't know what the print run was, but there must be a massive number of raw copies still out there in very high grades. Maybe the newsstand edition is scarcer than the DM edition, but I'm not sure about that. When that book came out, there was still a spinner rack in every corner store (but a lot of books got spine ticks flopping around on those spinner racks).

Sexual predator to sexual predator.

So, we have an adolescent boy who dreams about dominating muscle-bound grown men . . . interesting. From boy controlling men to boy and man controlling puppets.

Larger-than-life half-naked guy to larger-than-life fully clothed guy.

Many of the Promise books were very generously graded, especially the books that sold in the first couple of Signature auctions on Heritage (and in the weekly auctions in between). Books that looked 7.5 or 8.0 were getting grades of 9.2 or 9.4 or even higher. Here are a couple of examples; there are many, many others. (Note the rat chews on the corners of the Mary Marvel.)

Big flame to little flame.

I think the hobby has "jumped the shark."

The book has nice eye appeal for a 5.5. Also, with very scarce books, you don't necessarily see as steep of a price-grade curve as you do with more common books. ETA: It looks like most of the defects are on the back cover, and quite a few collectors dig books like that.

I'm not saying that HA is going to go easy on the in-house grading, but this one would be an 8.0 if it were a Promise book (knocked down six increments from 9.8 due to "minor chipping").

I don't think you'll see a book with a big chew get submitted unless it's a key.

For old-school GA collectors, yes, but most of the new collectors seem to be all about the Marvel and DC universes.

Is there anything that hasn't been selling for strong prices lately?

They mentioned at one time that many of the books had rodent chews. Some could be worse than what we've seen.

Hungry plant to hungry plant.

Raggedy clothes to Raggedy Ann & Andy.

Yes, I think the IRS is going to be cracking down on things like entrepreneurs (including dealers) buying books for their personal collections and booking them as "inventory" and using them to reduce their net profits. Twenty years ago it was a free-for-all; now the IRS is getting more sophisticated about catching things like that. I can't imagine those shenanigans are common enough to have a significant impact, though.

I'd like to see a correction, but I don't see it happening right away. I don't think people will still be collecting comic books one hundred years from now, so at some point values will start to move downward, but the big move won't be for decades. There are some guys in the GA forum who are 60 or over; those guys certainly don't have anything to worry about.

Looking for one to lost one.

There could be a few guys like that who have entered the hobby, but I doubt there are enough to fully explain the recent trends. A lot of people are staying at home—bored to death—and spending their cash on everything and everything. In 2020, people were allowed to take $100K out of their 401Ks early without the usual 10% penalty, and a lot of people did. Interest rates are low, so some people are taking equity out of their homes. People are working from home and saving money by not paying for day care, not traveling, not eating out, etc., etc. They have money, and money burns holes in a lot of people's pockets. Regardless of what's going on with crypto and the stock market, I don't think the various collectibles bubbles will be popping quite yet because the circumstances that helped to create them won't go away until the pandemic is in our rearview mirror. With comics, moderns will probably be the canary in the mine. Other bubbles (BA, SA, GA, OA) will not pop before that one.

Woman annoyed with a cad and a bounder to woman annoyed with a cad and a bounder.