jimbo_7071

Bid your max beforehand and then don't watch the auction. HA has auctioneering down to a science. During the auction they have bells, buzzers, a virtual auctioneer, and flashing red lights all sending signals to your brain saying, "Life will never, ever be even a little bit good ever again if you don't purchase—strike that—if you don't WIN this particular book at this particular moment." MK Ultra had nothing on the folks at Heritage.

Re. PL17: I wish you hadn't said that. The more I gaze into her eyes, the more I'm tempted to add that book to my want list—which could prove costly.

42 + 5.5 = 41 + 6.5. Green cover with white pages to green top edge with white pages.

You never said that the GGA had to be on a cover, so here is some interior art by Nicholas Viscardi. (He would have been 21 years old when he produced this centerfold!)

I picked up one beater that was not in a CGC holder and was not close to the top of the census. The high-grade books that I was tracking were too far out of line with previous sales for my comfort level. I picked up this book because my one and only contribution to the Grand Comics Database was my observation that the cover depicts a story from the ninth issue.

I almost bought the Black Cat 35 Mile High copy from cheetah several years ago, but then my brother went into the hospital because of a suicide attempt, and I got distracted from comics for a few weeks. I guess Gabe must have bought it. I was thinking about bidding on it, but it's already at $6K! I never dreamt that it would go that high, I'm definitely out of the running.

Busting through masonry to busting through masonry.

There are high grade horror books out there with nice pages, but many of them are still raw. Doesn't Flex Mentallo—is his name Michael? I can't remember—have a collection of killer high-grade horror books with nice pages? Early 50s romance, on the other hand . . . those seem to be genuinely rare. Maybe the print runs were small to begin with.

Webb back to web.

My take on it is that if I'm going to buy a book with extensive restoration, then I might as well just buy a reprint for $10.

Web to web.

With extensive resto, my guess would be $20—$30K. What's your prediction?

I wonder how much the person who writes the copy for CLink's auction listings makes. The exuberance and enthusiasm in some of those listings is so over the top that I'm sometimes not sure whether the person is serious or is trying to be funny. (I have actually laughed out loud more than once while reading CLink listings.)

They're benefitting from the hype right now. If they wait too long, prices will cool off, and they'll lose whatever they would have gained by having the books slabbed. It makes sense to bring as many books as possible to market quickly.

Yours, I assume? I personally wouldn't bid on a book if hoarding has affected the value in recent years—that's a bubble that could pop at any time, in my opinion—but I'm sure it will sell for more than guide. I'm certain that Catman 15s are being hoarded, too. I don't know who's doing the hoarding, but it's been going on for quite a while. The reason why I say that is because in the past 20 years, I've never seen the same copy offered for sale a second time. That's pretty unusual, even for rare books. I've also seen enough raw copies to know that even though it isn't a common issue, it isn't nearly as scarce as the census would suggest. So either multiple copies are being hoarded by the same person, or every single copy that has sold in a public auction has been locked away in a different private collection with little to no turnover. My money is on the former scenario. Others are free to disagree.

I guess they're hoping to find a buyer who's asleep at the switch and won't notice the missing corner. But can you honestly say that you're surprised that a company that would hire Muck Wilson would re-list that book?

I found out that Doug Schmell's grandfather was featured in an early Ellery Queen strip.

Baker gal in the air to Baker gal in the water.

Counting backwards to 19.

That always seems to happen.

There are 8 copies in the census, partly because the guide value is low. (I'm slightly surprised that someone slabbed a VG+.)

Unpleasant encounter to unpleasant encounter.

Teen-Age Romances to Youthful Romances.

Baddie being knocked off of a ledge to his likely death to baddie being dumped out of a car to his likely death.