MasterChief

I was surfing the current Promise copies listed on Heritage last night and noticed something rather interesting.

The following two books have distributor marks that look oddly alike. Both done in pencil, in the same location, and appear to be from the same hand. However, one is coded with a "K" and the other and "L" over the day and month.

Any ideas as to what the meaning may be?

15 hours ago, tth2 said:

By the way, the Wild West was my consignment, so thanks for winning it! It's a beauty! 

Nice to know where it came from! I am honored to be the caretaker going forward!

16 hours ago, tth2 said:

Mitch, this is the standard certificate that Heritage normally provides with some books.  It just means that Heritage will waive their normal 10% seller's commission, which is no big deal because Heritage almost always waives that anyways, often times without the consignor even asking for it.

But it means that without any further negotiation, Heritage keeps all of the BP.  So a book hammers for $1000, total price is $1200 inclusive of BP, and the consignor takes home $1000 and Heritage keeps $200.

Under the certificate with the Promise book, the consignor gets 90% of the total price inclusive of BP.  So under the same auction result above, the consignor now gets $1080 rather than $1000, and Heritage gets $120 instead of $200.  

It basically levels the playing field with CC and CL (in terms of auction fees) for anyone thinking about reselling a Promise book.

Thanks for the explanation, Tim. Very helpful.

While I've received these certs before, I've paid them no mind until Clark posted his (which I read in full). The language is curious. So much so I took a look at my other certs. Oddly enough, the certs for original art have different language from the Promise and Church. All of my art certs have the same wording...

21 hours ago, GreatCaesarsGhost said:

I ain’t no detective, but I think I’ve deduced Heritage’s plan to catch the secondary market. So when the first wave of buyers sell, why wouldn’t they go back thru Heritage?

 

I got a certificate from this auction, too. However, it was for a Mile High copy not a Promise copy, with different wording.

Anyone care to explain the difference in the two?

50 minutes ago, Pickie said:

3 hours ago, greggy said:

It got downgraded with the staple hole in the "A" in "Patrol"

Good catch! And the other two holes are beneath the red falling cube. So actually it was sealed with staples 

The paper appears somewhat frayed and discolored in both staple hole areas. Perhaps an indication of staple removal sometime after production? 

15 minutes ago, GreatCaesarsGhost said:

41 minutes ago, buttock said:

Yeesh.  If I read this correctly Hughes defaulted on over a half a million dollar deal with HA.  Then when HA tried to get what was owed to them from what Hughes had promised, turns out he owed that to MPH.  Then MPH and HA went to court to figure out which of them got to keep proceeds from this inventory?  Hughes was just robbing peter to pay paul?  And then Hughes has the gall to say that HA didn't pay him when he defaulted on $600K to them???  Is that correct?

You read this totally wrong. Ok, maybe not totally. But you are missing some pretty major stuff

Please explain in layman's terms. Thx.

On 6/20/2021 at 4:37 AM, buttock said:

On 6/20/2021 at 4:27 AM, GreatCaesarsGhost said:

Wow. I never knew any of this. Is this related to the parrino thing?

I think if this had any merit it would be in court instead of a D-level complaint website.  

Apparently, if I'm reading the court description correctly, there was some merit to Hughes' claim that went to arbitration and trail court with final adjudication by the Texas Court of Appeals. IMO, the event paints both Hughes and Heritage in seemingly bad light. Here's the verdict issued by the appellate court...

Re: Movie Poster House, Inc. v. Heritage Auctions, Inc. (morelaw.com)

3 hours ago, tth2 said:

Parrino actually had the right idea because he understood just how much market dynamics were going to change.  Jimbo pointed out earlier how the slabbed comics market has completely tracked the evolution of the slabbed coin market.  Parrino just messed up on the execution. 

First, he relied on less than scrupulous dealers who saw him as a cash cow to be exploited unmercifully. 

Second, although he had the right idea to buy the highest graded comics and recognized what an incredible phenomenon the Church collection was, he got directed into a lot of lesser titles that said unscrupulous dealers and their clients were only too happy to have found a victim to unload on.  I remember being awed when I first saw the listings of the Church All-Flash run, and then I snapped back to reality as I realized it was All-Flash.  The flaw with his focus on the Church books was that most of the owners of the key Church runs had no interest in selling and he couldn't persuade them to sell at any price, which is something he didn't anticipate.  

Wasn't one of Parrino's buying advisors Bill Hughes?

Hughes, from what I understand, wasn't the EF Hutton of comic books that Parrino was hoping for. Bought too much too quickly. Overpaid for a lot of material. Took major losses upon liquidation. The advisors, as they say, did quite well for themselves.   

I personally don’t know Bill Hughes. Always admired his books and liked looking at his website. One of the big players in the hobby, so to speak. Not sure if this has been discussed before, but it seems the worm turns quickly in the wacky world of comic books...

Complaint Review: Heritage Auctions
Submitted: Mon, May 26, 2014
Updated: Thu, July 17, 2014
Reported By: William Hughes

"Between 2001 and 2009 minimally, Heritage Auctions has used their vast financial resources, position in the collectibles industry and experience in manipulating the accounting of sales of consigned goods to steal, cheat and con clients who enter into consignment relationships with them in good faith. I personally entered into well over $3,000,000 worth of transactions with these crooks and ended up on the short end of the stick to the tune of hundreds of thousands, if not over a million dollars (I am still figuring out the magnitude of the deception and malfeasance on their part)..."

Link to original report and follow-up posts:

https://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/heritage-auctions/internet/heritage-auctions-heritage-comics-heritage-sports-collectibles-heritage-movie-posters-f-1149717#comment_7

9 hours ago, Funnybooks said:

I can attest that the winner of the PL 17 is not an outside speculator and is ingrained in the hobby. The other "big" PL's all now reside in the collection of a prominent collector very much connected with CgC and Heritage.

Jim Halperin?

I don't see any PLs in his private collection, but I suppose you never know how much of his stuff is actually listed on the website.

2 hours ago, Robot Man said:

I remember an esteemed boardie who no longer posts here had a Gaines File copy of MAD #1. It was the highest graded copy at the time. Then low and behold, two more copies in similar grade appeared on the census. He ended up selling it. I guess bragging rights wasn’t enough. I would kill to own any one of those...

Sounds like Mark Zaid. He was quite upset to learn his copy was joined by an apparent CPRed 9.6.

1 hour ago, reality_consensus said:

I recognized the coding on the front covers immediately, similar to those seen on several GA books obtained from a dealer who found around 150 books in a storage unit.

The Promise Collection books revealed thus far by Heritage have various covers markings, including two different distributor marks, each with and without the numeric month and day indicators. The "K" with the month/day inscription is the overall prominent marking.

The second distributor marking is the curly "C" with or without month/day. This particularly marking is interesting as it has similar characteristics to that of a distributor marking found on the Aurora pedigree. This may indicate that portions of the Promise Collection originated from the same western regional distributor as the Aurora books.
 

1 minute ago, sfcityduck said:

Where do you get that?  I've heard hard stop in 1950.

There are 3 promise books in the current auction with 1951 in the description. I have not checked but I suspect these books have late 1950 on-sale dates. Here's a link.

3 hours ago, sfcityduck said:

A cursive "Armand" written on this and other books.

So now we know three names to work with, Robert, Armand, and Junie, right?

Wrong.  

"Junie" is a nickname.  Heritage made this clear when they stated in the ad "His younger brother, known as Junie ...."

So now we're back to two names, right?  Yep.  And either or both of Robert or Armand could be first, middle or last names.

And guess what?  Over thirty to fourty thousand U.S. soldiers died during the Korean War (the number is still debated).  So you can't just scan a list.

The impression you should be getting from these comments is that we don't have a lot of info, and we have a lot of suspects.  So, again, I emphasize that I'm speculating.

But, there are ways to filter down our suspects to a manageable amount.

Fascinating stuff! 

By my count, 7 books currently display a word penciled in cursive. A few of these books are either accompanied by a short slash mark under the word and/or a distributor's mark. All of these books were published in 1949 with on-sale dates, per Grand Comics Database (GCD), between the months of May and August. The issues are listed below by the on-sale date (month/year), versus the CGC label month/year notation, in an effort to determine the proximity of the cursive word inscription.

True Crime Comics #6 5/49
Detective Comics #150 6/49
Captain America Comics #74 7/49*
Detective Comics #151 7/49
Marvel Tales #94 7/49*
Detective Comics #152 8/49
The Saint #7 8/49

Robert, according to the story, was drafted into service. The World War II draft operated from 1940 until 1946. In the wake of the escalating Cold War, President Truman in 1948 asks that the draft be reinstated as the level of military forces falls below necessary numbers. In 1949 the scrawled word appears on the cover of Promise Collection books. This may indicate that Junie followed his brother into service (enlisted). The conflict in Korean begins in June of 1950. One ships off to war, the other remains in the rear with the gear CONUS or OCONUS. Collection timeline ends in 1951. 

*GCD does not list an on-sale date. Distributor mark on cover indicates "7" for the month of arrival.

6 minutes ago, Badger said:

I am aware. Did you see Halperin's response to the Forbes' article? 

What Forbes didn't tell you.

 

Yes. And thanks for that. That was my next post.

3 hours ago, Badger said:

Just curious, but when you say things like this do you envision Jim Halperin walking the halls of CGC and saying, "That's a mighty fine book you're grading there. Be a shame if it were to be less than, oh say, a 9.8." How, exactly, do you think CGC lets the graders know that they should be lenient on a certain number of books? Is the grading carde marked? Does an email go out? Team meeting? Do you envision a tell-all book detailing all of the shady practices?

The conflict-of-interest accusations between Heritage and CGC are largely based on Jim Halperin's shady past in the rare coin world (grading and auctioning), which eventually led to run-ins with postal inspectors and the Federal Trade Commission. You can read about it in this Forbes article from 2004:

Top Drawer
by Christopher Helman, Forbes Staff

"Halperin, 52, is also probably the most controversial professional numismatist of all time. He has had brushes with postal inspectors, the Federal Trade Commission and coin dealers who have sued him for, among other things, sticking them with inflated prices. But then this is a profession that attracts controversy. With an estimated 130,000 U.S. collectors trading $5 billion worth of coins a year, the opportunity for mischief is considerable. A coin's value is exquisitely sensitive to how well it's preserved, and grading is highly subjective."

https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2004/1227/156.html?sh=617d33d82e07