MasterChief

14 hours ago, namisgr said:

MARVEL PREMIERE #4, CGC 9.6 NM+ Suscha News $1  -  $0  0  4/10/2020      In preview

Great looking MP#4!

Your 9.6 is the top copy from the Suscha collection. The other is a 9.4.

Interesting to note that the original owner only pulled two copies of MP#4 from the warehouse pallet. Whereas, 4 copies each of issue #1 through #3 were snagged and 1 copy of #5.

All copies have white pages with the exception of a single copy of MP#1. It has off-white to white pages.

Good luck in the auction. It's a beautiful specimen! 

Great information, Barton. Lots to digest. Interesting how the lack of high-grade esoteric books continues to reveal how demand, national distribution, local distributor wholesalers, and outlets willing to carry comics during the period may have impacted the sales through for these titles.

Here's a great article by Jim Shooter that might reveal some insight into the matter...

Comic Book Distribution
http://jimshooter.com/2011/11/comic-book-distribution.html/

Also, an interesting account about the origins of the direct market by Chuck Rozanski, which Shooter recommends reading...

Evolution of the Direct Market
https://www.milehighcomics.com/tales/cbg95.html

12 minutes ago, Ghost Town said:

True. True. True. And also, getting the PF set in registry probably played some part. Who was the insufficiently_thoughtful_person who kept bugging Gemma to create the PF set? I hate that guy

Yeah, the registry mastermind and the guy who got the thread pinned to the top of the forum should be shot. They've destroyed my savings account!     

2 hours ago, namisgr said:

Sales To Astonish

Picture Frame Marvels Market Report

Great report, Bob! Felt like I was reading an Overstreet market report.

I have always considered that this thread, down through the years, has generated a fair amount of interest in the PF books. So much so, more collectors are attuned to the uniqueness of the cover design, the 3D effect, and the time period in which they were produced. Hell, dealers and collectors for the most part never call them "picture frames", but they're called that now. And I believe this thread and its posters paid a large part in cementing that distinctive name.

3 hours ago, djpinkpanther67 said:

Nope. This was the only book I was after Congrats on the Daredevils. They finished strong. 

 

Fantastic copy, Thomas!  A true high-grade specimen from a great collection that survived the ravages of time unabated.

16 minutes ago, namisgr said:

With just one more day to go selling 71 high grade books at auction, I aim to pull together statistics on how the sale prices relate to prior figures recorded in GPAnalysis and Registry points established by CGC, highlighting surprises on both the high and low sides.  The market report for picture frame Marvels will be called:

Sales to Astonish

It should be pulled together and posted this weekend.  I hope my fellow collectors of this cool Bronze Age niche will find it useful as a gauge of the current high grade slabbed market.

Great title!

Looking forward to your statistical sales compilation.

This website is a pretty good source. It discusses the process and has several color palettes, such as:

I know exactly what you mean, Barton. When I took the color plunge I think I ruined my color perception. This is a little off the wall, but here's the post I made about my kaleidoscope trip 9 years ago (Wow, it's been that long?!? )

On 5/5/2011 at 7:01 PM, MasterChief said:

Sparked by comments made earlier regarding Picture Frame border colors,

I took the plunge into the CMYK spectrum in an attempt to quantify cover colors.

Quickly realizing I was drowning in a subtractive color model, and not wanting to spend countless

hours trying to identify original print colors by way of my RGB monitor, I backed away from any

attempt at being anal-retentively-precise and SWAGed by way through 389 cover images.

Now I'm pretty certain that black is black and white is white. And that red is red and yellow is yellow.

But when it came to some of the other 'colors', I wasn't so sure.

In any event, it is what it is.

And even with my middle-aged eyesight one can quickly see:

The Black Picture Frame Border was a favorite of the Merry Marvel Production Crew.

(Yes, I know... these are really useless facts. Get a life, MasterChief!)

 

1 hour ago, namisgr said:

There's a large effect on comic prices at the moment.  Back in January, I agreed to consign 79 comics to Comiclink for auction.  Of the 71 currently in the March auction, prices are running right now at 50% of GPA with 1-3 days to go.  Yes, a handful of the books will skyrocket on the final day, but compared to prices of picture frame comics 1-3 days before prior auctions closed there are a bunch of books destined to markedly underperform.  Who knew back in January?  At least I had the sense to offer only about a quarter of my collection in a single auction, wanting to see how the books fared.

It's far too early to tell how far the market will fall and how long it will be before prices are on an uptick again, but current world events and investment conditions are most definitely having a big impact now.

 

Sorry to hear about this, Bob. It's an unfortunate situation to say the least. Best of luck with the auction. 

1 hour ago, chezmtghut said:

Was that Action 1 sale for 3.2 million on eBay back in 2014 paid via Paypal? If the buyer accepts those terms as part of the sale, there’s no issue. I ask for Bank Wire on all of my big keys. 

Darren Adams did not specifically define payment methods for the Action Comics #1 eBay auction. Although bidders were required to be prequalified and, apparently, render a deposit via Paypal or credit card in order to be allowed to bid, the exact terms of payment were not listed in the auction description. Instead the following statement was included: “Payment terms are on a case-by-case basis. Please contact the seller for more information.” (See link below for the eBay auction page)

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Action-Comics-1-June-1938-Supermans-Debut-CGC-9-0-Perfect-White-Pages-/311050328393?pt=US_Comic_Books&hash=item486c0b5949

4 hours ago, Chicago Boy said:

Yet again Trimming is NOT Restoration. You r  not returning things to their original form—- you are taking paper away. Voldy IMO has it correct I’m sure people wud see it as a money grab or it would feasibly a liability but I wish CGC wud trade our PLOD for blue when trimming is the only piece of “ restoration “.  

If I’m not mistaken, the Overstreet Grading Guide, which is the closest thing the hobby has to a worldwide recognized industry standard, continues to classify trimming as restoration. So until such time as Overstreet changes the definition of restoration, trimming, and other restorative treatment procedures that have somehow transitioned into something other than currently defined by the standard, remain restoration regardless of what the individual collector, dealer or third-party grading company would like them to be.

1 hour ago, tth2 said:

I don't know, there's a very strong sheep mentality amongst collectors when it comes to CGC. 

They say a certain practice is okay, and the market quickly adopts it. 

They say a certain practice is not okay, and the market quickly shuns it.

They give a collection "pedigree" status, and suddenly it's prized by collectors.

They say a collection formerly given "pedigree" status is no longer a recognized pedigree, and suddenly collectors no longer prize the books.

They don't recognize a collection as a "pedigree" even though it should be a pedigree, and immediately everyone ceases to care about its provenance, and the origins of books from the collection quickly get lost as they get dispersed.

You've just written the outline for the executive summary of the Certification Age Report.

1 hour ago, lou_fine said:

Actually, the best thread to get the whole story on this fight between the two parties is this one here on the GA boards:

https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/topic/381951-theres-a-restored-94-tec-33-blowing-up-on-ebay/page/25/?tab=comments#comment-8958785

A massive thread that just came out after the Christmas of 2015 and it seem more like a case of "he said, she said" when you are given a window to view all of the dirty laundry that comes with a divorce or business breakup.  

After all, although we always seem to focus on the Meyers husband and wife team whenever we talk about the bad doings with IGB, it shouldn't be forgotten that the whole thing started out as a happy threesome.  If you read through the whole thread here, it's quite obvious that Matt and CGC were also quite involved with developing the process through the initial and possibly middle stages.  Unfortunately, for both parties involved, there was a breakdown somewhere along the line in this business relationship and they both went their own separate ways.  As par for the course with these types of breakups, each side coming up with completely different and oftentimes conflicting reasons for the eventual breakup.  Hard to say who to believe, but in cases like this, there is usually a bit of truth and lies on both sides.  

My bet is that if the process had come to a successful conclusion with Matt and CGC still having their hands in it at the end, we would not be saying the same things about these books.  In fact, I think both CGC and CCS would be spinning the story about how great these books are and would have already included this process as another one of their additional revenue streams by now.  And no doubt, we would also have people lining up to get their books done up and the buzz on the boards about these books would not be slanted as much as they are right now.  

Your conclusion is very perceptive.  

20 hours ago, tth2 said:

20 hours ago, lou_fine said:

20 hours ago, tth2 said:

Sometimes I DO love this hobby.

     ..............

Is this going to be your new tagline going forward?  

On those rare occasions when the people who've ruined this hobby get taken to the cleaners, yes! 

But unfortunately, those occasions are few and far between.

C'mon, Tim. Your moral compass is wound too tight. Live a little – they're just funny books.  

19 hours ago, Gotham Kid said:

19 hours ago, MasterChief said:

Nicely done!

So much of this stuff in the hobby, spanning all the years. Disgrace.

Edited 19 hours ago by Gotham Kid

So true. I've catalogued hundreds of manufactured books whose original certification numbers remain active within the CGC database. It would take weeks to collate and post the info like you did. 

49 minutes ago, Gotham Kid said:

I think @MasterChief will like this one too

 

Nicely done!

32 minutes ago, comicnoir said:

1 hour ago, lou_fine said:

Well, it looks like his mistake was going through all of that time consuming and tedious work involved with the whole CPR game facilitated by CGC.   

He simply should have gotten a hold of Anthony Chiofalo who probably would have paid him outrageous money for his books similar to this BW copy of All-Star #3:

https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/all-star-comics-3-billy-wright-pedigree-dc-1940-cgc-vf-85-off-white-to-white-pages/a/7054-91043.s?ic4=ListView-ShortDescription-071515

The winner of this Billy Wright book here paid only $49,293.75 for the book and ended up receiving $200,000 for it only a short week later through the Make An Offer To Owner feature that they have on the Heritage website.      

Definitely virtually impossible to beat a return of over 300% in only a week's time anywhere else.  

Yeah and if you look down it resold August of this year for $72,000.00. Massive loss for the guy who paid $200K. Loser.

Uh-hu, total loser. Disbarred lawyer, Anthony Chiofalo, embezzled over $9M from his employer and used the stolen money to buy comic books and other collectibles. Spent it all like a drunken sailor. He plead guilty and was sentenced to 40 years.    

18 minutes ago, Gotham Kid said:

1 hour ago, lou_fine said:

Interesting to note that the original purchaser of the BW copy must have lost big money on his copy as it was purchased for $83,650 on Heritage a few short months earlier back in February of 2012 during the initial auctioning of the Billy Wright Collection when it was listed as only a lower graded CGC 7.0 F/VF copy.    

This happened with several Billy Wright books.

  It's interesting to note that the Billy Wright copy of DC#29 was originally a 7.0. It was acquired along with at least 9 other BW copies at the same auction which were then apparently CPRed 3 months later (same submission group) and liquidated in less than a year after purchase (some as soon as three months after the initial auction). Whoever was behind it lost big $$$ for this particular flipping episode as these particular 9 books were acquired for $231,650 then liquidated for $190,602, a net loss of $41,048.   

28 minutes ago, Dark Knight said:

36 minutes ago, MasterChief said:

Perhaps I'm not using the reworked GPA interface correctly, but the last recorded sale I see for a 5.0 is $95,600 in May of 2018.

GPA doesnt record all data. Sometimes GA may be limited. GPA is best for SA and newer. A lot of the higher profiled books sell privately. 

Yup, I get that. My original comment was specifically in reference to a "GPA record price", not all sales public or private.