Artboy99

When I was trying to find my copy of Planet Comics 15, all I could find were copies with brittle pages. 2.5, 3.0, raw 2.0, raw 1.5, etc but they all had brittle pages. I eventually found my CGC 1.5 with off-white pages. I think encapsulation can make someone choose a very nice presenting book that might have significant tanning because they won't open it and risk the book falling apart.

Very nice page congrats! I put in a bid as well. I really wanted the Gale Allen page, it is a beauty. I wonder who got it?

The "Berk Buzz" is what I am calling this evening. It has been a lot of fun. I think I have 12 PM chats going, and 10+ auction pages open watching. Great fun.

Yes because it can go on and on like the auction I was involved in for a Punch Comics 12 that was 45 minutes long. It is great as a seller though.

quite the marathon between the deep pockets....

Same! I was after the Planet 24 splash and was under bidder. I was 3rd on the Gale Allen black splash ( what a beautiful page! )

LOL! Indeed they can.

I am happy to say I have added an original art page to my Planet Comics collection. No not the Planet Comics #1 page but I did win this page. Some great panels definitive of Planet Comics:

I wish I could say I won the Planet Comics 1 page, but alas. I even tried for 2 of the Splash pages, but lost out on those as well being under bidder on the Mars splash to Planet 24. With great delight I can say I did win this page which has some great panels. I am very happy.

It was a very disappointing show. Our 50% off section did ok, our 0.25 c books did very poorly we only sold 1.5 longs of the 8 we brought. We likely would have done just as well pricing them at $1 each selling less of them but yielding more profit. The quality of the 0.25 books was not great I will say and that is a factor. The thing is, around these parts where it is winter 7 months of the year, the June shows are always the worst.

We have 200 long in Dave's basement ( sorry Dave! I need to buy a bigger home? ) and most of it is 80's to current from collections we have managed to buy. I agree the SA books sell...we can't keep them. We also struggle to find collections that contain those books: they are out there, but the competition to acquire them is huge here in Edmonton. Today at a local comic show we have several longs of books priced at 0.25 C each. I will report back here and let you guys know how they did. 4 for 1! Got to be a great deal right? Already had a fellow comic seller browse the boxes yesterday, his first comment was "I can see why these are 0.25 c", then he pulled a dozen books and paid us before we all went out for dinner. If I can't sell the books for 0.25c then what do I pay for them? Seems 0.10c is possibly to much. 0.05c? $10 for a longbox? If I can't sell them the buyers are setting the price for this stuff and that means the next time I see a collection that contains these books I simply pass: already have it, can't sell it. It is worthless. I am thinking for the next big multi day show Dave and I should build a few absolutely drek boxes and put them under the tables with a sign on them "FREE!" entice the kids to grab as many books as they want. Sounds like a great idea. The problem is always space/ cost of space versus return on that space and room in transport vehicles. Hard to bring something that takes up space that is generating nothing but good will.

nothing like that

I know there was 5 copies of Iron Man #1 as per the list ( as an example )

congrats to your friend for this find. I have no regrets missing out on the deals. There will always be another collection.

And to add to the workload and cost: all of the books in this collection require rebagging and boarding. There is a significant cost to buying bags and boards for 25000 books. I am perfectly happy buying 1200 books for now. Time: I spent 20 hours+ from Wednesday evening to Saturday evening taking my half of the workload of these books out of their horrible bags, coughing ( due to the smell as I am an asthmatic ) grading the books, counting pages, then rebagging and boarding and finally pricing them for the comic show this coming Sunday June 11th. I work a full time day job as well. I completed only 400 books.

it was an all or nothing purchase. In contact with him he was adamant that he didn't want to be cherry picked and you had to buy it all, I don't have $200,000 dollars so I didn't want to waste my time. You have a good point though, and it was a learning experience: we should have gone and looked at it anyways. It ended up he was asking $200,000 for his 100 longs so it was actually quite worse of a deal. In the end, someone did go and look at it, and whether it was the first person to do so or someone after, the owner did relent and decide to sell it piece by piece. Had we gone and looked at it in the first place maybe it could have been us who got the fantastic deals. Oh well, live and learn.

sure, what you see in the pictures. There was nothing left for key books unless the origin of Kid Colt in Kid Colt #11 is a key .

I don't think the guy ever had that many books. I think it was a mis-communication from the start and I think he had 100 longs at the start which is 28,000 books estimate. That said would I have offered $200,000 for all of it. Nope. The owner had told us the Marvel/Dc side of the collection had been heavily picked ( and it was ) whereas the other publishers side had not had as much picked ( Dells, Charltons, Atlas, etc ) We have lots of westerns as an example because they were left behind by previous buyers. Harder to sell locally at shows I guess? We will find out

Me? No chance.

Yes the lousy economy currently in Alberta has had a definite impact. Lots of collections available. In this case, the owner is not hurting financially, it is just time to sell as he is a retired "baby boomer" and I think is wanting it gone ( 100 longs takes up a lot of space! )

Original owner collection part 2: Our return visit the owner had a change of heart, he seemed a little put off that so many buyers have come through and cherry picked him. I was hoping to buy more but our second visit is was $20,000 for everything left. While the collection still has some great books left the bulk you want to obtain at a lower price point so you can sell them as dollar books. Our second visit we did a search again to determine if we could pay his asking and we determined no so we left empty handed. Original owner collection part 3: Our 3rd visit, the owner had reduced his prices. This time we were the first buyers to get in at his new price point. Now the owner is far more motivated to sell. We went through the 90 longs again picking books again, we came out of there with around 1200 books. Here is some group shots of some of the books: The pictures were taken last night so this is a very recent purchase for us. Hoping to get them ready for a comic show this weekend. The bags are smelly, yucky, but once you managed to peel the book out from the nastiness you see that they are rather nicely preserved retaining gloss. Some of the bags are so bad I literally was using a utility knife to cut away the top so I could get to the book. Many of the bags are stuck together so you have to peel them apart to get at individual books. Basically they have been sitting bagged in boxes for 40 years undisturbed until now ( actually LOTS of books are not bagged. ) Most the books left are VG-Fine condition. Some are Goods even. In the end Dave and I should do pretty well with these because of the price we paid. Will we return for Part 4? Depends on the price, as there is very little good stuff left. I am thinking there is likely to be a Part 4 as the owner finds all of those previous buyers are unlikely to return or buy anything that is left as it is all sell as dollar books. I am hoping we get the rest and if so, I will update you all.

Original owner collection. Dave ( thehumantorch ) and I have been buying books from an original owner collection that is local to us for a few months now. The owner is a retired guy and has been buying comics since the 1960's and still buys comics to this day. He went backwards in time for purchases as they came available; remember this is for the most part pre-internet buying so he bought what became available to him. His collection is rather large, 100 longs and it takes a very long time to search through it! When we first heard of this collection the price was $200,000 for all 100,000 books. We didn't give it much thought at that time as it was an all or nothing sale. Turns out, over time the owner realized he was not going to get that price so he started to sell the books he had individually. While I wish I could say we were the first people to see the books once he let the collection be cherry picked, alas we were the 10th??? so needless to say all the great stuff was long picked. As an example: I heard a different seller got a NM copy of Iron Man #55 from this original owner collection and paid the ridiculously low price of "60% of VG in the price guide" which is how this owner was selling his books. When he graded the book if it looked good to him he called it VG for pricing it from his several years old price guide, if the book looked beat he graded it a good and you paid 60% of good in the guide. So, there was a virtual ton of great stuff to pick for great prices at first. As I said, we were the 10th??? buyers to arrive and I picked out a long box of books. Some of the books from that first buy are these: Then fast forward a couple of months, and the owner has reduced his pricing, so we returned to have another round of picking. There have been others that have picked since the last time I was there but there is still 90 longs to go through. TO BE CONTINUED....

Considering the creases at bottom right, at bottom, and the creases near the spine, add in the glue/ stain the grade is a 4.0-4.5 in my opinion.