the blob

On 9/19/2023 at 12:19 PM, Number 6 said:

Yes.

Suffice to say, I won't send raws to MCS again.

At the end of the day isn't it more about what you can sell them for there rather than the grade they assign? If their Fines sell for 2X as much as a Fine would on ebay then maybe it is not as big a deal if you thought it was a VF. On the other hand, with them hammering the grades it makes it harder to hit that $50 figure in your head and the commissions on lots are pretty brutal (and I completely understand why they are). 

On 9/19/2023 at 11:16 AM, jjonahjameson11 said:

Agree with you on the ASM 195, an overlooked book featuring the Black Cat’s origin.

135 - seems as though it was stalled in value for over a decade, but in 9.6 and up, it’s a tough book to find

Yes, high grade on 135 is spensive, I'm just thinking from a collector's standpoint looking for a BA semi-key within a low budget, you can get a presentable copy for not THAT much. And I have always liked the cover. Will that VG/Fine copy appreciate? I dunno, but let's face it, not that long ago a 5.0 (raw) copy of 129 was like $50-60 if you went to a shop pricing by OPG. It was 2-3X much on ebay. I made 3 flips of 129 buying it at guide from shops and then here or on ebay. Wish I had kept them.

On 9/19/2023 at 11:34 AM, Number 6 said:

Thanks for the responses. 
 

Yeah, I have a couple of books that would be in the $1000 range, maybe a handful in the $400-$500 range and the rest probably $100-$250 range. And none of it really the kind stuff that would make them jump and say ‘we want that in our auction’. 
 

Just to clarify:  when I mentioned sending them to MCS, I meant sending them to be listed as BIN.  I agree, I’d get slaughtered at auction there. 
 

It just seems like Clink has gotten back to where it was pre-pandemic:  stuff picked up at decent prices and then flipped and sold on eBay for more. Great if your a buyer…though it never seems to work for me when I decide to bid on something. 

Are they slabbed?

On 9/19/2023 at 5:34 AM, Courageous Cat said:

good question, I've only dealt with GA, Sorry, wish I could be of more help, but I'm pretty sure HA doesn't wish to deal with 20.00 books, but I could be wrong 

They do in a lot, I think, not so much individually.

They're a little weird, I tried to consign the full art to Lobo 2 from Dell (of note because it was the first comic series devoted to a black hero, but Heritage just viewed it as 23 pages of generic Dell art, didn't see why anyone would care about the historical significance) and they would not take it because they did not see it cracking $750. Needless to say I put it up on ebay and it quickly sold for about $2000. And for years I have been getting inquiries about it (probably because I posted about it here). Probably worth $5000 now.

Auction houses are weird. I have two signed large photos from Lord Snowden (Anthony Armstrong Jones)  -- Princess Margaret's Husband who was featured in some of these crown bio movies -- that were gifted to my mother eons ago. I figured they'd be an easy $1500 a pop based on his other sales but none of the auction houses in NYC wanted to deal with them on their own, they probably would have if I had 10 more though. I actually have not tried Heritage, dunno how they are on photos. 

On 9/18/2023 at 9:20 PM, southern cross said:

So prices are lower

Not rare, warehouse copies found so not rare in 6.0-8.0

I think this sold over FMV

I think this book sold for over FMV?

A group of books, thinking it may normally sell cheaper because it's a group of not Uber high grade. My bid was a throw away bid and knew it wouldn't come close to winning.

But it appears this kit went for over FMV?

Maybe there are corrections on Key books worth a lot of money to begin with. But I'm seeing a different result in books I'm interested in and I see it regularly.

Is there something about that collection or any specific issue in that run? I agree, a lot selling like that for guide is pretty wild if they are just a bunch of rando 5.0 books. I have a long box of romance books like that.

On 9/18/2023 at 7:56 PM, Cman429 said:

Comparing coins to comics is apples to oranges. Scarcity does factor into comic value to some extent but with comic prices you have so many other factors. They make perfect sense if you factor in emotional and cultural forces on price. Stuff like coins or stamps don’t have that 

yup, I sold on these boards one of those gerber "you never see these" books and if I remember correctly the reaction was "where the F did you find that????".. low grade, a whopping $150, bad market then (mortgage crash I think), so maybe $1500+ now, but still, it was a one shot book, aside from rarity, nothing that special. 

On 9/17/2023 at 11:53 AM, Mokiguy said:

So this morning I was wondering about comic issue print runs for silver age books. I found that it's a tough search to find accurate answers to print runs, and best I could find was generalities, but consensus seems to say that average print runs for a single silver age DC or Marvel was 200,000 to 500,000 issues. So that got me to thinking about Key issues and Grails. At the time of publishing an issue, there would have been no reason to publish and more or less issues of a single book because it contained Lois Lane being black for that issue, or the first appearance of a character like the Batman's Poison Ivy issue, or the Fantastic Four Black Panther issue, or many others. If the Fantastic Four #51 had a run of say 300,000, then they probably printed 300,000 Fantastic Four #52 as well. But Fantastic Four #52 is worth 10 times as much as Fantastic Four #51 because it has the first appearance of Black Panther.

OK, I'll get to the point here. I have collected Morgan and Peace silver dollars a lot longer than I've been collecting comics, but what I know about Silver Dollars and most coins for that matter, is that rarity is what drives the value of one year or mint mark above another assuming condition is the same. Low mintage coins bring higher values than high mintage runs ....... makes perfect sense to me. But comics seem to be driven purely by speculative demand since print runs are virtually the same for a common or key issue, and that makes no sense.

Well that's what was rattling around in my brain this morning.

It is supply and demand, not an "inflated artificial value" unless someone is manipulating the prices short term. "Supply and demand" is what drives your Morgan values too. Of course, the print run is not the same as copies in circulation for these older books. DC in particular had many books not sell on the rack. Those were returned, pulped, destroyed or wound up being carted off to some warehouse fraudulently. 

On 9/18/2023 at 6:02 PM, shadroch said:

What entertainment do you get from a slabbed comic?

some of them have cool covers...

On 8/8/2023 at 9:16 AM, Gaard said:

Just did my first consignment with them (2nd one is in this week's auction) and I couldn't believe how easy it was.

The only thing that kind of surprised me (and this is probably all me) is that every one of my comics that were sent in were vastly graded lower than what I graded them. I'm not talking most of them, or even some of them, but EVERY one of them. And I'm not talking a little off, or slightly different grades, but very different grades. Again, this is probably an indication of how sucky I am at grading. ...but every one of them? I think my next batch that I send them, I'll post all of them in the PGM forum here first.

 

Think about it from their perspective ... if they sell a consignment book you get paid. If someone returns it do they take the money away? So they want to make it highly unlikely anyone returns anything. So they hammer the consignment books on grade, at least from our perspective. In an efficient market folks know those books are probably tighter than cgc grading, so they buy accordingly, and don't assume the typical ebay overgrade. I have never bought anything from there that I thought was overgraded (albeit I have probably not bought anything they graded at higher than a VF+ and I don't think I have bought any consignment items that are not slabbed). 

On 9/18/2023 at 3:46 PM, batmiesta said:

brain fart. my wife is convinced the blood thinners are giving me brain damage.

On 9/16/2023 at 2:03 PM, Courageous Cat said:

First off, MCS? super, super nice folk, but unless you're sending a bunch of drek, I wouldn't do that. You are just setting yourself up for low $$ results. 5k is Ha's min per category. They prefer more than that, but I believe thats their bottom line. If it were me with SA/BA? Clink or CC. Best to you

But what are we talking about? 100 $50-75 type books? Or 20 $250-300 type books? Or 10 $500 type books? (Will HA even do the 100 $50-75 type books? I don'

I don't think they do well with lots?

On 9/15/2023 at 4:16 PM, batmiesta said:

Savage Tales 1 CGC 9.6 for $410? Surely not, where was that?

Savage Sword 1. Sorry. My link to "this should have been higher" was a Savage Sword 1 that went in the $200s.

On 9/15/2023 at 5:19 PM, DC# said:

A year later and the dreaded OW/W vs W and this book is down nearly 60%

absurd prices. both of them!

On 9/15/2023 at 3:02 PM, Semicentennial said:

Not everyone sends it in to prescreen which is probably why some of the grades come back so low on these books.

I get it, it's just that a $25 slab fee (and I know there are discounts) in the hope of getting a $50 book pretty much wipes out any profit if you guess wrong on a few 9.8s, which is really easy to do. I guess you need to still be profitable at 9.6 to do that regularly. 

Ouch, this was a hot book, I guess it didn't get a season 2 on Prime: https://www.ebay.com/itm/175881296136?hash=item28f3579908:g:c4UAAOSwStlk73Nr&amdata=enc%3AAQAIAAAA4ExXuvZ12vPvk2liBoNTnDW1SgNBjDgXkyvj5TYu7Gxqm88Zk6CApoRGmtjSowR3tFXzqyxG946ys5khaKo6ND1OVkd2FokS3pKif3J4%2F%2Fqe4EHnZVW5p86VzHQVLndDuFKlJb7MhFRhU9dhPsCelyEdxk0JcqMGaOdn3K1JunRMS0iyY4pQ0LBKOdslJmDLKPwBKzLNq5eVX%2F5MA1Tfkfg98jtUCyJ%2B4V6CAP74Xq%2FL7pfN8QEFSxbPF9Ir0t2EJJ%2FFASoWoovT9XuC%2B1tQ9c76UxpLhmPQH61iKkiISkTj|tkp%3ABk9SR6DH0aTTYg

Which makes me wonder, with the market so soft would CGC ever considering lowering slabbing costs or have they already done that in a less public way for big submitters? If they are still doing big volume I guess they have no reason to. There ought to be a better accepted mode for sub $100 books than $25-42 a pop, even with a 15% discount, but I understand there is a lot of overhead and employees need to get paid.

Auctions can be weird, not everyone is hunting at the same time. That same Savage Tales 4 might  go for $150+ out of a store. 8 and 10 in 9.6 sold as BINs for $125-150. In June a Savage Tales 1 in 9.6 got $410 and I don't think the market has krapped out more since then, has it?

On 1/20/2023 at 10:03 AM, dover said:

While key, high-grade books go for record prices, I was astonished to win a Savage Tales 4 in CGC 9.6 OW-WP with arguably the best Neal magazine cover for $83.00. With CGC charging $42.00 to slab and the lead time, I feel I made a good purchase. It is a common book, granted, but auctions and market pressures are challenging to understand at times. I still want a better copy but this will fill the void nicely until a 9.8 comes along.

 

Yes, that's just silly to me with a slab fee that high. 

I feel like this should be higher:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/204401242366?hash=item2f974370fe:g:-GwAAOSwQhNktx-u&amdata=enc%3AAQAIAAAA0NaAnNqkIKiSCBtJyZ2DiJG8a7TeqxiOaKtFBwI85CquU68%2BGUeQQ%2BXy2MzHm5WgJ68tyW3kF1pastkLHqA0XZZEIoKu%2BMTXh8bDC%2FiQszTB6Rp1kKY5umSj95wCHqa3cBhpA3Z27iu0xGsCZzT2BIhEg3KRMHShpeIkblLv%2F6vFWIl9zlpxqPt8iSH%2F3y0DX6swVW95sj%2FzIpz%2BosyKwrrIhv8k2qInO1JogGkSFN46VILFLo9od5yU9vjT%2Br8w2w1%2BDhx%2FnTbd8qLdlSeOFgM%3D|tkp%3ABk9SR97avaHTYg

On 9/14/2023 at 4:52 PM, whetteon said:

Um, Amazing Spider-Man #347 CGC 9.8?  

ParadiseComic's copy has 44 bids and 52 watchers. I go and show the lowest to highest and I see ParadiseComic's copy at the lowest basically verifying that you can't really find it cheaper than $83.. WTF is happening here?  

Huh? It has always been a desireable cover but there are copies under $20 on ebay before shipping that look decent.

On 9/4/2023 at 10:50 PM, Semicentennial said:

They send it in because they're trying to make more money.  A lot of non-key Marvel/DC cgc 9.8 from 2000 and before can go for at least $50 or more.   You're going to make more money selling a non-key cgc 9.8 than a $5 high grade non-key raw comic. )

That's a pretty big investment to make for a $50 sale hoping it comes back a 9.8. $9 added for the pre-screen/reject (do they tell you what they would have graded it on a pre-screen?)

I don't mind much because over the years I have assembled a collection of inexpensive "exemplars" to assist in my grading. 

On 9/15/2023 at 1:27 PM, lizards2 said:

I see what you did there. 

Not my intent at all. I live in NYC, it is just part of the landscape here, nobody looks twice. Folks stopped paying attention years ago.

On 9/15/2023 at 1:26 PM, CJ Design said:

OK you've shamed me as I'm drawing and painting everyday...I just don't want to bore people...I'll trickle some out

A Pencil Red Sonja on 11x17

A Backing Board Catwoman

A 11x17 Watercolor/Gouache Jungle dude.

cool stuff. don't get me wrong, I doodle/sketch plenty on random pieces of paper. I didn't go three years in between anything "artistic" (not saying you are doodling, that Red Sonja could be a pinup in Savage Sword), just getting the paints out is more of a project for me. I am constantly terrified of knocking over the dirty water container on to one of the rugs we just spent $300 cleaning. 

On 9/15/2023 at 1:16 PM, CJ Design said:

Hope the rehab is going well...always keep painting though...nice

I go in and out of it. I started painting again late 2020 because I was trapped in the house. This summer i went back because I was getting planted outside by my wife unable to move much while she enjoyed her summer at the beach, pool, etc. with my kid. I was sitting in the outdoor lounge of our beach club and needed something to do. I start getting sleepy after reading 5 pages of a book apparently.

On 8/26/2023 at 11:31 AM, jjonahjameson11 said:

Recently, I noticed just how many ASM issues in the late 100's and early 200's have broken from the pack in the OPG and are now commanding more than surrounding issues.  It's a pretty incredible list of books and it got me to thinking about some of the other issues that may need to break out from the Bronze Age pack.  I'd like to share my list, and I hope you will share yours.

My top 3 as follows:

1. ASM 204/205.  The 3rd and 4th appearances of the Black Cat, with 205 being the 1st Romita Jr art on the title, I believe.  Overstreet lists them at $20 each in NM- 9.2.  By comparison, ASM 226/227 feature the return of the Black Cat and list for nearly double, $38 each.  Why?  the stories in 204/205 and just as good as 226/227 and they are available in equal quantities.  Most recent GPA sales for ASM 204/205 in 9.8 is $400 and $275, respectively.  By comparison, most recent GPA sales for ASM 226/227 in 9.8 is $190 and $158, respectfully.  All sales occurred within the past two months.  Similar results where sales for ASM 204/205 in 9.2 fetched more than ASM 226/227 can be found on GPA.
2. ASM Annual 13.  While there is usually less interest from collectors for annuals, there is no doubt that ASM Annual 13 needs to break out from its current grouping of ASM Ann 11-13 = $28 in OPG.  Annual 11 really has nothing going for it, while Annual 12 is a reprint of ASM 119 and 120.  However, ASM Ann 13 contains a killer, brand-new Spidey vs Doc Ock story illustrated by Byrne and Austin at their peak (same time they were on their ground-breaking Uncanny X-Men run), its the first time Spidey rips out one of Doc Ock's tentacles from his body, and its part 1 of a two part story that concludes in Spec Spidey Annual #1.  Not as easy to find in high grade as it used to be.
3. ASM 216.  With Madam Web's recent rise to fame in the Spider-verse, we've seen her 1st appearance in ASM #210 sky rocket in price, and its safe to say that she'll be a fixture in the Spider-verse for a while longer.  So ASM #210 may have already become unaffordable to some, but her second appearance, in ASM 216, should still be affordable...for now.

Thoughts?

Agree on 204/205, but 195 has been overlooked a long time too, maybe bumped a little lately. ASM 172, 1st Rocket Racer as well. And 135. And I know 135 is not a cheap book, but you can still get a decent copy for under $50 if you try hard enough. Ionic cover, etc. if you are priced out of 129.

On 9/15/2023 at 12:35 PM, MAR1979 said:

during the first years of this century I picked up a bunch of late 70's - mid 80's Archie covers - all by Dan DeCarlo.  One of those rare instances where the book's in 9.8 might exceeded the one of a kind original cover art.

archie art, even decarlo, was always crazy cheap. I have bought a nice chunk of it over the years, including directly from DeCarlo on ebay. But I don't think a cover. I have like a 5 page archie tarzan spoof I believe from the book below and I am pretty sure I paid under $100 for the whole thing (this was early 2000s though). It is pretty funny and I had the idea of framing the whole thing, but then the cost of properly custom framing them dawned on me and it was like 5X as much as the art cost!