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jcb193

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Posts posted by jcb193

  1. On 11/4/2019 at 2:39 PM, revat said:

    CGC has hundreds of paid employees, including dedicated customer service employees committed to answering the questions of customers and potential customers.  They even have an "Ask CGC" section right here on the boards.  They have emails, phone numbers, multiple physical offices, social media accounts, and even physical mail boxes that where they regularly receive packages and letters.  Why not ask CGC directly instead of asking a bunch of random internet strangers?

    I had already asked them before posting here and they gave me a somewhat satisfactory answer (though it didn't help that my books have already been graded).  I was curious if someone knew why they hadn't or whether I was mistaken in his first appearance.  He's a pretty major character in the Vertigo world, so I was shocked when my books came back without it.

    CGC response to my inquiry:
    "First appearance label notations are made at the discretion of the CGC Grading Team. You can find this information by visiting the CGC Census which will include the Key Comments, Art Comments, and First Appearance notations.

    If you would like to request a first appearance update or inclusion to the current label, please include a note along with the book in your submission (post-it on comic bag)."

  2. 14 hours ago, Timely said:

    I do know. The winner of this auction was willing to go much higher than it went for. You weren't even close.

    I think I preferred the way Gator phrased this news to me, but I can take it :)

    Thank you for the further verification.  I was outgunned big time!

  3. 5 hours ago, lou_fine said:

    Forgot to comment on this wonderful post from last week.

    This is by far the absolute best story I have read on the boards here with respect to the Jon Berk auction.  Reading it just felt like a descriptive play by play and made me feel like I was right there sitting with him as he was bidding on the book here.  (thumbsu

    It should be pointed out that I also threw in some bids on this book here, but dropped out well before it hit anywhere close to the finish.  To the original poster, as Adam has already pointed out, it's quite possible that this book could come around again, but I somehow highly doubt it.  :wishluck:

    Since you seem to like the cover theme and the apparent extreme rarity of this particular book, I guess the other option is to hope that the Church copy of Funny Picture Stories #7 will also come to market in the near future.  After all, the FPS 7 is also a black racial theme cover and similar to the Star 3, has also been identified in the Overstreet guide as being Rare.  Not sure why Overstreet would denote these 2 particular books as being Rare, when it actual fact, a lot of the early Centaurs are deemed to be extremely rare.  (shrug) 

    Since the Church copy of Funny Picture Stories #7 was also graded by Chuck as being in NM condition, let's hope it's also a similar killer copy whenever it does comes to market.  :cloud9:  :taptaptap:

    Wow, thanks for the kind words @lou_fine !!!  Very complimentary. I was pretty emotionally tapped out of right at the end of that book, so I figured the best was to help my mind process what had just happened in the last 30min was to write about it and assume some other people could relate.  Obviously, looking back, it could use a little more editing, but I left as is.  I've been collecting comics for most of my life, but this auction put a ton of books in the spotlight that I had never ever heard of or seen before.  It was really hard to allocate my resources. We all collect comics at a different level, some in the $.10 bin and some in the $1,000,000 bin.  This book was stretching my limits, and within a really short time period. Even a week later, I'm not totally sure what my max should have been :)  You have to put a limit somewhere.

    But what an awesome ride, and one I'll remember for some time.  You win some, you lose some.  I was bidding against an infinite bidder, so it wasn't meant to be.  Next time I'll just do $100 bumps and try to catch him with too many bidding windows open zzz

    Thank you everyone for the kind words and support.  I'm new here, but have lurked for awhile. AMAZING community you have here.  I'll keep my eyes open for the Funny Picture Stories, but it wasn't so much the theme or racial covers, but the Star Comics #3 was a cover I recognized from Overstreet in my youth and it had enchanted me and stuck with me.  As a kid, I didn't know that comics of that nature, type, or age had even existed outside of Superman, so the art and concepts from a totally different social time stuck with me.

    So if anyone happen across another Edgar Church High Grade Star Comics 3, give me a shout :nyah:

  4. 3 minutes ago, G.A.tor said:

    Great story...the winner would have paid a lot more if that will make you feel better 

    It does, and now I feel a little bad that I cost them more than they needed to spend, but I figured there was someone out there that wanted this at any price, and I couldn't compete with that.  Grats winner!  I gave it my best shot!

  5. 9 minutes ago, Sqeggs said:

    I think the negative reaction to PLODs in the hobby originated not so much in people rejecting restored books, as such, but because people were furious to find out that dealers had sold them books with undisclosed restoration.  

    I only have one restored book in my collection (aside from my recent All Star 3 purchase). It's a Sub-Mariner #1 that I traded in my entire baseball card collection as a kid at a show to a dealer for because it was such a nice looking copy.  It was worth over $150 dollars!!!!!   I finally got around to submitting it last year....3 edges trimmed....I'm keeping it forever. It's my anti-Rosebud.

  6. 4 minutes ago, vaillant said:

    Love it! Although I agree on the dislike for trimming (but for very rare books…) I would not agree on page quality.
    Page quality is the thing I care more about, simply because it warrants a longer life for the book. Even if one manages to keep it in the slab, which does not make sense to me.

    Well, many market prices for american comics do not make sense to me, but that’s another matter… :D

    I would likely never do this, but the spine seems really tight, and since the trimming damage is already done, wonder if it's worth getting the other edges trimmed and see if can pull a higher grade?  I'll have to see in person first.   I personally place a premium on one edge trimmed versus 3, but curious if others do.

  7. 17 hours ago, rjpb said:

    As historically important as they are, I don't know that a lot of collectors are that keen on the early newspaper strip reprint books. With some exceptions, the early original content pre-hero books, while not as widely sought after as superhero comics, seem to get more attention. 

    Yeah, I understand this.  Mostly curious why Funnies on Parade get the least hype of them all, when it's the "first comic book."  The fact that is is pretty freaking rare too seems like it would garner a little more attention. Just found it interesting in the Jon Berk collection that it didn't even warrant a paragraph.  

  8. 5 minutes ago, sagii said:

    lol AF 15, and IH 181 are phenomenons. There seems to be no ceiling on demand. 

    On the FC3 vs. SC3 showdown, it's tough to say if SC was the clear winner: if the winner of the FC lives in NY add on taxes and it's practically a tie ( by a hair). But the showdown has been one for the ages. 

    Or you could argue they'll get a 10% rebate on the total purchase price, playing with house money and all :)

     

     

  9. I mean, let's take the Jon Berk collection for example.   How is there no homage paid to Funnies on Parade????  Even Carnival of Comics (2nd) and Century of Comics (3rd) get a lengthy introduction or exclamation.  Funnies on Parade, which is only 5 graded issues rarer than Famous Funnies Series 1, and multiples rarer than the others, doesn't even warrant a single sentence.

    Am I missing something?  The write ups from Comic Connect are the following.

     

    Funnies on Parade:

    1st comic book; 1933 Eastern Color giveaway
     

    Century of Comics:

    100 pages! RARE; Eastern Color giveaway (1933)
    The Jon Berk Collection

    VF Overstreet is $25,000.00 and is so much rarer than Famous Funnies:A Carnival of Comics or Famous Funnies #1.

    Overstreet Guide 2016 FN+ (6.5) value = $8,736. 
     
    Famous Funnies #1:
    ow/white pgs; Mod (B-3): pcs added, cvr clnd, int. lightened, reinforced
    RARE!! 1st monthly newsstand comic book; golfing cover
    The Jon Berk Collection
     
    Eastern Color published Famous Funnies 1, in July 1934, a sixty-eight-page periodical they distributed to newsstands through American News Company. While it was a huge hit with readers during the cash-strapped Great Depression and sold close to ninety percent of its original 200,000 print run, the expenses left Eastern Color with a $4,000 loss. Eastern's luck would eventually change as the book turned a $30,000 profit with every issue after 11. Famous Funnies ran for 218 issues, inspiring imitators and launching a new form of entertainment readily consumed by the masses. It's quite possibly one of the most important comics ever published. Without this trailblazer it is hard to imagine that American comic book readership would have developed as successfully as it has.
    "Famous Funnies reprinted popular newspaper strips of the day. As legend goes, the format of Famous Funnies was conceived by Harry Wildenberg, sales manager of Eastern Color Company of Waterbury Connecticut, to take up some of the slack time available on the presses. Eastern Color produced many of the Sunday comic funnies for the New York newspapers, and Wildenberg noted that the standard tabloid comic pages, when folded in half, yielded an appealing sized book which could be run on Eastern's presses. Adding a glossy cover, Wildenberg, together with M.C. Gaines, a salesman for Eastern Color, (yes, that M.C. Gaines!), came up with the idea of reprinting comic strips and giving away the books as premiums. 

    "After the initial success of the give-aways Funnies on Parade, Carnival of Comics and Century of Comics, financial backing was obtained to experiment and try to sell a comicbook. This resulted in the production of Famous Funnies Series 1, which was distributed only in the greater New York area in early 1934. Apparently, this experiment was successful enough so that Famous Funnies 1 was released under cover of July 1934. 

    "This historic issue, then, was the first newsstand comicbook series of the modern format." 
     
    Famous Funnies Series 1:
    crm/ow pgs; Sl/Mod (B-2) ct, glue cvr, tr sls, spn splts sld, reinforced
    VERY, VERY, VERY, RARE! first-ever newsstand comic! Mutt 'n' Jeff, Joe Palooka
    The Jon Berk Collection
     
    This is the beginning, the start of it all. Incredibly historic and immensely important, this piece of Americana is the first comic book to reach American newsstands and survives in such low numbers that, for decades, collectors believed it to be a myth invented by the Overstreet Guide to prevent counterfeits! Time has proved otherwise, as copies have surfaced but only few and far between. Cobbled together with reprints of popular newspaper strips and rushed to market to attempt to move the slowly-dying comic strip field into a new era, this comic unwittingly launched a whole new business and a whole new medium. The success of the comic later led to the launch of the Famous Funnies monthly series and proved the viability of the medium. It's hard to overestimate the importance of this artifact to American comics and American pop culture in general.
     
    Famous Funnies: A Carnival of Comics:
    2nd comic book; 1933 Eastern Color giveaway; wraparound cvr
    The Jon Berk Collection
     
    It begins here. Considered by most serious comics historians to be the first true American comic book, this 1933 one-shot established the size, length, and format of the comic book for decades to come. A sprightly, vivid, seismic shock that may not have seemed important at the time, but essentially provided the foundation for the art form that would come to dominate the latter half of the 20th century and fire the imaginations of generations of readers and artists. This incredibly rare comic, distributed through the late, lamented chain of Woolworth stores, enjoyed an aggressively high print run, yet survives in extremely low numbers today, making it not only one of the most important comics ever published, but also one of the most coveted.
     
     
     
  10. Platinum Age (Famous Funnies vs. Funnies on Parade, etc)

    I'm curious as to what you guys think is the hierarchy of the Platinum Age comics?  I've seen lengthy write-ups on Famous Funnies, or even Famous Funnies: Carnival of Comics, but I rarely see auction houses pumping up the Funnies on Parade- which CGC lists as the "1st comic book."

     

    Is this just an oversight? Curious how you guys think this all shakes out, as Funnies on Parade is seriously rare, barely more common than Famous Funnies: Series 1?

    How would you rank:

    Funnies on Parade

    Famous Funnies: Carnival of Comics

    Century of Comics

    Famous Funnies: Series 1

    Famous Funnies #1

     

    Is this a dead category overshadowed by superheroes? I personally think it's a very overlooked category in comic collecting.