Concorde

On 2/26/2023 at 11:03 PM, lou_fine said:

Well, I guess you really shouldn't include Heritage in this group here because bidders are paying more for their raw Heritage graded books than they are for the CGC graded certified copies when it comes to some of the GA sales results I've seen.  

I guess that's probably why we are seeing more and more raw books in their Sunday/Monday auctions and also why Heritage has a big hiring blitz out for GA and SA graders right now.   Especially why would you even bother sending in books to be graded by a third party like CGC at a huge cost when they can make more money grading it themselves and selling them raw.    

Yeah I have not personally had the same issue with Heritage.  I have bought a lot of raw books from them and on balance, mostly agree with the grades.  

Thanks for the feedback everyone...I will call this a "lesson learned".

I know this has been discussed in the past, but after not having bought anything from them in a while I recently bought a few lots at what I thought were very reasonable prices from Comic Connect.  The image below is of a copy of Tales of Suspense 55, sold as part of a three book lot graded at VG+.  One book was VG+...other was VG...then this one.  So much for a VG+ average.  Same was true for an Iron Man lot graded F+.  More like VG+

Is this an isolated problem or do I need to do the old "subtract a full grade or more" trick before buying from there again??  

Thanks

For all intents...pretty impossible to get a decent scan/photo...even with a light box.  I need a bigger scanner!  Too much glare on these to really see what is going on, but maybe a little better.  

Note that I took the second one at a pretty oblique angle and squared it up as best I could in the photo app...so, the book may seem off.  

On 2/10/2022 at 6:30 PM, zzutak said:

Fixed that for ya! 
What do the Grader Notes and Label Text say, and what part of that would you challenge?

Thanks!  I was half way into a Manhattan when I wrote that!  Yeah...grader notes say "small amount of color touch on top front cover"

I am helping a friend with his dad's collection.  These were all bought off the rack and have been in his closet for 50 years essentially.  Seems kinda odd that one gets purple and the others don't.  Is there an appeal process??  Maybe it's all correct, but has anyone tried to argue with CGC in this situation?  It makes no sense, given the pedigree, that this book is restored.  

Not trying to be an as$.  It just doesn't seem likely that this book is restored. 

Thanks

Hello...I am helping a friends dad sell his collection.  Pretty great group of books.  ASM complete to 300ish, X-Men 1 to ~300, bunch of TOS, FF etc.  

Question...He bought quite a few of the books off the rack in the 60's.  Many are high grade.  If a book has a FMV of over $25K...how does CGC insure the book when shipping back to the owner?  USPS only insures to $25K.  

Thanks in advance.

P.S.  Funny story - he bought the ASM #1 from Howard Rogofsky (the guy that used to advertise in the comics back in the day), for $1.  

Do you all think $400 is recoverable?  I would be happy to have a book signed by her in my collection, but dang...seems like a hefty premium.

1 minute ago, Qalyar said:

Here's the difference. If I own Star Wars #1, I have a thing. There are a finite number of those things. If the number of people who want to own Star Wars #1 is even one greater than the number of copies, someone is not going to have a copy. There can be reprints, but those are distinguishable from my thing, and so may or may not be worth as much to various collectors.

If I own a digital file with an NFT assigning ownership to me, that's very different. It doesn't matter if the digital file is ostensibly 1/1. An arbitrarily large number of copies can exist at any time. If more people want copies of the digital object than there are copies extant... more copies can be produced. Also, a copy made six months from now, or 2 years, or 20 years, is the same in every respect as my copy. The only distinction is the NFT that identifies me as the owner.

So, at least two problems here. First and foremost, so what? The NFT as certificate of ownership only has any meaning if everyone ascribes meaning to it, because it doesn't actually provide any of the physical benefits we typically associated with ownership of an object. Second, the NFT itself has scarcity only so long as everyone agrees that it does. There's no concrete mechanism to prevent more NFTs from being issued.

NFTs aren't really certificates of authenticity. And they aren't really ownership in the normal sense. You get a token that says you are the owner of a thing that, from a certain philosophical standpoint, doesn't have ownership defined for it. Look, I get why they're appealing. People want digital goods to have "uniqueness", to be finite, like physical goods are. I just don't see this as filling that gap.

All good points. 

As for more NFTs being issued though...by definition, there can only be one for any given digital object.  The "concrete mechanism" is the association with the blockchain.  

Anyway...it is a pretty philosophical topic.  One that really demands to be discussed over adult beverages.  (Eagle Rare?  Glenlivet 18?)  

We shall see what happens!  Maybe it takes...maybe the whole thing collapses.  

6 hours ago, Qalyar said:

Call me a Luddite, but I really do not understand the appeal of this NFT craze. You ... do not own anything by buying an NFT, except a digital signature that represents you are, in some philosophical sense, the unique "owner" of a digital object that need not itself be (and, indeed, probably very much isn't) unique. I can't help but feel that it's like buying a sham deed to the Brooklyn Bridge. Sure, you're the owner... of that deed, but it has no impact on the physical world, nor any actual connection to the object it purports to represent.

I'm probably missing something, but I can't imagine this craze lasting very long...

I understand, and you may be right.  And by no means a Luddite!

But I was thinking about how I can buy a very nice reproduction of, say, the Starry Night by Van Gogh and put it on my wall at home in a reproduction period frame.  It is a copy.  It is not the "real thing"....but despite its very close resemblance to the unique and "real" Starry Night, it is not the real thing and I know it is not the real thing 

Same thing applies here.  If I have, for example, a 1/1 piece of digital art and an associated NFT that identifies it as the one true original, and that NFT allows me to sell that piece as the original, that should make that piece more valuable than a digital copy.  It might seem insane....but is it really any different than an authentic Star Wars #1 in CGC 9.8 vs. the Whitman reprint in 9.8?  The books are for all practical purposes identical, but one sells for substantially more than the other.  ($6300 for the first print vs. $450 for the Whitman reprint based on recent sales).  

Bottom line...comic books are just paper objects with no inherent value.  All the value is assigned by a community of people who have all agreed that they carry value.  If a group of people all decide that the NFT has value...it's no different, IMHO.  Heck, I live in California.  The Native Americans that used to live in my area traded clam shells for food and other goods.  The shells were hard to come by (just like a copy of FF1 in high grade)...and everyone in that community assigned value to them as the basis for trade.  

Anyway...my opinion...but I don't see how this cannot end up being a part of the hobby.  Just my opinion.  

7 hours ago, Juno Beach said:

Can you link to where this is explained? This is not my understanding of NFT. 

This is a reasonable explanation...if you watch the NBC clip though, none of the announcers get it, at all.  https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/nft-boom-digital-collectibles-rcna430

And here:  https://www.investopedia.com/non-fungible-tokens-nft-5115211

I *think* this post is appropriate for this forum, but moderators please move as needed.

After a piece of digital art by the artist Beeple with associated NFT sold at Christies for $69M a few weeks back...it got me thinking.  Why would this not be the direction comics are headed??  There would be unlimited books available of course...no collectible value and purchasable at all times online.  But then there would be limited books (aka variants) with associated NFTs that would be collectible and essentially act as a currency.  You could read the book and see it on a tablet or computer, but only you would have access to the aspects that define the variant....and you would have the freedom to sell or trade that work and its associated token.  This is where baseball cards and the like are headed (check out all the news about Topps last week) so why not comics?

I know some will absolutely detest this idea.  See attached poll to provide your opinion.  But like it or not...this may be the future of collectible comics.  

Thoughts??

Yes...watercolor and ink.  Cover for high republic #6 variant

So this showed up in the mail today.   Can’t wait to get it framed and displayed!  

I don’t see that getting much higher than a 4 with that corner.  Maybe a 5...max.  

1 hour ago, Math Teacher said:

I believe the poster was expressing his/her amazement as to how much this book has increased over just a few short months.

According to GPA, the last X-Men CGC 2.5 sold for $5,880 on November 15, 2020. If the OP's book sells for his asking price, that will be a 204% increase in four months or less. I, too, am amazed by this. There have been numerous posters who have stated that they have never seen anything like this. If these rates of growth keep increasing, I could see that a CGC 2.5 could be worth $25,000+ by year's end. That would be great if you already owned one, but these prices are putting these books out of reach for long-time collectors.

Agree...but the rate of increase is not sustainable (of course).  The big question is, will things level off, or crash?  Who knows.  I sold a collection for a guy that I know last year. His wife wanted him to throw the books in the trash during a move.  X-Men 1, Avengers 1, Spidey 3 and a bunch of mid 60's related books...but those were the keys.  I ultimately traded to keep the X-Men 1 and we put a value of $3500 on it.  It is ~a 3.0.  It is indeed, insane.  

Added a couple new copies of Eternals #1...one for every price point.  Actually...I do have 9.4 and 9.2  (sorry...my bad, I only have 8.5, 9.0, 9.4, 9.6 and 9.8.  So no 9.2  All books are OW/W).  

If interested...DM.  These copies all came out of Robert Sidebottom's store in San Jose, CA about 25 years ago.  

1 hour ago, B2D327 said:

Found this unexpectedly in an old copy of X-men 101 that came in a book lot

The greatest splash of all time (in my humble opinion)

On 3/15/2021 at 2:56 PM, marmat said:

Just for information, a 5.5 sold yesterday for $13200 per GPA

Yes!  Saw that.  Is what it is.  I traded mine based on a trade value of $9K based on info at the time!  Oh well...I still have the JIM 83.  

This book has SOLD.

This book has SOLD.