alexgross.com

buying a graded book should always be for future profit, since you can't enjoy reading it. raw books are the more complicated purchase, but in my view they are always books i want to read, re-read, or make a run with, and they shouldn't be terribly expensive.

probably i'm just paranoid. but it would be nice to have more transparency so everyone could see who's bidding against them. of course, eBay has been more transparent over the years, and yet does absolutely nothing about blatant shill bidding. so, i guess it's all the same...

the lack of transparency on CL and CC is disturbing. ever since my very first bid on CL i was sure that they were doing some shenanigans. every single auction i've bid on has ended one increment higher, in spite of it not showing up until the auction has ended. still i've gotten some good deals there.

last time i wrote something about unnamed dealers asking silly prices at cons, i got a bunch of replies mocking me for being "anti-dealer." but i love how you put it- "optimistic pricing." i recall 3 years ago getting an "optimistic" price from him on something there at NYCC and coming home to get the same book from someone less "optimistic" for fair market price. i'm not anti-dealer though! just anti-optimist i guess.

thanks for sharing so many photos! finally some good pics of the stuff on the walls at NYCC for those of us on the other coast.

yes whose booth is this? amazing!

i recommend a new scanner... the new epsons are dirt cheap and pretty good-

thanks for the nice words and the suggestion. legal protections for artwork that references copyrighted properties exist as long as the artwork is 'transformative'. warhol's campbell's soup cans are one famous example. as i said, i've published a whole book of these pieces, and the publisher was confident that my works qualify as transformative, and there have not been any issues. so, that's not really a realistic concern. i'll think about your suggestion and certainly let you know if i make prints. i personally had the most fun putting in the villains, as it really adds another level of interest to the piece for us comic fans. it's almost like doc ock and loki snuck in the back while the photographer was getting ready.

thanks mac-- as to your question, i sell the paintings, and sometimes make prints and sell those as well. i have a few collectors that own dozens of these paintings, believe it or not! i published a book of them several years ago, called "NOW AND THEN, the cabinet card paintings of Alex Gross." https://www.amazon.com/Now-Then-Cabinet-Paintings-Gross/dp/1584234873/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1507401782&sr=8-1&keywords=now+and+then+cabinet+card+paintings

before and after--this one is acrylic and oils on top of an antique photo, again. it's called 'marvel heroes,' in spite of the fact that a couple of them are villains. i gotta do a DC one sometime, but i was never as passionate about DC as i was with marvel.

what are the commission rates for selling on CC and CL?

some interesting points in here, but this paragraph is just silly. people submit 1st appearances of characters at a much higher rate than other books, and as long as CGC has been operating, their label has stated that 181 is the 1st full appearance of wolvie. duh.

shocking comiclink auction results last night on TOS39 in a 4.0. $5,100!! a grand higher than GPA and not even close to the last 4.0 that ended 2 weeks prior. both this one and the one a few weeks ago looked really nice, so this is pretty stunning. so, if it LOOKS like a 5.0, people are willing to pay 5.0 prices??

i saw that and was wondering what the heck was going on. like many of their practices, seems a little dubious. on the other hand, lots of folks are saying they were unable to bid at the last minute, so i guess it does seem fair to have a do-over.

thats close to double what GPA has on this book in that grade. what gives? does CC also not report to gpa?? also makes no sense why the same or better book would sell a month later for 20k less.

this 35k price for a 7.0 is several thousand higher than the last recorded sales on GPA. perhaps the white pages made it more desirable. of course, this sale will never show up on gpa.

that does seem like a price only obtained on the WHITE PAGES copies i've seen this year. things are pointing up yet again for this book.

9.4 on comiclink, ends tomorrow

this is my kudos thread for anyone i do business with here. as i'm new, it may take awhile to get much info on it. thanks alex

awesome report! great to see all the photos-- really makes me want to go next year. looks like a whole different group of dealers than we get on the west coast. also, peter klaus is knute rockne.

yes, everyone here says how great bob is, and i certainly believe them. i wish i saw him at wondercon (CA) every year, but i haven't. i've seen a lot of the dealers that are known from overstreet ads and online at that show, and my statement is based on that. i won't start naming names, but pretty much every dealer i've seen there asks prices a good deal over GPA for key books. saw a poor looking hulk 1 cgc 3.5 about a year and a half ago there and the dealer was asking 13k for it, when it was worth at most 9k. and this is a well known and well liked dealer. I'm not anti-dealer. but that's been my experience, and there are more stories like that one. i'm glad to know that bob is apparently more fairly priced than most of these others.

if you want to buy a silver age key at a convention, you will surely pay more than if you buy it on a CL or CC auction. as the dealers here have already mentioned, they have lots of costs in attending conventions, and that will surely be reflected in their prices, especially for the most sought after books, the keys. conventions are awesome for finding run books that are raw, you can really inspect them closely. but don't waste your time trying to find a great deal on hulk 1, af15, or anything like that at a convention, unless you want to pay extra.

you've seen a key at a convention that was fairly priced?!?

"Batman and Robin," before and after. i've been doing these paintings on antique photos for several years now. they are cabinet card photos from the late 1800s. i seal them with clear acrylic, and then paint directly on top of them. if you like this, you can see more of them on my website: http://www.alexgross.com/mixed-media/index.html

yeah, i figured as much. this seems like a ridiculous legal position to take. if your auction is public on the internet, then the results are also public. of course, i'm not a lawyer. many of us have already, in our own amateur ways, kept certain records of their results on books we are interested in. but of course you are right, and if this is the position that comiclink is taking, then it is really comiclink that is screwing up results at GPA, and by extension, all of us who collect/invest in comics. if someone on this forum chose to keep a record of every comiclink result, and rather than sell it, make it available to everyone, with the possible suggestion of a small donation, like a museum does, that seems like it would be most useful, and legal.