alexgross.com

On 2/12/2023 at 8:18 PM, KirbyCollector said:

That is not true at all. When I browsed the racks in the early 80s, I was confronted with a wide variety of very distinctive styles by artists such as Byrne, Art Adams, Aparo, Colan, Miller, Romita Sr, Romita Jr, Perez, Sienkiewicz, Sal Buscema, and Walt Simonson on monthly titles -- all artists whose work was instantly recognizable as theirs alone. You hated or loved artists at that time because their art made you care. I'm open to new art (neglected to mentioned I like Bilquis, who seems to have a good future), but right now most of what I see is a lot of bland, corporate art which doesn't induce me to plunk down my $4.

oh i think it's true to some extent. at least in the seventies it was. for example, this is NOT neal adams. in the eighties there did seem to be more diversity of art styles with byrne, miller, simonson. i felt the same way you do now once the image guys showed up. i felt that everything looked the same at the start of the nineties. perhaps this feeling is common with each generation. not saying there isn't alot of truth to it. and i think one of the reasons many artists use digital shortcuts is that it saves time and money. i don't think page rates are very good these days.

On 2/11/2023 at 5:09 AM, GrasshopperFF said:

Avengers #1 is on the wall.

 

Now I need #4. 

congrats on a great book! 

looks like gpa did do as i had hoped and break out the badly faded books mentioned above into their own separate item lines and not in the main averages.

awesome to see them be so responsive! +1

my son aksed me and i didnt knows the answer- is them makings a second eternalz movie? i havent hearded nothing bout one...

here's another one ending shortly that's going to decimate GPA averages on this book. high time they broke out faded books into their own category imo. 

https://comics.ha.com/itm/silver-age-1956-1969-/journey-into-mystery-83-marvel-1962-cgc-vg-45-off-white-to-white-pages/a/122305-19537.s?ic4=GalleryView-ShortDescription-071515

On 1/27/2023 at 2:07 PM, joeypost said:

A little over a week to go. 

very excited to be there again finally after three years!

we all know the market is soft right now from recession and inflation fears. but when i saw this gpa result of an asm5 5.5 selling recently for a ridiculously low price of $870, about half what it ought to be, i had to click the link. now i see why. the fading is absolutely ridiculous. 

https://comics.ha.com/itm/silver-age-1956-1969-/superhero/the-amazing-spider-man-5-marvel-1963-cgc-fn-55-off-white-pages/a/122303-15029.s

i saw another faded book like this also achieve a crazy low price this year, although i cannot recall the specific book. now, gpa will often break out sales where it says 'cgc case cracked' and other notes like that, separating them from the average sales of standard books so they do not 'contaminate' the overall results. how about a separate breakout for books with massive fading? seems like it would be a good move since i doubt that a book like this is a true reflection of the value of an asm5 5.5 grade, or any other badly faded book is either. 

On 1/26/2023 at 7:39 AM, MAR1979 said:

  Now you just need to bring your website out of the 1990's

 

thats amazingly fast shipping. i have yet to receive anything from them faster than 3-4 weeks, so i hope it's improving across the board. 

as for their website, it blows my mind that people make this comment. compared to comicconnect, whose site uses much newer software (i'm told), comiclink loads about ten to twenty times quicker, images are better, and the organization is easy to understand. i'll take comiclink's site any day. please do not update it! just add pics of the backs of each slab-

won this one the other day from HA latest auction. i also think that the word DAREDEVIL may be the first instance of a pixellated look in comic type that i can recall seeing. i'm getting there on my 1-50 white page collection. 

On 1/18/2023 at 7:02 AM, MAR1979 said:

They wants to be paid and want to cherry pick the scraping to only show their auctions they feel did very strong.  They want money for self-skewed data that puts them only in perfect light.  Wisely GPA said no to their nonsense.

Also it may involve updating their seemingly circa 1998 website.

 

+1

for years now i've been keeping screen shots of auction results of books that i am interested in. it's quite annoying that they won't report to gpa like almost everyone else does. especially on books you don't see that often, when one auction result can make a big difference in current value. 

On 1/17/2023 at 1:59 PM, mjoeyoung said:

Only my opinion of course, but I find it funny that people are so concerned with page quality on encapsulated books.  YOU CAN'T SEE THEM.  Then again, I'm not a grade whore so... 

you can't read them either if they're graded/ encapsulated, so by your logic the grade doesn't matter either. 

people want books with white or close to white page quality for the same reason they want an 8.0 more than a 2.5. because that's closer to what the book looked like when it was new, and the nearer one can get to that, the nicer it is to have as a collector and lover of the medium. 

just arrived from CC today. very happy with the presentation considering the grade-

On 1/16/2023 at 11:10 AM, VintageComics said:

 

We've become a chicken little society that only focuses on the negatives and when the negativity starts to rise people scramble and run for the hills. Social media, the "news" and 24 hour coverage of everything has exaggerated this to an nth degree. 

These sorts of over reactions are exactly what causes the market volatility and overreaction in so many markets. If people were just a little more patient or a little more stable we wouldn't see these fluctuations. 

So the key is not to get too sucked into the news and learn to think past it. In everything.

I'm not saying everything is rosy. There are some unforeseen or unprecedented times coming economically, but the tops and bottoms of any market generally are a reflection of people's panic and mania, and those are things that can be controlled by people. 

But you need to unplug from the groupthink or you'll never see it. 

+1000 

On 1/14/2023 at 11:38 AM, delekkerste said:

I think the JIM #110 page is very good, with some very nice elements like Odin and Heimdall & Bifrost, though, I agree that the Avengers #6 page has, as you noted, the "even more dynamic and awesome panels" and Stone's inks are super-tight on that page (I mean, they really, really pop) versus a bit less so on the JIM page. I think there's probably also a premium for being Avengers and early at that (plus more villains and an Iron Man cameo in panel #4). 

I expected mid-to-high $20Ks on the JIM page and high $30Ks to mid-$40Ks on the Avengers page, so, I would say both ended up on the slightly lower side of expectations, but, generally within the expected range.

Regarding the Kirby market as a whole, I wrote this to some friends yesterday:

"There's so much Kirby supply that buyers can pick and choose...the price appreciation curve has definitely flattened out a lot over the past 8-9 years vs. other top artists, which is exactly what you would expect given the relative maturity of the Kirby market vs. newer artists  A lot of [newer] top artists have probably seen their art go up 3-5x or more during that time but Kirby is probably only up 1-2x on average I'd wager during that time."

thanks for the thoughtful and knowledgable reply, much appreciated!

https://comics.ha.com/itm/original-comic-art/story-page/jack-kirby-and-chic-stone-journey-into-mystery-110-story-page-8-thor-original-art-marvel-1964-/a/7338-91013.s?type=lotlink--bidnotice-tracked-dailystatus

how was the price (24k) of this gorgeous kirby thor page? is this in line with the market for this sort of page? this one below was 38k, probably because it has even more dynamic and awesome panels, but i would have loved to get either one. 

https://comics.ha.com/itm/original-comic-art/story-page/jack-kirby-and-chic-stone-the-avengers-6-story-page-9-thor-original-art-marvel-1964-/a/7338-91012.s?ic16=ViewItem-BrowseTabs-Auction-Archive-ThisAuction-120115

about how much are them two awesome kirby/stone thor pages going to end at? specifically talking about the avengers 6 page and the JIM110 page. some great images of the god of thunder in both of them. 

i doubt i'll be playing, but i'd love to know the neighborhood that i would need to be in if i did choose to play. gracias for any guidance. 

for me it was when john byrne took over. the combination of his replacing the thing with she-hulk, and his insisting on inking himself instead of working with terry austin again made me completely lose interest. 

i know some people love the writing in his run on the book, and it may be very good, i cannot recall. but the thing was my favorite member by far. and i was more about the art than the story back then, as an aspiring artist. 

On 1/1/2023 at 2:02 PM, mosconi said:

This was a childhood grail of mine and a classic cover I've always admired.  Super happy to have found a copy with a nice wrap, White pages, and no Marvel chipping.  It was a tough combination and really pleased to have in the collection 

if you ever decide to sell or upgrade this book, please reach out to me first! great looking copy for the grade and with the hard to find WP to boot!