alexgross.com

yeah it's mine as per PM! thanks for your patience Rob! stoked to finally get my all time favorite key book--

by the way, at the torpedo comics collectors convention in los angeles yesterday, i saw several higher grade 181s yesterday. i only inquired about price on a few, but all were priced at record prices for the grade, as far as GPA goes. not a big surprise, but worth noting. of course most key books are priced that way at shows. sometimes they come down some if one negotiates. i say several copies, but it was not like everyone had one. some dealers had none and said they had sold what they had before the show already.

yes i second that opinion completely. the whole point is that the dealers are in town for SDCC, so of course it's close to that show! and i, like robotman, never go to SDCC and with this show, have absolutely no reason to. we are the ones this show is for, as well as anyone who wants to grab stuff early. definitely a most welcome addition to the schedule for real collectors.

his email is comicspot@yahoo.com i bought that avengers 1 in the photo above from him today.

it was a great show today, i'm sure others will post pics. lots of great dealers there and tons of quality books. here's a few shots. it was a bit dark in there is the only issue they need to better address in future. john dolmayan was walking around like a happy proud parent. two rooms, one for comics, and one for comic art and other art. i mostly spent time in the comic room but ran into mike mignola in the art room later, though he wasn't at a table or anything. i also found a nice raw copy of avengers 1 for a good price. i'm sure there were lots of boardies there but i don't know how to recognize one. we should make shirts next time. PS that picture of the rack with one book missing from the middle was a very nice looking JIM83 cgc 3.0 that i was thinking about, and which had sold when i came round again.

Any recorded sale of a book, even if it's a ridiculous outlier, like the $3500 for a 7.0 last week, automatically causes all dealers as well as collectors and small time hobbyist sellers to reprice everything on the assumption that that is the new normal price. it's not their fault of course, everyone wants to make money. everyone is pricing their 181s stupid expensive now. if they don't, then it sells fast. the only way to gauge the real market price for these books is to watch real auctions, not one BUY IT NOW purchase. BTW the ss 181 8.5 that sold on feebay earlier today went for 5k, not the 6k BIN price that shows up on the sold listing.

the equally annoying converse of this is when a book seems overgraded, for example some of the AF15s that have brutal chipping all along the right side. when public auction results are disappointing for books like this, in low or mid grades, it tends to make everyone think the book is losing appeal, when in fact it is just a reflection of that particular copy.

i agree that's most strange. i could see passing on an offer 4 days earlier and then changing your mind later and needing to sell. but he passed on $3400 just one day before accepting $3300. i just cant see how shill bidding helps him on this though. really odd.

yes when something sells for fixed price OBO they say that it sold for full price. but if you use this link, and swap in the item number, you can see the actual price that the item sold for: https://offer.ebay.it/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBidsLogin&_trksid=p2047675.l2564&rt=nc&item=173401406321 in this case you can see that the seller accepted an offer of $3,300, although he passed up better offers prior to that, which is strange.

please tell me that the prices on the bags are what the person paid a long time ago, not what you paid now. please.

back to the subject of this listing, there are now multiple 7.0 through 8.0 copies sitting around on feebay with BIN prices based on the one or two crazy sales, with no action. a 7.5 sold for $3,300 on feebay earlier today or yesterday despite feebay claiming it sold for $3750. an 8.5 selling for 5k there is also a new record for the grade.

this is an old debate here too, but i believe his point was that if you are spending thousands of dollars on graded books, and you don't care about the investment aspect of your purchases, then you must be in the 1 per cent. most of us need to feel that the investment is a good one or we would not do it, when you are talking four or five figures. that does not mean that we don't also collect books to read and cherish. for me, those books are not graded and are not in the thousands of dollars. a slabbed book is an investment for the vast majority of folks.

i do think that when someone overpays dramatically for a book, like has just happened with the apparently legit sale of hulk 181 7.0 for $3500 on feebay last week, it can put a dampener on the action of a hot book. because what follows is everyone drastically overpricing their books ( now a 7.0 is listed for $3995 obo) and less sales will take place. it will be interesting to see if this dulls what has otherwise been the most explosive short term rise for one book i have seen since i started paying attention around 5-6 years ago.

yes clearly the answer is a resounding YES, ITS THAT RED HOT!!! lol. i've noticed in this field that whenever there is a new record price achieved for a book, every single dealer and person trying to sell their copy immediately assumes that's the new going price. sometimes it does reflect the market. but now, $3500 for a 7.0 is just plain stupid. no one except one person of questionable intellect is paying that today. will it be that price in a little while? based on the last few months, yes. but it's not there now. it's been amusing to see at least 3 sellers now list books here for silly prices and have no takers. but like i said, in a few more weeks, or perhaps only days, things could be different. i still see a lull coming down the road. not a crash, just a lull. this book will never crash unless some genius decides to put 30 copies on the market at once.

i'll be there! i'm sure i'll recognize you from your distinctive robot shaped head.

this. i have two copies and was hunting for my third when prices went nuts. i agree, plenty of people have this book and just want to hold it for whatever reason. but if 9.0 copies get to 10k i will sell one. whats interesting though, is last summer, when AF15 went ballistic, everyone was putting their copy on the market. a real flood. comiclink had 4-5 copies in an auction several times. with H181 now, it's not happening, even though there are tons more copies out there than AF15s. so, that's noteworthy. i imagine it's because people had waited awhile to finally see AF15 make a big move, whereas with H181 it's never not been going upwards.

i predict by winter prices have come down some. not that it will ever be cheap by any means. but come down a bit, and stay there for awhile too. but then again, no one cares what i think, especially my wife.

congratulations, that's good to know it was a real sale. i wonder if this guy will give me 10k for my 9.0WP?

from what i understand, the next film version of wolverine will be played by caitlin jenner, so that should be exciting. on a more serious note, lets see if that $3500 7.0 copy shows up again within a week on feebay. i'm thinking fake sale.

i got to spend some time with Alexandra Shipp the other day, who plays Storm in the new Xmen films, age of apolalypse and the upcoming dark phoenix. she is super cool-- she told me that she read all the claremont byrne xmen stuff and lots more, and really cares about the character. she also said whenever she sees a comic shop, she pops in to see if they have any Storm toys, and if they do, she buys them. she grabbed this one and signed it for my 3 year old son, which was very sweet of her. of course i can't show it to him yet or he'll rip it open. gotta save it till he's older.

i'm now pretty sure that a correction will be coming. a 7.0 sold on feebay yesterday for sellers asking price of $3500. no 7.0 had been over 3k so far and just earlier that day another 7.0 went for $2900. a few months ago it was 2k. this record breaking copy didn't even have white pages. perhaps it's a scam sale to artificially inflate prices even more. i guess we'll see. i've only been in this field for 5 years but i just don't see this feeding frenzy sustaining itself. i don't care how popular logan is, and i love him too. ( of course, now a seller on these boards has put his 7.0 up for sale here, asking the same price.)

funny that you should ask. as i posted a little earlier here, i was quoted $4800 in march for a 9.2 copy with white pages. it sold shortly thereafter for $5300 on ebay and since then has continued to 6k and now $6400 as the highest according to GPA. this is indeed a sudden upturn of dramatic proportions. grades such as 9.0, 8.5 all the way through fine and lower also have experienced similar surges. it will be interesting to see what happens to these various books in 6 months or a year. hulk 181 has always been highly in demand across most grades, so i am inclined to think that it may hold it's new values better than some of the other books that have encountered the recent speculation. but anything seems possible. watching last summer's AF15 rollercoaster was an eye-opener as far as comics values in the short term. i think in the long term all these books will continue to be solid investments.

got any hulk181s?

someone just shared a book on here within the last week that had an old cgc label and it said PRESSED on the label. just cant remember what the book was or what color the label was.

but they did note it on the label for awhile, right??