Naphtha

I'll take it!

The idea is that eventually sales become muddled between what is within reason and what isn't to the point where it just gets lost within the aggregate.. While I completely agree with the caveat emptor approach, times change.

I completely agree with you and I'm also waiting to submit books until holders are fixed for more reasons than just the NR. It also might have to do with material ordering although I have no idea how many books are encapsulated in any given time. When the new engineered slabs were introduced, they likely purchased on contract large quantities of preform material that can't just be canceled or returned. As they likely tried alternative methods, they couldn't find a solution in time, thus we are in this endless cycle of no fix...maybe. Although as I think about it, preform plastics can't possibly hit their margins that much considering how much we pay for slabbing. Regardless, I just want the old slabs back. I could care less about optics and whether they use fancy plastic.

All I want is the old holders back. The other competing company is limping into obscurity. You won. Please drop the fancy plastic and get back to encapsulating books the way it was done a decade prior to this issue.

Exactly what I mean. Once there are enough slabbed grades to generate volume sales the book will climb. I assume your average ebay speculator doesn't consider the census when making "HOT" or "MCU" purchases, although I could be wrong.

I agree with both of these points and think that somewhere in the thread the legitimacy of the charity completely derailed any meaningful discussion on the legitimacy of their sales. I agree that this type of behavior should be rooted, but once the dust settles, we're still left with trying to figure out how to appropriate prices on books based on GPA's data. The market is moving into completely unknown territory in the next few years, and I for one want to make sure that any blatant price setting and/or manipulation in any way is controlled and hopefully removed completely. This is likely next to impossible, but all legitimate markets adapt. If we continue to let any and all sales from ebay create gospel FMV without any plan to regulate or validate those sales, then we are moving into very dangerous territory. There were two types of price manipulation that I could see. One where the book was listed, sold, and then immediately relisted at the same price using the last sale as bait. The other used two books of the same grade, one BIN and the other auction. The BIN (usually less desirable) would sell ~4-7 days prior to auction end so that last sale would again bait higher bids. I for one think that charitable sales should immediately be cut from GPA. If we are assuming that these books are being sold with either no consequence from a seller's perspective or that the interested buyer's are generally willing to pay more for a good cause, then they should not be used to generate FMV. Any situation in which a higher sale benefits the seller in any other way other than simply validating the price they paid should be exempt. I also don't mean to include situations where the seller is motivated due to health issues or personal reasons. This type of sale doesn't motivate buyers with tax deductions. While there is no way to read through every ebay sale of every CGC issue, we could at least start by monitoring sales at certain prices for certain vendors. For example, every sale of $1,000 or more sold on ebay should be validated before listing. I'm not sure how smaller dealers validate their prices on GPA, but I assume they submit paid invoices and the numbers are added individually. For ebay, it seems like the description and listing info auto populates these numbers once a confirmed sale happens. By confirmed sale, it could be simply hitting the button and waiting to cancel the transaction. I'm in no way passing judgement on GPA in this regard. I have submitted multiple shill bid sales and they have responded within the hour every time, but as the number of sold CGC issues skyrockets in the next few years, we have to find a reasonable solution before it escalates to a much bigger issue and we no longer have any context or legitimate reference to fairly claim FMV.

The majority of high grade copies are still locked in personal collections (census for 47 is 459 and 48 is 496). Once the census catches up to demand I think it will be a sustainable book for the next few years...if the rumors are true.

I always felt like Man-Thing was missing something special that Swamp Thing had...Adrienne Barbeau and Heather Locklear.

There were so many beautiful books in that collection. 9.8 x-men 12! It was also good to see the x-men 4 sell like it did. I'm glad his auction went well and hope he has enough to pay the bills and buy a lower grade run to keep it going.

I'll donate two trades. Hardcover X-Men Dark Phoenix Saga & X-Men Age of Apocalypse omnibus.

I would like to join in if a slot is available. It was fun watching this last year.

No, $118,000 in the last 30 days. I counted all the sales including the relists. They are generating a massive amount of CGC sales.

Imagine if the red cross was trading stocks and using that power to set prices. Berkbridge sold the 8.0 181 for 5.3k in the summer of 2018. Last sale was 2200. This price was unheard of and set the stage for the bronze age spike of the last two years. Real people losing real money because they think its a game. And small dealers will be hit hardest because they will be stuck with the inventory.

Well regardless of their response, their tracks are being covered as the original ebay listing thread was removed. That's 4 threads related to this issue that disappeared in less than 3 days...

I explained my reasoning right before the old thread was deleted. For the sake of this thread im backing completely off this issue.

If that is the case, who is the seller in San Diego? Would all sales be transferred to the account registered in NV?

I addressed 4 separate sales in the last two weeks. They claim all of them are "mistakes" or that the buyer didn't have a correct payment method. Do we seriously believe that a "charity" that has given not a single sentence of proof of their legitimacy and is selling ~one million in high value comics annually with record prices isn't manipulating the market?

That was never cleared up more than just a response saying it was a "mistake". I just posted their 30 day sale total at $118,000. If this was legitimately being used for a charity they would have no problem addressing this by now. They have stated nothing. The fake sales were never cleared up, just redirected to a different issue before the thread was removed. I can tell someone that I accidentally forgot to correct myself on a record sale right before I relisted the issue to get the sale at the same price but I would likely be lying.

There has to be a trail.

Their reported sales on ebay in the last 30 days is ~$118,000. Can you explain a little using your expertise what you are seeing?

The thread where I posted the ebay sales was also removed.

Yeah, I was lucky enough to grab all my FF keys the summer before that announcement. I actually traded most of my bronze age collection for an FF1 in october 2016. I don't think the seller was happy two months later.

I wasn't the only one. Good.

Jesus man, do you think I'm freaking out over a single ASM15 sale?