FSF

Well...no one has to do anything. ebay sellers and board members here don't "have to" either but they do. I would think as a function of two things. One, to give an accurate and as complete a depiction of the item as the seller can (which I think is only fair), and two, to garner more interest. I for one am the kind of person who doesn't stick to GPA figures if I want an item. And I will comfortably go over by 20-30% on a book that is not by any means rare and comes up often, if it is an older book and I can discern as much of the presentation as possible. But I will not even consider buying at a 20% discount if I can't see the back.

The clear majority of CGC books on ebay seem to show a scan of the back. I won't even consider bidding on an auction without seeing one. Why does Comic Link rarely show one? I can't be the only potential business they're losing by not doing so.

Thank you for the links. Very interesting site. I wish he would do some material in a more straight forward manner as he obviously has a lot of talent.

BTW, who is the artist and what other works have they done? I'd very much consider buying this painter's works but not this one.

I think the work is very well done so I'll give it that. I personally don't care for the interpretation.

I couldn't agree with you more regarding Pollock. I can't understand how his "paintings" yield some of the highest prices ever paid, or even one dollar for that matter. How does hurling the contents of a can of paint onto canvas, without much control of how hit will display on the canvas, constitute art? It literally seems to me that anyone could basically do that. Now I may very well be trivializing it some but employing as much objectivity as I possible can, I really think it is just lazy. Now I get that abstract art is what it is but unlike Picasso, who does it so well with some of his best works, Pollock's material and its popularity is entirely unfathomable to me no matter how hard I try to understand the situation.

Fair enough. I'm by no means an expert, and to be quite honest, I was really thing that there are virtually no high grade GA books which leaves possibly a fair amount of mid grade books as possibilities. But based on the census totals (being that they are submitting the best books available), I'm not entirely convinced of that. And of course we can debate as to the percentage that defines "virtually all".

Maybe I'm reading you're post wrong but you seem to be preaching to the choir. I'm completely in your camp in that regard. In fact, it seems like you are agreeing with my post that virtually all GA books are low grade. I never stated that ALL of them were, but "virtually all".

As for trying to define high grade by era, the grade is the grade. It's either high grade or it isn't. Where that line gets drawn universally is debatable but the actual grade isn't. We don't say that a kid who wasn't born very bright but manage to work very hard to get a 'C' in math somehow got an 'A' because he did the very best s/he could and 'C' was the ceiling of talent. It's a 'C' no matter who got it.

I don't doubt at all that there are high grade GA books to be had. The census is proof of that. But I have to believe that there are in a tiny minority of all the entire population of GA books that are in existence.

As my OP stated, I agree with you that grade is irrelevant of era. I think the way to look at it is that virtually all modern books are high grade (even if they are "only" 9.0 and no one wants it) and virtually all GA books are low grade.

I've never seen that Pissarro before but man it is beautiful. I am a fan of his work and that's up there with the very best I've seen. $800K sounds really cheap, even for 1995, but I'm not an art expert by any means.

Personally, I think today's high prices are temporary and primarily a function of two factors. One is the comic movie craze. However, I think that is much more benign than the main factor which is that stocks and real estate have been pushed to way overvalued levels (largely driven by central bank shenanigans and huge increases in government deficits). The massive amount of paper wealth that has built up has led to all sorts of assets becoming inflated including sports cards, vintage autos, comic books, art, etc. I haven't sat down and actually done the math but my guess is that you could probably buy every single CGC book for well below 1% of Apple stock's value. And 1% of Apple is virtually nothing on just Apple's value, let alone the entire stock market capitalization. In times like this, I would probably focus on hard to find books that aren't that expensive (even if they did go up in value a lot). Mainly because they are hard to find. I would not buy Hulk 181 or AF15 at these lofty levels. Personally, I'm extremely confident that the next 5-10 years will manifest in a significant asset deflation scenario at some point. I think it could get really ugly and comic books will be the last thing people will care to buy with their limited amount of funds.

For the record, and I know this isn't one of those factual things but prone to perception and varying opinions, but I would have thought: High - 8.0+ Mid - 5.0-7.5 Low - 4.5 and below

I would assume this shouldn’t depend on the age of the book.

It's people like you that make the world a better place. Thanks for the app!

Perhaps it's targeted. I know that when I look at BIN listings, it shows the discounted price right above the "Bucks" sign.

Any thoughts on luannlynn?

Interesting, if you are talking about the one in Mountain View, I was planning on dropping by there today.

Any specific opinions on anthonyscomicbookart-online ?

Will do!

I'm looking for VF-NM for Bronze and F-VF for Silver. I would very much like to buy higher grades than that in CGC holders but I've come to two conclusions. 1) I only prefer the new slabs (for their durability and presentation) 2) I can't stand the new slabs with the Newton rings' issue so until CGC gets its act together on that, I will not buy any slabbed comics unless on those limited occasions where I'm seeing them in hand. And quite frankly, I think comics present much better outside the slab. But of course if one is spending hundreds or thousands on a single comic, I don't want to risk buying raw comics with my limited skills in grading and judging restoration.

Thanks for the responses, everyone. I was going to ask about many of the names cited here but this is much more efficient.

Can you folks please make some suggestions for dealers who sell non over-graded, unrestored, raw comic books?

Thanks for the vicarious thrill in documenting your process through all of this. Very entertaining stuff and I wish you unlimited success in your venture.