Stefan_W

Back cover looks normal but there is almost no color there. Just an ad for Lego.

Hi Everyone, This one has me stumped so I figured I would try to draw on expertise on this board. I bought a cool collection today that had this X-Men 118 Whitman variant. However, the reds and yellows are almost completely absent from the cover. At first I thought it may be sun fade but it really looks as though those colors were never there to begin with. My next thought is maybe the printer was running out of some inks when this one rolled out, but I dunno. Has anyone seen a book like this? Is it just sun fade or does it look like something else?

And shipped. Jumped to QC and then shipped within a couple of hours, which was outstanding.

Woah, went right to QC/Finalized within an hour. That was awesome!

A group of 4 ME books SFG - Sept 21 G/E/I - Oct 13

Congrats on selling off your books! It is really tough to sell a lot of comics and collectables a couple at a time, and if you get a fair price in one shot it is definitely a great way to go.

I do strictly cash, but I will note that vendors who accept plastic sell a lot more comics.

Count me in

I have said this before, but assuming a hot market will stay hot or assuming a cold market will stay cold are both very common mistakes. The first sucks you into buying books at a price you will never get back, and the second leads you to avoid solid investments. I've definitely made both mistakes since you never know how high or how low you can get, but I have also tried to minimize them by not buying "hot" books and by taking advantage of steals when prices tumbled.

The do not appear until after the books are graded, so they will be there at some point shortly after it moves to QC. They listed under "Category", so books that make the screen show "Modern" and those that do not show "REJECT". The other way of seeing how you did before the grades appear is to check your Visa for charges shortly after QC. Once the pre-screen books are graded you can tell how many books made the screen (although not which ones, of course). The actual grades do not usually appear until it rolls to Shipped status.

Picked up some more cool raws this week.

Hmm, I keep seeing people moving to shipped within a day or so after QC, which has been my experience. My latest pre-screen has been sitting in QC for a couple of days and my card has not been charged yet. The QC part is whatever, but I have never had a wait longer than a couple of hours between grading and my card being charged for pre-screens. I wonder if some part of the process changed slightly.

I usually just group it all together as a final price in my head and decide to buy based on that. So from a cost perspective there is no difference between $100 for a book with free shipping, $80 for a book with $20 shipping, and $70 for a book with $20 shipping and $10 handling. However, if a sale is recorded in GPA I want the final price I pay to be reflected in what appears in GPA since it sets the bar for future value. So extra costs that are not recorded in GPA sales make me less likely to buy a book.

I had 6 moderns close out this week and only one of them recovered my grading costs. A couple more would have but I sent that one through a different presser (it was before I started pressing my own books) and the extra costs associated with that pushed the line higher. Full disclosure though that being in Canada the costs of shipping to and from CGC are much higher, and there are also costs shipping to a US-based auction house. My cost per book after all fees in a full CGC submission of 25 moderns is usually about $45 CAD, so 33 USD. Auction house fees at CL at 10%, and shipping to CL is about $40 for a six book lot. I don't send smaller in books in for auction unless I figure they will go for $100 or more.

Honestly couldn't care less about your opinion of the book - I was just sharing as an example of how much below market value modern books were going. As I said in the post, I had someone local offer me $100 for it a couple of days after it was sent in so it has value at least to some people. People's tastes, and what they choose to spend money on, are personal and exist regardless of what someone who feels they have more elite tastes thinks of them.

Here is an example of the blood bath that I took. This book was ranging in the 130-160 range, and when I sent it in there was one lower sale of $100. I figured it would land at about 80-100. After I already sent it in there was a lower sale at $61 but that seemed like a one-off thing. Someone local offered me $100 for it two days after I shipped it out. Well, here is what happened.....

Just hit QC today, Oct 5th. Lightning fast! I noticed one difference the past couple of pre-screens. They are now listing rejects right away as soon as they hit QC so you know how you did. I like this change. I ended up with 22/25 hitting this time around which makes me happy.

It was (unsurprisingly) moderns.

My estimate was based on about 70% of current GPA, so it had a lower expectation already built in. Most went for about 1/3 "value" or so, but of course with prices tumbling value is tough to estimate. I probably would have done better on this group of books in one of the CL auctions prior to the pandemic. Aside from one book that climbed to lofty heights over a hundred bucks I did not even make back grading costs let alone value for the books themselves. No one seems to be putting cash into run fills and moderns now. There is still a bidding war for Silver and Golden age keys, especially the scarce ones you do not see all of the time. I put the cash from this group into a signed CGC 9.9 Vampirella that I liked. It has pretty bad Newton Rings which means I have to send it in for a re-holder, but that also kept the price down so I think I will be ok. If I was asked before the auction whether I would trade those six books for the Vamirella I would have said yes so I guess it worked out ok for me in the end. I am a bit more concerned about the higher value books I have lined up in the next two auctions.

My CL books in the current auction are all done and I made under 50% of my pre-auction estimate on them. Granted these ones were not big keys, but there were a bunch of 9.8 books that are cool enough to have gone for much more. A lot of comic prices seem to be swirling around the drain right now and I doubt it will end any time soon.

25 book modern pre-screen: SFG - Sept 20 G/E/I - Oct 4 Super fast once again

The usual suspects are holding since everyone figures bigger silver and GA keys are the best choice to protect your investment. It is the run fills and more recent books that are taking a massive tumble right now. The first four of my books that closed in the current CL auction went for about half of what I was hoping for and I regret putting them up for auction. In the end I know my bigger books will do alright though and hopefully it will all come out in the wash.

If you have to ask you can't afford it.

Mine is back up and working again, thank you for all of your hard work getting things up and running again!

Hahahaha, I got censored