Stefan_W

When I sell comics I sell at full market value on Ebay and take the 15% hit, accept the risk of selling on CL and take a 10% hit plus the amount it goes below value (which may be a lot), and when I sell in person I ask for 85-90% of full market value. Works for me. When I buy books I pay close to value for a raw key books and expect to get a steep discount on filler books. Most people have no ability to sell filler in any meaningful way so my offers typically go over well with people selling their collections to me. I then clean and press the keys to increase the value on them, and I take the filler to comic shows to offload a few boxes to make room for more buying along with replenishing a bit of the cash I set aside for buying collections. Again, works for me. The biggest thing is a deal has to make sense for both sides. When I buy collections I make offers that are super reasonable to the person selling. When I sell off books I offer them below market value so people have a reason to open up their wallets. So often I see prices at comic shows that just make me shake my head. It is like they are hoping someone comes along who does not know how much the comic is actually worth. I also sometimes see completely unrealistic price expectations from a few people selling off their collections. I once had a person offer me their collection of 5,000 comics that she said has a total value of $18k based on MCS prices (with no books worth over $20 to show me), and she offered me a "deal" at $14k for that collection. The math suggests those books were listed on MCS shop for $4 or under which makes them books I throw into my dollar bins at shows. Full value to me for that collection would be roughly 10% of what she wanted for it, so different universes in terms of valuations. It takes all kinds to fill a freeway.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. People may be saving their books for the Con season and things may slow down again when that glut of submissions starts to come in. It is a part of why I am trying to get the last of my next submission pressed and out as quickly as possible. I think there is still time to beat the rush.

25 book modern submission Mar 8 - Shipped to CGC Mar 12 - Arrived at CGC Mar 13 - Box opened and SFG Mar 20 - Variant editions updated in submission tracking Mar 21 - G/E/I Mar 22 - Q/C Mar 28 - Shipped Really happy with both the speed at which this went through and the results. Trying to get another shipment finished so I can send it in before the Con season slows things down. Kudos to the CGC team for their hard work!

25 book modern submission Mar 8 - Shipped to CGC Mar 12 - Arrived at CGC Mar 13 - Box opened and SFG Mar 20 - Variant editions updated in submission tracking Mar 21 - G/E/I Mar 22 - Q/C This one flew through the process!

A friend stopped by a couple of hours after this exchange to drop off some books for pressing, and he was pretty excited about the new sig verification (he heard about it on Facebook last night). He is planning on submitting 4 books that he kept as raw and asked if I could crack two others from another company so he could submit them as well. A sample of one, but I think we should begin to wrap our heads around the possibility that this new feature will be popular with collectors and re-subbing will be a significant part of it all.

25 book modern submission Mar 8 - Shipped to CGC Mar 12 - Arrived at CGC Mar 13 - Box opened and SFG Mar 20 - Variant editions updated in submission tracking Mar 21 - G/E/I This is a very quick turnaround! Fingers crossed that I did well with this group

I know people who would line up to do exactly that. The target group would be people who have books they personally took to Stan Lee (or other artist signing) signings many years ago and who only used the competitor because of their verification option.

I'm happy with this announcement and not surprised at all. It will be nice to have a mechanism at CGC for authenticating older signatures. I think it is a nail in the coffin for competitors. I know many people who only use other grading services because they have signed books they know are authentic, and there was no mechanism outside of slab notes like "'Stan Lee' written on page 1" as an option at CGC. I suspect a lot of them will crack those books and send them to CGC. Heck, it would not surprise me if CGC offered up a special where people can send in signed books from one specific other service for reholdering into CGC cases like they did years ago with unsigned ones. In fact, if I was running CGC that is exactly what I would do in order to pull even more higher end competitor slabs out of the marketplace.

12 book Vintage Submission: Mar 14 - Shipped from Canada Mar 19 - Arrived at CGC Mar 20 - Box opened and SFG Mar 20 - Credit card charged

25 book modern submission Mar 8 - Shipped to CGC Mar 12 - Arrived at CGC Mar 13 - Box opened and SFG May 20 - Variant editions updated in submission tracking I noticed this morning that some variants that were not identified when the shipment hit SFG were updated today, and a second print that I thought was a first print was also updated. I never noticed this as a separate step before so figured I would include it in this list of steps and timelines.

I just pulled up a couple and it worked fine for me.

I really enjoyed the video. The storyline, as I see it, is that even with modern books direct from manufacturing not all books are 9.8, and the 9.9s and especially 10.0s are hard to come by. Not a bad choice of messaging. I hope they do more like this down the road. The biggest question that I have is based on my own experience - I have submitting hundreds of books that hit 9.8 but none so far that reached 9.9 or 10.0. I know it is (or at least was) possible based on older books in the census that could not have been sent to CGC direct from manufacturing but still reached those levels. I've had one or two along the way that I was convinced had a good shot at landing at 9.9 but they never got there, so basically I am wondering what I was missing in those cases. This video helps a bit but I am not sure you can compare books straight out of the box like the ones in the video to older ones that reached 9.9 or up.

Well that sucks. The silver lining if you had decided to go through with the sale is people who buy there typically know the grading is super tight, and you may have still been able to get FN/VF prices for raw books they list as FN-. But of course there is no point in taking that risk, and it doesnt change the reason for being frustrated to begin with.

You could always offer to pay for these books with three dollar bills.

I would phone them directly. They are really good to deal with and will straighten it out right away.

25 book modern submission Tried a new shipping process this time and used Canada Post/USPS rather than Fedex, and it ended up getting to CGC in about half the time with less than half the cost. Shipped - Mar 8 Arrived at CGC - Mar 12 Box opened and SFG - Mar 13

I heard a bunch of pressers talking smack about you too, so I guess this is fair.

Someone took a black marker and colored the case in top to bottom?

25 book modern submission Dropped off at FedEx in Ottawa - Feb 20 Arrived at CGC - Feb 26 Box opened, SFG, and card charged - Feb 26 G/E/I - Mar 11 Q/C - Mar 12 Shipped - Mar 12 Shipped out on day 11 of the TAT, which is pretty spectacular. Got great results in this one - 11 books out of 11 that I cracked and re-subbed got grade bumps.

25 book modern submission Dropped off at FedEx in Ottawa - Feb 20 Arrived at CGC - Feb 26 Box opened, SFG, and card charged - Feb 26 G/E/I - Mar 11 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 Q/C - Mar 12

25 book modern submission Dropped off at FedEx in Ottawa - Feb 20 Arrived at CGC - Feb 26 Box opened, SFG, and card charged - Feb 26 G/E/I - Mar 11

I was not going to include these since I got only the tail end of the comic boom when prices were already slipping, but here are some Silvers I sold at the end of 2022. Better late than never, and super happy to move on when I did. Silver Surfer 1 CGC 3.5 Sold in 2022 for $445 Current GPA value: $360-370 X-Men 10 CGC 8.0 Sold in 2022 for $1027 Last GPA sale was$375, but typically go for about $600 ToS 77 CGC 8.0 Sold in 2022 for $333 Typically got for less than half that now Silver Surfer 3 CGC 8.5 Sold in 2022 for $1550 Current GPA value approx $850 (last sale was bigger) Journey into Mystery Annual 1 CGC 6.0 Sold in 2022 for $424 Current GPA value $350 Ghost Rider 1 CGC 7.0 Sold in 2022 for $485 Current GPA value $350-ish The Surfer 2 CGC 8.5 roughly held value but still happy to have moved on in a tough market.

I would be shocked if no one who collects Golden and Silver Age comics noticed a big spike in value during the height of the pandemic. It did not have the same impact across all books, with rare books with very few sales not experiencing the roller coaster (i.e., gotta have sales during that time period to see the rise and fall), but it is not as though I am just pulling random stuff out of places the sun doesn't shine. If you look at a longer time frame (like 10 years, as you suggest) the market looks more like normal with a big blip followed by prices correcting - but that big blip in prices did happen, and people bought and sold even when the market was really high. If you are curious about how the comic boom impacted upon the values of books you love I would highly recommend doing a search for You Tube videos on the topic. There are good ones that break it down by category such as Modern, Silver, Golden, etc.

A lot of discussion focuses on drops in prices and how we have overpaid for books. This makes perfect sense since no one likes to see value drops in their larger purchases. However, people who sold during the height of the comic boom may have done really well. This thread is to show examples of books that you may have had trouble parting with at the time, but that you are super glad you walked away from before prices crashed. I picked a couple of examples where I had multiple books that I am lucky to have sold off while prices were high. First one is Heir to the Empire. I picked up 6 high grade raw copies for $50 each, sent them in for grading through a presser, and ended up with 4 X 9.8 and 2 X 9.6. All of these went straight to comic link for auction, and there was a range of fantastic returns with the highest being $1700. Just checked GPA and the last 9.8 sale of this books was $312. Second one is Usagi Yojimbo. I bought 5 graded copies all at 9.2 and 9.4 from a friend, did a crack and resub, and ended up with 4 X 9.8 and 1 X 9.4. Again, all went to CL auction and all of the 9.8s had really strong sales with the best being $1399. This book has level out lately at just over 500 USD, and looks as though it may sit there going forward, but that is a far cry from the prices I got for my copies a couple of years back. Please share your stories