LordRahl

On 5/18/2024 at 7:09 PM, NoMan said:

I'm not the most knowledgable person in this hobby, but would a TOS 52 go for 100k?

Hard to say since one sells about every 5 years or so. The last one sold in I believe 2018 or '19 on CL for around $65K so at the height of pandemic prices, yeah easily $100K. If Ghost Riders first app is a quarter million and higher dollar book with 5 graded at 9.8, I don't see why Black Widows first app wouldn't be $100K with only 4 in 9.6 and none higher.

On 5/18/2024 at 6:11 PM, NoMan said:

what book?

ToS 52 in 9.6

I actually had a lapse of judgement once and listed a book that I really had no intention of selling for something outrageous like 3x GPA or maybe more. Thought, no one will buy this at this price. I was wrong. If that same book had sold in 2021, it would have been an easy $100K, even today it might get that, but minimum $70K. Let's just say my immediate regret at selling that book has only intensified over the years.

There is a difference between putting stuff up for a premium and what this seller is doing. I have books that if I were to ever sell, I'd only sell for 4-5x GPA. Partly because GPA only has 2-3 sales in grade ever, partly because my copies are ped copies and upgrade candidates and partly because best of luck in finding another one in the next 5 years. This seller likely isn't even looking for a sucker but has non sales related reasons for putting it up for that kind of price. Who knows what that is. Or I suppose he could just be a crackpot, it's not like we don't have our share of them in this hobby.

On 5/15/2024 at 12:17 PM, Q.N.S. said:

But the reasons are because of Covid boom. Before this, you the retailer only would knock off 10-30%. There are cases where nothing is marked off, or at least there used to be in HTF's and rare and as market conditions demand. So, I don't blame Overstreet. Noise is just noise. Comics are not supposed to go up and down so much in the course of one year. If they do, we have insufficient methods of tracking them. Cars don't sell for Kelly Blue Book, or even new ones for list price. It used to be that LCS would sell 50-80% price consistently of guide which means they buy for 25-40% of guide unless they know there will be a buyer, it can go higher in those cases. 

Overstreet's prices will settle off and I'd be more interested in a 2024 or 2025 volume than in a 2020-2023 volume. Just because an auction was timed poorly or timed perfectly or hit a book when it was on movie/tv show highs doesn't mean the book is really worth that. It only means someone was willing to pay that much or accept that low in exchange, but it's not the actual value. So much of the comic market is still not data-logged online. This is why I trust the vast network of dealers who contribute to Overstreet. I believe not backing Overstreet's mandate to stay premier and legitimate is a major mistake. 

No. They aren't. Overstreet was irrelevant loooong before the pandemic. The reality of it is, any guide, be it OS, GPA, Ebay sold listings, whatever, is just a guide and people that aren't dealing in comics regularly (whether selling or buying) do not understand how to value comics. Also, there is no such thing as "actual value" of a comic. This is a myth, a fabrication, a puff of smoke. 

On 5/15/2024 at 11:49 AM, Hepcat said:

My copy of the House of Mystery 175 anyway:

On 5/15/2024 at 11:31 AM, Hepcat said:

9.6's? I'm surprised there are any (especially of the Tomahawk).

 

 

Amazingly enough the Tomahawk has a 9.6 AND a 9.8 The HoM has only 1 9.6 and no 9.8. I'd love to see that 9.8 Tomahawk

On 5/15/2024 at 9:55 AM, Hepcat said:

But tth2 specified Marvels and neither of those two comics are Marvels meaning they're not nearly as common as Marvels from the same time period.

Given that there are exactly 3 copies of both books combined that grade out at 9.6 or above... this is the understatement of the year

On 5/15/2024 at 1:51 AM, tth2 said:

Depends on the pedigree, grade/PQ of the book in question and the rarity of the book in that grade/PQ. 

Some SA pedigrees I value much more highly than others, particularly Curator, Pacific Coast and Western Penn.  Other SA pedigrees I attach little to no value to, particularly Savannah and Mohawk. 

Also, if there are a ton of other copies (pedigree and/or non-pedigree) as good or better as the pedigree book, then I would attach very little (or any) premium to the book.  For example, is there really anything premium about a 9.6 Rocky Mountain or Oakland Marvel from the mid- or late-1960s that is one of many 9.6 copies and behind many 9.8 copies in the Census? 

The whole reason a mystique developed around pedigrees in the first place was that they contained pristine copies of books that were otherwise impossible to find in such condition.  So GA pedigrees and then SA pedigrees that contained books from the 1950s and early 1960s that were impossible to find in grade.  But pristine books from 1968 are as common as dirt, so there's nothing particularly special about a pedigree book from that period being pristine.

Is that so? Please find me one of these common as dirt Tomahawk 116's or HoM 175's in 9.6 or 9.8 And I won't be expecting to pay an arm and a leg for them because they are so common. 

I kid mostly but your points are valid. I haven't broken out any Rocky's but I have broken out a bunch of Suscha's and a Suscha 9.8 is just "nicer" than a normal 9.8 typically. 

On 5/14/2024 at 7:23 PM, RockMyAmadeus said:

 

Yeah that's kinda what it looks like. Ridiculous

On 2/19/2024 at 3:01 PM, Ghost Town said:

When I was growing up and first saw Ghost Rider in a comic, it didn't strike me as unusual that his head was flaming skull. But fifty years later, I'm thinking, "Wow, his head is a flaming skull!"

Zoiks!!! What a book!

The top of the book sits up close to the front of the outer well, then it bows back where the middle is all the way back to the back of the outer well and the bottom of the book is towards the front of the outer well.

Trying to get a good picture but it's tough since it's only photographing from the side. In hand it's obvious even looking at the book from either the front or back but it's not showing up in pictures.

I just got back 8 boxes of books. I've opened 4 of the boxes and all the slabs seem to have warped inner wells where they are concave in the middle, like I'm sure many of you have seen with backing boards. So, since the inner well is bent, it's bending my book inside it, which is of course putting stress on the spine. I've looked through a bunch of older slabs and they don't have this problem. Is anyone else seeing this with recent subs or did I just get "lucky"?

I have a Curator X Men book that is a dead nuts 9.8 all day except for a 1" corner crease on the back cover. One of those you can't really see until you angle the book to a strong light. It's not pressable as the paper is broken but on a white back cover it's very hard to see. It's a 9.4. Bought it as a 9.4, broke it out because I couldn't tell why it was only a 9.4 and once I saw the crease raw I sent it in again and it got a 9.4 again. So the answer to your question really is the only way you're going to know it's by sending it in but what you are describing doesn't necessarily bring you out of the 9's.

I always struggle with stains and foxing. Sometimes it's obvious that it's foxing and other times it's like this example. Even with book in hand it can be hard to tell. If it's on the outside only, and given the grade, I'm guessing foxing in this case. CGC doesn't hit foxing as hard as stains.

It doesn't need to break color for it to not be a good pressing candidate, especially with a white back cover, there really is no color for it to break. If the paper fibers are broken, no amount of pressing is going to put them back together. Pressing might flatten the crease but the crease will still be there. The pictures aren't great but it looks like the paper fibers are broken.

And probably my favorite cover in my collection that is from a ped

On 7/25/2020 at 8:00 AM, namisgr said:

That's a sweet pedigree run of some really scarce comics.

Here's another that got an upgrade after it left my collection:

I'm the sucker that bought the "upgraded" copy I guess. S'okay, it lives in it's natural, raw state in one of my boxes now. Don't remember what it was when I bought it... 9.0 or 9.2 I think?

Green River and old label goodness all in the same pic. Pretty sure this would sit in a higher graded holder if it was graded today.

The Savannah ped is generally looked down on because of the inferior page quality on a lot of books however a lot of the other peds didn't have the late Silver horror books like these 

On 5/3/2024 at 2:09 PM, thehumantorch said:

We're all wired differently.  While I have some great memories of friends and concerts and vacations and all the rest I also value comics that I've purchased, especially when I was young.  I have a strong emotional attachment to them and I love to flip through them and go back in time to the newsstands and second hand bookstores of my youth.  I'd just rather plug in a Bee Gees CD and sort my books than pay $200 for a concert and fight the crowds.  

And of course collecting comics and enjoining other aspects of life aren't mutually exclusive.  We can travel and hang with friends and all the rest and collect what we like.

Where prices go from here really depends on how many people will continue to collect in the future.  As we all know, a collectible is only worth what the next guy will pay us.  Strangely enough I believe my collection has actually appreciated since the end of covid because pretty well all of my SA to MA books have dropped in value but my Timelys and Precode Horror and Precode Crime and Romance have jumped.  At the end of the day I don't really care what my books are worth monetarily, their value to me is purely emotional.  I'll just stay in my lane and continue to pick up books.

As an aside, probably the best musical experience I ever enjoyed was going out for supper to a random Mexican restaurant.  Inside Billy Cowsill was playing to a crowd of nobody.  I was 10 feet away watching a man of extraordinary talent sing his heart out.

On 4/29/2024 at 5:05 AM, 1Cool said:

Wow - that is a lot of red   I'd think we would be seeing a lot more green on the left side of the chart with it being the start of comic book season.  

And everything is over $350 so it was one of their premier auctions with the "great stuff" and we still see so much red.  That's sad.  I don't have GPA but we must be seeing 2018 - 2019 prices at this point with a lot of these books.

This is one of their regular auctions, not the premier ones which they call featured. The featured one is coming up in a couple of weeks. Nothing I bid on, which is mostly keys and "cover" books in high grade, is back to '18-'19 prices yet. I'm sure you can find filler stuff that might be back to that but anything that is broadly desirable is still above. Prices are basically where they should be if you take out the the pandemic madness... about 10-25% higher now than they were in '18-'19. That's on average, as we all know books sell in a pretty wide range of prices and there is no such thing as a set FMV despite what people on the internet try to preach. Even pre-pandemic you could find high and low outlier sales and now you can find high and low outlier sales.

On 4/27/2024 at 9:38 AM, newshane said:

 

I encourage him to abandon speaking through emoticons and images. BRING BACK THE PROSE! 

While I agree and enjoy his, let's say wordier posts (I know that's not a real word), he's doing a fine job of getting his point across with images and emojis so hey whatever works and doesn't get him banned. It's unfortunate that people are so thin skinned that they can't take a poster who has a very deep knowledge base on things he posts about, just because he doesn't sugar coat things. Sugar coating things isn't all it's cracked up to be but that's just my