LordRahl

4 hours ago, www.alexgross.com said:

last one for now- Silver Surfer #16 vs Mephisto!

i make this one a 9.2. very clean as all of these are- glossy and tight. the distributor ink from atop the book has come down over the yellow type a bit. a few light spine ticks and some corners that are just slightly not sharp. 

last sale in 9.2 was $300. 

my price: $199

4 hours ago, www.alexgross.com said:

Silver Surfer #14 vs Spiderman--

another super sharp copy, i make this either 9.4 or 9.2. so hard to say! i'm debating submitting this one but will try here first. 

very clean and glossy, almost as nice as another copy from the same collection that got a 9.6. there is a little wear around bottom staple but it is still solidly attached. otherwise no real issues. like all of these books, there is some distributor ink up top of the book. 

last two sales of a 9.4 were each $650 in june of this year. last sale of a 9.2 was $380 in may. 

my price: $400

2 hours ago, Joe Ankenbauer said:

I mentioned this in another thread. Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon have no state sales tax. So, based on the example shown by the OP, if someone in Oregon wanted this set, it would cost them $139,000 plus shipping. However, if @littledoom wanted to purchase the same set of books, it would cost him $152,205 plus shipping. I would say that gives the buyer in Oregon a tremendous advantage.

I'm not a fan of having to pay these taxes, but that's what has to be done to have a civilized society. My solution would be to establish a uniform "Internet Tax" that EVERYONE pays, regardless of your state sales tax. If you want to set it at 5%, I can live with that. All I'm asking is for the playing field to be leveled.

You are correct that the buyer in OR would have a major advantage however I'm not sure how big of a difference it makes in the grand scheme of things. The population of all of those states combined is less than the population of just NYC.

3 hours ago, Chudders said:

So, an update.  I think it is important to give credit where credit is due.  I followed this advice (many thanks by the way) and today had a conversation with a lovely lady named Rebecca Bonacci from CGC.  She could not have been nicer or fairer in the way she dealt with the case.  I was offered viable options and finally agreed on a way forward that has 'great customer service' right at the heart of it.  Thanks for your help on here and thanks to CGC 

Glad it's being worked out to your satisfaction. I have had similar experiences and CGC is usually able to take care of problems however.... it's unfortunate that you had to email Brittany and needed to post about it in order to be "in the know" of who to email to get the situation resolved. It SHOULD have been resolved through their normal customer service team who apparently failed miserably here. People shouldn't have to know who Brittany is in order to have problems taken care of. Do better CGC.

2 hours ago, HighAF said:

Artgerm needs to pencil an entire book, any book, to earn my respect.

I'm sure he's crying himself to sleep at night not having YOUR respect.

15 hours ago, NP_Gresham said:

Comiclink listing one at a time.

Put them all out there at once. See what happens

ASM#300 is as common in 9.8 as dirt.

More copies than collectors.

Like I said, de beers has done this for a century.

There is nothing rare about diamonds.

I guess I missed the part where CL took over the world and is the only place you can buy a 9.8 ASM 300. But seriously, you do know that just because one venue out of hundreds limits the amount of a certain grade they put at auction at any given time does not mean that the supply for the entire market is being artificially manipulated, right? It's ONE venue, there are many more. Not to mention that they are only limiting it per auction so just wait for the next auction and there will be more or go on feebay, or comicconnect or any dealer website etc etc.

On 7/12/2020 at 9:15 PM, NP_Gresham said:

More like - hide the supply to keep the demand.

Not new, De Beers has been doing this with diamonds for over 100 years.

 

Who is hiding the supply exactly? Anyone can go look at the CGC census and feebay and figure out real quick that a book like ASM 300 is plentiful.

10 hours ago, William-James88 said:

Metropolis comics has been doing this for decades and yet there is very little uproar, why?

Has been doing what? Cracking CGC slabs and reselling at a higher grade? Do tell more 

18 hours ago, lou_fine said:

Which now brings us back to the chicken or egg argument.  

As you have clearly stated and a point to which I definitely agree, there are some collectors (along with speculators and flippers) who DO indeed care whether  book has been pressed or not, which means that this critical piece of information should rightfully be disclosed if they as sellers are aware of this fact when they go to sell such a book.  Yet, my bet is that the number of sales descriptions or auction descriptions which discloses the fact that a book has been pressed is a whole lot closer to zero than even a tiny fraction of the books that CCS has pressed over the past 20 years.  

The argument back then by the pressing cabal was that it was not necessary to disclose pressing since the only thing that mattered in the final determination of the price was the grade, and pressing didn't factored into the price.  As a result, it was conveniently not necessary to disclose this fact because they claimed that they themselves as buyers would pay exactly the same price for equivalent graded books whether the book had been meticulously preserved and stored in that condition over the decades or whether it had been artificially improved to that same grade the previous week by a comic book doctor working in their basement lab. 

Clearly a argument which I found to be totally unbelieveable and totally   if you actually gave it some thought.  

I think what eventually ended up happening is that a lot of sellers just started saying to assume that their books are pressed because it's difficult to keep track of what is and what isn't and it's easier to just assume everything they sell is. I don't know why people wouldn't take this approach as well with auction houses. Just assume it's all pressed. I know I do when it comes to any book that is valued more than a couple hundred bucks.

11 hours ago, lou_fine said:

Yes, it would not surprise me at all if you would have to wait years, if not decades to have your CGC 9.8 graded copies of some of these relatively common hot books like ASM 300 to ever hit the auction block.    

And yet, the CGC label collectors still continue to line up to pay ridiculous dollars for these kinds of common labels which tends to show up in every single auction.    

Demand > Supply equals ridiculous dollars regardless of total number of graded copies. Not sure why that's difficult to understand

On 5/14/2020 at 6:27 PM, James J Johnson said:

As Lionheart once said, "Wrong bet"! I've been tracking his purchases and sales for quite awhile, once I discovered the crack and relist strategy. There have been restored purchases in his feedback, books that later showed up as, you guessed it, "out of father-in-laws refrigerated safe, NM/unread", without mention of their being restored at sometime during cold storage. It's all there in the feedback. I know ebay scrambles IDs in most cases but the feedback number usually indicates who the seller or buyer is if you match it up. Other ways to tell to, but I don't want to give that away, like a tutorial for him on how to better game  people watching him.

Now there is a reference that you just don't see much. I see you are a connoisseur of early career JCVD and Lionheart just gets overlooked but one of my favs. Well done sir.

4 hours ago, lou_fine said:

Are you telling me that you don't really buy CGC's and the pro-pressers' spin from way back in the day that there's no need for disclosure because nobody cares if a book has been presseed or not, as the only thing that matters is that big number on the top left hand corner of the slab.  

All I can say to that, is that there must be a whole lot of nobodies in this marketplace then because they sure do seem to care. 

Did anyone actually say that "nobody cares"? Of course there are people who care. Most of them are very vocal and are here on these very boards. Thing is, there clearly aren't ENOUGH people who care... at least not enough to influence the market downwards. The minority here (people who care) may be very vocal and the majority (people who don't) really don't say much but clearly the people who don't vastly outnumber the people who do. 

3 hours ago, trmoore54 said:

Hey all...thought I'd catch up with my post and offer some thoughts.  Been busy with work which is a good thing (actually busier than pre-shutdown because now everyone thinks take that 1-4 hour daily commute you're not doing anymore just convert it back into work/production...I'm an architect) and "off" the boards since early April.  So seems like there is still quite a bit of optimism and positive sales/activity and perhaps, as I read the posts at least, apparently still a seller's market for the most part.

However, I personally am waiting for the other shoe to drop (and believe me I am the ETERNAL OPTIMIST!) with 40M people unemployed in USA etc.  And I can't believe the resilience of the stock market but people have to put their money somewhere I guess.  Think about it.  There are approximately 156M people in the workforce in the USA so 40M/+ unemployed is 25%.  That's a lot!  This is tip of the iceberg type thing as it is early and will only worsen until said 40M people get re-employed and back on their feet etc.  As is the cycle, the rich will get richer and take advantage of those with less resources.  

For me personally, I turned 65 last NYE, things change.  I still love comics and love my comics but just about no one else in my life could care less.  So I love other things as well and right now my "collectible" focus is on wine.  Wine is fun and more people that I know like wine and I can enjoy that myself and enjoy with others.  Wine is also expensive, like the comics (higher grade) I like, so in that sense I have to navigate and manage my obsession and collect accordingly...and also get the same thrill when I get a deal.  (There aren't a lot of deals to be had in the wine collecting world...it's just about acquiring them and having them pretty much at market for whenever they are available to attain.)  Frankly, comics just don't mean that much to me as they did 5 or 10 years ago.  It may happen to you at some point in your collecting arc.  Don't get me wrong I'm not ditching my ASM 1-20 in CGC 9.0 anytime soon.  And I still do enjoy having them...that is the most intrinsic aspect.  But that will change again some time and I'll sell them all and give the money to my grandkids or something.  The cycle of collecting and life...

Yes, 40M unemployed but that number is heavily weighted in the retail and service industries as things were shut down. It isn't an actual lack of jobs, it is a forced lack of jobs. As everything starts to reopen, most of the people in those industries will go back to work. 

36 minutes ago, Foolkiller said:

I'm going to yield my rights to the ASM 23 to LordRahl.  

I greatly appreciate it Brian.  the ASM 23

3 hours ago, lou_fine said:

Am I missing something here as I thought this book was sold in the old style eBay auction format, as opposed to a BIN or sale price set in advance by the seller.  

If so, then it's really much more a case of a buyer being able to buy a book for whatever they want, after factoring in the caveat emptor principle. 

Even more so in this particular case here where the seller specifically and clearly states in big bold letters that the grade is ONLY HIS OPINION and asks potential bidders to look at the photos as GRADING IS VERY SUBJECTIVE.  Now, if that's not raising big red flags to any potential bidders, then they have only themselves to largely blame as they are definitely not bothering to conduct any due diligence on their own part before throwing down irresponsible bids on a common book that already has well over 5,000 copies graded and slabbed in CGC 9.0 and above.    

Now I must be missing something... what book are you talking about?

2 hours ago, djpinkpanther67 said:

Not as spectacular as @LordRahl’s haul. They graded about what I thought they would, with no surprises

 

That Avengers is 

2 hours ago, batmiesta said:

LordRahl, where did you come by the Marvel Tales #34 ? Love that cover but impossible to find in that shape, well! For me it is anyway. 

Awesome books by the way. 

That was an ebay score along with the other MT books. Sometimes you get lucky.

8 hours ago, ghost of the wild said:

Since I know the others posted the dates, they were not ahead of me, sounds a little like a sweet disguised, in others words, we have no answer for you how ever just to give you a pat on the head, now go away. 

Nah, not really. I just had 5 orders ship within the last couple of weeks. 3 Modern and 2 Pre Screen Modern. All submitted at the exact same time (same box over to CGC). 1 Modern shipped on 5/1, 1 on 5/4 and then both pre screens shipped prior to the 3rd modern finally shipping 5 days after the first one did. Why would that happen when they all went in on the exact same day and why would a pre screen ship after a normal sub? I have no idea. They all shipped far earlier than the estimated TAT's so I couldn't care less. They are shipping stuff at light speed right now. Must be far fewer subs going in with the whole Covid thing I guess.

14 hours ago, Lest 2 Art said:

You're missing 20 years of Josh being a sketchy sob whose moral compass is NOT wound too tight.

8 hours ago, Larryw7 said:

Auctions are private to discourage Thrill Bidders

Hammer Time!!! He always managed to find "thrill bidders" somehow.

21 minutes ago, Hieronymus Bosch said:

It's funny the number of threads around here where people will absolutely go nuts over someone buying a collection for cheap and making a profit off of it - but a seller who lies about what he's selling to make a profit is ok? Bizarro world.

Ummm... NO. There are a couple of people in this thread that seem to be OK with it, certainly a minority. Probably the same minority that would be just fine with the other scenario too.