DC#

Hulk 247 VF/VF+ $ 4.00 283 VF $ 4.00 298 VF $ 4.00 Fantastic Four 143 VF 8.00 I’ll take these

I am seeing, or at least feeling, the same thing - both on Heritage and Comiclink. Books that are getting really close to "FMV" or whatever benchmark you want to use in early bidding may not have any bids in the final few hours - I tracked a lot of books with no change/additional bidding on the last day last auction. I will start my recap of this CL next week - will try to cover the entire auction this time as it is a bit more manageable (only 46 pages of listings including art)

I think of my collection as more than just comics....I view it as collecting some of the greatest Pop Art of the 20th Century. The joy of ownership for me is seeing it. I'll share a photo of my "collage" some day.

Here is an updated chart of sales for grades 2.5 to 5.5 going back to Jan 2022. Will update again in a few weeks with the Comic Connect and Comic Link results. This chart does include a 4.5 sale on Heritage tonight. Things have definitely leveled out with biggest differences in sales within the same grade seemingly driven by the quality of the book.

From my experience the card grading situation is exactly the same if not slightly worse. If you have never had the pleasure yourself, watch some unboxing videos as people are completely dumbfounded at cards with no discernible flaws getting a 9 or even a 7 or 8. And cards that are seemingly the same condition coming back with wildly different scores. And never any notes to understand what happened during the grading process. So like comics, it is easy to see which have been “run over by a truck” - but the differences at the upper end are harder to see or accept or validate. Cards may be worse because of their size and the microscopic attention the graders place on things like surface condition. People on this forum are pretty good at guessing comic grades with nothing but some poor photos pasted on a website. Card people have to use jewelers loupes or other magnification to try and find any tiny defects.

I understand the logic of the questioning - but it also gets to why is any of this worth anything - only because someone sees a value in something. Here is a 9.6 vs a 9.2 of Batman #251 - why is the 9.6 worth $3k more (+300%) over the 9.2? Are the differences really that material? I assume some of one's view of what is a rational vs irrational depends greatly on how much money you or have to spend on this hobby/investments. If you are not someone who would ever drop $30k on a book - it would never seem rational to spend the premium for a 9.8 vs. a 9.6. If you would never drop more than $2k on a book - you think it is crazy to pay for a 9.6 Batman 251 vs a nice 9.2.

Here are some select results from the April/May ComicLink Focused Auction - Session 1A and 1B. Good chance this is the only recap I do for this auction..... Maybe a few more "green shoots" this time and results do feel a bit stronger than the March CL auction. But a lot of books bouncing around still....hard to say if they are finding their footing.

An 8.5 WP copy of WWBN #32 closed on ComicLink last night for $1,600 - so half of the Heritage number. And the Heritage sale is still not showing up in GPA.

It definitely wasn’t the best looking 3.5…..

Funny you say that.....because that sale has not shown up in GPA yet but all the other sales from my chart were already there. Heritage results load really fast into GPA...makes it a pain to do these recaps.

Here is a small pulse from this past weekend's Heritage auction. The DD #1 6.0 was crazy strong but it was probably the best looking 6.0 in white pages around. And the WBBN #32 was strong too.....

This is like one of those “spot the difference” games. Besides the label problems - the date stamp is not in the same location. The color breaking crease in the upper right corner is not in the same location. The space between “ind” and the top edge is not the same. The cover is less centered on the fake with part of the 12 cent circle behind the fold.

Heritage closed a 9.8 OW/W copy yesterday for $4000 less than the Ow/W EBay copy. Much more in line with GPA trends. Will likely do a small recap of this past weeks Heritage sales as a pulse check while awaiting ComicLink Session 1 to close. I still can’t tell if Heritages new 3-day format is impacting results.

The staples aren't rusty but the column behind is. Beautiful book - your father had good taste.

That seems to be the case in the world of graded action figures/toys. From what I can gather both CAS and AFA seem to be pretty similar in terms of sales performance and collector opinion. But is also seems census data/population reports are less relevant for those collectors (neither of toy graders have census data that is useable). Whereas I thought the robust census, at least historically, was a huge advantage for CGC.

For whatever percentage of the comic market looks at books as an investment (even if they also think of themselves as collectors) - there is probably going to be a desire for 3rd party validation/affirmation. And CGC is the equivalent of the American dollar in the world of currencies (and many counties hate having the US dollar in that position but they too are stuck).

It depends greatly on the nature of the business and if there is additional value created by having broader engagement. If you have the pricing power you might be fine with a smaller audience if you were getting sustained premiums (which is what movie theaters have been trying to do with the premium formats and enhanced food and bev offerings to drive higher per caps with declining overall attendance). And fewer but higher value customers might also create operational or marketing efficiencies. For movies like Mario or Star Wars there is typically a lot of value created in consumer products that are best supported with broader engagement OR very high engagement with the core demos that will buy those consumer products. One thing for sure - the 20th century metrics for success are rapidly changing for the media industry. As is the way desired audiences are being targeted. To pull this back to Mario comic books - I am dubious that even a successful series of movies will change the long term prospects for collectibility and value. Just as I am dubious that the appearance of a secondary or tertiary comic character in a movie/show will elevate them to blue chip status (I was more than happy to sell my Booster Gold #1 9.8) Miles Morales was already a popular character before the 2018 movie and UF#4 didn’t spike with the movie itself. It spiked with the rest of the comic boom in late 2020 and thereafter. There is a dimensionality to Miles which makes ongoing storytelling both likely and likely compelling. Not sure I would say the same about Mario.

Tough audience on a Saturday morning Without more context this pie chart is of very little use - but it does illustrate that a small percentage of overall transactions at the upper end can represent the majority of the dollars. In this case books over $2.5k were 2% of transactions but 51% of revenue. Sort of aligns to wealth in US where top 1% HHs hold over a third of total wealth. Even if you were to isolate only CGC grades books I would imagine the distribution would look very similar. As an anecdotal observation - I did notice a lot more aggressive bidding in the first 12 hours for the session one books in this months ComicLink Focused Auction as compared to past several CL auctions The later sessions with the vast numbers of copper and modern are starting with their typical slowness.

In reference to the art market data being overweight in the high end - Short Box just had this analysis in their newsletter this week. Here is their description of the data: ”you'll see the overall historical breakdown of sales and total revenue data across all platforms we track. The top chart shows how many books were sold in a given price range, and the bottom chart shows the contribution to total revenue by price range. If we strip away all of the available book identifiers and look at the numbers, an encouraging picture emerges.” This is not just their platform sales but they also don’t specify the time range on the data which makes it harder to absolutely proclaim that the current comic market is showing healthy participation across the ranges.

Then sounds like you have a good sense of what you value and where you are willing to compromise. I don't think the 4.0 you were looking at is a bad deal - but it is not a killer deal for sure. Though depending on your sales tax situation and the nature of this transaction - you need to consider if a 4.0 private sale looks like a really great deal. That ComicConnect 3.5 with limited chipping would cost me $34k (10% sales tax state) which turns into a $1k premium over a private 4.0 C/OW at $33k. Gets a bit harder for me.

So just as a comparison - would you be willing to buy up to the no-chip, OW at 3.5 for $36k? (Jan Heritage sale). Or save a little for a 3.5 with slightly less chipping in OW for $31k (March CC sale). Or go up to a 4.5 OW no chip for $38k (March Ebay)

I wonder if there is challenge with “lack of complexity” or childishness in books like Mario that will hold them back long term. Golden age stuff like Four Color seem to be above this but true collectibility in bronze and newer seems to align with more modern sensibilities like elevation of anti-hero, darker stories, and more maturity overall. Only one of these covers clicks with me……probably a sad commentary on our modern society. Then again Romans jammed into the Colosseum to watch death and dismemberment so maybe it is just human nature.

No record is unbreakable (except maybe Nolan Ryan’s career strikeouts). And comparing all these box office stats across decades is really tough. Force Awakens was $248M domestic but $529M global opening weekend. Super Mario at $337M was global but also across 5 days. Based on just traditional 3 day weekend Mario domestically was under $150 which would make it third highest animated film. Even with a 5 day global it only beat Frozen 2 at 3 days by $19M from 4 years ago so with current inflation I bet that gap is closer to $10M. And adjusted for inflation A New Hope and Empire Strikes back are both around $1.9B life to date including re-releases (but even that doesn't account for growth in screens globally and new markets for American films since the late 70s. For reference - Empire's opening weekend was on an estimated 127 domestic screens. Mario is on 4,300 screens domestically). Mario won’t get anywhere close to that given current multiples. That being said - as one article put it - “Mario officially says ‘game over’ to the video game movie adaptation curse.”

True. But in this case the winning bidder only made one bid - the final bid. And their history shows they mostly only do one bid and mostly on collectibles. The underbidder had bid several times including automatic bids. Did the underbidder just put in a crazy high number in an attempt to avoid last minute snipe only to get sniped by one of those tools some buyers use to thwart all other last bids (I am butchering the explanation but hopefully you get it). I am going to watch this one - I have a feeling it might not close.

This is a crazy sale. +50% above current GPA and trounced all time high of $6k. Some funky bidding there at the end.