Superman2006

I am thinking this is the best option. My only hesitation is that I've heard that USPS is very difficult to deal with when it comes to claims. Which I hope would not be necessary. I've got four orders in this box and I've decided to break them up and ship each one separately. Good luck! I'm not sure if you can fill everything out online for Registered mail, or if you need to go to the post office to do all that, but for what it's worth, I found a USPS calculator that can give you an idea of the cost; https://postcalc.usps.com/Calculator/ As an example, plugging in some random area codes, going through various screens, etc., it looks like it came up with a registered / insured mailing cost of $114.20 + usual priority mail shipping cost based on a single package with $40K value.

Per Topnotchman's post above, USPS registered mail has a high insurance value limit, and I believe the insurance cost for registered mail is a lot cheaper than the insurance cost for other USPS shipping options. I'm not sure why CGC rep wouldn't have suggested USPS registered to you.

I could swear I've seen that signature before. I think the first name is "Donald"

I would say No if you look you can see it's not attached and if it was it would be called Restored. Technically, if it was attached with tape, I think it would still get a qualified CVR label, rather than restored CVR label, but that would just add damage to the cover; fortunately it doesn't appear as though that wasn't done.

That's pretty cool. I should have prefaced my comment with "Regarding the Honus Wagner card"

I don’t believe so. He had some comics including an Action 1 I think. Wasn’t he part owner with Gretzky of the famous Honus Wagner baseball card? You had the right idea, but the wrong Los Angeles sports team owner; Gretzky purchased the Honus Wagner card with Bruce McNall, who was the owner of the Los Angeles Kings at that time.

I’ve only submitted a few books for grading and don’t swim in the deep end of the pool. But what happened to “walk through” grading? What was previously the "walk through" tier now roughly corresponds to the "unlimited value" tier in so much as both of those tiers had unlimited value. However, whereas walk through tier used to have a 1 day turn around time (and iirc a 3% fee subject to a max grading fee; maybe even lower than 3% in the early days of CGC), the unlimited value tier has a 2 day turn around (with a 4% fee, and no max grading fee).

Excuse my ignorance, but Burrell has now left the hobby? And what about Chuck? Still in business? Yes, per Chuck's story about discovering / acquiring the Mile High collection that I linked in an earlier post, it sounds like Burrell left the hobby a while back. Chuck on the other hand, is still very much active in the business ( https://www.milehighcomics.com/ )

Per Mike’s earlier post return shipping would be $125, plus a $5 invoice fee I guess. Of course unless the submitter wants to risk shipping a multimillion dollar book with just $100k in shipping insurance, the actual cost might be more like $160,005 + travel costs to/from Sarasota (or possibly more than that if it really graded out at an 8.0, as the last 3.0 and 6.0 sales were $1.5 million and $3 million, so and 8.0 would arguably be worth more than $4 million today)

I continued reading the article that I provided a link to earlier in this thread ( https://www.milehighcomics.com/tales/cbg12.html ), which is an excellent read (even if I'd read it years ago &/or heard most of it secondhand), and can answer my own question above; Apparently Chuck used his own funds to purchase the first 10K books which he hauled off initially (primarily the lower grade 1950's books; and not the higher grade 1940's books from the closet), and then he arranged funding from one of his friends / customers (not Burrell Rowe) to pull together the necessary funds to pay the Church family for the remaining 8K book. In exchange, Chuck allowed his friend to purchase a portion of the comics at 40% off 1976 Overstreet, and his friend primarily picked funny animal books. After acquiring the 18K books, Chuck offered the Church family more money for Edgar's reference library materials that the family hadn't already thrown away. That's the point where Burrell Rowe enters the story (read the article for more details!)

Except that in the case of New York World's Fair 1939 all copies have blond Superman on the cover, and there's plenty of other black on the cover.

Many of you have probably already seen it, but I just came across a reproduction of the 184 page 1977 Mile High Comics Catalog as it appeared in the Comics Buyer Guide; https://www.milehighcomics.com/catalog/page03big.html Click on the image in the link above to make it bigger. Some observations: Action comics 22 and 23 appear to have still been available at that time ($145 for Action #23 in Fine); I thought I read that the dentist picked up early Actions through #23; still a possibility, but perhaps 22 and 23 were separated from the rest for a period of time. All American #16, Batman #1, Captain America #1, Superman #1, and Whiz #2(#1) and a number of other big books were still available at that time generally in NM or NM+ condition (except for Supes #1 which was Fine) with asking prices around $2K to $4K for most ($7K for the Whiz). I wonder what books Burrell Rowe picked in exchange for providing the funds to Chuck to buy the collection... Some big books not included in the catalog include Action 1-20, Marvel Comics #1, and Tec #27.

Who does the falling rifle on the left belong to? I assume it must belong to the guy in the air, and if so, was he packing a couple of pistols and a rifle, and yet still got picked up like a rag doll?

Yeah, that image of blond Superman popped in my head as well with all the earlier posts about the coloring of the Joker on Tec #40

I've thought about this problem, and figured that the solution would be to gather up the oldest bills you can currently find that aren't worth any more than the newest bills, go back in time to when they were new, exchange them for the oldest bills you can find that aren't worth any more than contemporary bills, and repeat the process until you have valid money from the time period you're buying from. True, that would be a viable option if it didn't require much time / effort to operate your time machine, but if it runs off of plutonium or something like that, then you might want to just buy some affordable lower grade coins from a coin store, or bring with you some goods that were of great value for the time period you're visiting that you can use to barter (like some tulips if going back to 1636)

For restored, and even conserved, it would depend on the amount of the work done on the book, so probably need to give % discounts (or % of blue price) for different levels of work done.

Just reading the part you quoted, I would interpret it as follows, using an example to explain my interpretation: For an item that hammers at $250K, it sounds like the buyer's premium would be 25% x $100K + 20% x ($250K - $100K) = $55,000, which for a hammer price of $250K essentially works out to an average buyers premium of $55K / $250K = 22%

Just to be clear: I agree with your view that Chuck didn't rip off the family, at least based on the accounts of the transaction that I've read. I agree that from the accounts I've read, Chuck definitely does not present as someone with no worries back around that time. However, IMO there was no need for one to be certain that comics would always move up for a knowledgeable comics dealer at the time that had viewed the collection in person (like Chuck did) to have ascertained that there would be very little risk in purchasing the entire collection at 10 cents a piece. I don't know exactly how it went down, but I would say there would be virtually no risk if (a) the family wanted $2K for the collection and (b) Chuck could have told them "I don't have that much in liquid funds, but assuming I can pull together the funds, which I expect to be able to do, then you have a deal. I'll give you call ASAP when I have pulled together the funds", (c) at that point, Chuck could have reach out to other(s) (like he apparently did with Burrell Rowe), given up a "mere" $10K in overstreet value in exchange for $2K up front, and then (d) essentially retained the balance of the collection that were worth many multiples of the purchase price (even back then) for "free". Other knowledgeable dealers that were around at or around that time can correct me if I'm wrong.

True, but well worth the "risk" if you're a dealer and you've had experience grossing roughly the total cost of the collection in a single weekend about 5 years prior. Chuck's biggest risk at the time had to have been the risk that another dealer with a clue and money in the bank would have taken the time to view and acquire the collection while he was arranging funding.

I would think that once Chuck saw the collection, that given his experience / skills in selling comic books (as evidenced by his comments about grossing $1,800 in sales at a convention 5 years prior) he had to have known there wasn't any risk in paying the Church family's asking price. Didn't he get the funding to actually pay for the entire collection by pre-selling a small number of the books to some more well-funded dealer(s)? (Maybe I got that wrong; just going off of my memory) If so, then that basically meant he was getting the rest of the collection for free. As to other dealers taking a pass, I don't think that any one of them with anywhere near the same experience / skill of Chuck would have balked at paying cover price on that collection IF they had taken the time to go see the collection themselves. I don't view the other dealers missed opportunity as evidence that Chuck was "arguably taking a bit of a risk in Denver." If you change "a bit of risk" to "a tiny bit of risk" then I could agree, as it wasn't totally risk free (e.g. his car / truck with the books could have started on fire, or something when transporting the books lol).

Chuck was operating at a time before pedigrees were a thing, price guides were a new concept, comic conventions were still an emerging concept, and there was risk to dealers. Hard to believe these days. It was more than a bit of a Wild West back then. Chuck’s story on the acquisition is very similar to the story for most comic acquisitions back then. There are other pedigrees that were in whole or part hitting the market because the comics were stolen and the dealers likely knew it. Chuck at least was not a fence. The closer to the present we get the more suspicious and dicey these vague pedigree stories get. But way back when Chuck bought those comics he was arguably taking a bit of a risk in Denver. It was only after he blew up the pricing models, created the pedigree multiplier, and arguably jump started price inflation that the market fully matured. But I am suspicious of almost every pedigree acquisition where the dealers do not tell how or where they got the books. The pedigrees consigned to Heritage are the most “ethical” deals for OOs. Not that there is anything wrong with a dealer paying wholesale prices. For what he paid for the books, I don't think that I would say that Chuck was "arguably taking a bit of a risk in Denver" given his story about having sold $1,800 in comics at a convention in 1972, and I doubt the books he sold then were anywhere near the quality or quantity of the Edgar Church books (more info in the link below) https://www.milehighcomics.com/tales/cbg12.html

What about Number 9? Number 9? Number 9? I guess I've always been a big fan of the Joker covers and liked Batman #11 the best (second overall favorite Joker cover to Tec #69). I agree that Batman #9 is a great cover though!

Definitely an outlier . It seems that the winning bidder was aiming for the "White Pages" for this book. Yeah, I think it might have received a bit of a bump vs. prior sales for the white pages. I do love that cover; probably my favorite Bats cover (either that or #1, although it's hard to compare any cover against the grails of the hobby, like Bats #1).

The Stan Lee's Personal Hairdresser Collection was the nail in the coffin. But that's a collection, and not a pedigree. I don't recall seeing any CGC requirements to get a collection notation on the label. It might just take a phone call to the right person at CGC and the promise to slab a specified number of books (possibly thousands?). Maybe someone else can shed more light on CGC's requirements for a collection notation.