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bluechip

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Everything posted by bluechip

  1. It will be interesting to see what legal position Ditko's heirs take, considering how vocal Ditko was about insisting he had worked for hire. There was talk that Ditko had been verbally promised something from merchandising and the TV series, and that it played a part in his departure when he was paid nothing from the MMMS money. But that is, so far as I know, undocumented, and DItko said many times over the years that he was paid and Marvel owed him nothing, which was and is a core belief among Ayn Randians.
  2. It's about the iconic speech that was a pivotal moment in the iconic Christmas Special which is remembered by nearly everyone including those with megachurches and private jets.
  3. I bid on nearly every issue but had trouble getting bids through for a couple that went lower than I intended to go (5,11,7 IIRC). Didn't mind at first thinking I'd get another but then the others I wanted went higher than I expected. I'd gotten used to expecting collectors to diss owner copies, and thought surely (don't call me Shirley) there was gonna be people saying "stay away" "they're low grade so nobody cares" "It's the nephew selling after he died; how convenient!" Not that I agree with any of that, but it's what I totes expected, and bid accordingly. So I have mixed feelings; glad that didn't happen but sad I didn't realize it in time to bid higher and get at least one of them...
  4. I owned that a bunch of times and all through the time I owned multiple copies I was being told nobody cared and it was not worth all that much. It went up so quickly after I sold off my last copy that I imagined somebody calling me looking for reassurance that I no longer owned one before it could get the go-ahead to rise in in value.
  5. CAN'T FIND THE ORIGINAL POST OF THIS-- On 9/16/2021 at 11:29 AM, stinkininkin said: Collectibles that any guy off the street would probably recognize, and yet still down (after a big run up I guess). All the while, the only hobby I ever took any real interest in out of pure love and completely devoid of investment considerations, original comic art, seems to be just about bullet proof (so far). What are the odds? While I am a big believer in the "collectibles that any guy off the street would probably recognize" that belief does NOT extend to brand new stuff created in order to be a collectible. Anything that touts itself as a "Limited edition" or "variant", "dealer incentive", "exclusive" or has the word "collectible" printed right on it. Same goes for sports items used or worn and/or signed with the express intent of being packaged and sold as a collectible.
  6. I will be curious to see if you are correct. Have not been a serious collector as long as you but I have seen the view toward resto swing so wildly that it went from one nonsensical attitude to another nonsensical attitude. Originally it was you "have to get it restored or you're leaving money on the table". Then it went to "all restoration is desecration and destroys the book's value because it's the deed itself that matters and not how little or how much was done". I would love to see what this looked like prior to resto but doubt that info is available. I remember when I tried to sell a book that was restored along with details of the work plus before and after photos, I was told "nobody cares about anything but what it looks like now", which of course eventually went to the other side of the pendulum to became "nobody cares because any restoration is just as bad as total recreation, so regardless of what it looked like before it has been destroyed". So you think maybe the pendulum will finally come to rest somewhere between the middle of those two extremes?
  7. Does anyone know if the letter exists in which Steve wrote he was sending the comics to his nephews?
  8. I bid on more than a few and won nothing. On most I was simply outbid. On several I would have bid more but my phone failed me. After the 6 went for several K I couldn't believe the 7 went so cheap and that my screen failed to realize my thumb was pressing the bid button.
  9. Relatively speaking, imagine how many times you could put together a small stack (or even less than a handful) of other books from this auction which equaled the 220K the Batman 1 got, without including a single book that anybody outside the hobby would even recognize as a comic book, let alone recognize the actual book itself, or any of the characters within it. So is a Batman 1 "just good" condition worth as much as (insert names and grades of a couple esoteric books that together brought the same money)?
  10. If by interested parties you mean more fans of Spidey who might hear what the comic sold for, I would agree. But if by interested parties you mean people with the sort of money they could and might actually pay 3.6 million for a comic book, you're talking about people who are both superhero fans and top copy chasers and they probably know a peak condition copy of Action 1 or Detective 27 is far less likely to end up sharing that status with as many other copies as an AF15. And they will also know that if they happen to like Spidey more they can find a newsstand appearing copy virtually any day they are prepared to pay the going rate, and that's not necessarily true of A1 or Tec27
  11. Markings that deliberately deface the book don't seem to affect the desirability or value. If there had been no markings on her leg but instead a barely noticeable bit of black pen mark in the black area, with everything else the same, most people would expect that to affect the desirability and value, and they'd be right, but in the wrong direction.
  12. I would say prices are unreal but this result for a Batman 1 is not what I would reference as the most exemplary indication of that. Relative to every other book in the hobby in regard to cultural significance the Batman 1 is uber huge. So this does not boggle me when stuff nobody's ever heard of outside the hard core hobbyists is getting the prices they're getting. It would boggle me, in fact, only if the others got the prices they're getting and this did not get what it did or even more.
  13. Way too argumentative. It is not just opinion that there are more AF 15s, and that copies are far more likely to be in great shape. That is not just overwhelmingly intuitive but also born out by indisputable facts, therefore totally "impossible to know". People pointing that out should not be insulted or responded to as if they have expressed a specific desire to devalue your books.
  14. Or just treat it like additional damage and grade it harshly, point out where the CT is, anything but encouraging people to remove portions of the book itself. Just don't get how it is supposed to be more desirable with pieces of the book gone instead of letting them remain and treating the color touch like ink instead of polonium.
  15. "more copies at the top" will feed the value increases even as it increases the potential for corrections. The paradox has more than one cause, but a big one is this: If you're selling something rare, then the more people there are who own something similar to sell the more people there will be voicing support for the value of the item you're selling and even bidding on it to make sure it doesn't sell for much less than they believe theirs is worth. And since that "something similar" could be any book which simply has a similar grade number, the value-enhancing effect can be extended to many, or virtually any, other books.
  16. Sorting books the other day came across this example of comics that are nearly perfect Yins to each other's Yang. And Nick Fury is in both. Made me wonder if there are other fun examples like this, and I will post any more that I both think of and have time to organize (which could be today or years from now)
  17. That time is past. Real people in the know know that Inspector Jabot came first.
  18. I would totally buy a celebrity animal signed book. Simple paw prints would be fine but more elaborate sigs would be better still. Maybe it could be remarqued with a small illustration by an animal artist (not only simians but elephants and raccoons, basically any mammal that has hands or something like it... give em a brush and they go nuts.
  19. It is published, whether anybody "considers" it so, or not. But I agree that "with an asterisk" is appropriate. And it should be clear if it was created with the intent of publishing and then passed over in favor of another cover, or if it was created as a specialty piece which got published later on. Both are cool, but the former is coolest, IMV.
  20. They say these things but so did I when I was a kid, and like me they love him, anyway.
  21. Exactly. So forget the grade numbers and go for something truly unique. Imagine telling your friends you snagged "the 'Naked City' copy"
  22. That is a good point about the difference between 60 and 80 years. For anyone below 50 the early 60s seem as prehistoric as the early 40s. But aside from the numbers themselves those 20 years had a lot of history in them which will remain common knowledge for many generations to come. There's been a lot of history since the early 60s, but Batman comics also shared the planet with fans during World War II, which greatly increases the feeling that Batman and other Golden Age heroes are a part of our history and culture. The other big difference is how many comics were saved. That changed a lot from the 60s onward. Far fewer books were destroyed. Marvel even sold back issues for a while. So anyone who talks about the highest graded Batman 1 versus the highest graded AF 15 is thinking almost exclusively about a number generated recently and subjectively with all sorts of other criteria, and overlooking the fact that when it comes down to how many existing copies of AF 15 would look to the average person like they came straight from the newsstand versus how many of Batman 1s would pass the same test. And, though I am a big fan of both books (I would even go so far as to say Bat 1 is a contender for best GA book of all, just as AF15 is the best SA book), I have to acknowledge that the difference in rarity between them, in all grades, is a very large number. So if a tie-breaking factor is the genuine rarity of the book, then a minty looking Bat 1 wins out over a minty looking AF15.