Dark Knight

People have been prosecuted for it. A guy went to prison for shill bidding on baseball cards on eBay. I read about that in a news article; that's how I learned that shill bidding in an online auction is a felony. Is that the story regarding the ebay auction house PWCC where supposedly the owner of PWCC and the consignor of the baseball cards had talks about shilling up the owner's cards? I believe the authorities were looking at this case last I checked (this was probably 2-3 years ago now), but never found out what happened after.

I wasn't a bidder at all. Even if say I was interested in bidding, just by looking at the bid history is already fishy enough for me and would steer me away from bidding. Also, I do not have any hard evidence that shilling was involved. That's something CL would know more about if ever.

I think it can go either way. Sometimes small auction houses deliver stronger prices, sometimes they underperform. I've gotten some good bargains from smaller and well-known larger auctions. I think it's all about timing and advertising. Is the marketing and exposure of PBA as good as the big three comic auction houses? People like me usually check the well-known auction houses for upcoming books because it's already implanted in our heads that there will be an upcoming auction coming. When it comes to smaller, less known auction houses like PBA, it's uncommon at least for me to check regularly on whether there will be a comic book auction. It's more spread through word of mouth, comic book forums such as this, or through a once in a blue moon advertisement in social media that hey there will be a comic auction coming soon. What I find interesting though is that the first batch of Ditko books were auctioned from Heritage and it seemed to me like it did very well. Why didn't the heirs consign the rest with them? Did something go wrong in the negotiations or they were dissatisfied with the hammer prices? Maybe PBA has a better commission rate %? Well, we'll see how it goes. Best of luck to the consignor(s).

Interesting choice to auction Ditko's books as opposed to auctioning them off to one of the big 3 comic auction houses

Well, the FF #5 CGC 9.4 sold for a record price of $210k. Not sure what to think of it because it had a lot of head scratchers and controversy behind it. Looking at the bid history, ALL bids took place during the first day ONLY in just under an hour! There were 0 bids thereafter.. Also, the reserve was set at either $200k or $210k which is higher than the last recorded highest sale of a 9.4 copy just earlier this year. After some little digging up that I've done, the owner who had this copy supposedly sold (or maybe he didn't sell it as it is shown as "pending") this book sometime last month. I don't really know what to make of it, but the turn of events just seems odd...

Wow, what a price and it beat out expectations! It's fascinating for me to think that there are I believe 3 PSA 10's of this card. If this 9.5 is a $12 mil card, than the PSA 10's would have to be a min. $20 mil? I believe one of the 3 was micro-trimmed by a well-known card doctor... Investing in high profile cards such as this is a huge gamble due to the card grading companies certifying and grading micro-trimmed cards as if they were left untouched..

Possibly, certainly fits the profile. I believe he is asking $290k for one of his 9.4 copies.

To me the CL 9.0 > HA 9.2

You mean..

well looking at it now, that might be the case. If that happens, he can corner the high graded FF5 market

Well that's 10 years ago so who knew the comic market would perform this good. I wish I held on to the book I purchased 10 years ago too .

Yeah I saw that. I believe I know who is bidding up these books... he's been well known to create fake large sales before so this was no surprise given he is holding 2 FF5's in 9.4 I believe and can't sell em for his unrealistic sky high price.

I remember being elated at $40k for my 9.4 How long ago was that?

Same with FF #5 CGC 9.2 (I know it's silver age, but it's so obvious).. Already at just under $100k

Mann what's going on with these supposedly trusted grading/authenticating companies lately!? I'm hearing/reading that the only authenticating company in the sports card hobby, BBCE, is being questioned by sports card people for possibly authenticating a high end box (bought for 6 figures) of tampered sealed packs. The packs were opened live on Whatnot by different card breakers and they noticed that the sequencing of the cards for 2 or 3 of the packs were incorrect and likely were resealed. BBCE also provides services to PSA for vintage pack authentication. Previously they got into serious heat for authenticating a "factory sealed" case of these rare 1st edition Pokemon boxes, only to find out that the packs were replaced by cheap GI Joe packs . That case was a multi million dollar sale, which turned out to be worthless . I believe buyer got all or most of his $ back, but that sucked!

Yeah Hulk 2 looks like a 5.5-6.0 from the front. Unsure about back cover though...

My pick would be Hulk 2, just looks beautiful as long as it is price right. I would've went with the Avengers #1 because it was graded by CGC, but the marvel chipping is a turn off. The Hulk 1 and X-Men 1 each have their own huge problems and would pass on them.

I just did the DD custom label on it, so grade didn't change. The label looks better than the regular one.

Well I got my DD 1 back from CGC... But because of the whole fiasco with them and the UF4 acetate bootleg copies that they gift grade as 9.9's and a 10, I'm upset with CGC with the whole thing and therefore made a decision to not post any CGC graded books in the meantime.

Will Smith?

This is opening up a huge flood gate of other dealers doing the same thing to make some easy $. Hey if you can get a CGC 9.9 or 10 from these kinds of books and sell for a few hundreds or thousands, why not... There's some sort of negotiation/inside job going on here that's for sure. This is kinda like that huge fiasco regarding the custom labels and restored books, but on a grander scale.

If you staple an acetate cover to it to hide/seal the splits, it'll grade out at least a 9.8!!!

In times like this.... What would Krang do