Aman619

Except perhaps in the case when comparing an 8.5 Church to a 9.0 no name copy… only one grade apart. . We are seeing a great resurgence in pedigree importance out there, even more so than in the old days before CGC grades supplanted them. Especially Church mega keys like this Of course, nobody bats !000… DA may have to live with only 3 of the most valuable copies of his 4 big DC keys.

That’s all part of the math. I only meant to point out that when someone’s cost basis is very low, you can pay “insurance” and get a do over. Insurance being how ever much it costs in fees. as for my specific example, market value is not literally “the last price paid for anything” except on Wall Street where there are 1000s of shares trading hands constantly. One low final bid at a comics auction relies on dozens or scores of people tuned in at that moment many of whom aren’t bidding on it. Next week same book could be higher or lower.

As for consignors buying back their own books, since they'd only do it because they'd hoped for a higher sale price, and are willing to take it back for another day, they just do some calculations as to how much more $$ they want to be into a book for. If you paid $1000 for your AF 15 20 years ago and GPA says you'll get 100K today, but the bidding is ending at 60K, (for whatever reason), would you mind paying another few 1000 to get the chance to sell it later for a higher price? Now you're into a 100K book for 3K! why not?

skimming the article I think this speaks only to whats going on in the art auctions. Auction houses make deals with Guarantors before accepting some high priced items for auction. They guarantee a floor price, like a reserve, but the difference is the guarantor gets to buy it for that price. With a reserve it reverts back to consignor. Seems that if the guarantee was 100M, the auction would add the commission to that and announce a sale of 120M. But only the guaranteed amount (100M) would change hands. So the public sale price must now be lowered to the 100M keeping the market value to just what was actually paid. Im assuming the consignor gets less, after consignment fees are taken by the auction house. I dont think we (yet) have this happening in comics auctions.

perfect description of where our hobby is currently.... This also explains our consternation of late at the prices being paid today. Those of us who have been around for decades look at the people paying them as "out of their minds" because we have attachments to them at much lower values. It like buying a coffee today and having to pay 3.50 when the "price" we expect based on experience is way under $2. or a normal lunch at work breaking $20 when for years it was hard to crack 10 bucks. Younger people today pay what things cost today! New collectors pay today's prices because they have no experience of $1000 getting you a high grade AF 15 ... or even a Fine.... or even a lousy VG with chipping!

CBG advertised a few other private auctions too. Comic Heaven, and others were regularly scheduled events. Sothebys and Christies were a high mark in the 90s for wider acceptance. but they petered out as art was getting huge prices and the 1-2M comics auctions became insupportable to their big machines. Of course Mastro came along, geared to comics and cards and posters (our stuff) but went south too under the weight of their "dealings".

Its all a progression. That 3M sale back then made todays sales prices possible. Just as todays 5.3M sale opens up the high end even more

Bring out the Bangzoom books! Time to see what he has so he can go after upgrades! Im kidding, nobody id upgrading at todays prices for these books. But had he slabbed them 10 years ago he could have, if he wanted to for a lot less. heck, we aren't sure he even put them in mylars yet! : )

I dunno. Im tempted today "because it's More Fun that way?

I made the original comment that keeping the number was transparent, but I see now I was looking one way not the other. Meaning that if someone had a scan of the 8.0 and looked up the number they'd see it was upgraded to 8.5. If the 8.5 got a new number, you couldn't make the connection. But, Masterchef makes a deeper point that the problem from way back was deleting the pre upgrade record from the CGC database so that research into upgrades was harder to do.. It WOULD be much more transparent to keep both serialnubers in the database . But back then that would only have invited hard questions to answer. Even now, would the zeroed out record have to say "Label returned", or "see #367826001" ?

Agreed. Still it would be a disappointment for DA if the Church collection rep continues to grow to a point where it’s more important than the grade. The pedigree multiplier effect versus no name books waxes and wanes. But seems like the Church name attached to a copy is very strong of late. … for this world class level of book anyway.

You graded the Church copy as an 8.0 right? What were the considerations about how it got the grade, given hobby awareness of its issues? and as you well know, DA owned all three of the so far best copies at one time or another. And he selected his no name copy as the keeper. Of course he may have messed up, but we don’t really believe that. Do we? Maybe it’s eventually just a 9.0 the Church mystique may mean it always sells for more. that would be an interesting dilemma as a buyer choosing between them huh?

You guys kill me. Always spinning wild tales and taking news that’s been reported and disbelieving it. Looking for holes in the story. People in the know knew about the sale. There are no secrets, just the ones no one told you about. But others talk. What’s so hard to understand here? A buyer wants a big book. A Really Big Book. Dealers scurry to make a deal. Buyer and seller are matched up. Buyer is told it’s probably upgradeable, but still a great deal at the price. Buyer rolls the dice. Bingo. Happens all the time with books graded 20 years ago. Sale is leaked but Info gets garbled. Everyone goes quiet until a few months pass by and there’s a press release confirming the rumors but that just invites criticism and speculation of wrongdoing. The only aspect thats new is keeping the old serial number, but , isn’t that a case for greater transparency? The census shows the 8.0 disappearing and an 8.5 appearing. And with the same serial number it’s even more obvious. Wonder if it’s a change for all books or just this one big book. anyway, on with the show!

This "leniency" for GA copies has been in place for 20 years. People have questioned it, but there has been a CGC threshold for minimal CT or glue for high grade unfortunately minimally "fixed" copies. This book was an early example. It would be interesting to tabulate just how many books fall under this category? 25? 100? anybody have a sense?

The Church Action 1 value today is a fun guessing game. But since it will "never" be for sale one can say it's worth 10M today, or 20M or even 30M ... because before it finally changes hands (which could be 20 years from now(!) it Will be worth an ever increasing amount. Say, whatever the highest sale to date times 3 until some point where the number is REALLY crazy. Then again what is crazy? Not that long ago most of us thought 5M was the crazy number for it. Now look where we are, with a Superman 1 in much lower condition but also from same Church collection already there... as an 8.0. Ive heard the deal was made as an 8.0 as is. They buyer's "team" helped it happen with confidence about the upgrade. Question now is how much of the 5.3 is due to the Church copy significance. Whats the other 8.0 worth, now standing lonely left behind!

the thing we can't forget when suddenly elevating Cap 1 higher on the list is that the copy was a 9.4. The only other 9.4 that has sold of the books on the list is the Batman 1 last year. I have no doubt that it's now worth closer to 4M now. And jeez, how much does anyone here think a 9.4 Action 1, Tec 27 or Superman 1 would sell for? Or, forget the actual grade and, as the Second Highest graded/known copy, compare it to the Second Highest graded/known copies of each book: 9.0 Action 1, 9.2 Tec 27, 8.0/8.5 Superman 1 and 9.4 Batman 1. Each of these would or "maybe" already has smashed Cap's 3.2M! So to me, good for Cap 1. Smashed a home run. but lets let the other big boys step up to the plate again now and see what they go for before we jump Cap 1 in 3rd place or higher.

Ronnie? I thought it was Bob Storms!

and the Batman 89 looks NM except for the spine issues, so in hand 8.0 may be a fair compromise. Not a spine I would like, but I remember an Action 242 that was beautiful but had numerous (8-10) white spine cracks (some 1/4" long) all along the edge that got an 8.0 over a decade ago. I say we let CGC grade the books, unless anyone else wants to take over the job and sort out the complexities of balancing the grading weight of all the kinds of defects and combinations of them.

many of these re offers are automatically generated at HA.com. The seller often doesn't even know about it. Or buyer saw he got a bargain and decided to flip it rather than keep it.

and 8.0 is highest graded! I looked it up. I only had a 6.0 too Thats a tough era for DCs

Yeah. I agree with your thinking, especially based on your actual experience as a dealer, not a collector. Yes, many if not most of us didn’t actually buy every issue we could have back then. We read the lamentations here each time an “I coulda” admission is posted. But yes, waking up ready to pull the trigger happened to many of us and may be partially responsible today. I went though that same transition you are describing. but I did it soon after CGC came along as I was forced to confront the reality that my “high grade” copies were really 7s and 8s in most cases. So I went out and repurchased better copies. But this was 20 years ago, they were still cheap if you had some extra money, the prices were far from the millions they go for now and way below the !00K level your empty nesters are looking to pay. As people joke here now, 1M is the new 100K so I agree that some of these sales are to long term collectors who now either have the cash or are just ready to “man up”. Even maybe 1 or 2 who’ve met with outrageous fortunes along the way with millions or spend. On one hand that good news! People who love comics and have been around as the buyers is probably better than fickle new money. But my sense is that it’s a smaller % of the new buying pool. Either way though, we now have actual sales data that comics are seriously in the mix, not just our usual pie in the sky guesses, Actual 3M sales boost confidence and gain attention. Aren’t we all getting texts and links to press clippings from friends and family each time one sells? People in all walks of life are paying attention.

Ok. I get your point. I’m not positive the movies will be their overriding decision point. But, it’s been the movies that have elevated comics to them as a potential investment item. Therefore if that impetus wavers, or ceases to look as strong as it does now, many of these comics will be finding their way back to auctions. We don’t want that, cause you take the new money away and no one else will have the millions to prop up the prices. At this point, we must hope that comics follow impressionist artwork. A core of passionate art lovers goes against the grain in love with dumb stuff — weirdly painted colorful works the serious old guard money won’t touch. And over time the NEW money comes around and prices shoot the moon. Sorry for the drunk history version of collecting!

Yes. A great day to be a Moondog! although I imagine a bit sad and lonely too. Bad enough the day they were shipped to Heritage, but now they aint coming home again... not even for the holidays! : (

we may not agree ... To my eyes, these current million dollar buyers of our comics are "obviously" new to comics. If I have to backtrack from that Id say 85% of them are. Can anyone think of ANY of us buying at these prices? millions for a comic book? By definition they HAVE to be new collectors because if they aren't, and have loved and coveted and built collections for years, they'd have bought their copies already for far less. I suppose there may be a few who have been collecting but are now very successful and rich and are spending their money to buy them because they only recently CAN afford them. but, doesn't sound right to me except for a handful of people, and they'd have to have spent 20-30M so far to be responsible for ALL the recent big sales.

Id say that there will be a lot of increase for lower grade copies now that Cap 1 has a 3M sale on the board. Just like AF15 at 3.6 had jumpstarted all the lower grades since. Theres so much less risk paying the price now for any Cap 1 than there was a week ago!