Aman619

The real 9.2.? Or the image we have seen that CGC cobbled together for their booth?

put me down for 2000 and 2000. Ive always believed from hands on experience that the serious high dollar collecting community in our far larger hobby is a lot smaller than most others believe. Id lean toward a higher dollar amount for the same 2000 people, but don't want to mess with the OPs question as put forth. More like 2000 people willing to spend 10000.

aside from the Litho Ninja banshee wail which I'll never be able to mis remember!.... thats a great video. Comics production has changed over the last 80 years, but this clearly shows the basics of the process. the printing of multiple pages of the comic on same sheets, to be later trimmed into single sheets of 4 pages (F and B); plus the stapling process where they roll along on the spines and get stamped with staples on their spines. I think though that this small shop doesn't trim the assembled books the same as Sparta did. These Ninjas trim them one at a time. Sparta used an "industrial" paper cutter to trim hundreds at the same time, which to is believed to have lead to the Marvel chipping, and also miscuts (trapezoidal comics) due to slippage of the pile under intense pressure, and sloppiness. Great question about why only the front covers get Marvel chipping. I was thinking it would be because the large trimming machines pressed down ward on the front covers into the books, while the same cut would push the back covers outward away from the book. But not sure it would cause anything since the back and fronts would have been stacked on top of each other (the pile would be in this order: Book 1 F cvr, inside pages, B cvr, ....Book 2 F cvr, inside pgs, B cvr.... etc etc ). I can't imagine why the direction of the cut relative to the coverstock would result in chipping on fronts bt not on backs.

I think if they wanted to be suggestive (not that intent really matters if it works!) it would have been 2 girls strolling by in same outfit. but maybe that a bit over the top?

Buying a big book and soon after placing a much higher price on it as a “flip” isn’t exactly flipping it.. a flipper would usually look to make a quick 10-20% profit... But in this case, placing a price on it for twice what you paid, especially for a record price you paid is more like saying “ I’m keeping this book for 10 years when it will be worth twice what I paid. But if you want to buy it now for that price, I’ll let it go. Trying to lock in the full gain you foresee for your purchase but not have to wait a decade for the market to slowly increase its value. Makes sense to me...with one of a kind grail items... even if they rarely sell quick anyway!

...

The short answer to the dpi question I’d it doesn’t matter... but that’s a dodgy answer. The quality of a scan is a function of the dpi AND the size of the scan. Size as in the dimensions of the scan. DPI means dots per inch, so a 2x3” image at 600 dpi is contains no more detail / pixels than a scan at 100 dpi that’s 4x9”. If you use photoshop or other image retouching software, you can change the image size/resolution (DPI) and see this effect. The general rule for scans that will be printed is to scan at same size at 300 DPI. When creating vary large scans, say 30x40” you can do half size at 300 DPI. scanning comics at same size at 600 dpi is overkill for little extra benefit. Files are pretty large especially if you are storing 1000s of scans., but, I guess storage in MBs isn’t the problem it once was with the cloud and terabyte drives!

I agree with both your points... depends I guess on the needs of the book and the scans. Close ups would solve the details problem. And most books , camera scans ar adequate. And quick! But high value books buyers I think will prefer a hi res scan they can scroll around. A camera station would be ideal, but, still in the end positioning books and swapping them in and out takes time and risks damage. I also crop the images and clean up the colors to reflect the actual books in photoshop which adds more time, but I can usually finish before the next scans s done... and I enjoy that part.

I don’t know if it’s cause the posted scans here are low res to fit the Boards file size limit, but overall, if a scan doesn’t show the individual printed ink dots, it’s really not sharp enough to see details. So for me a scanner is a time sucker but the quality of the results is a must.

I forgot to add not too dry, not too wet.

Keith Contarino loved Atomic Mouse.

Preservation? It’s been stored the same way lots of long time collectors store their books, even million dollar books. Mylars, acid free Boards, TL-30 safe, not too hot, not too cold, in the dark, rarely touched... a winning formula.

They haven’t been sellable for a while...

I haven't read Kirkmans letter or 193. But as surprised as I am right now --- because Kirkman has always indicated that he was in for another million issues --- Id think that given that hes a known TV and soon film creator/commodity, that his time is too split and the comic book is using up more than he wants to now. Bigger and "better" opportunities being tossed his way. But thats just a guess. His letter may explain something else and Im waiting to read 193 first. Wonder if he tells the end of the entire rebuilding of civilization saga? If not he could be saving it for newer series by other creatives... Maybe hes taking ver Spider-Man!!? in the old days dangling Superman or Spidey always enticed comics writers to jump ship!

Must be nice...

not the Superman 1... he has a better copy.

Many people also don’t realize that their monitors are showing them off color images too. We trust what our screens show us unquestionably, even tho they drift from reliable and are adjustable, but rarely verify it to reality., because with monitor technology, there is no single reality! We are each seeing a slightly different color, often radically different. Having said that these recent Heritage scans are a bit hotter than usual.

if you start with 25K worth of Apple at 2 buck a share, you have 12500 shares. All you need do now to calculate its present worth is use the splits to calculate how many shares he has now (588,000 shares) Then multiply by todays price. 183. that looks like 107 million bucks to me. Its another thing to calculate how much he paid fr each share owned today, but the VALUE of his investment is now 100M.

well, I suspect the answer rests as a publisher by publisher thing. I dont know these smaller and foreign publishers, but I know about pre press work and how the artwork becomes a printed cover. IF the american publishers asked for or were given artwork with plenty of extra art (bleed) in the pieces delivered to them, AND it was supplied overseas, the result would explain why cropping took place. Clearly we have seen such from Charlton. Their practices were much looser than DC and Marvel and may in fact have worked with wider drawn art at their directions or by the artists. but none of the other examples needed wider art to extend the peripheral areas at all. and overall, Im just pointing out what was done on covers you have contributed, no reflection on you personally. No need to get al TOOTSIE on me! : ) "I said GOOD DAY sir!"

as for the Batman cover. I think ANYONE could have reduced Batwoman's sign shape and added a few shading lines off to the right edge.

I don’t know why you are laughing. The first book you showed last week with test tubes etc is the only one yet that looks like they had access to wider artwork. All the rest, especially these last three Marvels are just a little studio work to extend or modify the US artwork. Nothing very technical was created at all. And, further strengthening my argument of simple extension of what was given to them to fill their cover area is the Spidey cover. Look at the upper left bkgnd of NYC buildings. It’s all different to the left of the word balloon (that was incorporated into what they were given which is why it remains in exact same position, and not added as an overlay like when they moved the word balloons in the test tube cover on Astounding #1). They needed to recreate the buildings that would have been UNDER the corner box because they did not have access to the artwork under it — because it was never drawn. So they replaced that whole area with a few amateurish lines. Same level of talent that extended the sides. The brick wall technique is completely different, not drawn as one wall area by the same hand. Look at the DD cover... they replaced the whole trap door area. And added a few floor lines off to the right to finish off that area. This is pen and ink work a pasteup bullpen jockey could do in a half hour. Tops. Find more like the astounding #1 that are harder to take apart please.

Im learning the GCD. But I don't really know which title I'm comparing covers for. I didn't find any with extra artwork because I didn't look very deeply, but I did match up thee 3 Tower comics covers reprint in Astounding Tales (Seems Alan Class had deals with many US publishers to reprint that he placed in this one title. These 3 Tower covers were all simply cropped from the US art he was given. The answer may come down to how each US publisher supplied materials to other pubs. Either the final vertical US cover pasteups. or just a stat of the original art only, plus the US cover pasteup (with words, titles blurbs etc.). Tower sent US covers that had to be cropped. Charlton may have sent wider art stats that could fill the wider covers with art that was cropped in the US.

got it. that wasn't apparent when I visited the site. thanx for the tip.

I don’t understand how to use the site to find same cover artwork. Is there a simple method?

in this Strange Suspense Stories, it seems that the the Astounding Stories had access to the actual artwork because the type elements are in different places. And being from the 50s, before Marvel/DC etc normalized production with pre-printed cover templates, I agree it looks like the artists drew wider artwork, perhaps as they were told given Charltons having already secured foreign reprint rights for shorter cover dimensions. There are a lot of ways to assemble these covers from photostats. It all depends on what you are starting with and what you need it to fit into. We can get to a greater consensus if we had lots more examples, as Marwood accomplished with the British "reprints!"