silverseeker

X-Men #1 may go down in history as the first book where aggressively overpriced books on eBay end up being fairly priced in a very short period of time...

Here's my admission ticket to the Avengers #1 club...just arrived this week from @blazingbob. Thanks Bob!

I'll let the rust experts weigh in on this, but the top two photos seem to exhibit what I would call oxidation more than rust...I'm not sure if an oxidized staple is on it's way to becoming a rusty staple though.

To me, 7.5 is a book that can't quite figure out if it wants to be "mid grade" or "high grade". I think 7.5 is actually a great grade for finding affordable copies of books for this reason...of course, this doesn't apply to the big keys that we're discussing.

That's what I tend to think of as Silver Age mid grade, although I would not call 7.5 high grade, so it's kind of a tweener... For me, Silver Age high grade starts at 8.0, but I'm sure everyone has different opinions on this...

Oh man...I wonder what the final hammer price will be for it?

It will be interesting to see how these prices hold up over the next year or two...if the people selling Bitcoin and other investments to buy X-Men #1 are true collectors I could see prices continuing to be strong. However, if the majority of people scooping up copies of X-Men #1 are just investors hoping it continues it's meteoric climb I can see things playing out differently. Only time will tell, but this market feels like it's too crazy to be sustainable...

Getting back on topic, congrats to both the seller and the buyers! Some nice books in this sales thread...

According to an inflation calculator I found on Google, 12 cents in 1964 is worth $101.81 today, so the markup is not quite as dramatic as you would think...

I agree on going with blue...the trimming on the restored book would also bother me.

5.0

4.5 for me as well...

I know you have a good eye for books, Patrick, so I'm not surprised...

9.0 for me as well...sweet book! I could see it sneaking into 9.2 territory because the crease at the upper right corner is pretty light...

9.2 for me as well, unless there's something going on with the back cover we can't see in the scan...

Speaking of ECs, I'd have to say no, and this is part of the reason I sold the handful of EC books (except for Weird Science-Fantasy #29) I had last year. When I got back into collecting in 2000, getting a few nicer issues of each EC crime, horror and sci-fi title was one of my collecting goals. Once books featured in SOTI (CSS #22 comes to mind) started blowing up like crazy I decided to step away from ECs and narrow my focus down to my other two interests, Silver Age Marvels and DCs. It basically got to the point where collecting ECs was going to eat up more of my comic collecting budget than I was willing to allocate to it. I did get to read and enjoy each of my EC books before slabbing them to sell, and have to say there's nothing else like them.

This is what I would do if I collected these types of items...protects them from more damage (other than that from the shrink wrap) while keeping them in the most desirable condition when it comes time to sell them. It would take a lot of willpower not to crack out the Bubble Funnies just to chew that incredibly stale gum though...

Looking back, does it seem like a fair trade? I'm just curious, and understand that sometimes you have to give a bit more to get a grail book. Using a fantasy sports analogy, its like trading two bench players for a starter...

On an unrelated note, the laugh emoji appears to be back...

This is a great way of looking at it, and the key is what you did with the cash you made from selling your books... Did you just lose your job, and needed to raise funds to cover living expenses? No regrets... Did you buy a house, pay for a wedding, etc.? No regrets... Did you buy other books that have also appreciated? No regrets... Did you buy other books that have not appreciated? I guess it depends on whether or not you enjoy the replacement books more... Did you blow it all on crack?

While I have regrets here and there over a few books I sold (fortunately we're talking about hundreds and not thousands of dollars of lost opportunity), my much bigger regret is not buying some books (I'm talking to you, X-Men #1 ) before the market exploded, because even if (when?) the market calms down prices will still be so much higher than they were 3-4 years ago. The price increases TOS #39 saw after the first MCU movie should have been all the motivation I needed to make the big keys my highest priority, but I didn't. I was still able to acquire a lot of second-tier key books (early ASMs, FF #48-#50 and #52, X-Men #4, etc.) that have appreciated, but I don't know how many of the big keys will be achievable now...

Yup...looks like they could be small tears or even just some small creases with varying amounts of paper loss. I've purchased graders notes before that called out staple tears, so to your point the wear around this staple is probably not substantial enough to be called out...

Per @boatfund's qualification above, your copy has a "popped" staple (where the cover is no longer attached to the book)...as far as I'm aware this should always get a green qualified label, whether it happened during production or after the fact. However, I have seen at least one blue label Silver Age book with a popped staple, but it was called out in the graders notes...I wonder if the submitter chose to have that factored into the grade so the book could get a blue label?