Market Manipulation

[Rickdogg]

There is another form of Market manipulation...

 

For example, lets just say that a seller just received his Ultimate Spider-man #1 White variant CGC Mint 9.9 fresh from Florida. Lets also say that there is only ONE graded that high on the census. Although the seller knows that he has the second copy, he will list it on ebay as the the only 9.9 in existence and manipulate the fact that CGC does not update their census all of the time. Good way to make money

[Arty]

Some people even use phrase "According to CGC, this is the best existing copy" as their main selling point.

 

These are examples from www.pgcmint.com

 

http://www.buyandsellcomics.com/private/Dealers/Embed/ComicsShowOneItem.php?comicID=730

 

http://www.buyandsellcomics.com/private/Dealers/Embed/ComicsShowOneItem.php?comicID=764

 

I wouldn't call these examples best existing copies, simply because grades aren't something you would expect from such copies.

BUT what really bugs me is that wdc&s 257 is the only graded copy!

 

..practically all GA/SA Disney comics in my small collection of about 20-30 books are CGC best existing copy candidates, because there aren't any CGC-graded books in census.

 

 

Maybe I should send some books for slabbing. It would give me instantaneous bragging rights

 

"So you have ASM 14 in CGC 9.0?? sigh...that's just so common...according to CGC I have over 20 best existing comic books in my collection. I can't accept anything but the best."

[COI]

Joanna,

 

De Beers does manufacture in the sense that they obtain and bring the diamonds to market from the mines. But they are monopolizing the market by the way they exact control over the mines. Without getting into the gritty details, let's just say that they strong arm the market in some highly unethical ways. The guys at the top of De Beers are in a lot of hot water with various governments around the world, including the U.S.

 

Good point about the pedigrees, although those are very tough. You have to be at the right place at the right time, with the right connections, and the right amount of money. Tough unless your last name is Brulato.

[hammer-migration]

Arty , pick out some of the comics in your collection that dont appear on the census - like Adventures of the Fly no. 29 - & regardless of the grade , youll have the best existing copy . The Pgc mint has some incredible comics , but the prices are equally atmospheric ( pass the tylenol ) . Comiclinks prices look like giveaways by comparison .

[blowout]

i think you are talking about a hypothetical situation that could never come to pass.

 

take silver age books for example, no matter how much cash you have, how do you get hold of all the choice copies of a book thats been in circulation for 40 years?

there haven't even been acurate estimates for how many copies of a book are out there, so many are locked down in private collections that it would be virtually imposible to corner the market. you may achieve it in the very short term, but as soon as a price spike occurs, other high grade copies will be shaken loose as people cash in on the 'rare' book.

you might have more success in the golden age market where the books are much scarcer, but as far as the silver/bronze markets go there are just far too many 'hidden' copies out there to ever achieve a real market cornering, IMHO.

[aardvark88]

Mkt manipulation was already done 10 yrs ago. I know 1 collector /dealer in the NY/NJ area who tried to corner the mkt on hi-grade FF 48 & Avengers 4. He had about 24 copies of EACH. Sat on them while hype caused the bks to double & dbl again in Ostreet, then cashed them out slowly.

[Joanna]

Yeah, I know DeBeers' practices,that's why I put "manufacturer" in quotes. Perhaps Diamond Distribution (how ironic!) would've been a better parallel.

 

Okay, I can't type any more because of that DeBeers/Diamond weirdness.

 

-- Joanna