• When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Market corrections in September Clink auction results?

Started by mysterio,

127 posts in this topic

etanick

etanick

Posted
Posted

CL auctions all year for the most past have been bad for many books, SA or BA, and even GA...at least on many of the titles I collected. This is not a one time thing. The market has corrected and no where else is it more visible at CL since they have monthly auctions...not hard to see similar books keep getting lower and lower each month.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
mysterio

mysterio

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Case in point, I sold my Hulk #104 CGC 9.6 there last month for $787, and another one popped up this month (same PQ even) that I watched with quite a bit of interest. The one in this month's auction sold for $391! Half! I am thanking the comic gods that I sold last month instead of this month. It may be a function of mine being the first 9.6 to come to market in a while (I had trouble finding sales data on it) but that much of a drop is just crazy to me. Lots of ASMs I was watching went low too, and made me wish I had more free cash flow to bid...

 

And the Hulk #1 4.0 sold very low as well. Seems that every book I checked clocked in lower than other recent auctions.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
trmoore54

trmoore54

Posted
Posted

I posted my thoughts on some specific books in the Comics General Auction Thread...primarily on the SA ASMs...there were a couple of strong sales...the 17 9.0 and the 44 9.4...very soft on most others I was tracking...

 

And 9.4s in issues 53-100 have just taken a beating in the last year...clearly values have halved in the past year...year and a half...sold my last 2 books #77 9.4 OW for $257 (a $450+ book in 2009/2008) and my #82 Winnipeg 9.4 OW for $197...paid $325 in March 2007...and these were nice well-centered/well-presenting copies...

 

This was basically the impetus for me to sell off my 53-100 (less several of the "key" issues) earlier this year as these books were more about me holding my 1-100 set together but most of these books were not that dear to me...in fact I've been considering culling down my set to the Ditko issues 1-38 and keeping a few of the early Romita keys (39, 40, 41...50...)

 

Good for the buyer these days... (thumbs u

Link to comment
Share on other sites
fantastic_four

fantastic_four

Posted
Posted
CL auctions all year for the most past have been bad for many books, SA or BA, and even GA...at least on many of the titles I collected.

 

+1

 

It's been up and down the last year, mostly down. Most likely cause is the poor economy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
jimjum12

jimjum12

Posted
Posted

I'd say 95% of all collectors have a $ 300 glass ceiling. Probably fewer than 2% will break the $ 1000 barrier, and as these acquire their wants, the prices will naturally go down in an auction format. A fixed price format may be the best way to go on books that have 20 or more copies in 9.6 or so. The FF has always been my favorite, but prices have been stable to low for several years. I primarily go after books from 1957- 1963....and even with these, I decided quite a while back that I wasn't going to proceed with an investment mentality any more. If I can get my money back, or even most of it when I decide to sell, I'll be happy. That's still not bad for your entertainment dollar. How many people are going to get ANY of the money back when they retire that was spent at the Pool Hall, Golf Course, or Bowling Alley ? GOD BLESS...

 

-jimbo(a fiend of jesus) (thumbs u

Link to comment
Share on other sites
mysterio

mysterio

Posted
  • Author
Posted
How many people are going to get ANY of the money back when they retire that was spent at the Pool Hall, Golf Course, or Bowling Alley ? GOD BLESS...

 

 

That's what I keep telling my wife. lol

 

I agree (and my wife does too) but it could explain why the uber-expensive stuff is dropping some. It is easier to throw away $250 than it is to throw away $1000 plus. I think that this explains why keys seemingly have no limit (people will always pay a premium for the Hulk #1s or the AF 15s of the world) but the crazy prices for high grade non-keys is coming down fast.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Loki

Loki

Posted
Posted

All I can say is that (once again) I ended up as the underbidder on every SA ASM that I placed a bid on, which was mostly 9.2 WP copies. It's not that I'm lowballing either - my bids are between 90% and 110% of GPA, depending on whether I think a book is weak / strong for it's given grade. It seems to be the case with almost every auction for a SA ASM that I've bid on all year, whether it be CLink or eBay. I don't think I've acquired a SA book all year that wasn't a BIN... :(

 

I'm not sure whether it's PQ pulling in strong demand or whether there's pressers out there paying a premium for quality 9.2s they think they can improve upon, but it seems much harder to win white pagers at auction this year...

Link to comment
Share on other sites
fantastic_four

fantastic_four

Posted
Posted
All I can say is that (once again) I ended up as the underbidder on every SA ASM that I placed a bid on, which was mostly 9.2 WP copies. It's not that I'm lowballing either - my bids are between 90% and 110% of GPA, depending on whether I think a book is weak / strong for it's given grade. It seems to be the case with almost every auction for a SA ASM that I've bid on all year, whether it be CLink or eBay. I don't think I've acquired a SA book all year that wasn't a BIN... :(

 

You missed out earlier this year then, not sure how...all the Silver Spideys I saw were going for 20% - 50% under market. Lots of 9.x copies going for the same prices they did in 2004/2005. This auction was a bit stronger than previous ones this year but by no means an advancement in the market, just an apparent re-solidification of it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Peter Loves Gwen

Peter Loves Gwen

Posted
Posted

I think you are right that people are putting bigger bids into white page books. I would too if I trusted the PQ ratings that exist right now.

 

Paper quality is very important to long term values, and as that kind of collector I do factor PQ in more than most people. But, there is a massive problem with the current system, CGC is the standard and their PQ ratings suck, and I mean suck big time.

 

The CGC PQ designations are almost useless, not quite but almost. Therefore, I like to see the "magic" words white pages, but it means very very little to me. CGC is not identifying tanned edges, major tanned sections of books, whether it's just an edge or a cover, or the entire book. I gather that CGC looks for the lightest PQ color in a book, and that's what they label the whole book as.

 

I have seen lots of books with tanned edges, dust shadows or otherwise low paper quality in part of a book, and the CGC label rates it as W or OW/W pages. That is terrible for CGC to represent their standards as useful to buyers, yet they rate PQ in such a way that you can't really tell what the PQ is overall in the entire book.

 

Any book with any kind of tanning of any part of the book, has poorer overall PQ than other books with even coloring that is "darker than the CGC rating of the first book."

 

So, look at people bidding high on a white page book, and not knowing if it has tanning of certain parts of it. Compare that to tons of OW books that have no tanning of any part of them. The OW books in this example are all better in overall PQ than all of the white page books that do have some kind of tanning.

 

Tell me how that should make me feel about paying extra for a CGC rated white page book?

 

My conclusion is that the PQ rating system being used was bad to start with. A system should have been created just like the grade system, with numbers that mean something besides "the lightest paper found in the book." A 1 to 10 rating system could have been used to much better describe the overall PQ, not just the crude steps we have now that ignore most tanning. Regards,

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Loki

Loki

Posted
Posted
All I can say is that (once again) I ended up as the underbidder on every SA ASM that I placed a bid on, which was mostly 9.2 WP copies. It's not that I'm lowballing either - my bids are between 90% and 110% of GPA, depending on whether I think a book is weak / strong for it's given grade. It seems to be the case with almost every auction for a SA ASM that I've bid on all year, whether it be CLink or eBay. I don't think I've acquired a SA book all year that wasn't a BIN... :(

 

You missed out earlier this year then, not sure how...all the Silver Spideys I saw were going for 20% - 50% under market. Lots of 9.x copies going for the same prices they did in 2004/2005. This auction was a bit stronger than previous ones this year but by no means an advancement in the market, just an apparent re-solidification of it.

 

Yeah, I seem to just have poor timing. If I decide not to bid on a book, it goes for a song. If I do, it seems to go for at least the GPA 12-month average.

 

Hell, there was an ASM #13 7.5 WP that I was bidding on last month that ended up just shy of a new GPA all-time high. Nothing special about the book other than PQ, but it went $150 higher than I thought it would.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
fantastic_four

fantastic_four

Posted
Posted
I have seen lots of books with tanned edges, dust shadows or otherwise low paper quality in part of a book, and the CGC label rates it as W or OW/W pages. That is terrible for CGC to represent their standards as useful to buyers, yet they rate PQ in such a way that you can't really tell what the PQ is overall in the entire book.

 

Any book with any kind of tanning of any part of the book, has poorer overall PQ than other books with even coloring that is "darker than the CGC rating of the first book."

 

You appear to be erroneously categorizing all types of page discoloration as tanning. Dust shadows and tanning are extremely different from each other because a dust shadow is surface dirt that can be removed using undetectable cleaning techniques and doesn't affect the integrity of the paper. Foxing is also different from tanning but more serious than dust shadows and is sometimes removable. All of them are easy to mistake for each other.

 

If you're seeing what appears to be tanning on white-paged books, the greatest odds are that what you're seeing is a dust shadow, not tanning.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
mysterio

mysterio

Posted
  • Author
Posted
My guess, buyers are going to always pay a premium for no chipping.

 

+1

 

CGC's greatest ongoing philosophical grading mistake is not deducting enough for production defects.

 

Chipping is one of those philosophical differences that collectors can have. Personally a little bit of Marvel chipping doesn't bother me very much on an otherwise pretty book because it came off the press that way and sat on the shelves that way. To my way of thinking, MC is less problematic that post-production wear like spine stress and creasing. Other people hate chipping, which is certainly their right (I personally hate and avoid color breaking creases when at all possible). But you could make an argument that a Marvel chip out of a cover is different than a chip caused by wear or abuse. 2c

 

I do agree that premiums should be paid for books without chipping, particularly if chipping is common on most copies of that particular book.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
fantastic_four

fantastic_four

Posted
Posted
To my way of thinking, MC is less problematic that post-production wear like spine stress and creasing.

 

How can missing pieces or tears be less of a defect than creases? ???

 

But you could make an argument that a Marvel chip out of a cover is different than a chip caused by wear or abuse.

 

Ugly is ugly whether your momma made you that way or somebody beat you later on with an ugly stick. :sumo:rantrant

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Go to topic listing