PGC Mint article on cgc census & Geppi's golden age.

[aardvark88]

As many of u r getting tired of reading the attacks on or by ablue, plz read this lucid article by Mark Wilson about the cgc/auction mkt & Steve Geppi. It is part 1 of 2 articles for Dec/02.

http://www.pgcmint.com/FrameArticles.html

Comments fandom?

[murph0]

Good article. I would agree that there's probably a lot of bronze books that still have yet to be submitted. There probably are more silver age books waiting to be submitted but I doubt there's that many NM's left. His articles are pretty good, I missed his "time payment" one. Wow, for only 15 percent down plus 1.5 percent after 3 months..you can buy a book that you could easily get off eBay for 1/3 of his price

 

Brian

[aardvark88]

Agreed the Mark Wilson article was well written & balanced. Hope part 2 is just as good. In the mean time, I better start saving up my pennies b/c All Star will be auctioning off Romita Sr's orig comic art for the cover to ASM 40 w/ Gr Goblin in the spring, 2003. Will probably realize over $30k.

[murph0]

I'd rather have 39..any chance they'll be selling that too?

 

Brian

[murph0]

I'm also rather curious as to where he's finding this "abundance" of Golden Age in high grades? Maybe it's just Cap books, but it's been next to impossible (with the exception of the 8.0 that went last night) to find any in 8.0 or better..am I just looking in the wrong place?

 

Brian

[greggy]

Nah, he's just paying the bigger bucks for his museum pieces!

[drbanner]

Good article, but I have to question his insinuated advice that the upper echelon of books (4 figures+) will continue to increase in value over time. As I've said numerous times, the pool of collectors that actively buy $10/$100/$1,000/$10,000 dollar books shrink exponentially with the extra zero, so the more expensive books get, the smaller number of collectors that can afford them. When I graduated from college in '91, I could realistically look at buying NM copies of early silver age books...I doubt the same applies to today's grads (looking at the % of a year's salary it would take to buy a certain book then vs. now).

 

I totally agree with his buy what you like advice, as the hobby just isn't any fun if your #1 goal is to buy books to make money...gotta build your personal collection to make it fun.

 

I also agree with his idea that the crazy prices brought out the best books, and that's why there will be no influx of fresh material with another spike in prices...Steve G, Bob O, and I already slabbed 'n sold our good stuff (well, that we were willing to part with anyway)!

 

And Murph, compared to the 7 years before CGC, there has been an incredible amount of high grade golden age material to hit the market in the last 3 years...how long have you been looking for high grade Caps? Pre-CGC there would maybe be a couple Timely's on ebay per month, now, with the Heritage (and other) auctions and ebay, there's plenty of material (relative to the mid-90's).

 

Finally, Merry Christmas to you all! The struddles are cooking downstairs, my family is all together, and tonight I'll be setting out the luminaries, tossing back some cold/spicy ones, blowing a few bars on the flugle horn, strumming my guitar, and generally enjoying life...let there be peace on earth.

[murph0]

There has been a lot of G.A Cap's out there, but none that I would describe as NM..but then I forgot about the law of diminishing NM with G.A., so maybe I've gone through a few NM Cap's and just not known it. In the past 4 or 5 years, I've owned about 20..and currently still have 8. I still just don't see this huge amount of high grade G.A., I must be looking in the wrong places..

 

Brian

[hammer-migration]

Great Post, article, and thread! I think we're safe for awhile. BUT one of the pests already showed up so I imagine the other 2 locusts will be here very soon calling an unfortunate end to yet another serious thread.

[hammer-migration]

Hey pal, the wheel fell of my skateboard again. Can you help your bull out???

 

[aardvark88]

Banner,

Totally agree. I know that I am running out of bks to pull out of my long boxes to submit to cgc for reselling. I have no intention of submitting my personal copies of my fave Steranko or N Adams comics to cgc. Buy & keep what u ENJOY.

With cgc silver ASM prices going to the moon, many collectors have shifted to re-buying hi-grade bronze bks that they grew up w/ as a little kid. Some of the Avengers, Defenders or G Kane Capt Marvels may only list for about $8, but r sweet memories of youth.

[murph0]

I'd say that a higher percentage of the ASM books are already graded..due to the high profile of the character and the prices that were being attained. It gettings increasingly smaller though as you go down the popularity ladder..I'd guess that there's a lot more Thor, Captain America, or Iron Man books out there then actually reflected on the census..

 

Brian

[awe4one]

I'd bet there's more than you imagine. I still feel the "majority" of comic collectors have not embraced CGC and/or felt the need to send a comic to them for submission. No way to quantify this though other than of all the comic collectors that "I" personally know, only one has taken the plunge. But there's no way to quantify it on the other end either.

 

In the case of ASM, just when you think that all unslabbed high grade Spideys are gone, another guy shows up on eBay with uncirculated distributor copies (95-150) or X-Men (60-100) in multiples or another pulls out multiple copies from their personal collection. This type of activity has only increased over the last year and more will appear in 2003 in my opinion.

 

 

Jim

[FlComicFan]

I agree 100%. Something else to consider is not all collectors/dealers are active right now. They will eventually feel the need to dust off the boxes they put away from the late 60's up . I am also curious what has happened over the years to the stock of the secondary distributors who were setting back stockpiles of books back in the late 1970's early 1980's Heroes World, Moondance, Robert Bell just to name a few. There were literally dozens of mail order dealers who regularly stockpiled new books I have to believe a lot of that is still out there somewhere. Chet

[murph0]

How many books do you seriously think can be out there? Obviously there's a TON more that aren't submitted b/c they aren't high grade. But there IS a limited amount of Silver out there, it's not infinite.

Sure there's going to be a lot of bronze books out there, we all know that..the print runs were pretty big.

 

Brian

[awe4one]

How many are still out there? Well that's the $10,000 question isn't it? What we can guess though with some relative certainty is that a large percentage of high grade copies in "active" dealers and investment minded collector's hands are graded. We have no way of knowing what is still in the collections of those individuals who either aren't inclined to pay CGC fees to grade their books or are content knowing that they have high grade copies and aren't selling in the near future. I believe this is a significant number of collectors and are the majority out there.

 

And yes, ASM has been the most collected comic for decades and I bet a large number of high grade silver exists in these collections that are not graded. Silver Marvels had large print runs that rivaled Bronze numbers as well and collectors have hoarded these comics as collectibles since the late 60s.

 

Bronze shows up more often in high grade due to collectors hoarding straight from the newsstands. Early Silver was hoarded after they had beeh "out there" for a time so there is certainly less high grade available but they exist in much higher numbers than the Census currently shows. Again, this is all my opinion and I welcome differing views but I do know there were many high grade early Silver available at shows in the mid-70s that don't seem to be reflected in the current CGC numbers. I doubt they were all trashed down to mid-grade.

 

Jim

[hammer-migration]

In studying the Golden age census on key and early Timely and DC Superhero related titles, keeping in mind what I've personally seen, passed on, owned or know of (I am working on completing Timely runs and my DC #1 collection), I could genuinely say that there is ALOT out there, in EVERY grade, still unaccounted for on the CGC census, just based on MY observations. Vastly more than is already accounted for. The majority of Golden age collectors are not sellers, and the incentive to submit for grading just for a second opinion (since as LONGtime, experienced collectors, most would probably value their own opinion on the grades of their books in their collection above anyone elses or simply just don't care what anyone else thinks one of their books grades) is not enough for them to submit their books to CGC.

[murph0]

Yes, the Golden Age #'s are lower then they truly are..but, at least Cap, are certainly not abundant by any means.

 

Brian

[aardvark88]

Seems like New York's Koch-Dolgoff-Koch bought most of Robt Bell's Marvel returns inventory years ago. There was a previous post that stated Chuck at Mile High bought a chunk of that Marvel horde also.

[FlComicFan]

there were many more dealers who were backstocking large amounts in the late 60's and 70's I still think we'll see a lot more books show up. Another factor to think about is say you had a boxful of say Conan 1 all unread and arguably NM/M How would you sell them. Would you drop 200 copies of the book on CGC or would you milk them a few at a time over the next 5-10 years? I'm betting a lot of that is going on too.

 

Golden Age I would be very surprised if there wasnt a lot more books out there. Seriously who is going to grade anything below VF unless its a monster key. You dont get a premium for them being slabbed in below VF or so probably more like 8.5 or better. Kind of makes the census not a worthwhile source or information at least as far as Gold books.

 

Anyone care to guess how accurate the Gerber scarcity numbers are in general? I'm collecting MLJ's pre Archie and they have to be a lot scarcer than Gerber #'s suggest or nobody wants to sell them??