For Your Eyes Only they said, but EVERYONE should read this! 3 3

[Guest]

Well I do not post here often given my lack of popularity, but differences aside I thought this information compelling enough to offer it up to these boards, so reader beware!

 

Allow me to preface the following text by asking for NO EMAILS regarding the sources, nor posting here challenging my sources, I WILL NOT give them up so believe what you wish. I will however tell you the sources are Golden, as Golden as an Action Comics# 1...without the Blue Label Color touch

 

There have been a few threads on these boards about Nick Cage and the reason he's selling his collection. I've read about him selling them for financial reasons(? the guys got millions), Scientology reasons(they are nuts), female reasons(that i'd have believed) but i'm here to attempt to elucidate the situation.

 

Nick Cage happen to buy about 70% of his collection from Metropolis Collectibles, which is owned by Fischler/Zurzolo, which is understandable considering these guys have fairly significant highend clientele. At conventions you can sometimes find Leo Dicaprio, or Jose Ferrer sitting at their table giving an extraordinary appeal to the typical bystander.

WELL, when Nick started to submit his collection(roughly a year ago i'm told) he soon found out that close to 75% of the books he bought from METROPOLIS were RESTORED! and trust me, my sources have pretty legs. He confronted the Metropolis boys and guess what they had the balls to tell him? sorry but all sales are final( I don't know word for word what was actually said, but that's essentially it). Supposedly Cage went nuts, and got so angry he got fed up and said @#$% you, @#$% this industry and decided to sell the books beacuse of it.

 

I have NO IDEA what the situation is going to be with regards to the heritage books coming up, nor if the Purple Labels with "from the Nic Cage Collection" will be offered. This is what I was told, and once again the sources are from people that MANY on this board know of.

 

Despite personal feelings about others in these rooms, I do have respect for a few(like James(FF) ect.) who I feel are genuine and honestly care about this hobby and industry, hence why I felt I WOULD post this thread despite the "hush hush" label it was given to me with. I don't think this type of information should be withheld, its a HUGE black eye in my opinion HUGE!, and really says a lot about what we all THINK we know, and WHO we know.

 

Please refrain from any name calling or insults, if you decide you don't believe me or care. That's your choice to do so, but I just thought the FYI would be quite interesting, yet disgusting...enjoy!

[clobberintime]

I don't doubt it all! I have heard similiar stories about the "big time" sellers - in the last 20 years it was supposedly somewhat ok to " fix up" books and sell them to the unwitting buyer as i have heard from very knowledgeable sources. The big change came in the last few years - especially with cgc. i think that is part of what gets Comic keys going -it used to be kind of ok. Cgc has killed the value of those restored books and it has probably hurt a lot of unwitting purchasers. That brings you back to the ethics and legality of selling a touched up book to someone thinking that they are buying an unrestored book.

[Guest]

I agree, and I forgot to mention something else. Nick's financial investment in those ungraded books i'm told is over the $400,000 dollar mark...400THOUSAND... OUCH! Man, talk about an unfortunate investment.

[Bonds25]

If it's true, it's an absolute shame. Metropolis should be sued for knowingly selling restored books as unrestored.

 

I wouldn't doubt it either. When I went to the San Diego Comic Con a few years back for the first time, I gazed in wonder at the books that Metropolis had for sale, and tried to talk to Steven Fischler about some of them, but he was as cold as ice and you could tell he didn't like talking to peons such as myself. I asked several other dealers about him, and you could tell they thought he was a real ! It seems like Vincent Zurzolo is better, but I've never met him.

[aardvark88]

Talk about conflict of interest. Susan Ciccone did the best resto work 12 yrs ago & was buddy buddy w/ Fischler. Then Sotheby's recruits the best restorer in the business to identify resto (her own included) in all those gold & silver bks for the big Sotheby's auctions 10 yrs ago. But back then, SLIGHT resto was readily accepted b/c a comic in a mylar looks the same as its neighbor. Now Heritage & new Sothebys.ebay auctions need to contend w/ the dreaded purple label & lack of bids. No wonder Nic & the other big bidders fr 10 yrs ago r peeved.

[aardvark88]

Vinnie's younger & friendlier trying to boost up Metropolis web & con sales. Fischler was Master of the NY neg attitude, u peon.

[aardvark88]

U must kow tow b4 Metropolis b/c they have 3-10 copies of every bk in stock. Their catalog was incredible 10 yrs ago. BEST inventory.

[Guest]

in re: the cage resto... I've been through probably 1/2 of the Cage books at heriatage. There are definitely some restored books, but it is nowhere near 70%. Not even close to that high of a percentage. It's more like 15%. What is the story there? Where are the restored books? Not being sold?

[Guest]

crusty,

 

What is/will be done with the restored books? If this source is accurate, then I'd expect we'll see a bunch of fairly prominent restored books on the market in the next few years.

 

Here's hoping your source is a bit off, because this would, as you say, be a huge black eye for the industry.

[clobberintime]

yeah - i long ago tired of calling on their web site books - and don't even try to negotiate the price of a book! The price is whatever random mark they seem to chose - and that is it. I guess they are used to dealing with just 2 kinds of people - those who don't know that everything is negotiable and those with so much $$ they don't care. I frankly don't see how you stay in business very long like that.

[NativeNewYorker]

If he paid $400K for everything, he'll make out like a bandit. The Allentown Detective #38 CGC NM 9.4 should fetch over $150K itself. The Mile High All Star #3 CGC NM+ 9.6 should fetch over $100K despite the slight glue. You still have all the unrestored copies of Action #1 CGC VG+ 4.5, Marvel #1 CGC VG/FN 6.0, Marvel #1 CGC VG/FN 5.0, Showcase #4 CGC VF 8.0, Mile High Adventure #33 CGC NM- 9.2, #34 CGC NM 9.4, #35 CGC NM- 9.2, #36 CGC NM+ 9.6, #39 CGC NM+ 9.6 and #41 CGC NM+ 9.6.

 

With Cage making several million a movie, there is no need to feel sorry for him.

 

Ted

[Bonds25]

Feeling sorry for him isn't the point. Would you be pissed if you were told that 70% of your collection was restored, but were told originally that they were unrestored, and paid $$$ based on their unrestored value at the time??

[Guest]

I just want to know, if this is true, where all the restored books are. Because, as I said earlier, the percentage of books that are restored on auction at heritage is magnitudes less than 70%. Out of the keys there are only two that I can think of off the top of my head that are restored (Daredevil-comcs #1 and Cap #1) and there are very few restored books that I remember amongst his lengthy Adventure and Mavel Mystery runs. So, this is not true, or there are hundreds (600 hundred or so would even the percentage out to 70%) restored books from his collection that are being held back from the public.

[Mister_Comics]

A while back on AMC's Biography, they had about Nicholas Cage. it showed how he was influanced by comics and told about him buying comics at a early age. I wonder if he has any of those comics that he had as a kid. Those would be the ones I'd be interested in buying. Not the ones he bought afterwords.

[Bonds25]

Good question. I guess no one knows but Nicholas Cage and CGC.

[Guest]

Buddha, why are you assuming ALL of his collection has been graded? The way I heard it was he STOPPED submitting once so many high grade books were coming back restored, who wouldn't? I don't know WHAT books he may have sold off, or will sell off that are ungraded AND restored.

 

The story is 70% of the books he BOUGHT from Metropolis were restored, not necessarily 70% of the books auctioned at Heritage. The other 30% or so books in his collection were purchased from other dealers obviously, so he may have only graded say 50% of the Metropolis books and then said @#$% it!

[Bronty]

Good post, crusty. Thanks for the info...

[Guest]

Dude, if (as you said) he bought 70% of his collection from Metropolis and 75% of those books were restored, then that means (it's a little late for math) at least HALF of his books were restored. Judging from the 3-400 books I've browsed of his at Heritage, maybe (I'm guessing) 30-50 were restored. That would mean that there would have to be another 3-400 books of his that are restored that not accounted for.

 

What's more he's got pretty much every silver and golden age key listed right now at heritage. Only a handful of those are restored. Which means (according to this story) that, unless he had doubles of every silver and golden age key, the hundreds of restored books required to make the math in this story work are not the most likely books to be restored. I mean, if your key books aren't restored but hundreds of commons are, you've got to be the luckiest man in the world.

[Guest]

Buddha, then, I guess you've got it all figured out, and the people that relayed the story to me must have made it up? Sorry, don't mind me.

[Guest]

I'm just playing devil's advocate. It seems a little flimsy to me. So I'm pointing out where it looks flimsy... You act like your own sterling reputation is the one being attacked. I'm just pointing out what I see as holes in this story.

 

Don't worry about it, dude. You're just the messenger, right?