ComicConnect Event Auction!

[Moondog]

The Action ashcan has the interior to Detective 1 and the rejected cover art to Detective 2. This was well over a year before Action 1 was actually published and sold. So clearly Action Comics was something on Donenfeld's radar screen long before it saw print and his ashcan protected it. One account of the Action Comics ashcan has Donenfeld ordering Action Comics, Double Action Comics and Triple Action Comics. No Triple Action has ever surfaced either.

 

I don't think Donenfeld was involved in a pre-Action Superman ashcan as I don't believe he was aware of the character until late 1937 or early 1938.

 

Thank you. Ok, ... maybe this all makes more sense than I thought it did.

 

Trademark regs suggest that (in theory) the Superman Ashcan would also have been in early 1937. But they didn't publish for opposition until 1939, which has always left the door open in my mind for the idea that Donenfeld/Liebowitz fudged the registration in their bid to push the Major out.

 

That aside, the reg has a firm date of Jan 3, 1937 for first use of "Superman", which certainly suggests they had a specific "publication" in mind. [so... either the ashcan or something like an ashcan existed, or the filing is false]

 

The Wheeler-Nicholson family believes (through family conversations while the Major was still alive) that the Major had a Superman book in some stage of production just prior to Donenfeld/Liebowitz's involvement, which actually fits both scenarios here -- the material could have been "on the books" in the office before Donenfeld locked into what they had.

 

But, taken as a whole -- your point about the Action Ashcan being well in advance also -- it does suggest that Liebowitz may have simply started getting all the company's ducks in a row as soon as they got into the business with the Major, and started locking down all the new/important/upcoming stuff as soon as they got in there.

 

Yeah, all the publishers were circling their wagons by late 1939. There are single weeks in 1940 where 4-5 comic book trademarks were published for opposition with USPTO.

 

This makes the most sense to me if their intent was to swindle the Major and to make sure they were ready to go once he was out of the way.

[Gotham Kid]

Either CBCS is changing the way folks view restored books or CC is up to something.

 

And I wonder how many of those books used to live in CGC holders.....

 

Looks like CBCS is well on their way to being the "restored book grading company". (thumbs u

 

-J.

 

I'm pretty sure the supes 1 7.0 mp CBCS used to be a restored CGC 6.5 mp

[Gotham Kid]

Wow. $22k for a 0.5 Tec 31 and only $36k for a Tec 33, 6.5.

 

Something definitely seems more than a little out of whack about that, and 33 certainly seems severely under-valued in relation at this point.

 

-J.

 

..... Same here...... Tec 33 just seems to have a lot to offer....and it's an Uber-Cool book (...to me) GOD BLESS...

 

-jimbo(a friend of jesus) (thumbs u

 

Totally agree.

 

+1. The tec 33 was a deal

 

...and yet this restored 1.0 is up to over $11k on ebay with three days to go....

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Detective-Comics-33-DC-Comics-Golden-Age-1939-Origin-of-Batman-CGC-1-0-/191542299735?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2c98cf8c57

 

-J.

 

and the bid retractions have begun. shocker ! Seriously, 11k for a fugly 1.0mp

 

Did you guys even see the retractors max bid!?! His max was $55,555 Obvious shill?

 

Bid retraction #2. $11,111. Joy bidders having some fun. Totally called it.

[gino2paulus2]

Come on you guys were supposed to let me win the Wonderworld #7 I suppose I can move on and I will except all your apologies if someone offers me an equally conditioned Wonderworld #32

 

On a serious note congrats to everyone who has picked up some cool books there sure were a lot of em in this auction...and PM me about the #32 (thumbs u

[The-Collector]

Either CBCS is changing the way folks view restored books or CC is up to something.

 

And I wonder how many of those books used to live in CGC holders.....

 

Looks like CBCS is well on their way to being the "restored book grading company". (thumbs u

 

-J.

 

I'm pretty sure the supes 1 7.0 mp CBCS used to be a restored CGC 6.5 mp

 

+1

[tabcom]

Bid retraction #2. $11,111. Joy bidders having some fun. Totally called it.

I like the direction this auction is heading. Couple more retractions and I'll be loosing up my purse strings.

[Diamonddave]

Tomb of Terror 15 File Copy went for over $4300. Bidding went crazy in the last hour.

[buttock]

Tomb of Terror 15 File Copy went for over $4300. Bidding went crazy in the last hour.

 

What was the grade? That's a very strong price.

[Jaydogrules]

Bid retraction #2. $11,111. Joy bidders having some fun. Totally called it.

I like the direction this auction is heading. Couple more retractions and I'll be loosing up my purse strings.

 

First bid retraction was the shill. Second bid retraction was the guy who realized his top bid was outted by the shill bid. It's depressing that this goes on even with GA books. At least the auction "looks" clean now.

 

Buying on ebay....

 

-J.

[Sqeggs]

Makes you wonder why people don't snipe to mitigate this problem (you can still get shilled even with a snipe, but not this blatantly).

[Flex Mentallo]

Makes you wonder why people don't snipe to mitigate this problem (you can still get shilled even with a snipe, but not this blatantly).

 

I for one would never stoop to such blatant tactics. And I'd never, ever retract a bid after making one to find out what the shill bid is. I don't even understand what I just wrote.

[AtlasT]

I for one would never stoop to such blatant tactics. And I'd never, ever retract a bid after making one to find out what the shill bid is. I don't even understand what I just wrote.

 

Round up the usual suspects!

[bluechip]

Comicconnect deals with buyers from all over the world. It's conceivable a foreign collector could overlook the resto info on the label, no? The seller needs to keep his fingers crossed the buyer doesn't use their return policy or chicken out. It's a long couple weeks I tell ya.

 

Not only that but why did CBCS make it a point to use the colour blue at all? That colour has been associated with UNIVERSAL GRADE for 15 years. They could have used any other colour yet they chose that one. If they wanted to have "one label for all books" (even though, hypocritically enough, that is in fact *not* what they have) why not use pink or lime, or hell, just white, or literally any other colour and throw all your books in that holder with micro print that gives prospective buyers a headache when they try to read the label that tells them what kind of book they're *really* getting ?

 

But they didn't do that. They used the colour blue. Their reasons for doing so are both obvious and disconcerting.

 

-J.

It's a great niche for CBCS. They'll become the company specializing in slabbing restored books.

 

Everyone with a CGC PLOD can now rush to crack their books out and resub to CBCS and get a BLOD and get a huge return on their investment immediately. It's basically what all the PLOD owners have been jonesing for for years.

 

It's the best new comic arbitrage opportunity since cracking and pressing 10 years ago.

 

The PLOD provides opportunities as much as anything else. I've seen (and had) books that were PLOD when sold, then saw the resto was removed and the book sold for much more.

 

There is no perfect answer, because we can't go back in time and forego the colored labels in the first place, which would have been the best thing.

 

I agree with the poster who said it's not logical to think people will spend thousands on a book without reading the label and seeing it's got some work done to it.

 

But I can agree that somebody who doesn't know the difference between CGC and CBCS might confuse the two and think the lack of a purple label means no resto. They might see only the big number. (but then, I am not a fan of making the grade number the biggest damn thing on the label in the first place)

 

Because of that, I would expect that people might offer buyers a chance to back out if they can reasonably say they didn't understand the difference between the two companies. Key word there is "reasonably." I would not be surprised to hear that ill-intentioned people pretended they didn't know, and I would be surprised if we do not hear of people contacting the buyersof restored CBCS books and talking them into demanding refunds out of a pure desire to cause trouble.

 

The real problem is not that one company has colored labels and the other doesn't, or that any company is being "deceptive," but that the colored labels were a bad idea in the first place and have caused large variations in price that bear little relation to rational thinking

 

While they are not the best examples of skewed valuations, the Supe 1s being offered tonight are a decent case in point. One is a moderate restored 7.0 and the other is a trashed looking unrestored book. Knowing what I do about what what constitutes moderation resto it is entirely possible and actually quite likely that the restored 7.0 started off looking much better than the unrestored book. Add to that the vast difference in eye appeal between the books (huge stains in the unrestored) and it's clear that the eye appeal of the restored book also started off much better than the other. And then realized that it's also likely that if you added all the defects together -- counting the resto as ADDITIONAL defects, the total defects in the mod restored 7.0 would be fewer than the defects in the unrestored book. Yet, the blue label book, last time I checked, had bids several times that of the other book.

 

That is skewed and strange, and it does not reflect well on the hobby. It's a good idea to try to change it, somehow. Which is why CGC made some efforts to address it with the conserved label,

 

I agree with many of your points. However a restored book should not "look" like an un - restored book once it had been slabbed. We cannot inspect these things ourselves once they're entombed and it should be readily apparent (no pun intended) when a book that is slabbed has been restored. It should be easy and obvious to see even the most novice of collector. It is clear that that is not the goal of CBCS's labeling system.

 

CBCS is 15 years late to the comic grading and slabbing game. And they want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to kow-tow to the restored comic book collector and seller by making his book look like an un-restored book in their slabs. Yet they also want to cash in on the established blue label universal grade colour identifying system that CGC has used for a decade and half.

 

I'm not saying they are being "deceptive", but I do think their system has a stink to it. Not the same kind of stink as PGX. But a fairly pungent reek in its own right. Needless to say, you can count me in the camp that would never buy one of their slabs.

 

-J.

 

Trying to ensure that a restored book should not "look" like an un - restored book once it had been slabbed is what created the mess of the purple labels in the first place. It stems from the view of purists that a book has been "desecrated" if it was touched with the impure thought of trying to improve the appearance, so they always hated that a book could be made to appear better. The purple label is, to those purists, a way of taking a book that has been altered to appear nicer and forcing the owner to give it a less desirable appearance.

 

If you say that CBCS is now the "restored book grading company" just because they use words instead of colors, then what does that make CGC "The restored book condemnation company"?

 

They both grade restored books. They both describe the work. The only difference is that CGC puts restored books in labels which are designed to denote "desecration" of the book, which determination is made based not on whether a book has been truly restored (meaning, made to look better) but on whether something was done by a person who intended to make it appear better, whether or not he/she failed to do so. And that's what has led to absurd things like book labeled "apparent poor",k mind-boggling discussions about whether a mark or drop of glue was applied intentionally or unintentionally, people tearing off pieces of covers that contained color touch (increasing the level of defects), using destructive corrosive tape rather than archival tape, hiding dots of color touch with LARGE defacing marks (because those are considered better than marks designed to improve the book), and it's what's led to a lot of naive people being told their book had to be priced much lower because of a tiny bit of "resto" that didn't really improve the book and was easily removed so the book could sell for much more (but only after the naive OO no longer had it). CGC has recognized that these problems have been created and is trying to address it, though I would have done it differently I applaud the intention behind the efforts.

 

Now, if you want to say that a book which only appears to be a 3.0 because of improvements should be given a number that treats the resto as a defect, that would go a long way toward making restored books cease to "appear" better than they are, because, as we know, the slabs put that effing number in giant screaming type that says this is the only thing you should care about.

 

 

 

 

[tabcom]

It seems to me the seller would not shill his own items. With 10124 positive feedbacks, it would appear out of character to do so.

[Gotham Kid]

It seems to me the seller would not shill his own items. With 10124 positive feedbacks, it would appear out of character to do so.

 

no shilling. probably a couple buyers seller must have ticked off ( refused to sell offline maybe or whatever other reason ) and decided to have a go at disrupting his auctions.

 

either that or case of cat vs keyboard

[Dark Knight]

Well, the guy who placed a max bid of over $55k is absolutely Even if he placed a max of around $10k he would end up winning the book.

[Sqeggs]

Makes you wonder why people don't snipe to mitigate this problem (you can still get shilled even with a snipe, but not this blatantly).

 

I for one would never stoop to such blatant tactics. And I'd never, ever retract a bid after making one to find out what the shill bid is. I don't even understand what I just wrote.

 

Enough about you, let's talk about me.

[Flex Mentallo]

Makes you wonder why people don't snipe to mitigate this problem (you can still get shilled even with a snipe, but not this blatantly).

 

I for one would never stoop to such blatant tactics. And I'd never, ever retract a bid after making one to find out what the shill bid is. I don't even understand what I just wrote.

 

Enough about you, let's talk about me.

 

Oops.

[Sqeggs]

Makes you wonder why people don't snipe to mitigate this problem (you can still get shilled even with a snipe, but not this blatantly).

 

I for one would never stoop to such blatant tactics. And I'd never, ever retract a bid after making one to find out what the shill bid is. I don't even understand what I just wrote.

 

Enough about you, let's talk about me.

 

Oops.

 

Or maybe we could talk about me talking about you.

[Sqeggs]

It seems to me the seller would not shill his own items. With 10124 positive feedbacks, it would appear out of character to do so.

 

Right. I didn't mean to impugn the seller here. I think of shill bidding broadly speaking as being any phony bid -- a bid not intended to win an auction with the intention of taking possession of the book. We've certainly seen many instances of shill bidding where the seller was most likely not involved.