Mile High List 2 2

[comicdonna]

On 9/26/2021 at 9:13 PM, adamstrange said:

In the Coin world, there is now a company that certifies the certifier.  You send your slabbed coins to them, and, if they believe the grade is correct, they place their sticker on the case.  Coins that have been doubly certified in this way sell for more.

Are you talking about CAC (The green bean)?

[adamstrange]

Yes

Quote

CAC is an independent numismatic coin authentication service and is not connected or affiliated with any other numismatic coin encapsulating and/or grading service.

 

What Separates the Grade from Premium Quality

In every field, there are a select few that represent the best of the best. Coins are no exception. Now there's an easy way to identify premium quality coins within any particular grade. Just look for the CAC verification sticker.
Third-party grading services have revolutionized our industry by evaluating the condition of coins. Evaluations, however, can be subjective and over time, coins of varying quality have received the same grade. That's why leading members of the numismatic community formed CAC - to identify and formalize the existence of premium quality coins.

We only consider previously graded coins, submitted by CAC Submission Centers, and will only award our sticker to those coins that meet our standards for premium quality.

 

 

[lou_fine]

On 9/26/2021 at 6:45 PM, comicdonna said:

On 9/26/2021 at 6:13 PM, adamstrange said:

In the Coin world, there is now a company that certifies the certifier.  You send your slabbed coins to them, and, if they believe the grade is correct, they place their sticker on the case.  Coins that have been doubly certified in this way sell for more.

Are you talking about CAC (The green bean)?

 

On 9/26/2021 at 6:52 PM, adamstrange said:

Yes

 

Yes, but don't we sort of have that in place already with the CVA and QES stickers which goes onto an already slabbed book if they think the book actually presents superior to the assigned CGC grade based upon a number of listed factors.  

Well okay, the CVA sticker appears to be generic,whereas the QES sticker is for specific superior quality factors which they have listed for you. 

[lou_fine]

On 9/24/2021 at 2:27 PM, rob_react said:

FYI here is the best version I have, although it's out of date by a couple of years.

https://github.com/roblarsen/Edgar-Church-Collection-Data/tree/master/src

Looks like this is the version of the Mile High Catalog that's been floating around after Burrell took off his $10K chunk of the collection like the Planets and some of the better books were like the Actions, Pep 22, Suspense 3, etc. were already snapped up.  

I imagine it would be a tedious and mind-numbing job to try to keep this file up-to-date, especially with all of the auctions that's now taking place and also all of the CPR that's being done to books nowadays.  Does your History mean that the file was last updated back on January 8 of 2017? 

Still, very useful as a reference guide and I would definitely say a whole lot easier on the eyes as opposed to that original catalog with the tiny miniscule print in it.  

[lou_fine]

On 9/24/2021 at 3:33 PM, rob_react said:

oooh! Here's one that's even more provocative.... I'd take the Allentown books (135 books!) over the Promise collection.

It's probably really more a case of to each, their own.  

Since it all comes to fantasy and dreaming for me when it comes to these pedigrees, as I have already mentioned in an earlier post on another thread here, I would also take the Allentown books over the Promise Collection.  Especially since that much earlier time period and all of those HG keys present in the Allentown Collection is just so much more in my own personal collecting baliwick.      

[lou_fine]

On 9/24/2021 at 4:28 PM, rob_react said:

Just not in the same neighborhood as the Church collection.

Sadly, also not in the same neighborhood as the assigned CGC grade that's showing on the slab for a small sampling of some of the books posted here by other boardies.  

Although a very small sampling relative to all of the books seen so far, but yet obvious and large enough to give pause and make you wonder that if they missed or gave a pass to these clever visible cover defects relative to their assigned grades, are they also doing the same thing for interior defects which we cannot see from the cover scans?    

[lou_fine]

On 9/24/2021 at 6:32 PM, tth2 said:

First off, I don't know of any credible collector who is actually saying the Promise collection is comparable to the Church collection.  So you guys seem to be conjuring up a debate that doesn't exist. 

You are correct when you say that nobody is really doing a direct comparison of the Promise Collection to the Edgar Church Collection.  

But they are clearly alluding and indirectly referencing the Church books when they speak about the Promise books in the same breath and in the same sentence as the Church books.  The clear intention here is to lead the listener or reader to think in terms of the Church books when they think about the Promise books, but then again, maybe that's just me.  

Actually, based upon the books that's present in the Promise Collection that we've seen so far, the pedigree that comes to my mind is that the Promise Collection is really more of a super high end (i.e. condition wise) Davis Crippen pedigree from my own personal point of view.  

[lou_fine]

On 9/24/2021 at 6:32 PM, tth2 said:

The only big pedigree that I can think of that was offered in a similarly open fashion was Pacific Coast, but that was pre-CGC.

Well, from a GA point of view at least, the only one that I can think was the Billy Wright books which came into the marketplace all in one shot through Heritage back in 2012 or thereabouts.  

Of course, that was something like only a few hundred books which is clearly not the same thing as the 5,000 books that's in the Promise Collection.

[Cat-Man_America]

On 9/26/2021 at 10:31 PM, lou_fine said:

Looks like this is the version of the Mile High Catalog that's been floating around after Burrell took off his $10K chunk of the collection like the Planets and some of the better books were like the Actions, Pep 22, Suspense 3, etc. were already snapped up.  

I imagine it would be a tedious and mind-numbing job to try to keep this file up-to-date, especially with all of the auctions that's now taking place and also all of the CPR that's being done to books nowadays.  Does your History mean that the file was last updated back on January 8 of 2017? 

Still, very useful as a reference guide and I would definitely say a whole lot easier on the eyes as opposed to that original catalog with the tiny miniscule print in it.  

There's something off about that data base.  I'm not sure where it floated in from, but I bought the Church copy of Silver Streak #7 from a catalog like the one depicted below.  It wasn't "Fine" as listed in the data base (which is off as well for a Church book since Chuck doubled the then current Guide prices).  The copy I bought was NM+ for $600 which was a lot of change in '77 (double the OSG value of $300 for a "mint" copy at that time.  Note: There were only three categories listed in Overstreet prior to the 10 point system, Good, Fine and Mint.  You're right about the tiny print, but the two section tabloid insert was more fun to look at than the data base with winged fairies sprinkled liberally throughout...

[lou_fine]

On 9/26/2021 at 8:17 AM, RareHighGrade said:

My only criticism of the Promise collection is the inexplicably lax grading on several of the books, including keys.  Apart from that, I think it's an incredible collection in terms of overall quality, especially scope and grade.

This is without a doubt the best and most consise statment that I have seen here with respect to the Promise Collection pedigree.  

A truly incredible and magnificent collection and one which most of us thought we would never ever be able to see unearthed at this late stage of our collecting hobby.  Yet sadly as I have stated here before, this historical collection did not get the same quality grading service commensurate with its pedigree, as CGC basicaly provided a disservice to the Promise Collection with its seeming incompetent and inconsistent grading.  This in effect has tarnished the legacy of this pedigree in the eyes of many long-time collectors, and once tarnished, sometimes it is very hard to remove and forget. 

[lou_fine]

On 9/26/2021 at 12:36 PM, Cat-Man_America said:

The depth and breath of the Chinatown Collection doesn't matter.  It is a pedigree and has a lot of popular books (Timely) in grade that overlap the Promise Collection.  This may sound cynical, but is it any surprise that in the heated auction market we find ourselves in there wouldn't be an overlap of key auction books.  Competing pedigree books would be leaving money on the table and invite closer scrutiny to the grades.

Do you know something that we don't know and softly hinting that the Chinatown books might just be coming to market after the Promise books are done?  

If so, what makes you say this at this current point in time, especially since the Chinatown books first surfaced some 20+ plus years ago and we have yet to see any come to market to this day?      

[Timely]

On 9/26/2021 at 11:06 PM, lou_fine said:

You are correct when you say that nobody is really doing a direct comparison of the Promise Collection to the Edgar Church Collection.  

But they are clearly alluding and indirectly referencing the Church books when they speak about the Promise books in the same breath and in the same sentence as the Church books.  The clear intention here is to lead the listener or reader to think in terms of the Church books when they think about the Promise books, but then again, maybe that's just me.  

Actually, based upon the books that's present in the Promise Collection that we've seen so far, the pedigree that comes to my mind is that the Promise Collection is really more of a super high end (i.e. condition wise) Davis Crippen pedigree from my own personal point of view.  

Based on condition and years, the Promise Collection resembles the Big Apple Collection more than any other pedigree. Big Apple books pre 1943-1944 are unspectacular and lower grade, just like the Promise. Then in 1943-1944 they become quite amazing. Big Apple book as also generally have White and OW/W pages. They are also coded as well.

[rob_react]

On 9/26/2021 at 11:31 PM, lou_fine said:

Looks like this is the version of the Mile High Catalog that's been floating around after Burrell took off his $10K chunk of the collection like the Planets and some of the better books were like the Actions, Pep 22, Suspense 3, etc. were already snapped up.  

I imagine it would be a tedious and mind-numbing job to try to keep this file up-to-date, especially with all of the auctions that's now taking place and also all of the CPR that's being done to books nowadays.  Does your History mean that the file was last updated back on January 8 of 2017? 

Still, very useful as a reference guide and I would definitely say a whole lot easier on the eyes as opposed to that original catalog with the tiny miniscule print in it.  

Yes, it hasn't been updated in 3 years. I would like to return to it, but it's one of many things I've got going on and it's a bit down the list.

[rob_react]

On 9/27/2021 at 12:59 AM, Cat-Man_America said:

There's something off about that data base.  I'm not sure where it floated in from, but I bought the Church copy of Silver Streak #7 from a catalog like the one depicted below.  It wasn't "Fine" as listed in the data base (which is off as well for a Church book since Chuck doubled the then current Guide prices).  The copy I bought was NM+ for $600 which was a lot of change in '77 (double the OSG value of $300 for a "mint" copy at that time.  Note: There were only three categories listed in Overstreet prior to the 10 point system, Good, Fine and Mint.  You're right about the tiny print, but the two section tabloid insert was more fun to look at than the data base with winged fairies sprinkled liberally throughout...

 

 

It didn't "float in" from anywhere. It's a project I worked on, off and on, over two years. It's imperfect, for sure, but it's a much more usable version that the tiny text pdf that everyone has. It's open source, so my hope was that people would submit corrections and I could update the data that way. That has rarely happened, unfortunately, so it's difficult for me to keep the data up to date myself (in the middle of all the other projects I do and having a life.)

But, please, feel free to throw shade at the work I did for free, for the hobby, including spending hundreds of dollars of my own money to hire two separate people to try to double check and format the data since it was too big a task for me to do on my own. 

It's much easier for people to snark about the project than it is to actually help. I get it. 

Here's what I wrote up initially where I explicitly say it's incomplete and needs corrections and I explicitly ask for help. I also posted about it on the boards. 

https://itsalljustcomics.com/2016/04/07/edgar-church-collection-data-released/

Quote

After a little over 15 months, countless hours of my own time and 30+ hours of paid assistance, I've finally gotten the Edgar Church Collection Data project to a point where I can release it.

What have I done so far? I've merged the original master list with an old list of CGC grades for the collection. On top of that I've added (with the aforementioned assistance) dates and publishers to over 99% of the titles.

I underestimated how long this would take when I started this in 2014. That's one of the reasons I ended up hiring folks to help out. I just wanted to get it to this point so that when I add/updated data it's already in a format that people can use. Even now we've identified some areas of the data that need double checking. I just didn't want to wait any longer. I'm never going to get to 100% accuracy, so holding out to move the needle from 95% to 97% before releasing it seemed like nonsense.

Right now the project offers two different options for end users:

• A CSV containing all the data. You can open this in Excel or another program and play with the data as you will. Also available as a zip file.
• A series of browseable resources on the github site:
  • A-C
  • D-F
  • G-I
  • J-L
  • M-O
  • P-R
  • S-U
  • V-Z

Please check it out. At this point I'm actively soliciting errata and additions. If you're Github savvy, please just open issues on Github. If not, feel free to email me with any updates or corrections.

The data is released under an Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license. Which means it's free to use (even commercially) as long as you give me proper attribution.

 

[rob_react]

As always, thank you to the many people on the boards who have helped out on the many projects I've taken on over the years. I really do appreciate it, but getting snark because something I worked on over two years isn't good enough when I haven't historically gotten the sort of help I'd need to improve the data is annoying as hell. Roll up you own sleeves and do the work yourself and see how that goes. 

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

On 9/27/2021 at 9:19 AM, rob_react said:

As always, thank you to the many people on the boards who have helped out on the many projects I've taken on over the years. I really do appreciate it, but getting snark because something I worked on over two years isn't good enough when I haven't historically gotten the sort of help I'd need to improve the data is annoying as hell. Roll up you own sleeves and do the work yourself and see how that goes. 

I’m sure what @Cat-Man_Americais saying is thank you very much for you work, no offense intended 

[tth2]

On 9/27/2021 at 12:06 PM, lou_fine said:

You are correct when you say that nobody is really doing a direct comparison of the Promise Collection to the Edgar Church Collection.  

But they are clearly alluding and indirectly referencing the Church books when they speak about the Promise books in the same breath and in the same sentence as the Church books.  The clear intention here is to lead the listener or reader to think in terms of the Church books when they think about the Promise books, but then again, maybe that's just me.  

What's wrong with that?  Nothing wrong with a book by book comparison.  Any particular individual Promise book might very well be superior to the Church copy.  That doesn't mean that the Promise collection as a whole is better than the Church collection, which is the non-existent fight that some people here seem to be getting all worked up over.  

I could definitely point to specific books from the Vancouver collection which I think are better than their Church counterpart.  But only someone intentionally trying to pick a fight would suddenly turn it into a debate over whether I was claiming that the Vancouver collection as a whole was superior to the Church collection, which obviously would be ridiculous.

[rob_react]

On 9/27/2021 at 11:04 AM, tth2 said:

What's wrong with that?  Nothing wrong with a book by book comparison.  Any particular individual Promise book might very well be superior to the Church copy.  That doesn't mean that the Promise collection as a whole is better than the Church collection, which is the non-existent fight that some people here seem to be getting all worked up over.  

I could definitely point to specific books from the Vancouver collection which I think are better than their Church counterpart.  But only someone intentionally trying to pick a fight would suddenly turn it into a debate over whether I was claiming that the Vancouver collection as a whole was superior to the Church collection, which obviously would be ridiculous.

Vancouver was such a funny pedigree. Amazing books, but it was like the original owner was actively trying to avoid buying anything that would end up being valuable. 

[sfcityduck]

On 9/27/2021 at 7:19 AM, rob_react said:

As always, thank you to the many people on the boards who have helped out on the many projects I've taken on over the years. I really do appreciate it, but getting snark because something I worked on over two years isn't good enough when I haven't historically gotten the sort of help I'd need to improve the data is annoying as hell. Roll up you own sleeves and do the work yourself and see how that goes. 

Rob,

Always loved your site, which is why I have on occasion shared info with you so you could in turn share it with the world - like my info on the chronology of the world record comic sales.   I appreciated that you acknowledged that contribution, and that was more than enough "fame" for me as the real gratification is getting the info out for people to know.  While it didn't bother me when you updated your site and dropped your acknowledgment ( ), I can see why you're pissed that folks tend to forget to give the thanks you deserve for the free info on your site.  I know that I am a not infrequent quoter of info from your site on these boards.  So, again, thanks!

Edited September 27, 2021 by sfcityduck

[rob_react]

On 9/27/2021 at 1:15 PM, sfcityduck said:

Rob,

Always loved your site, which is why I have on occasion shared info with you so you could in turn share it with the world - like my info on the chronology of the world record comic sales.   I appreciated that you acknowledged that contribution, and that was more than enough "fame" for me as the real gratification is getting the info out for people to know.  While it didn't bother me when you updated your site and dropped your acknowledgment ( ), I can see why you're pissed that folks tend to forget to give the thanks you deserve for the free info on your site.  I know that I am a not infrequent quoter of info from your site on these boards.  So, again, thanks!

I need to update that page. The visualization is out of date and I'm sorry I lost your attribution, so I'll add that back in. You were super helpful on that chronology