Suspense Comics #3 Church copy just showed up 2 2

[Randall Dowling]

33 minutes ago, lou_fine said:

Well, somebody should have clued Geppi and Overstreet in on Terrific 5 when they sold the Overstreet copy for only $600 bsck in '95, only to have Metro listing it in the CBG at something like 10X that amount a mere 2 or 3 weeks later.   

Well, Metro paid for that in the end anyways when it came time for Geppi to price out their big piles of books.     

Lol! I never saw that but it doesn't surprise me.  Fishler's been at this for awhile... 

i would have loved to find a Terrific 5 at that time!

[N e r V]

I've bought from Metro for years. 

They've always been my image of what a New York comic dealer should look like.

 

Just wish they would learn to grade more in line with standards. I have to subtract at least 1/2 to 1 point off each book to maintain a grading curve with them.

[Paul © ® ⚽️💙™]

1 hour ago, N e r V said:

That post reminded how stupid other collector's thought I was in the 1980's and 1990's for going after Matt Baker books. Romance? Really. 

Lots of other stuff too I acquired with full abuse back then.

I always liked the good but obscure stuff. 

A good rule of thumb is...buy what you like and  everyone else! 

[Crowzilla]

2 hours ago, lou_fine said:

Well, somebody should have clued Geppi and Overstreet in on Terrific 5 when they sold the Overstreet copy for only $600 bsck in '95, only to have Metro listing it in the CBG at something like 10X that amount a mere 2 or 3 weeks later

They must have sold it for guide, which is always the right price - Overstreet said so.

But seriously, this is a fantastic book to pop up after so many years presumed lost. And it has carried a premium to guide for those who know for at least 30 years. Around the time of the first Sotheby's auction, I offered Magic 10x guide, and then followed it up with 20x guide for the his copy (he had just recently purchased it from Ernie), and it didn't phase him.

Not sure if this or the Fantastic 3 will end higher, but I suspect the Fantastic might. Part of the record price that Magic got for his was the assumption it would remain the highest graded, so I believe there has already been a premium attached to the prior sale.  Very doubtful there will ever be a better Fantastic #3.

 

 

[N e r V]

Especially if someone from Metro decides they must have it. 

I like the cover but don't even think it's the best Lou Fine or robot cover to me (although it is a great cover nonetheless). I also don't believe it's as scarce as the Suspense #3 is. Fantastic has a lot of copies tied up in collections with owners who don't want to sell because of that cover. Suspense #3 has always been in low supply. 

Part of me still favors the Suspense for final price but I have to admit at least one bidder could change that with their lust for Fantastic #3.

What fun watching though.

Edited March 13, 2017 by N e r V

[comicnoir]

10 hours ago, N e r V said:

I noticed the difference right away too.

 

So is it a bad scan? Heritage (and others) have produced some weak looking scans of books I bought from them up to and including weaker colours.

Is it weaker colours due to long term storage? We all know what heat or Mr. sun can do to colours even slowly over time.

Or maybe it's just a weak original colour strike. I've seen numerous HG GA books now with really weak colour strikes. Planet comics come to mind with several I've seen.

 

I'm not sure what it is but the structure looks tight and it's certainly got the history going for it. At 250k or whatever it hits I'd want to kick the tires in person.

I remember bidding on the Crippen copy knowing I didn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of getting it. I'm only looking at scans like the rest of you, but the colours on the Crippen are so intense and offset by the bone white of the logo so beautifully, if that's truly what it looks like, it is the most desirable in my eyes.

[lou_fine]

3 hours ago, Crowzilla said:

Not sure if this or the Fantastic 3 will end higher, but I suspect the Fantastic might. Part of the record price that Magic got for his was the assumption it would remain the highest graded, so I believe there has already been a premium attached to the prior sale.  Very doubtful there will ever be a better Fantastic #3.

I believe you might be right in saying this since there are no Fantastic books at all in the Allentown Collection, and the Larson Fantastic 3 is listed as having a coupon out of the back cover. 

With the odd exception, I would say the Allentown's and in some cases, possibly the Larson's might be the only copies that could possibly stand a chance of beating out a Church copy of an early Fox book.  Of course, there's always the possibility of a stand-alone non-pedigree HG copy popping out from somewhere, but I would really expect that to be as rare as hen's teeth. 

Edited March 13, 2017 by lou_fine

[lou_fine]

2 hours ago, N e r V said:

I like the cover but don't even think it's the best Lou Fine or robot cover to me (although it is a great cover nonetheless). I also don't believe it's as scarce as the Suspense #3 is. Fantastic has a lot of copies tied up in collections with owners who don't want to sell because of that cover. Suspense #3 has always been in low supply. 

Well, not sure about GPA listed sales, but based upon the Heritage archives, it would appear that Suspense 3 shows up much more often in the marketplace as compared to a Fantastic 3. 

The Heritage archives indicates a total of 17 different auction listings for Suspense 3 over the years, as compared to only 5 auction listings for Fantastic 3.  Of course, some of this higher numbers for the Suspense 3 might be due to relistings, but that's still a pretty significant difference between the 2 books. 

[N e r V]

Yes, the Heritage sales mean little to me. There's many books that Heritage (and others) list as seldom offered. Does not indicate a books true scarcity.

I'm also not a expert of true numbers of existing copies but in my experience I've seen enough copies of Fantastic comics #3 over the few copies of Suspense comics #3 to make me believe the Suspense book is rarer. That is in no way to say Fantastic #3 is falling off trees. I was a dealer (well part time dealer at least) from 1989 until 2002. In that time I saw a few copies of Fantastic #3 come and go but no Suspense comics #3. I have family and friends that own both books and I've always heard Suspense #3 is the toughest.

Someone like Gator or Bedrock though is probably far better  equipped than I to answer which book is truly rarer.

I will say though that although it is much easier today to locate books thanks to the Internet and the countless methods it provides there are far more books locked tightly into collections than there once was. There are a number of books that 20-30 years ago seemed easier to find without the internet than they are today. 

[Pickie]

11 hours ago, Grantley Goddard said:

I love reading stuff like this. It's fascinating how the hobby has evolved in the last 40 years or so, in terms of collecting focus. It would be great if that Pedigree book ever appears. I mean the one that is supposed to be written by Ritter & Co.

They've only been waiting for the Church Suspense #3 to appear  Now everything is as clear as day

[tth2]

7 hours ago, N e r V said:

I also don't believe it's as scarce as the Suspense #3 is. Fantastic has a lot of copies tied up in collections with owners who don't want to sell because of that cover. Suspense #3 has always been in low supply. 

Not all copies are made equal.  The fact that there may be more 2.5 or similarly low grade copies of Fantastic 3 than Suspense 3 is irrelevant when it comes to these particular copies (I don't know if your statement is true actually, but anyways for purposes of these books, it's completely irrelevant). 

Fantastic 3 is notoriously difficult to find in anything above low grade because of its spine issues.  Suspense 3 can be found in low grade, mid grade and VF.  This Suspense 3 is one increment higher than Magik's copy.  The Church Fantastic 3 is so far ahead of any other copy known that it is truly one of a kind.  It's either go big in this auction or accept that a 5.0 or 5.5 is the best copy one will probably ever own of this book.

[rob_react]

5 hours ago, N e r V said:

Yes, the Heritage sales mean little to me. There's many books that Heritage (and others) list as seldom offered. Does not indicate a books true scarcity.

I think you're missing out on a valuable resource if that's the way you look at it. 400,000 points of data (250,000 CGC listings, 150,000 raw) from the biggest, baddest auction collectibles house on the planet is nothing to sneeze at when researching this stuff. If Heritage hasn't listed it very often, that's a valuable indicator.  As part of the mosaic of information we have it's a pretty great resource. 

[Sqeggs]

3 minutes ago, rob_react said:

5 hours ago, N e r V said:

Yes, the Heritage sales mean little to me. There's many books that Heritage (and others) list as seldom offered. Does not indicate a books true scarcity.

I think you're missing out on a valuable resource if that's the way you look at it. 400,000 points of data (250,000 CGC listings, 150,000 raw) from the biggest, baddest auction collectibles house on the planet is nothing to sneeze at when researching this stuff. If Heritage hasn't listed it very often, that's a valuable indicator.  As part of the mosaic of information we have it's a pretty great resource. 

I think that's right.  I think it's also true that some books tend to circulate more than others, with the same copies appearing multiple times, sometimes across different auction houses.  A larger fraction of the population of other books ends up being held by collectors and disappears from the market for extended periods. 

[rob_react]

15 minutes ago, Sqeggs said:

I think that's right.  I think it's also true that some books tend to circulate more than others, with the same copies appearing multiple times, sometimes across different auction houses.  A larger fraction of the population of other books ends up being held by collectors and disappears from the market for extended periods. 

Oh, it's imperfect, for sure, but it's still invaluable.  The round-robin of Marvel Comics #1 being sold and resold a decade ago is an example of the downside. It is more common in high grade than other Golden Age keys, but it's not nearly as common as the auction record might indicate if you simply search and don't de-dupe the results. 

[*paull*]

3 hours ago, tth2 said:

 

Fantastic 3 is notoriously difficult to find in anything above low grade because of its spine issues. 

While I've never owned either book, I have seen copies of Suspense Comics 3 with detached covers and bad spines.  I have experience with other books from Continental (Terrific and Suspense), and to me at least, they are notorious for brittle spines and detached covers.  The cover paper stock that their printer used must have had a high acid content.

[N e r V]

Auction houses like Heritage or ComicConnect or whatever will often post things like "first copy we've ever offered" or "first copy offered in 10 years" but in no way shape or form does that mean for a fact the books that scarce.

It could be or it could be that the auction house simply hasn't seen one often. So yeah, I do observe those factors but also know sometimes it's not a fact. 

I'll give you an example. I just posted a copy of Blue Bolt #105 on another thread and a poster happened to mention it's a seldom seen book. Not rare but seldom seen. So as a fellow collector of LB Cole books I know a few other collectors of him one of which owns a complete run of the mentioned Suspense books. I ran into him in SDCC last year and as a ongoing joke I happened to ask him how many copies of Blue Bolt #105 he still had. It's one of his favourite Cole books and he's acquired every copy he's seen for over 30 years now. He wasn't sure but he's well over 2 dozen copies of that book alone. He is a black hole of all things LB Cole. I've known Baker fans with just the same collecting habits. 

Heritage has offered just 3 copies of that issue I could find. All in 2007 sales. 

So I'm aware of the difference between a books supply and demand at a given time vs it's true scarcity. I'm also aware that a lot of books get pulled off the grid never to be seen again and that when prices rise some get "smoked out" as some posters say.

My opinion on Suspense and Fantastic of actual existing copies (not what's more difficult in grade which is another subject all together) or what's locked into collections is that the Suspense book "may" be rarer from what I've seen in collecting since the 1980's. I also gave the "I might be completely wrong" at the end.

 

To be fair though I never really chased Suspense #3 back when it was affordable and the Fantastic #3's I did own were just "another cool GA cover" passing in the night since that book wasn't crazy expensive at the time either. No I was to busy looking for nobody books by Matt Baker or LB Cole or useless early Pep comics or worse yet buying PCH books by anyone not named EC since all those little publishers were hacks. 

 

 

[comicjack]

1 hour ago, *paull* said:

While I've never owned either book, I have seen copies of Suspense Comics 3 with detached covers and bad spines.  I have experience with other books from Continental (Terrific and Suspense), and to me at least, they are notorious for brittle spines and detached covers.  The cover paper stock that their printer used must have had a high acid content.

Fully agree and the fact most were heavily read 

[Bronty]

17 hours ago, Randall Dowling said:

This is what most people say today but my recollection of the time was a little different.  When the Photo Journals came out, there were already a group of elite collectors that had been identifying the unusual and special golden age and precode horror books for over a decade.  Some of those people are on these boards, like Jon Berk and Pat Calhoun (among others).  Those guys were actively researching and writing about these "off the beaten track" gems in CBG and other fanzines and eventually the Comic Book Marketplace.  Those guys were after books like Suspense 3, Terrific 5, Fantastic 3, Hit 25, Black Cat 50, Crime Does Not Pay 24, Eerie 2, and many, many others long before the rest of the market had any idea.  Most collectors in the 1980s that ever ventured earlier than silver age hero books were busy chasing DC, Timely, EC, and maybe Fawcett.  But that small minority forged through quarter boxes, dollar bins, back rooms and basements for the cool stuff nobody else wanted.  And had been doing so for some time.  To these guys, Suspense 3 was a big deal.

When Ernie Gerber published his books, it opened up this much, much wider world to the rest of us.  I (and many other fellow collectors) would spend hours combing through those pages for new gems to find, making lists and then searching through mail order catalogs and the CBG to find these rarities.  But by then it was already pretty late.  Suspense 3 was on my first list and I searched and searched for a copy to no avail.  Being from Wisconsin and Minnesota, there just wasn't the access.  When I started looking, I think guide on it was a few hundred dollars.  But you would never find one for that price (same as today, pretty much).  The books that Ernie put on the dust jacket weren't arbitrary.  It's a pretty awesome cross section of all comics from all publishers.  Anyway, I've always had a lot of respect for those "trailblazers" like Pat and Jon (among others) that spent hours, days, weeks of their lives enduring boxes of comics in some old guy or lady's smelly basement or attic to clue the rest of us in. 

And, of course, much gratitude to Ernie Gerber, too!

I think that's accurate.   There were already collectors on that bandwagon, but the gerber exposure opened them up to everyone.

Shortly before gerber I bought a vg horrific 3 for $25.     Shortly after gerber I sold it for $500.    

(dumb luck on my part but it illustrates the point that while a few collectors wanted and identified the books highlighted in gerber, it took gerber to make the values soar to new levels and for more mainstream collectors to see the value in certain books).  

 

Edited March 13, 2017 by Bronty

[lou_fine]

10 hours ago, N e r V said:

I just posted a copy of Blue Bolt #105 on another thread and a poster happened to mention it's a seldom seen book. Not rare but seldom seen. So as a fellow collector of LB Cole books I know a few other collectors of him one of which owns a complete run of the mentioned Suspense books. I ran into him in SDCC last year and as a ongoing joke I happened to ask him how many copies of Blue Bolt #105 he still had. It's one of his favourite Cole books and he's acquired every copy he's seen for over 30 years now. He wasn't sure but he's well over 2 dozen copies of that book alone. He is a black hole of all things LB Cole. I've known Baker fans with just the same collecting habits. 

Your fellow collector friend has excellent taste as the Blue Bolt 105 is just an absolute killer si-fi cover. 

Definitely still a highly underappreciated cover relative to all of the other classic covers out there.  I still remember this cover being used as the frontispiece for some comic art cover book, similar to how Suspense 3 was used for the Gerber Photo-Journal.  Maybe the time will come for Blue Bolt 105 to have its turn in the spotlight, as almost everything in comics seems to move in cycles.  Similar to how blazing red hot the covers for both 'Tec 31 and Punch 12 are in today's marketplace, but yet was on no collector's list as a top cover back in the mid 90's. 

[Randall Dowling]

11 hours ago, N e r V said:

Auction houses like Heritage or ComicConnect or whatever will often post things like "first copy we've ever offered" or "first copy offered in 10 years" but in no way shape or form does that mean for a fact the books that scarce.

It could be or it could be that the auction house simply hasn't seen one often. So yeah, I do observe those factors but also know sometimes it's not a fact. 

I'll give you an example. I just posted a copy of Blue Bolt #105 on another thread and a poster happened to mention it's a seldom seen book. Not rare but seldom seen. So as a fellow collector of LB Cole books I know a few other collectors of him one of which owns a complete run of the mentioned Suspense books. I ran into him in SDCC last year and as a ongoing joke I happened to ask him how many copies of Blue Bolt #105 he still had. It's one of his favourite Cole books and he's acquired every copy he's seen for over 30 years now. He wasn't sure but he's well over 2 dozen copies of that book alone. He is a black hole of all things LB Cole. I've known Baker fans with just the same collecting habits. 

Heritage has offered just 3 copies of that issue I could find. All in 2007 sales. 

So I'm aware of the difference between a books supply and demand at a given time vs it's true scarcity. I'm also aware that a lot of books get pulled off the grid never to be seen again and that when prices rise some get "smoked out" as some posters say.

My opinion on Suspense and Fantastic of actual existing copies (not what's more difficult in grade which is another subject all together) or what's locked into collections is that the Suspense book "may" be rarer from what I've seen in collecting since the 1980's. I also gave the "I might be completely wrong" at the end.

 

To be fair though I never really chased Suspense #3 back when it was affordable and the Fantastic #3's I did own were just "another cool GA cover" passing in the night since that book wasn't crazy expensive at the time either. No I was to busy looking for nobody books by Matt Baker or LB Cole or useless early Pep comics or worse yet buying PCH books by anyone not named EC since all those little publishers were hacks. 

 

 

This is exactly my impression of the illusion of scarcity in the marketplace.  So many more books sell outside of the major auction houses than through them including highly desirable books like Punch 12 or Suspense 3.  Even with the number of books sold through Heritage (many of which are the same book relisted), if you were to only look at their archive, you would have a very narrow perspective of actual availability.  But it's easy to believe otherwise when there are so few sources of information about the comic market that are accessible on the internet (strange to say, I know, but true).