Incredible Hulk #181 - is it *that* red-hot? 17 17

[MGsimba77]

16 hours ago, tdotcbc84 said:

Didn't Hulk 181 9.8 drop to 50% of value after 2008?

That's pretty much the only grade that dropped significantly post 08

[kimik]

The Hulk 181 9.8s dropped as more copies came onto the market post 2008 due to the miracle of widespread pressing. As more copies came into the census and market, the prices adjusted with the increased supply as they should. This is why BA and CA “top census chasing” is a mug’s game. Sooner or later another copy will be pressed into existence. 

[Howling Mad]

2 hours ago, kimik said:

The Hulk 181 9.8s dropped as more copies came onto the market post 2008 due to the miracle of widespread pressing. As more copies came into the census and market, the prices adjusted with the increased supply as they should. This is why BA and CA “top census chasing” is a mug’s game. Sooner or later another copy will be pressed into existence. 

God can you imagine how defeated people who own the top graded book feel when it's either pushed down or now has company? Ugh.

Kimik - unrelated, but if you come across another Shazam 28 in 9.8 please let me know. Leads appreciated as well.

[kimik]

If I recall correctly, didn't the buyer of the Hulk #181 at $26K in 2009 also chase another copy or two to try to maintain the value? If you bought during the trough from 2013 - 2016 you are laughing now as a $13K investment would not be worth $20K+. 

The one to cry over is whoever bought the first CGC 9.6 GL #76 to come to market. That book cost him/her $30,500 when it first popped up (I bid up to $10K - thankfully that did not carry), and now that there are 9.8s on the census a 9.6 is only worth ~$6000. FWIW, the first 9.8 sold in 2010 for $37K and change, and the next sale was in 2014 at just over $31K. That is a hard to find book in 9.4+, but as its significance wanes over time the prices will follow suit.

I will let you know if I find any more Shazam 28s.

Edited August 4, 2018 by kimik

[lou_fine]

4 hours ago, Howling Mad said:

7 hours ago, kimik said:

The Hulk 181 9.8s dropped as more copies came onto the market post 2008 due to the miracle of widespread pressing. As more copies came into the census and market, the prices adjusted with the increased supply as they should. This is why BA and CA “top census chasing” is a mug’s game. Sooner or later another copy will be pressed into existence. 

God can you imagine how defeated people who own the top graded book feel when it's either pushed down or now has company? Ugh.

As I have stated many times in the past, paying outrageous money for the highest graded copy of what is otherwise a common book, really implies that you are a CGC label collector as opposed to an actual comic book collector.  Especially when you are really paying mostly for the "transitory value" of a label, whereby most of that value will disappear as soon as another equivalent or higher graded copy of that same book appears in the marketplace.  

I find it is much better to buy a truly collectible comic book whereby a copy in any grade that shows up in the marketplace, whether it be in equivalent/higher or even lower condition, only serves to reinforce the price that you had paid for the book and helps to push the value of your copy further up.  

But to each their own, I would have to say.  

Edited August 4, 2018 by lou_fine

[lou_fine]

14 hours ago, Pontoon said:

I assume this would be the chart for the Hulk 181 9.8 copies whereby speculators were paying for the CGC label (as opposed to the underlying comic book itself) back in the 2008 to 2009 time period.

If you put up the chart for the various grades under 9.8 whereby collectors were paying more for the comic book itself (as opposed to the CGC label), my bet is that the graph looks completely different without having that long drawn out decline in prices.  

[jsilverjanet]

Also probably a factor is how many copies sell. More copies is a more stable consistent market. Less you will get less points on a graph and a great variety 

[VintageComics]

Hulk #181 has been a fairly stable priced book in CGC 9.6 for over a decade, if memory serves correctly. You could buy one for $4000-5000 in the early-mid 2000's and you could spend the same money and find one 10 years later in the same grade.

It's only recently (the last couple of years) that the book has been moving in 9.6 and the price rise started with a Heritage auction that ended on a Sunday night with an extremely aggressive price for a CGC 9.6 - a copy that I thought I was upgradeable to CGC 9.8. At the time a CGC 9.8 was maybe a $12Kish book.

The lower grade copies (below NM range) have been rising steadily for some time now, though, applying upward pressure on the higher grades.

A combination of the lower grade copies pushing up, the recent price movement on CGC 9.6 copies and surrounding keys (mostly the SA keys like AF #15 and ASM #1) jumping in price is what has caused this movement IMO.

[dinesh_s]

4 hours ago, VintageComics said:

Hulk #181 has been a fairly stable priced book in CGC 9.6 for over a decade, if memory serves correctly. You could buy one for $4000-5000 in the early-mid 2000's and you could spend the same money and find one 10 years later in the same grade.

It's only recently (the last couple of years) that the book has been moving in 9.6 and the price rise started with a Heritage auction that ended on a Sunday night with an extremely aggressive price for a CGC 9.6 - a copy that I thought I was upgradeable to CGC 9.8. At the time a CGC 9.8 was maybe a $12Kish book.

The lower grade copies (below NM range) have been rising steadily for some time now, though, applying upward pressure on the higher grades.

 A combination of the lower grade copies pushing up, the recent price movement on CGC 9.6 copies and surrounding keys (mostly the SA keys like AF #15 and ASM #1) jumping in price is what has caused this movement IMO.

Totally agree. I would also add that while 9.6s were stable, 9.8s were slowly moving up and as they did the gap started to become to large. 9.6s rose to reduce that gap in my opinion.

[RockMyAmadeus]

There is not an infinite amount of raw 9.8 copies...of any book...in existence, nor is there an infinite amount of lower grade books that can be pressed up to 9.8 (or any other grade, really.)

We are now in, and have been for a while, the era of diminishing new census numbers, especially for heavily traded books like Hulk #181. In the 00s, the census was filling out, and people didn't really have a good idea about what was out there, which is why people paid such premiums for "highest graded books."

That's no longer true.

The era of the census doubling, tripling, quadrupling, or more is essentially over, for most of the "key" books. Yes, there will continue to be a steady trickle of new census entries, as people sell their previously raw copies, or books get resubbed without turning in the old cert, but it would be quite the miracle if the number of Hulk #181s on the census even tripled in the next 20 years at this point. It's certainly not going to go up tenfold as it did between 2001 and 2013, or double again from 2013 to now. And while the rate of submission has seen an uptick in the last 2-3 years, again...there aren't an infinite amount of copies out there raw. Yes, there are a few people who have a decent amount of raw copies...but that number probably isn't "thousands", even over the entire world. That is, while there are certainly a couple of tens of thousands of copies still raw worldwide, there probably are only a handful of people who own multiple copies, not counting dealer inventory. Maybe 20-50. And of those tens of thousands of raw copies, probably less than 100-200 can lay legitimate claim to eventually ending up in 9.8 slabs.

NOW the era we are in is "this is how many are on the census, this is how many are available, now let's see where the demand really lies." Now we get a more true picture of the value of these books in their various grades, as opposed to the false values we got in the mid to late 00s because of the artificiality of the census. This is when the real fun starts.

[RockMyAmadeus]

There's your next project GH: Graphs of the rates of submission since the census started.

[MGsimba77]

9 minutes ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

There is not an infinite amount of raw 9.8 copies...of any book...in existence, nor is there an infinite amount of lower grade books that can be pressed up to 9.8 (or any other grade, really.)

We are now in, and have been for a while, the era of diminishing new census numbers, especially for heavily traded books like Hulk #181. In the 00s, the census was filling out, and people didn't really have a good idea about what was out there, which is why people paid such premiums for "highest graded books."

That's no longer true.

The era of the census doubling, tripling, quadrupling, or more is essentially over, for most of the "key" books. Yes, there will continue to be a steady trickle of new census entries, as people sell their previously raw copies, or books get resubbed without turning in the old cert, but it would be quite the miracle if the number of Hulk #181s on the census even tripled in the next 20 years at this point. It's certainly not going to go up tenfold as it did between 2001 and 2013, or double again from 2013 to now. And while the rate of submission has seen an uptick in the last 2-3 years, again...there aren't an infinite amount of copies out there raw. Yes, there are a few people who have a decent amount of raw copies...but that number probably isn't "thousands", even over the entire world. That is, while there are certainly a couple of tens of thousands of copies still raw worldwide, there probably are only a handful of people who own multiple copies, not counting dealer inventory. Maybe 20-50. And of those tens of thousands of raw copies, probably less than 100-200 can lay legitimate claim to eventually ending up in 9.8 slabs.

NOW the era we are in is "this is how many are on the census, this is how many are available, now let's see where the demand really lies." Now we get a more true picture of the value of these books in their various grades, as opposed to the false values we got in the mid to late 00s because of the artificiality of the census. This is when the real fun starts.

In your view how much of the census numbers regarding 181 are a result of double counted resubmitted books? This is just an anecdotal example but a few pages back in this thread someone posted a picture of about 10 old CGC labels from resubmitted books that were cracked open. 7 of those labels were of IH 181. I wish there was a way to obtain a clearer picture of this because for such an old book that census seems absurdly high! The ratio between available high grade copies & census also seems off. So many copies but only a fractional amount are available

[RockMyAmadeus]

1 minute ago, MGsimba77 said:

In your view how much of the census numbers regarding 181 are a result of double counted resubmitted books? This is just an anecdotal example but a few pages back in this thread someone posted a picture of about 10 old CGC labels from resubmitted books that were cracked open. 7 of those labels were of IH 181. I wish there was a way to obtain a clearer picture of this because for such an old book that census seems absurdly high! The ratio between available high grade copies & census also seems off. So many copies but only a fractional amount are available

I would say no more than 2-5%...and even that might be a lot (160-400 resubs without turned in labels.)

Keep in mind that there are always multiple times more copies held in collections that aren't available for sale vs. what is available. How many? Super hard to guess. For every 1 copy available for sale, there could be 100 copies...or more...in collections that aren't. No real way to know. The census...as flawed as it can be...is the only number which even comes close to approximating any idea about what exists.

[tdotcbc84]

what exists and what is available to buy, is two completely different things.

If there are only 100 Hulk 181s in the world, and 50 are for sale.  Are those 50 more expensive than say, the 5 that are for sale, but there are actually 1000 copies out there?

(I don't have a real answer to the question, just food for thought......)

[kimik]

2 hours ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

I would say no more than 2-5%...and even that might be a lot (160-400 resubs without turned in labels.)

Keep in mind that there are always multiple times more copies held in collections that aren't available for sale vs. what is available. How many? Super hard to guess. For every 1 copy available for sale, there could be 100 copies...or more...in collections that aren't. No real way to know. The census...as flawed as it can be...is the only number which even comes close to approximating any idea about what exists.

I have started asking my regular buyers at shows how many copies they have. I am actually amazed at how many of them have accumulated multiples of IH 181 over the years (as well as GSX 1, ASM 129, and most other BA Marvel keys). In fact, even collectors that I would have never guessed as owning one copy actually have multiple copies (but they won't part with any of them since the prices are still running up ).

My next question is how many are complete with the MVS. That is a more interesting answer, as most that accumulated their copies in the 80s and 90s will have one or two with the MVS missing. A couple have also mentioned knowingly buying copies with color touched spines since that was not as big a deal in the 80s (I love hearing the stories of them buying multiple copies for $5 - $10 way back when). 

Edited August 5, 2018 by kimik

[Turb0wned]

This is why I still think it’s the most overpriced book. You see for yourself how many people have multiple copies. So many of these 181’s out there. But hey, I own my copy so keep on rising.

Edited August 5, 2018 by Turb0wned

[ADAMANTIUM]

whoever bought that IH 8.5 today is going to be upset.... as the "description" says it is $3,900 for a 6.0, but the pics are for an 8.5...

  https://www.ebay.com/itm/The-Incredible-Hulk-181-CGC-8-5-Marvel-1974-1st-Wolverine-/163187445690?_sop=13&hash=item25febacfba%3Ag%3A4ngAAOSwrLZbZxoq&_nkw=incredible+hulk+181+cgc+&_sacat=0&_from=R40&LH_Complete=1&rt=nc&LH_Sold=1&nma=true&si=8ezL5zso0XZgmDAyLXLEIoI1CC0%3D&orig_cvip=true&nordt=true&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

 

[MyThreeSons]

I emailed the seller about the discrepancy but He didn’t not reply

[ADAMANTIUM]

22 minutes ago, minisink warrior said:

I emailed the seller about the discrepancy but He didn’t not reply

I looked at their feedback, the only negative WAS recent and does say that there was no communication after the sale.... it wasn't for a comic, but does say also "not as described".....

[jsilverjanet]

I have a 6.5 listed on ebay. The highest offer I received before sending to auction was $2800. a 6.5 ended last night that in my opinion got a gift grade (missing a piece top right hand corner) and was cream pages. The book ended at $2754.

:rollingthedice: