Heritage's Next Event Auction has started posting books ! 31 31

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

19 minutes ago, tth2 said:

Count me as part of both the 99.999% (at least with respect to a 7.0) and the 0.001%.

Cmon now. We’re talking about Poison Ivy here.

kidding

+1

[ThothAmon]

1 hour ago, drbanner said:

Hilarious

So true. Any time I, as a comic book collector, am about to make fun of another’s collecting habit I remember the adage about glass houses. 

Edited November 21, 2020 by ThothAmon

[SteveDuin]

Meanwhile ....

[Cat-Man_America]

2 hours ago, GreatCaesarsGhost said:

Cmon now. We’re talking about Poison Ivy here.

kidding

+1

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>  

 

[lou_fine]

1 hour ago, SteveDuin said:

Meanwhile ....

Rather surprising to see somebody like the winner of the Pokemon Red actually pay attention to these things like proactively getting into the Heritage settings to actually remove themselves from Heritage's Make Offer to Owner feature.  

If I am correct, the default setting on all HA members accounts is automatically set to Yes for the Heritage Make Offer to Owner feature if you are the winning bidder for any of their lots and is calculated based upon an automatic 30% increase over and above your winning bid.  

[buttock]

15 hours ago, lou_fine said:

Don't you absolutely love these CGC label collectors, especially when it would be halarious if the 9.8 copy had started out its certification life as only a CGC 9.0 copy?  

With a result like this, all I can say is that somebody must have really overdosed themselves drinking down all of that CGC Kool-Aid.      

The happiest people at this $90K result must be the other 2 collectors who also have CGC 9.8 graded copies of this particular book here.    

1) it was an OO copy

2) there are many people who want something and aren't concerned about making a profit on it.  I know it's hard to conceptualize at $90K, but there isn't a single comic book that has intrinsic value.  This is a hobby and value is predicated on what someone will pay.  In this case, at public auction with other people bidding below the max.  For a collector who wants a 9.8 copy of this book, it's a great buy because there isn't another one available.  As a collector myself, I rarely regret overpaying for something because I'm using discretionary funds.  I'd rather have the books than money in the bank.  But I'm not giving up my lunch money for comics either.  All that to say, I hope the buyer is really happy with their purchase.  

[alexgross.com]

6 hours ago, drbanner said:

Hilarious...99.999% of humans think it's inconceivably stupid to pay over a million dollars for a comic book ('Tec 27), yet the other 0.001% think that's totally sane but paying $90,000 for a different comic book is inconceivably stupid.

great reference! "He is black on the right side-- All his people are back on the right side!" the narcissism of small differences. 

[MrBedrock]

17 hours ago, RareHighGrade said:

On 11/20/2020 at 1:32 PM, Timely said:

I'm not sure if anybody even cares anymore, but the "San Francisco" Copy of Superman #4 that just sold on Heritage has a "B" erased just to the left of the logo. Seems VERY unlikely an authentic San Francisco Copy would have a penciled "B" on it. I've seen just about every known SF & I've never seen one with a "B" on it... unless Robert Beerbohm decided to put a "B" on this one for some reason.

There are other reasons it does not look like an authentic SF copy.  In fact nothing about it is consistent with an SF.

The "San Fransisco" copies of Superman #4 and #5 both came from the collection of a longtime Superman fan named Mark Edmunds. He decided to sell them around 2001 through John Fairless, who submitted them for grading. Mark swore that he bought them from Beerbohm represented as part of the San Fransisco collection. No reason to doubt him. Beerbohm corroborated this to CGC and CGC labeled them as such.

[Cat-Man_America]

2 hours ago, MrBedrock said:

The "San Fransisco" copies of Superman #4 and #5 both came from the collection of a longtime Superman fan named Mark Edmunds. He decided to sell them around 2001 through John Fairless, who submitted them for grading. Mark swore that he bought them from Beerbohm represented as part of the San Fransisco collection. No reason to doubt him. Beerbohm corroborated this to CGC and CGC labeled them as such.

Excellent background info.  

Just wondering, since we both know Bob, do you think his corroboration in respect to the provenance would hold the same weight today?  

Edited November 21, 2020 by Cat-Man_America

[Professor K]

21 hours ago, tabcom said:

One theory is a central banker, who is a collector, with access to liquidity (counterfeit) put his federal guaranteed chits on the table and received his required dopamine amplification.

Whoa Whoa Whoa you been reading my FB posts? 

 

Edited November 22, 2020 by Professor Chaos

[tth2]

9 hours ago, buttock said:

For a collector who wants a 9.8 copy of this book, it's a great buy because there isn't another one available. 

I'm sure there soon will be!  

I don't think the issue is necessarily the absolute dollars, because as you say none of these books has any intrinsic value.  Rather, it's the quantum leap over all previous benchmarks. 

This was not the MH copy of Fantastic #3 where a collector could justifiably believe that an equal or better copy doesn't exist and if it wasn't snapped up during the Berk auction, the opportunity might never come again.  This is from DC's go-go checkerboard period, and there is no such thing as a book that is rare in ultra-high grade from this period.

There are already at least 2 other 9.8 copies, and in this day and age I'm sure the gnomes of the hobby are already busily scouring for transformation candidates.

Edited November 22, 2020 by tth2

[buttock]

15 minutes ago, tth2 said:

I'm sure there soon will be!  

I don't think the issue is necessarily the absolute dollars, because as you say none of these books has any intrinsic value.  Rather, it's the quantum leap over all previous benchmarks. 

This was not the MH copy of Fantastic #3 where a collector could justifiably believe that an equal or better copy doesn't exist and if it wasn't snapped up during the Berk auction, the opportunity might never come again.  This is from DC's go-go checkerboard period, and there is no such thing as a book that is rare in ultra-high grade from this period.

There are already at least 2 other 9.8 copies, and in this day and age I'm sure the gnomes of the hobby are already busily scouring for transformation candidates.

True, but as always, supply and demand.   For Batman and ASM, there's always multiple buyers for a 9.8, and they have money.  There isn't nearly the demand for the Church Fantastic #3 that there is for a Batman 181.  Ask any weekend dealer and you'll hear that it's one of the single most asked for books.  This sale capitalized on demand (all time high) and supply (despite everyone thinking that more are available, there aren't, and one hasn't sold in 6 years; an eternity in the internet era).  9.8 Charltons are probably rarer, but I don't think you'd see the same prices, although you also may only get one shot at those.  People keep saying that there are more 9.8s of this book out there, but knowing that even prior to this sale, you were looking at mid 5 figures... where are they?  

[lou_fine]

3 hours ago, buttock said:

People keep saying that there are more 9.8s of this book out there, but knowing that even prior to this sale, you were looking at mid 5 figures... where are they?  

 

I believe they are being cranked out as we speak:  

[tth2]

10 hours ago, buttock said:

True, but as always, supply and demand.   For Batman and ASM, there's always multiple buyers for a 9.8, and they have money.  There isn't nearly the demand for the Church Fantastic #3 that there is for a Batman 181.  Ask any weekend dealer and you'll hear that it's one of the single most asked for books.  This sale capitalized on demand (all time high) and supply (despite everyone thinking that more are available, there aren't, and one hasn't sold in 6 years; an eternity in the internet era).  9.8 Charltons are probably rarer, but I don't think you'd see the same prices, although you also may only get one shot at those.  People keep saying that there are more 9.8s of this book out there, but knowing that even prior to this sale, you were looking at mid 5 figures... where are they?  

Dan, of course demand is an important component.  However, what we're talking about is unsophisticated, or perhaps impatient, demand that doesn't understand that the supply axis is not fixed.

Obviously a buyer is entitled to pay whatever he wants.  But the parallels for this sale are the moonshot prices we suddenly saw for 9.9 New Mutants #98 ("thus endeth the lesson"), 9.8 FF 52 and 9.8 TMNT 1.  I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure none of those buyers could recoup their purchase price today.

Yes, there is/was huge demand for those books, but unlike a Fantastic #3, supply was able to increase to meet that huge demand, at least enough to cause supply and demand to intersect at a lower price point.

As for why more copies haven't emerged even though prices were strong already, there's always been an odd phenomenon in this hobby of needing a huge spike, rather than just consistently strong prices, to bring copies from out of the woodwork.  I remember when I finally bought into the whole GL 76 scarcity in NM myth because prices seemed insanely strong for a BA book and yet there didn't seem to be a lot of 9.4 copies entering the census, thus finally convincing me that they really were that scarce.  And then a 9.6 copy came on the market and got a huge price that blew away all previous comps, and then the rush was on.  

[comicdonna]

There are 3 Batman 181 CGC 9.8's in the census.  

[DanCooper]

22 hours ago, buttock said:

I hope the buyer is really happy with their purchase

I hope so too.

Especially after they get to see it in hand and if that is actually a small piece of the Bat 181 floating around in that lower right hand corner

Edited November 22, 2020 by DanCooper

[buttock]

35 minutes ago, tth2 said:

Dan, of course demand is an important component.  However, what we're talking about is unsophisticated, or perhaps impatient, demand that doesn't understand that the supply axis is not fixed.

Obviously a buyer is entitled to pay whatever he wants.  But the parallels for this sale are the moonshot prices we suddenly saw for 9.9 New Mutants #98 ("thus endeth the lesson"), 9.8 FF 52 and 9.8 TMNT 1.  I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure none of those buyers could recoup their purchase price today.

Yes, there is/was huge demand for those books, but unlike a Fantastic #3, supply was able to increase to meet that huge demand, at least enough to cause supply and demand to intersect at a lower price point.

As for why more copies haven't emerged even though prices were strong already, there's always been an odd phenomenon in this hobby of needing a huge spike, rather than just consistently strong prices, to bring copies from out of the woodwork.  I remember when I finally bought into the whole GL 76 scarcity in NM myth because prices seemed insanely strong for a BA book and yet there didn't seem to be a lot of 9.4 copies entering the census, thus finally convincing me that they really were that scarce.  And then a 9.6 copy came on the market and got a huge price that blew away all previous comps, and then the rush was on.  

I agree completely that impatience is an issue.  That's why I made the comment about the internet time frame.  If you want to get likes on instagram, you've got to have the goods. 

 

But you also have to consider that there was an underbidder, and that means there's more than one person willing to pay this level of price.  That's where the fact that this is a 9.8 Batman key comes into play.  It's one of the 2 most popular characters.  So although there are 3 on the census, there are more than 3 people wanting the book.  

 

And again, when it comes to the price, although $90K seems like a LOT to most of us for a book of arguable significance, to the buyer that may be the absolute grail or a book that fills a hole they've been after for 10-20 years.  And if it's discretionary money, more power to them.  I say congratulations and I hope they are really happy with the purchase.  

 

And let's keep in mind that we're at 20 years of CGC certification now.  In the first few years the crazy prices for top census books were clearly hard to justify.  But the GL 76 9.6 sale was what, 10 years ago?  Maybe longer?  That's a generational leap in collecting time.  I give a bit more merit to top census copies now.  And again, this wasn't a CPR 9.8, this was an original owner book.  So despite the money out there for other copies, they aren't turning up.  

 

 

[Crowzilla]

On 11/21/2020 at 11:06 AM, SteveDuin said:

Meanwhile ....

Not that I would be interested in any of those 3 at those prices, but if I had to pick one it would probably be the Batman 181.

[Crowzilla]

2 hours ago, szav said:

...the 90k for a 9.8 first appearance of poison ivy strikes me as out of balance with other Batman related books like say Detective 140.  Looking at GPA the record price paid for one appears to be 38k.....  I think the Riddler at one time was a far more iconic batman villian, and there's no doubt the book is harder to come by in grade than Batman 181 in minty fresh condition ... but maybe poison ivy is more important to today's girly centric comic connoisseur? 

Maybe this is an apples to oranges comparison.  I dunno...it does seem like this 181 went to the moon just because "9.8".

 

I think Poison Ivy has been more important to the Batman mythos than Riddler for about 20 years now. Was just looking at GPA on the other big SA Batman Villain firsts (121, 171, 181, and 189) and see that 121 has an $80K sale, and 171 has a $41K sale in 9.6 (highest graded), so the 181 doesn't seem that out of line since Ivy is certainly more popular/important than the other two. Maybe the big takeaway though is that 189 is really undervalued with a top sales price of $3300

[bluechip]

2 hours ago, szav said:

Uhhh...you must not be paying much attention to TMNT #1 lately.

However, while I generally agree that no one who collects comics and has ever paid more than 100$ for one should ever criticize anyone else for any comic purchase at any price...the 90k for a 9.8 first appearance of poison ivy strikes me as out of balance with other Batman related books like say Detective 140.  Looking at GPA the record price paid for one appears to be 38k.....  I think the Riddler at one time was a far more iconic batman villian, and there's no doubt the book is harder to come by in grade than Batman 181 in minty fresh condition ... but maybe poison ivy is more important to today's girly centric comic connoisseur? 

Maybe this is an apples to oranges comparison.  I dunno...it does seem like this 181 went to the moon just because "9.8".

 

The Batman 181 is 'iconic' for many reasons.  It's an oft-reprinted cover and I believe it was the Batman book on the newsstands when the Batman TV series debuted, so if you learned about Batman through the show and went looking for it at your local store, it's what you saw.  So it likely got burned into many a child's memory.