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

[jimjum12]

11 hours ago, nearmint said:

There are 22 copies in 9.8.  Rumor has it the print run was only about 200. 

It does seem to increase with each sale and has been for quite a few years now. The 22 9.8's could be made up of a few re-subs that failed to make 9.9. I wouldn't mind having one. GOD BLESS...

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

[jimjum12]

2 hours ago, buttock said:

Exactly.  I hope that purchase made the buyer happy.  Who am I to judge them for what they bought? 

I know you're all spoiled rotten over these Promise books now, ()but wait till you see the Marines in Battle 17 I just snagged.... it's so nice, time stood, briefly, still. GOD BLESS....

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

[lou_fine]

5 hours ago, LordRahl said:

6 hours ago, lou_fine said:

The key thing to note here is whether that SS 4 auction result for 90K was an outlier, as one sale does not a marketplace make.  

Oh I hope that was an outlier. I'm sure it was, at least as sure as one can be in this current marketplace.

How can you be so sure that this particular Silver Surfer 4 sale was an outlier in today's rather crazed FOMO driven marketplace?  

Especially when you have other more recent high profile books with far higher census counts such as TMNT 1 in CGC 9.6, XM 94, and GSXM 1 moving from the teens where they were less than 2 years ago and now hitting $88K, $63K, and $72K respectively.  Especially in terms of GSXM 1 with something like 200 copies already slabbed in CGC 9.8 and over 10,000 slabbed in total and with no doubt, more to come as it was supposedly part of a big warehouse find back in the day.  

Sure, the demand for the Surfer 4 might not be as high as the demand for those much later BA and CA keys, but the supply is also certainly a lot lower on what is probably one of the best and most memorable covers to have come out from the Marvel SA time period.  

Edited June 22, 2021 by lou_fine

[tth2]

4 hours ago, buttock said:

6 hours ago, 10centcomics said:

Sometimes I feel like we have to put down another type of collector to justify the legitimacy of the thing we collect. Let's be real, paying tens of thousands of dollars for any comic book, GA or modern variant, is pretty ridiculous in the grand scheme of things. As others have said above, let people collect what they want to collect. It's not hard to imagine that maybe it's a diehard Spidey fan, a diehard Dell'otto fan (maybe he likes Dell'otto the way we like Alex Schomburg or Matt Baker), a variant collector (a quick Google search tells me this is the top modern variant of the hobby), or a completionist looking to get every issue of ASM and its variants...

Expand  

Exactly.  I hope that purchase made the buyer happy.  Who am I to judge them for what they bought? 

Because this is a hobby in which we grew up arguing over Marvel vs. DC, Spider-Man vs. Batman, whether Hulk or Thor is stronger.

So of course we're going to be judgmental on people's buying decisions!   

[Chicago Boy]

1 hour ago, tth2 said:

Because this is a hobby in which we grew up arguing over Marvel vs. DC, Spider-Man vs. Batman, whether Hulk or Thor is stronger.

So of course we're going to be judgmental on people's buying decisions!   

I keep telling you it's Hulk !!!!!!

[Dr. Love]

49 minutes ago, Chicago Boy said:

I keep telling you it's Hulk !!!!!!

Absurd, Thor's a god for God's sake

[VintageComics]

11 hours ago, LordRahl said:

Me too. But you and I and most of the folks frequenting the GA, SA boards are a bunch of crotchety old men yelling at the kids to get off my lawn... or stop buying variants for stupid money. Point being, we don't get it. And I think much of this comes down to just that, we don't get it because we don't collect moderns. But there are people out there that do and enjoy it. And the notion of "manufactured" rarity versus "real" rarity still doesn't matter as far as I'm concerned. Doesn't matter what you collect, GA, SA or moderns, there are "rare" books. Whether it's rare because they didn't survive as for GA or rare in grade because of x, y and z reason like some SA (Tomahawk 116 comes to mind) or rare because they only printed 200 of them as in the case of some variants. The end result is the same. Lack of supply and demand which outweighs the available supply. Honestly when it comes to rarity, I'd rather have it quantified like these modern variants. If there were only 200 or 500 or 1000 printed, you know what the possible supply is. It can never be over 200 or 500 or whatever. With a "rare" GA or SA book, we know the print runs were much, much larger and hey according to some on these boards, there are oodles and oodles of high grade books sitting in collections in people's closets. This can apparently be true of GA as well, given the recent Promise collection. So, in theory (and I know this is highly unlikely), but in theory, someone could uncover a couple dozen high grade Detective #1's next week. Or any other "rare" book which had a large print run but just didn't survive the ravages of time. 

Wait, was there an old guard in the 1960's who had been collecting comics since the 30's and arguing why anyone would be excited about some silly new characters called Fantastic Four, Hulk and Spider-man?

[goldust40]

49 minutes ago, VintageComics said:

Wait, was there an old guard in the 1960's who had been collecting comics since the 30's and arguing why anyone would be excited about some silly new characters called Fantastic Four, Hulk and Spider-man?

You had the original sci-fi fandom (Siegel and Shuster being examples), then the E.C. Fan-Addicts that Gaines and Feldstein attracted through letter-columns and editorials (and their cutting-edge stories, of course).

Fandom in earnest began with Marvel, who had been taking notes from E.C. It's certainly possible that anyone who had been collecting in the GA would have considered the Silver Age versions to be overrated and ephemeral, but I'd claim that the amount of dedicated fans that were around in the 1940s wouldn't be a vast amount more than the amount of GA pedigrees out there.

There wasn't an "old guard" as such, and certainly not a connected one, so there were basically a few isolated fans who had no idea of each other but ended up being crucial to the hobby in that their accumulations were the basis of so many later collections.

Of course there are a lot more GA and Atom Age books out there that weren't part of a pedigree, but any of those survivors were accidental or left in warehouses - as we know, nearly everything throughout the era got pulped in the war effort or chucked away. Or torched. Bad pre-code comics!

Perhaps because of E.C. fandom E.C. comics are more common in the marketplace compared to other pre-code titles. I'd wager that that is true. There's no evidence however that that particular strain of fandom had any interest in what followed half a decade later, even if Jim Warren did pick up the E.C. slack with his mags (an entirely separate development).

I doubt that pioneers like Don and Maggie Thompson, whose book All In Color For A Dime was pivotal, would've found the nascent Silver Age to be anything other than a continuation of what came before, and would certainly have had no contempt for it. In fact they and a select few others would've nurtured the excitement, and may have considered what was going on at Marvel to be an innovative development that, in the end, saved the medium and created the hobby in earnest.

I'm sure that folks in the 1960s who were uninterested in comics would have found the arrival of the new serious fandom and consequent marketplace bizarre and incomprehensible, if, indeed, they were even aware of it. People paying above cover price for kiddie books? $10 for a Fantastic Four 1?? Are they mad??

What fools, they no doubt thought. A flash in the pan, and ephemera that you grow out of, once you hit your mid-teens. Nothing good will ever come of those, and they'll all be worthless and forgotten in no time.

Edited June 22, 2021 by goldust40

[buttock]

4 hours ago, Dr. Love said:

Absurd, Thor's a god for God's sake

/argument 

[buttock]

8 hours ago, jimjum12 said:

I know you're all spoiled rotten over these Promise books now, ()but wait till you see the Marines in Battle 17 I just snagged.... it's so nice, time stood, briefly, still. GOD BLESS....

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

I need to see it in person to confirm.  Just send it over, I promise I'll send it back...

[jimjum12]

1 hour ago, buttock said:

I need to see it in person to confirm.  Just send it over, I promise I'll send it back...

Excuse me while I derail this thread  .... this is how you do "sour grapes" in a polite society. GOD BLESS....

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

[Chicago Boy]

6 hours ago, Dr. Love said:

Absurd, Thor's a god for God's sake

Puny God.  The only one that can beat Hulk is Superman. Everyone knows that 

Edited June 22, 2021 by Chicago Boy

[twmjr1]

Hulk's power set is argued to be higher than Superman's, per the majority of creators who've worked with the characters over the years. John Romita, Jr. has done both characters, and that's his position, for example, especially in the case of World Breaker-era Hulk.

[LordRahl]

12 hours ago, lou_fine said:

How can you be so sure that this particular Silver Surfer 4 sale was an outlier in today's rather crazed FOMO driven marketplace?  

Especially when you have other more recent high profile books with far higher census counts such as TMNT 1 in CGC 9.6, XM 94, and GSXM 1 moving from the teens where they were less than 2 years ago and now hitting $88K, $63K, and $72K respectively.  Especially in terms of GSXM 1 with something like 200 copies already slabbed in CGC 9.8 and over 10,000 slabbed in total and with no doubt, more to come as it was supposedly part of a big warehouse find back in the day.  

Sure, the demand for the Surfer 4 might not be as high as the demand for those much later BA and CA keys, but the supply is also certainly a lot lower on what is probably one of the best and most memorable covers to have come out from the Marvel SA time period.  

Honestly, I could be wrong and the next few will all sell for $90ish K or more. In this marketplace, I give up in trying to figure it out. It feels like an outlier just because the price difference is so big, $18K to $90K but then again they don't come up for sale every month soooo 

[Cat-Man_America]

5 hours ago, goldust40 said:

You had the original sci-fi fandom (Siegel and Shuster being examples), then the E.C. Fan-Addicts that Gaines and Feldstein attracted through letter-columns and editorials (and their cutting-edge stories, of course).

Fandom in earnest began with Marvel, who had been taking notes from E.C. It's certainly possible that anyone who had been collecting in the GA would have considered the Silver Age versions to be overrated and ephemeral, but I'd claim that the amount of dedicated fans that were around in the 1940s wouldn't be a vast amount more than the amount of GA pedigrees out there.

There wasn't an "old guard" as such, and certainly not a connected one, so there were basically a few isolated fans who had no idea of each other but ended up being crucial to the hobby in that their accumulations were the basis of so many later collections.

Of course there are a lot more GA and Atom Age books out there that weren't part of a pedigree, but any of those survivors were accidental or left in warehouses - as we know, nearly everything throughout the era got pulped in the war effort or chucked away. Or torched. Bad pre-code comics!

Perhaps because of E.C. fandom E.C. comics are more common in the marketplace compared to other pre-code titles. I'd wager that that is true. There's no evidence however that that particular strain of fandom had any interest in what followed half a decade later, even if Jim Warren did pick up the E.C. slack with his mags (an entirely separate development).

I doubt that pioneers like Don and Maggie Thompson, whose book All In Color For A Dime was pivotal, would've found the nascent Silver Age to be anything other than a continuation of what came before, and would certainly have had no contempt for it. In fact they and a select few others would've nurtured the excitement, and may have considered what was going on at Marvel to be an innovative development that, in the end, saved the medium and created the hobby in earnest.

I'm sure that folks in the 1960s who were uninterested in comics would have found the arrival of the new serious fandom and consequent marketplace bizarre and incomprehensible, if, indeed, they were even aware of it. People paying above cover price for kiddie books? $10 for a Fantastic Four 1?? Are they mad??

What fools, they no doubt thought. A flash in the pan, and ephemera that you grow out of, once you hit your mid-teens. Nothing good will ever come of those, and they'll all be worthless and forgotten in no time.

I would agree with almost all of this, especially the use of retrospective irony to convey points and add one variable to put 60's fandom in perspective, ...the emergence of comic dealers selling back issues in comics book classified ads.  This was a major catalyst for broader growth of fandom.  In fact, where we are today can be traced back to it.

Many of the GA books that survived were discovered, recovered and sold by folks like Howard & Gail Rogofsky, Claude Held, and several other ground breaking dealers who developed this marketplace.  This interest in collectible back issues and comic history fueled the growth of conventions and dealers rooms.  The conventions arose through the passion of fans who saw sufficient popular interest in sponsoring events that featured revered artists and other celebrities of bygone days as guests.  Yes, profit potential had a lot to do with this growth given where we are today in this highly speculative hobby, but it started with the pure joy of the medium.

There's another irony to be considered as well, the intangible and unknowable degree of speculation by collectors of that era.  Lots of SA books probably still survive in undiscovered collections put together by 60's era fans as that's when true fandom ...as we know it today... first developed.   We can talk about modern books all day long and why people invest in them and their variants.  

I think criticizing what people collect is foolish.  However, analyzing the manner in which books are marketed specifically to collectors and the grades and values placed on them in a volatile marketplace is good fodder for discussion.  Indeed, it may be a cynical perspective, but numbers matter when health of the overall market is involved.  If there's a silver lining in discussing investment, it's the difference between growth "stocks" and speculative "stocks" ...just insert the word "comics" into the quotes and you have a viable analogy.  All else aside, when you take the high-stakes money out of it, comics are still fun.  That should always remain the central focus of the hobby.

Edited June 22, 2021 by Cat-Man_America

[adamstrange]

16 hours ago, buttock said:

Who am I to judge them for what they bought? 

Because they are wrong and must be put in their place, lest these upstarts disturb the balance of the universe.

[adamstrange]

7 hours ago, goldust40 said:

Fandom in earnest began with Marvel, who had been taking notes from E.C. It's certainly possible that anyone who had been collecting in the GA would have considered the Silver Age versions to be overrated and ephemeral, but I'd claim that the amount of dedicated fans that were around in the 1940s wouldn't be a vast amount more than the amount of GA pedigrees out there.

Fandom started with DC.  Julie Schwartz published fan mail in Flash/Mystery In Space and gave out addresses that allowed first fandom fans to connect with each other.  This made possible the first Comic Cons and comic fanzines. 

In general, these fans were very supportive of bringing the superheros back, including lobbying for the inclusion of their favorites.

[lou_fine]

37 minutes ago, LordRahl said:

Honestly, I could be wrong and the next few will all sell for $90ish K or more. In this marketplace, I give up in trying to figure it out. It feels like an outlier just because the price difference is so big, $18K to $90K but then again they don't come up for sale every month soooo 

Then again, we could just be in a giddy bubble that's possibly about to pop.    

Case in point, with the CGC 9.8 graded copy of GSXM 1 selling for a crazed false FOMO price of $72K at Heritage last week, while the CL copy managed to hit only $42K last night.  Unlike the Silver Surfer 4 though, this might also be due to the fact that CGC 9.8 graded copies of this GSXM 1 seems to grow on trees as they tend to show up in every single auction.  

[LordRahl]

17 minutes ago, lou_fine said:

Then again, we could just be in a giddy bubble that's possibly about to pop.    

Case in point, with the CGC 9.8 graded copy of GSXM 1 selling for a crazed false FOMO price of $72K at Heritage last week, while the CL copy managed to hit only $42K last night.  Unlike the Silver Surfer 4 though, this might also be due to the fact that CGC 9.8 graded copies of this GSXM 1 seems to grow on trees as they tend to show up in every single auction.  

Auction fever... that at least partially explains some of the prices last week. 

[VintageComics]

8 hours ago, goldust40 said:

You had the original sci-fi fandom (Siegel and Shuster being examples), then the E.C. Fan-Addicts that Gaines and Feldstein attracted through letter-columns and editorials (and their cutting-edge stories, of course).

Fandom in earnest began with Marvel, who had been taking notes from E.C. It's certainly possible that anyone who had been collecting in the GA would have considered the Silver Age versions to be overrated and ephemeral, but I'd claim that the amount of dedicated fans that were around in the 1940s wouldn't be a vast amount more than the amount of GA pedigrees out there. There wasn't an old guard, and certainly not a connected one, so there were basically a few isolated fans who had no idea of each other but ended up being crucial to the hobby in that their accumulations were the basis of so many later collections.

Of course there are a lot more GA and Atom Age books out there that weren't part of a pedigree, but any of those survivors were accidental or left in warehouses - as we know, nearly everything throughout the era got pulped in the war effort or chucked away. Or torched. Bad pre-code comics!

Perhaps because of E.C. fandom E.C. comics are more common in the marketplace compared to other pre-code titles. I'd wager that that is true.

I'm sure that folks in the 1960s who were uninterested in comics would have found the arrival of the new serious fandom and consequent marketplace bizarre and incomprehensible. People paying above cover price for kiddie books? $10 for a Fantastic Four 1??

What fools, they no doubt thought. A flash in the pan, and ephemera that you grow out of, once you hit your mid-teens. Nothing good will ever come of those, and they'll all be worthless and forgotten in no time.

I was being sarcastic about how older generations may not chase what new generations chase.

But this was a great post.