GA COMIC BOOK Collecting in the Financial crisis of 2020 3 3

[Mr bla bla]

The community must get rid of the colour coded labels. They have proven over time to have Massive unintended effects among collectors and in the marketplace.

As we speak, rare books are being cut, scraped and torn just to achieve a companys @blue@ label colour. This is not acceptable.

The removal of the incentive in the marketplace of this practice should override all other concerns. And this responsability lies right now with the slabbing companies.

 

 

 

 

 

[jimbo_7071]

3 hours ago, Mr bla bla said:

The community must get rid of the colour coded labels. They have proven over time to have Massive unintended effects among collectors and in the marketplace.

As we speak, rare books are being cut, scraped and torn just to achieve a companys @blue@ label colour. This is not acceptable.

The removal of the incentive in the marketplace of this practice should override all other concerns. And this responsability lies right now with the slabbing companies.

 

 

 

 

 

I don't think you can blame the color of the label entirely. I've seen many blue-label books that say, "Very minor amount of color touch on cover" or "Very minor amount of glue on spine of cover". I don't know how much those books are punished in the marketplace, but I won't bid one them, and I'm sure many other collectors won't, either.

[Mmehdy]

13 hours ago, bluechip said:

I am not sure what you're saying.  I certainly would not disagree that the absolute best copy of a rare book like Action 1 should be worth 50 times more than the worst such copy out there.   

But should an Action 1 that gets a blue label (either 9.0 or something else) be worth 50 times more than a copy that gets the same number but a purple label for no reason aside from the fact that a speck of glue on the staple is judged to have been put there intentionally instead of accidentally?   That would be nuts.  

But even if you don't think that would be nuts.   

You say, effectively, that it's necessary to overcompensate, overreact, over-punish and devalue such books with extreme prejudice because, as you say--

"The principal reason is to STOP any further alteration or suffer a market price reduction reduction."

Do you really feel we cannot disincentive people from putting glue on the spine of their books unless we devalue them 98% for even the slightest microdot of glue or color touch?     

And must we do the same across the board?   If an "unrestored Action 1, torn and battered with a kid's name scribbled across the logo and a mustache drawn on Superman's face, is worth, say between 300 and 500K, would an Action 1 that gets a 2.0 purple label be worth only 2% of that, between 2 and 6 thousand?   And would it be worth only that because, instead of a mustache on Superman's face, there was some blue pen that filled in a crease on the logo?   

Encapsulation and simple, unadorned, unemotional, unaugmented identification is all the market needs to put a proper value on a restored item.  If strict grading meant that glue on a spine was considered a defect, then a book with a tear sealed would be graded as if it still was torn AND had additional damage on top of that with the glue.   Thus, two books that look similar, would not get the same grade.  The natural 9.0 would still be 9.0 and the other might look like a 9.0 but would get a grade that's less.  Even if it was so good before the glue that it might have gotten an 8.0 in its original state, the glue would bring the number down instead of up, and the value would also be down.  At the Action 1 level of pricing you're talking six figures at minimum and perhaps even seven figures of difference.  That's not enough to disincentive people?   We must artificially bring the value down 98% -- which would be what, $60K?

Doing that, or even just saying we must do that, does not make people think the hobby is rational.  And the less they think it's rational, the less likely it will be to have the stability that both you and I want.

 

 

50 times Action 1 Blue vs purple same condition..I agree it is nuts and lets see that is 64 K  vs Over 3 Mil but even 20 times seems absurd. I say 19.5 LOL. I don't want to overcompensate, overreact, over-punish and devalue any comic book with extreme prejudice--what a great comment BC...but I want the price differential to be substantial enough to stop any repair any steroid injecting face changing restoration dead in its tracks. 5x or 10 X 50 times price difference and  why BC are you  in way hypocritical. Why...I do see you standing on your soap box, saying all of this price differential is unfair when some collectors pays 10 times over  market price for a 9.8 or 9.9 as opposed to a single lower grade of 9.6. I challenge you to tell some imperceptible difference that you can even see, let alone JUSTIFY such a great price difference. You cannot, just as the same for you criticism of the price differential from Purple to Blue. This difference is just so ridiculous now we have a Blue that is not truly a Blue but qualified blue and the next step is a blue label that says.."wanna be blue" or "we almost made it blue"  That is absurd. Just call it repaired or restored or pressed or whatever and reward books that have not been so aggressively tailored to a collector's GA/SA market.

We in need to stand for something, that needs to be recognized as a true antique...like finding the treasures of King Tut's grave. Untouched for thousands of years and as it stands truly a real treasure. King Tut himself would jump out of his tomb if he was a true comic book collector (I guess he might be stone tablets collector ) and saw the face jobs that are being preformed today on some of this GA/SA wanna flip and make an immediate profit based upon label upgrading. That why there is currently litigation which involves CGC and some "ulta" restorers. At what point do you stop saying its a real comic book and its a recreation..that is the nightmare we must avoid at all costs which is why I am so convinced that we must draw a line as to what is really unrestored and what is not.  You point is this...The Mona Lisas was restored and my counterpoint is that it had to be to save and preserve it. Not to grade jump and make a good deal on a widget sale.  Pressing or hiding or erasing comic book defects 99% has nothing to do with saving it...it has to do with greed and that is by mankind  our nature since we had to hoard food survive. Whether you collect food, Ga comic books, if you make one label for all...does the ultra FRANKENSTEIN BOOKS and you know the ones I am talking about...deserve the same label as books which were kept in a pine chest in a attic for 50 years untouched. That is the danger BC of one label for all. Real, Unreal,Recreation etc we must maintain some type of reality as well as rational price to maintain a growing and sustaining GA/SA world. I agree with you that price sanity or rational pricing is BEST for the long run in our GA/SA comic book world.

 Are prices rational...you submit...in every market some are, some are not, some are good deals, some are not. Before we can get rationalization in price difference between blue, almost blue(qualified) and purple the underlying price structure of the entire GA/SA market is gonna have to remade in terms of price differential on grading itself. BC you have to start there and stop buyers from paying $2000 for SGT Fury 19 in 9.8 with 10 other copies similarly graded or higher to regain some type of market price rationalization.

 Until that time, the price level on GA/SA will back my opinion rational or not, that we need a  "Star Trek Neutral Zone" between restored and unrestored GA/SA comic books in terms of price.

Thank you for your very thoughtful comments here, I HEAR YOU and agree with you..to a certain extent...LOL

Edited May 3, 2020 by Mmehdy

[lou_fine]

On 5/1/2020 at 6:51 PM, bluechip said:

The advent of CGC could have and should have precluded any need to "draw a line in the sand" because it could have been (and I believe should have been) all about simple disclosure and notification, not about demonization and, as you put it, forcing anybody who owns one of the demonized books to forego the increase in value it would have if, instead of a tiny blue dot on a blue field of the cover, there was a massive black scribble on the yellow field of the cover... because the massive black scribble is judged only as a defect and the tiny blue dot is viewed as if the book has been rendered into, in your words, "toilet paper."

Identification of all defects, intentional or otherwise, could have easily negated any grade increase achieved by intentional restoration by calling it additional damage and giving no increase for the improved aesthetics.   That policy, strict and consistent, would not have "morph(ed) into something else" but the way things are has caused the whole thing to morph into just another, albeit different way that dealers can purchase something at one level of value ("it's restored so it HAS to be this much less") which then morphs into something else with a better label ("blue").   

 

16 hours ago, Mmehdy said:

2-Your comic book dream world is where all comic books are equal under one label, one world, with a so-called penalty of the resulting grade. It will  not work, and in fact it will never work. Who determines what to deduct and how much...think about how much damage will created by attempting to hide restoration or increased by the fact that the label  will be the same color. Think of the new collector who looks at the same color label and does not comprehend why the price is cheaper. There are a million reasons wrong with that. 

Why then are new collectors able to look at a uni-color label and able to comprehend that a blue label CGC 9.0 graded copy of a book is worth more than blue label CGC 6.0 graded copy of the exact same book?  

I have always thought the best way to handle restored books was the method which was proposed by Jon Berk way back in the day and would have been the best since it would have forced collectors to have a much better understanding of the type and extent when it came to restoration, similar to how they now can understand the nuances of the 10-point condition grading system.  This was from a post which I had done in another thread here on the GA boards a couple of weeks ago:

 

On 4/22/2020 at 8:33 PM, lou_fine said:

Sad to say, although the introduction of the multi-colored label system implemented by CGC was done with all good intentions, as Borock himself admitted after the fact, it unfortunately resulted in the unintended consequences of demonizing or stigmatizing the restored books because it was now so much easier to target and paint them all with the same PLOD paint brush, regardless of the extent or type of restoration done to the book.  

As I have stated many times before in the past, this whole unfortunate situation with books being butchered just so that they can get encased with a blue label could all have been avoided in the first place if CGC had simply started off with a uni-color label system in conjunction with both a 10-point condition grading system combined with a 10-point restoration rating system, similar to the one that Jon Berk Had proposed in an issue of CBM back in the day.  

The big argument from most boardies at the time was that since the labels would all be the same color, they would still not be able to readily tell the restored books from unrestored books even if they were clearly and boldly labelled as R-0 for Unrestored and R-10 for say Extreme Amateur Restoration.  This argument was totally irrational to me since they seem to have no problem understanding that a 9.6 graded copy of a book is in much nicer condition than a 2.0 graded copy of the same book.   Not sure why when it came to restoration, they were all like little school children that needed the color bars to tell the difference since a 10-point rating sytem was like rocket science to them and totally beyond their comprehension level.  

[bluechip]

1 hour ago, Mmehdy said:

50 times Action 1 Blue vs purple same condition..I agree it is nuts and lets see that is 64 K  vs Over 3 Mil but even 20 times seems absurd. I say 19.5 LOL. I don't want to overcompensate, overreact, over-punish and devalue any comic book with extreme prejudice--what a great comment BC...but I want the price differential to be substantial enough to stop any repair any steroid injecting face changing restoration dead in its tracks. 5x or 10 X 50 times price difference and  why BC are you  in way hypocritical. Why...I do see you standing on your soap box, saying all of this price differential is unfair when some collectors pays 10 times over  market price for a 9.8 or 9.9 as opposed to a single lower grade of 9.6. I challenge you to tell some imperceptible difference that you can even see, let alone JUSTIFY such a great price difference. You cannot, just as the same for you criticism of the price differential from Purple to Blue. This difference is just so ridiculous now we have a Blue that is not truly a Blue but qualified blue and the next step is a blue label that says.."wanna be blue" or "we almost made it blue"  That is absurd. Just call it repaired or restored or pressed or whatever and reward books that have not been so aggressively tailored to a collector's GA/SA market.

We in need to stand for something, that needs to be recognized as a true antique...like finding the treasures of King Tut's grave. Untouched for thousands of years and as it stands truly a real treasure. King Tut himself would jump out of his tomb if he was a true comic book collector (I guess he might be stone tablets collector ) and saw the face jobs that are being preformed today on some of this GA/SA wanna flip and make an immediate profit based upon label upgrading. That why there is currently litigation which involves CGC and some "ulta" restorers. At what point do you stop saying its a real comic book and its a recreation..that is the nightmare we must avoid at all costs which is why I am so convinced that we must draw a line as to what is really unrestored and what is not.  You point is this...The Mona Lisas was restored and my counterpoint is that it had to be to save and preserve it. Not to grade jump and make a good deal on a widget sale.  Pressing or hiding or erasing comic book defects 99% has nothing to do with saving it...it has to do with greed and that is by mankind  our nature since we had to hoard food survive. Whether you collect food, Ga comic books, if you make one label for all...does the ultra FRANKENSTEIN BOOKS and you know the ones I am talking about...deserve the same label as books which were kept in a pine chest in a attic for 50 years untouched. That is the danger BC of one label for all. Real, Unreal,Recreation etc we must maintain some type of reality as well as rational price to maintain a growing and sustaining GA/SA world. I agree with you that price sanity or rational pricing is BEST for the long run in our GA/SA comic book world.

 Are prices rational...you submit...in every market some are, some are not, some are good deals, some are not. Before we can get rationalization in price difference between blue, almost blue(qualified) and purple the underlying price structure of the entire GA/SA market is gonna have to remade in terms of price differential on grading itself. BC you have to start there and stop buyers from paying $2000 for SGT Fury 19 in 9.8 with 10 other copies similarly graded or higher to regain some type of market price rationalization.

 Until that time, the price level on GA/SA will back my opinion rational or not, that we need a  "Star Trek Neutral Zone" between restored and unrestored GA/SA comic books in terms of price.

Thank you for your very thoughtful comments here, I HEAR YOU and agree with you..to a certain extent...LOL

I hear you and agree with you a lot.   I think you are overly concerned that CGC encapsulation and identification will not stop every potential abuse, but I think, and I am far from alone, that the over-emphasis on seeing things as "desecration" has enabled other forms of abuse.  The pendulum has gone too far and should be allowed to swing back a bit until it finds equilibrium.

You express a concern for the novice and I agree there's reason to try to protect them but I don't think that concern should be a rationale for misleading them to achieve a desired avoidance of restored books any more than it should mislead them into thinking, as you allude to, an outsized willingness to pay 10X or 20X for a common modern 9.8 as opposed to a 9.6 of the same issue which is virtually identical and could go either way if they were both resubbed.

I totally agree that the emphasis on 9.8 versus 9.6 etc gets insane, but I don't think I'm being hypocritical just because I don't talk about it that much.  I feel like the very commonality of those kinds of books is incredibly obvious and I think most people trafficking in them know this even as they do it because the rewards keep coming.    That said, are there some novices who get sucked into it?   Almost certainly.   But how to address it without, as you say, affecting a "market reduction"?  Or should that even be a goal?

CGC tried, early on, and with I think good intentions, to address the commonality of modern books by putting them in brown colored labels, but the backlash from sellers caused them to discontinue.

Anyway, I don't have the answer.  But I do love it when you equate comics to ancient artifacts,   

 

[bluechip]

1 hour ago, lou_fine said:

 

 

I have always thought the best way to handle restored books was the method which was proposed by Jon Berk way back in the day and would have been the best since it would have forced collectors to have a much better understanding of the type and extent when it came to restoration, similar to how they now can understand the nuances of the 10-point condition grading system.  

 

I have been collecting since I was a kid but when I first had the kind of disposable income to buy the books I couldn't afford as a kid, it was at a time when restoration was not only approved but encouraged, and any major key with damage was priced in accord with its "restoration potential" -- meaning it was presumed you could get more if you restored so you had to pay more, and then if you didn't restore it you would be (as more than a few dealers told me) "leaving money on the table."   I knew even then things would change but I thought it would get more sensible, not less.   I had a choice between two copies of a major key both graded good.   One had a tear along the spine and the over had a chunk missing from the edge.   Both were priced above guide for their "restoration potential."   I chose the one with the tear because I liked it better and, after much pressure to get the tear fixed, I did.   Only to find the restorer also touched up the area nearby and reinforced the paper more than I'd intended.   Cut to years later, and I see the other book, unrestored, going for multiples of my book.   So I looked at the scan I had of it to see that the part of the cover which was still missing was large enough it that it exceeded the entire portion of my book which had been restored.   Both books essentially had the same amount of damaged area -- except that mine still had the portion that was damaged.   But because it was considered not just damaged but "desecrated" it was worth a fraction of the other.   It didn't even occur to me at the time to tear away the restored portion (and that only became a thing years later).

Years later, when removal of color touch was all the rage, I had it done to a couple of books.   One came book looking virtually the same, but the other came back looking horrible -- as if a family of rats had nibbled all around the cover.   

[lou_fine]

On 5/2/2020 at 11:34 AM, bluechip said:

The one argument that begs for a little b.s. call is the "other people are doing what they do for profit, but not me."    Some people bought high grade unrestored books because that is how they loved them most -- and they could afford them.  Which is great.  Meanwhile, some people bought low grade or restored books because they loved and could only afford the lesser books. 

Why is it fair to say that the books the privileged guy could afford will be (and must be) the only ones that go up in value, while the lesser books another guy bought will not (and must not) ever go up in value? 

And yet how ironic, that if you look at some of the recent auction results over the past few years for HTF GA books, classic covers, or expensive keys, the ones that have gone up substantially more from a strict percentage point of view have been the more affordable lower graded copies as compoared to the more expensive higher graded copies. 

For some of the truly HTF books that hardly ever come to market or the real in-demand books like Cap 3, even the restored copies have gone up astronomically in value as compared to before.  

Edited May 3, 2020 by lou_fine

[jimbo_7071]

On 5/3/2020 at 4:38 PM, bluechip said:

I hear you and agree with you a lot.   I think you are overly concerned that CGC encapsulation and identification will not stop every potential abuse, but I think, and I am far from alone, that the over-emphasis on seeing things as "desecration" has enabled other forms of abuse.  The pendulum has gone too far and should be allowed to swing back a bit until it finds equilibrium.

You express a concern for the novice and I agree there's reason to try to protect them but I don't think that concern should be a rationale for misleading them to achieve a desired avoidance of restored books any more than it should mislead them into thinking, as you allude to, an outsized willingness to pay 10X or 20X for a common modern 9.8 as opposed to a 9.6 of the same issue which is virtually identical and could go either way if they were both resubbed.

I totally agree that the emphasis on 9.8 versus 9.6 etc gets insane, but I don't think I'm being hypocritical just because I don't talk about it that much.  I feel like the very commonality of those kinds of books is incredibly obvious and I think most people trafficking in them know this even as they do it because the rewards keep coming.    That said, are there some novices who get sucked into it?   Almost certainly.   But how to address it without, as you say, affecting a "market reduction"?  Or should that even be a goal?

CGC tried, early on, and with I think good intentions, to address the commonality of modern books by putting them in brown colored labels, but the backlash from sellers caused them to discontinue.

Anyway, I don't have the answer.  But I do love it when you equate comics to ancient artifacts,   

 

I've been collecting since the days when Overstreet said that the value of a restored book was halfway between the guide value of the old grade and the guide value of the new grade. It never made sense to me that someone should be able to spend a few hundred dollars restoring a $1,000 book and all of a sudden have a $5,000 or $10,000 book. Too many people jumped on the restoration bandwagon. I'm hopeful that some day the grading companies will be able to reliably declare books unpressed and note that on the labels.

The punishment that restored books receive makes sense to me. If you can predict what the grade would be with the restoration removed, though, then it makes sense to value the restored book accordingly. (I don't have a huge problem with restoration that helps prevent the book from deteriorating further—like reinforcing the spine or replacing rusty staples—so long as it's declared. I hate CT and trimming.)

For some of these books where the cover is almost completely reconstructed from a few scraps, well...you might as well just buy a reprint at that point.

Edited May 5, 2020 by jimbo_7071

[bluechip]

18 hours ago, jimbo_7071 said:

I've been collecting since the days when Overstreet said that the value of a restored book was halfway between the guide value of the old grade and the guide value of the new grade. It never made sense to me that someone should be able to spend a few hundred dollars restoring a $1,000 book and all of a sudden have a $5,000 or $10,000 book. Too many people jumped on the restoration bandwagon. I'm hopeful that some day the grading companies will be able to reliably declare books unpressed and note that on the labels.

The punishment that restored books receive makes sense to me. If you can predict what the grade would be with the restoration removed, though, then it makes sense to value the restored book accordingly. (I don't have a huge problem with restoration that helps prevent the book from deteriorating further—like reinforcing the spine or replacing rusty staple—so long as it's declared. I hate CT and trimming.)

For some of these books where the cover is almost completely reconstructed from a few scraps, well...you might as well just buy a reprint at that point.

The figures you're discussing never made sense to me, either.   But then I don't recall ever seeing a $1,000 book  that became a $10,000 book.   To be a 10K book at the end it would, in my experience, have to start out much closer to that.   

You don't specify what level of punishment makes sense to you, so I can't help but think you're saying that all the punishment being meted out is appropriate.  Yet in the next paragraph you compare books with reinforcement to books that are "almost completely reconstructed".   Well, the "punishment" has effectively equated those two groups as no different.   So, that makes me think you don't actually believe all the punishment makes sense, since you imply that your latter example deserves more punishment.   

But as many can tell you that's not the case.   In fact, the conventional wisdom is that if you have a book with such minimal color color touch and tear seals that it started out as a 2.0 and after restoration it became just a "restored 'apparent' 2.0", the book has become just as "desecrated" as any "completely reconstructed" book, so you might as well do everything else to the book to make it a 9.0.    

Edited May 4, 2020 by bluechip

[KCOComics]

3 hours ago, bluechip said:

 

But as many can tell you that's not the case.   In fact, the conventional wisdom is that if you have a book with such minimal color color touch and tear seals that it started out as a 2.0 and after restoration it became just a "restored 'apparent' 2.0", the book has become just as "desecrated" as any "completely reconstructed" book, so you might as well do everything else to the book to make it a 9.0.    

Boy you guys type allot! 

But I agree,  this is 100% true. 

I do wonder if this will change as books become more expensive and buyers continue to become more educated. 

I recently bought a Hulk 1.  Really pretty copy that was trimmed with amateur color touch.  I've never knowingly bought a restored book (I have bought a few without knowing), but for my price range it was either a pretty restored or beaten to hell unrestored.

I don't regret my choice and I'll probably be adding a few more restored big books to my collection in the coming years.

That said,  I will not undo restoration or otherwise butcher a comic book to increase the value.  

[batman_fan]

I think restored books sell for exactly what they should.   Books with slight restoration sell for a lot more than one with extensive (with the caveat that it depends on what has been done).

[KCOComics]

3 minutes ago, Batmanis#1 said:

I really would not be worried about GA books they are all in low quantities. Buyers will out number the quantity of books available. With GA it is simple simply versus demand. There may be little moments here and there but the GA will be OK.

 

I wouldn't say I worry about anything. 

I do wonder what the future will look like for comic books. Will generations younger than myself care about collecting? No idea. 

I imagine the generations before me had similar questions, but in the end you have to do this for enjoyment of the hobby. Future value will be out of our hands. 

[KCOComics]

5 minutes ago, batman_fan said:

I think restored books sell for exactly what they should.   Books with slight restoration sell for a lot more than one with extensive (with the caveat that it depends on what has been done).

You think so? 

I feel like once a book gets a purple label people look past the notes and apply a steep discount regardless of the extent of restoration. 

I'm sure there is more value in books with minor restoration and more buyers,  but the discount is still pretty steep. 

[jimbo_7071]

8 hours ago, bluechip said:

The figures you're discussing never made sense to me, either.   But then I don't recall ever seeing a $1,000 book  that became a $10,000 book.   To be a 10K book at the end it would, in my experience, have to start out much closer to that.   

You don't specify what level of punishment makes sense to you, so I can't help but think you're saying that all the punishment being meted out is appropriate.  Yet in the next paragraph you compare books with reinforcement to books that are "almost completely reconstructed".   Well, the "punishment" has effectively equated those two groups as no different.   So, that makes me think you don't actually believe all the punishment makes sense, since you imply that your latter example deserves more punishment.   

But as many can tell you that's not the case.   In fact, the conventional wisdom is that if you have a book with such minimal color color touch and tear seals that it started out as a 2.0 and after restoration it became just a "restored 'apparent' 2.0", the book has become just as "desecrated" as any "completely reconstructed" book, so you might as well do everything else to the book to make it a 9.0.    

BBM. That isn't true from what I've seen . .  the degree of restoration does matter. But color touch alone is a big deal to most collectors. A book with only a sealed spline split will have many more prospective buyers than a book with a sealed spine split and color touch. Trimming would be my one true deal breaker; I wouldn't (knowingly) buy a trimmed book under any circumstances.

[bluechip]

10 hours ago, jimbo_7071 said:

BBM. 

Okay, unfamiliar with that, I looked it up and I am hoping you have a different meaning for it than what my search found.

[Mmehdy]

21 hours ago, Batmanis#1 said:

I really would not be worried about GA books they are all in low quantities. Buyers will out number the quantity of books available. With GA it is simple simply versus demand. There may be little moments here and there but the GA will be OK.

Supply vs demand...is not just that simple. This is an unusual market condition, where buyers might not act rationally nor normally. For example this virus has taken out a yet unknown number of Ga/SA buyers that will not spend any money because of the uncertain times, it is not that do not want to, or cannot, but they will be afraid of future events financially. The longer this downturn is and the more real it becomes the greater the fear of spending in a recession or depression will set it. Something can be rare or ultra rate and maybe some buyers will outnumber the material available, but that begs the question..how much will a collector be willing to pay...given the financial uncertainly. That is the determining factor here. You might have 5 buyers at 50% of GPA but you probably are not gonna have a single one at 100%. The quality of buyer  and his ability to pay decrease as economic downturns continue   and that determines  the GA/SA current market price.

Edited May 5, 2020 by Mmehdy

[Mmehdy]

20 hours ago, batman_fan said:

I think restored books sell for exactly what they should.   Books with slight restoration sell for a lot more than one with extensive (with the caveat that it depends on what has been done).

I think the GA/SA market has been very kind to the restored books especially those with minor repairs. In the coin world, there was this old coin clearer in the early 60''s and 70's that made coins look new, it totally destroyed the value of those down 90% to more. On the other hand, I do not believe that current market price differences with  unrestored blue books are excessive either. It is actually a pretty far market. The price  restored differential really helps collector who are trying complete sets or runs and have been subject to speculation on the yet acquired comic books due to flippers, pressers and widget buyers. So that is a good thing, complete your Action 1-10 with a few restored books and that is quite a run. Of course I do not think those "Franken" books count....which are more unreal than real. If I was a run collector, and that was my goal....I could live with Blue, purple or whatever to get to that collector goal. The only negative thing is when you exit as you have a much greater chance to have a next loss due to the restricted growth of restored books or limited demand. The entry is easy, it will the exist that hurts. As long as you can with that possibility then go for it. I agree batman fan, that books with slight restoration should sell for a LOT more than books whom have been restored extensively. 

[lou_fine]

On 5/2/2020 at 11:34 AM, bluechip said:

There was a long period of time when Overstreet said 1) books in all grades should increase at about the same rate

Yes, when I started collecting back in the mid and latter part of the 70's, I still remember Overstreet had price spreads of 1:2:3 on his Good/Fine/Mint valuations for several years back then.  I guess that was already a significant change from the first guide when his spreads were generally in the 1 to 1.25 to 1.5 for Good/Fine/Mint when he first started out.  Not surprisingly, the spread started to increase for the higher grades as collectors were definitely more on the hunt for these better condition books as time went on. 

I remember talking to Snyder who was a big time broker back in the day when the spread was around 1 to 3 to 6 for G/F/M and he would always advise me to skip the non-key mid-run books and go for the keys, and then in the highest grade that I could afford, because he said one day the marketplace would come to realize how truly rare the high grades are and they would end up selling at a much bigger multiple than just the 1 to 6 spread which was in place at the time.  Especially for a collector like me on a limited budget, since his rationale was that if I had spent all of my money buying mid-run books as they came around, I would never have any money left for the semi-keys and classic cover books when those would come around. 

With CGC eventually coming into the marketplace some 10 to 15 years later, that was definitely the right strategy in terms of going for the higher graded copies.  Interesting to note though, that as the GA books became more and more expensive, the affordability factor finally kicked in and this was clearly evident over the past few years as lower graded copies of books have actually increased at a faster percentage rate than the higher graded copies.  So much so that even old slow Bob finally ended up refelecting this in his price guide as evident by in-demand GA examples like 'Tec 31 which went from $13K in Good condition in his 2015 guide up to $30,100 in this years guide for a percentage increase of 132%; while it went up from $210K in top of guide in 2015 to $325K in this years guide for a percentage increase of only 55%.  Likewise, if you take a look at another semi-key like Flash 86, this book went from $314 in Good condition in the 2015 guide up to $2,700 in this years guide for a percentage increase of 760%; while it went up from $5,500 in top of guide in 2015 up to 27K in this years guide for a percentage increase of 490%.    

No doubt the lack of availability of these in-demand GA keys and semi-keys in HG condition probably held their price increases back a bit, but clearly evident that books have not increased at the same rate over the years that Overstreet was thinking way back in the day.  

[jimbo_7071]

6 hours ago, bluechip said:

Okay, unfamiliar with that, I looked it up and I am hoping you have a different meaning for it than what my search found.

BBM means "bolded by me" in message board shorthand.

[bluechip]

26 minutes ago, lou_fine said:

Yes, when I started collecting back in the mid and latter part of the 70's, I still remember Overstreet had price spreads of 1:2:3 on his Good/Fine/Mint valuations for several years back then.  I guess that was already a significant change from the first guide when his spreads were generally in the 1 to 1.25 to 1.5 for Good/Fine/Mint when he first started out.  Not surprisingly, the spread started to increase for the higher grades as collectors were definitely more on the hunt for these better condition books as time went on. 

I remember talking to Snyder who was a big time broker back in the day when the spread was around 1 to 3 to 6 for G/F/M and he would always advise me to skip the non-key mid-run books and go for the keys, and then in the highest grade that I could afford, because he said one day the marketplace would come to realize how truly rare the high grades are and they would end up selling at a much bigger multiple than just the 1 to 6 spread which was in place at the time.  Especially for a collector like me on a limited budget, since his rationale was that if I had spent all of my money buying mid-run books as they came around, I would never have any money left for the semi-keys and classic cover books when those would come around. 

With CGC eventually coming into the marketplace some 10 to 15 years later, that was definitely the right strategy in terms of going for the higher graded copies.  Interesting to note though, that as the GA books became more and more expensive, the affordability factor finally kicked in and this was clearly evident over the past few years as lower graded copies of books have actually increased at a faster percentage rate than the higher graded copies.  So much so that even old slow Bob finally ended up refelecting this in his price guide as evident by in-demand GA examples like 'Tec 31 which went from $13K in Good condition in his 2015 guide up to $30,100 in this years guide for a percentage increase of 132%; while it went up from $210K in top of guide in 2015 to $325K in this years guide for a percentage increase of only 55%.  Likewise, if you take a look at another semi-key like Flash 86, this book went from $314 in Good condition in the 2015 guide up to $2,700 in this years guide for a percentage increase of 760%; while it went up from $5,500 in top of guide in 2015 up to 27K in this years guide for a percentage increase of 490%.    

No doubt the lack of availability of these in-demand GA keys and semi-keys in HG condition probably held their price increases back a bit, but clearly evident that books have not increased at the same rate over the years that Overstreet was thinking way back in the day.  

Your numbers make me dizzy but your point is solid.   I had also guessed that high grade books would command big premiums but I thought low grade were excessively undervalued because they still had the #1 for buying -- to get the book. 

The ones I gravitated away from were the mid-to-high" books.   I figured if I was going to pay more for it to look nice why get one that was just sorta nice.   So while it made sense a perfect condition copy was worth 10X (or more) and I had more trouble with the idea that a vgfine being 5X more than a reasonably presentable "good"  

Edited May 5, 2020 by bluechip