They're Still Out There! 22 22

[tth2]

19 minutes ago, lou_fine said:

5 hours ago, comicjack said:

7 hours ago, Sarg said:

Mask #1 $102,000

Small house in the midwest 

Sadly, that wouldn't even cover the cost of the incremental amount that you would have to go over the asking price if you want to purchase a house here.   

 

Cry me a -ing river! 

[lou_fine]

9 minutes ago, tth2 said:

29 minutes ago, lou_fine said:

Sadly, that wouldn't even cover the cost of the incremental amount that you would have to go over the asking price if you want to purchase a house here.   

 

Cry me a -ing river! 

Yes, I would guess so since you live in the most unaffordable city in the world by a long shot while I am stuck living in only the #2 most unaffordable city in the world. 

[adamstrange]

1 hour ago, tth2 said:

I wonder how much of the traditional pricing relationship between different grades of a comic still exists, particularly between the "best" copy and all other copies.  To me, it looks like high end collectors will pay whatever it takes for the very best copy, but collectors of lower grade copies will not automatically pay X% of that top price.

This may be true, but one thing I'm certain of after watching this auction:

 I've never overpaid for a comic.  At any time.   Ever.

[lou_fine]

11 hours ago, batman_fan said:

Mystery Men 3   I think Tim did okay on that, sure it was no Marvel Spotlight 5 but what is.

Although definite congrats to @tth2 here on his Mystery Men 3, I believe he did rather surprisingly even a whole ton better on another book in the auction here.  

Edited June 19, 2021 by lou_fine

[lou_fine]

9 hours ago, linmoth said:

I had 2 books in the auction that did pretty well not like Tim. I also built a nice war chest to bid on some of the Promise books, but after looking at the hi res photos I couldn’t pull the trigger on the books. Dust shadows and miss-cuts just turned me off!

Ummm................your big mistake here is that you are only supposed to be looking at that big big number on the top left hand corner of the slab and pay no attention at all to the actual book itself, especially when it comes to the staples, spines, corners, and edges of the Promise books.   

Edited June 19, 2021 by lou_fine

[lou_fine]

5 hours ago, Cat-Man_America said:

I'll wager the Promise Collection chapter is being finalized as we muse of the prospect of it.

Even if it's being finalized, it definitely doesn't mean we are going to be seeing the Pedigree book anytime soon.  

Take a look at the Chinatown pedigree which received official pedigree status back in 2020, but I remember reviewing Ritter's draft writeup on it way back in 2007.      

 

5 hours ago, Cat-Man_America said:

Personally, I think we're seeing most of the cream now.  There are a bunch more classic covers that'll play out over the next couple of Heritage auctions, but after that I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot more second tier books and lower grades. That's just my opinion though.  There may be a lot more hot titles than we've seen or been led to believe.

I think you are probably pretty much bang on here with your assessment.  

Just take a look at some of the books in this auction here and I highly doubt that it's just a coincidence that it's the most in-demand books in a title that's been included in this opening auction here.  Perfect examples, being Cap 46, 74, Joker covers on the Detective's, Blue Beetle 54, AA 61, Contact 12, etc.  

No doubt they have left some quality books to headline their upcoming auctions and this is most probably why the Suspense run (including the highest graded copy of Suspense 8 by a long shot) was not included even though these books had already been graded and slabbed.   

Although there will be a ton of second and even third tier books here, I doubt many of the will be in lower grades as Ed Jaster stated in his video that he expects 3/4 of the Promise Collection to contain the highest graded copies.  Probably because some of the second and third toers might not be worth slabbing based upon their dollar value with Ed stating that there's no point to slab a book that might sell for a couple hundred dollars when it would sell for that in raw condition anyways.  After the results of this auction so far though, he just might have a change of heart on this.    

[Randall Dowling]

3 hours ago, tth2 said:

I wonder how much of the traditional pricing relationship between different grades of a comic still exists, particularly between the "best" copy and all other copies.  To me, it looks like high end collectors will pay whatever it takes for the very best copy, but collectors of lower grade copies will not automatically pay X% of that top price.

There's a lot of talk about how these prices will affect other copies.  But either the Promise Collection is special and commands non-rational multiples of what otherwise similar copies might bring (in which case these books are not useful comps), or it's not.  After seeing the prices realized, I think it's clearly the former.

We're going to see waves of under copies come up, increasing supply for otherwise scarce books.  But I still fully expect sellers to hold up Promise prices as justifications for higher asking prices, whether it's justified or not.  I mean, why not?  Everybody knows prices on comics only go up.  

[jimbo_7071]

19 minutes ago, Randall Dowling said:

There's a lot of talk about how these prices will affect other copies.  But either the Promise Collection is special and commands non-rational multiples of what otherwise similar copies might bring (in which case these books are not useful comps), or it's not.  After seeing the prices realized, I think it's clearly the former.

We're going to see waves of under copies come up, increasing supply for otherwise scarce books.  But I still fully expect sellers to hold up Promise prices as justifications for higher asking prices, whether it's justified or not.  I mean, why not?  Everybody knows prices on comics only go up.  

What was disappointing to me was that buyers obviously bought the labels, not the books. Even the most severely over-graded books went for high prices. For example, the Catman 29—look at the staple areas; look at the color breakage along the spine, on the tiger—sold for $48,000. That book should not have sold for more than 10K, but I guess somebody wanted the label badly.

[jimbo_7071]

4 hours ago, lou_fine said:

Speaking about chews on comic books, any bets they won't have much of an impact on the prices of the Promise books this Saturday. 

They didn't have much of an impact on the grades, so why would they have much of an impact on the prices?

[october]

3 hours ago, adamstrange said:

This may be true, but one thing I'm certain of after watching this auction:

 I've never overpaid for a comic.  At any time.   Ever.

Liar. I've seen Westerns in your collection.

[jimjum12]

2 hours ago, jimbo_7071 said:

Even the three severely over-graded books went for high prices.

... fixed that for you  GOD BLESS....

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

Edited June 19, 2021 by jimjum12

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

2 hours ago, lou_fine said:

Even if it's being finalized, it definitely doesn't mean we are going to be seeing the Pedigree book anytime soon.  

Take a look at the Chinatown pedigree which received official pedigree status back in 2020, but I remember reviewing Ritter's draft writeup on it way back in 2007.      

 

I think you are probably pretty much bang on here with your assessment.  

Just take a look at some of the books in this auction here and I highly doubt that it's just a coincidence that it's the most in-demand books in a title that's been included in this opening auction here.  Perfect examples, being Cap 46, 74, Joker covers on the Detective's, Blue Beetle 54, AA 61, Contact 12, etc.  

No doubt they have left some quality books to headline their upcoming auctions and this is most probably why the Suspense run (including the highest graded copy of Suspense 8 by a long shot) was not included even though these books had already been graded and slabbed.   

Although there will be a ton of second and even third tier books here, I doubt many of the will be in lower grades as Ed Jaster stated in his video that he expects 3/4 of the Promise Collection to contain the highest graded copies.  Probably because some of the second and third toers might not be worth slabbing based upon their dollar value with Ed stating that there's no point to slab a book that might sell for a couple hundred dollars when it would sell for that in raw condition anyways.  After the results of this auction so far though, he just might have a change of heart on this.    

If Heritage chooses not to slab, I guess that means it’ll be heritage, not cgc, doing the grading. 

[tth2]

3 hours ago, lou_fine said:

Although definite congrats to @tth2 here on his Mystery Men 3, I believe he did rather surprisingly even a whole ton better on another book in the auction here.  

I was pretty happy with the results of all of the books I consigned to this auction.  Would it have been nice to get a few more Promise-type multiples?  Sure, but I really can't complain.

I had been happy about consigning books into this auction knowing that the Promise books were coming out, because I figured the more eyeballs my consignments got as a result, the better.  But I have to admit that as I saw the quantity and breadth of the Promise books, and that they were being auctioned before mine, I started to worry that maybe even the seemingly infinite funds out there might start running dry by the time Session 4 started. 

I needn't have worried.  The availability of funds truly seems to be infinite. 

[tth2]

There's been a lot of speculation that the money coming into the hobby is financial speculators, but based on this auction I don't think it's purely financial speculators.  

If the money was only going into the most high profile books that have transcended the hobby and become acceptable alternative investments for financial diversification, such as Action 1, Detective 27 and Batman 1, then there would be a stronger case that it's purely financial speculation.

But books like Phantom Lady 17, Detective 140, Captain America 74 and Marvel Spotlight 5 mean absolutely nothing outside of our hobby, so I can't see financial advisors putting their clients into such niche books.  

Similarly, it's hard to see big money that has come back into the hobby for nostalgia reasons going into these kinds of books.  Typically, the big money returnees have bought Spider-Man, X-Men and other books (mostly SA Marvel) from their youth.  So I can see the recent massive price rises in GSX 1, Hulk 181, TMNT 1, etc. coming from returnees.  

But I just can't see the proverbial collector who left the hobby after going to college targeting PL 17, LB Cole covers, etc. unless they were extremely sophisticated collectors as teenagers.

Which doesn't answer the question who the buyers are, and where all this money in the hands of relatively sophisticated GA collectors suddenly came from, but I don't think it's a bunch of cashed up newbies.    

[Funnybooks]

4 minutes ago, tth2 said:

But books like Phantom Lady 17, Detective 140, Captain America 74 and Marvel Spotlight 5 mean absolutely nothing outside of our hobby, so I can't see financial advisors putting their clients into such niche books.  

Similarly, it's hard to see big money that has come back into the hobby for nostalgia reasons going into these kinds of books.  Typically, the big money returnees have bought Spider-Man, X-Men and other books (mostly SA Marvel) from their youth.  So I can see the recent massive price rises in GSX 1, Hulk 181, TMNT 1, etc. coming from returnees.  

But I just can't see the proverbial collector who left the hobby after going to college targeting PL 17, LB Cole covers, etc. unless they were extremely sophisticated collectors as teenagers.

Which doesn't answer the question who the buyers are, and where all this money in the hands of relatively sophisticated GA collectors suddenly came from, but I don't think it's a bunch of cashed up newbies.    

100% @tth2

I can attest that the winner of the PL 17 is not an outside speculator and is ingrained in the hobby. The other "big" PL's all now reside in the collection of a prominent collector very much connected with CgC and Heritage.

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

8 minutes ago, tth2 said:

There's been a lot of speculation that the money coming into the hobby is financial speculators, but based on this auction I don't think it's purely financial speculators.  

If the money was only going into the most high profile books that have transcended the hobby and become acceptable alternative investments for financial diversification, such as Action 1, Detective 27 and Batman 1, then there would be a stronger case that it's purely financial speculation.

But books like Phantom Lady 17, Detective 140, Captain America 74 and Marvel Spotlight 5 mean absolutely nothing outside of our hobby, so I can't see financial advisors putting their clients into such niche books.  

Similarly, it's hard to see big money that has come back into the hobby for nostalgia reasons going into these kinds of books.  Typically, the big money returnees have bought Spider-Man, X-Men and other books (mostly SA Marvel) from their youth.  So I can see the recent massive price rises in GSX 1, Hulk 181, TMNT 1, etc. coming from returnees.  

But I just can't see the proverbial collector who left the hobby after going to college targeting PL 17, LB Cole covers, etc. unless they were extremely sophisticated collectors as teenagers.

Which doesn't answer the question who the buyers are, and where all this money in the hands of relatively sophisticated GA collectors suddenly came from, but I don't think it's a bunch of cashed up newbies.    

Somebody from within is advising these crypto guys. And maybe it’s guy, not guys

[tth2]

1 minute ago, Funnybooks said:

100% @tth2

I can attest that the winner of the PL 17 is not an outside speculator and is ingrained in the hobby. The other "big" PL's all now reside in the collection of a prominent collector very much connected with CgC and Heritage.

Thanks for the quick verification.

What would be interesting to know is why is he (I'm assuming it's a he) suddenly willing to open the purse strings like never before?

[tth2]

1 minute ago, GreatCaesarsGhost said:

Somebody from within is advising these crypto guys. And maybe it’s guy, not guys

Regardless, if you're an investor with no knowledge of a hobby, are you going to want your money to be put into really esoteric books that might not be very liquid?  

If I were looking to diversify my assets into collectibles that I know little about, I'd want to know that the assets my advisor is putting me into are extremely well known and  liquid.  So if sports cards, then the Honus Wagner T-206, Mantle rookie card, Wayne Gretzky, Jordan, LeBron, Messi, etc.  If stamps, the inverted Jenny. 

Even if my advisor was extremely knowledgeable about sports cards and was able to make a strong pitch that the smart money was going into Carlton Fisk cards, I'd be leery as hell.  Particularly $456k going into a Carlton Fisk card.   

[Zonker]

6 hours ago, tth2 said:

I wonder how much of the traditional pricing relationship between different grades of a comic still exists, particularly between the "best" copy and all other copies.  To me, it looks like high end collectors will pay whatever it takes for the very best copy, but collectors of lower grade copies will not automatically pay X% of that top price.

  Chuck will be disappointed:

Quote

Howdy!

Our Mile High Comics Operations Manager, Will Moulton, will be reassessing the prices of all of our key and semi-key comic books this morning, after an over-the-top auction yesterday saw prices for many Silver Age and Bronze Age soaring vast above previous records.

While we may not have a great many of these issues in stock right now...

 

[Mmehdy]

12 hours ago, szav said:

And only a tiny tiny portion of the boards pays attention to or believes what anyone is saying on the boards...

Not true...some the biggest "whale" old time collectors READ the board on a daily basis. They have never posted, but they sure talk about what is being said or reported.