They're Still Out There! 22 22

[buttock]

1 hour ago, lou_fine said:

 

 

 

My observation is still the same as it was a couple of days ago from my post above.................why have there still been NO EXAMPLES of undergraded books from the Promise Collection to date so far as I am still waiting with bated breath.   

Totally agree that continual resubs of the same book will eventually demolish the law of averages over time, but this is clearly not the case here as this is a new OO collection which is being graded and slabbed for the first time.  So, with an independent and truly impartial grading system in place, it would only stand to reason that it would be statistically impossible to see several examples of overgraded books, but yet not a single example to date of a seemingly undergraded book to date so far.  We can certainly find and see many examples of seemingly undergraded books from outside this collection, but from the Promise Collection here.......nada!!!  

Which then leads to think about all of the talk of potential conflict of interest on the boards here about 10 years ago.  Of course, it should be pointed out that what some see as potential conflict of interest are actually viewed more by growing and expanding corporations as business synergies just waiting to be unlocked, especially in a business which appears to be very much vertically integrated either directly or indirectly.  So, maybe what we are witnessing here is "the powers that be" are also viewing this Promise Collection as an once in a lifetime generational opportunity and are simply going all out and unlocking their business synergies to the max here.    

How do you know none of them are under graded? You've got a million posts saying that there's no difference between a 9.6, 9.8, and 9.9. So many of the books in this collection are in that range, how can you say that they aren't under graded?

[buttock]

1 hour ago, lou_fine said:

 In the final stetches of the game though, they are usually irrelevant in the equation as the only thing that matters in the end to the deep pocketed bidders and the whales is that big big number on the top left hand corner of the slab and they couldn't care less about the visual attributes of the underlying book itself.  

What an awfully judgemental statement.

[buttock]

8 minutes ago, szav said:

Not that it matters in how one should approach these books, but I’m curious if the perception is that CGC is in a period of soft grading for everything, vs they’re just being easy on the Promise books right now.  

Prior to the unexpected explosion in comic prices, back when most people seemed to think comics of all eras would tank to a degree, the cynic in me expected CGC to loosen up grading as a means to incentivize people to submit during what was expected to be a period of light business.

My experience for the last decade or so is that things seem to cycle between 2-3 year periods of harsh and easy grading.  Again the cynic in me sees this as being a method to encourage people to resubmit books during the soft times.

Within the past few months there were threads getting locked down for people saying that CGC was grading too tight. More likely what you're seeing right now is inexperienced graders being brought in from the modern side to grade vintage books.

[jimbo_7071]

2 hours ago, lou_fine said:

Yes indeed, as I've always loved the Planet 38 with the beautiful green cover, even though on most copies they do tend to look a bit faded.  

Thnak God I am not an OCD driven label chaser addict as I highly doubt that I would ever be able to afford the Promise Copy of Planet 38 since it's now  been slabbed as the single highest graded copy at CGC 9.8, and that big big number regardless of the book itself should really catapult this copy right into the stratosphere from a pricing point of view.  

Hence as for me, still holding out hope (albeit fading and starting to lose a bit of interest) that I might one day be able to obtain this copy of Planet 38 here since it should HOPEFULLY come at a much lower price point, considering that it's a full 8 or 9 condition grading levels below the Promise Copy, but still presents nicely relative to its assigned seemingly tight tight CGC grade:        

Of course, as they say, you can never really grade a book from a scan, as opposed to having the actual book in hand.  Although this is especially true for a book that appears to be tightly graded or even undergraded, I think this argument holds a lot less water when it comes to books that appears to be overgraded from a strict visual point of view which some from the Promise Collection would clearly appear to be.    

If that's a 9.8, then I need to resubmit every one of my 9.4s.

[Comicdey]

Oh to just have consistent grading.  It’s so painful to get 9.2 and 9.4 books that look better than your 9.6 and 9.8’s

[Artboy99]

3 minutes ago, Comicdey said:

Oh to just have consistent grading.  It’s so painful to get 9.2 and 9.4 books that look better than your 9.6 and 9.8’s

agreed

[jimbo_7071]

9 minutes ago, buttock said:

Within the past few months there were threads getting locked down for people saying that CGC was grading too tight. More likely what you're seeing right now is inexperienced graders being brought in from the modern side to grade vintage books.

They used to have three graders grade every book, but I thought I read somewhere that they were down to two graders per book. Do you know whether that's true?

[lou_fine]

17 hours ago, jimbo_7071 said:

I'm not sure the sale of a single-highest-graded copy would pull up of the value of other copies. The opposite might be true. The previous highest-graded copy is now the 2nd-highest graded, etc.

 

8 hours ago, Timely said:

A rising tide can lift boats, but can sink others.

It is apparent a lot of current “Highest Graded Copy” books will no longer have that distinction due to this collection. Having that distinction on your book greatly increases its value. If you lose that, you lose money.

Example. You have the best copy of a book, a 9.4 worth $5000. Now a 9.6 appears. It is worth $6500 and that 9.4 is now worth $4000. I see this happen all the time!

I think a lot of collectors just lost money due to this new collection pushing their books off that highest graded pedestal, many right here on the boards!

Well, if you are referring to specific and individual next highest graded copies of books as per your example, then I would tend to agree with you.  Then again, how can you really tell for sure if you haven't place your then highest graded copy up for actual sale to see what the market will bear?  It's quite possible that the prices will be high enough for these copies here since they are coming from a special pedigree, that they just might bring prices on your next highest copy even higher going forward.  Especially if you was not planning to sell your then highest graded copies anytime soon anyways.    

I was really talking about the GA market more in general, as opposed to just the nosebleed highest graded copies portion of the marketplace.  If you take a look at what's happening with some of the BA and CA keys like Hulk 181, Spidey 129, GSXM 1, etc., the mere fact that we are seeing record setting prices being set on some of the highest graded copies are not resulting in a sinking of the slightly lower graded copies.  Heck, just take a look at the auction results for the seconded highest graded copies of TMNT 1 as they are certainly not sinking, but rather soaring into the stratosphere as more copies come into the marketplace.  

I would tend to agree with @GreatCaesarsGhost sentiments below in that I strongly believe this auction of the Promise Collection books will serve to shine a much bigger light onto the GA portion of our comic book marketplace, and as a result, will only be a huge positive on prices of GA books (in general) going forward:    

8 hours ago, GreatCaesarsGhost said:

Yes, totally. But on the flip side, I think we will see record prices, which will serve to attract even more of the crypto and card guys, and continue to heat things up across the board for awhile to come.  There are those who got pushed off the “highest 1 of 1” pedestals, but I think the hobby in general is about to receive its first stimulus check.

 I’m really flabbergasted by what is happening.

Pandemic? What pandemic?

 

[lou_fine]

29 minutes ago, jimbo_7071 said:

If that's a 9.8, then I need to resubmit every one of my 9.4s.

No sorry, my bad as I was referring to the fact that the Promise Copy of Planet 38 being a CGC 9.8 graded copy would be a book that I could never afford or dream of ever purchasing.  

The raw copy which I pictured in my post above (or seen below) is a copy that I hope to be able to obtain one day as I think it presents really nicely prior to it being graded almost 15 years ago, which turned out to be either a CGC 6.5 or a CGC 7.0 graded copy.  Most likely the former if memory serves me correctly.    

Just wish we could see some similar type seemingly undergraded copies of books from this Promise Collection, but I guess it is what it is when it comes to this particular pedigree collection here.    

Edited May 8, 2021 by lou_fine

[MrBedrock]

9 hours ago, Timely said:

A rising tide can lift boats, but can sink others.

It is apparent a lot of current “Highest Graded Copy” books will no longer have that distinction due to this collection. Having that distinction on your book greatly increases its value. If you lose that, you lose money.

Example. You have the best copy of a book, a 9.4 worth $5000. Now a 9.6 appears. It is worth $6500 and that 9.4 is now worth $4000. I see this happen all the time!

I think a lot of collectors just lost money due to this new collection pushing their books off that highest graded pedestal, many right here on the boards!

If CBCS had graded this collection imagine how many 10.0s we would be seeing!

[lou_fine]

7 hours ago, Jayman said:

I just can’t wait for the flood of undercopies that will hit the market! 

Although I've seen this same type of sentiment from many of the boardies here, it actually doesn't seem to make much financial sense from a supply and demand point of view.  

I would tend to think that GA prices might possibly just be trending lower short term if you are trying to sell books at a time when others are also trying to sell their books in order to raise monies to acquire books from this Promise Colllection.  Being more of a pure collector, I would tend to buy books either from current funds that I already have available or from funds that I could raise from other investments outside of the GA comic books.  

[Gotham Kid]

9 minutes ago, MrBedrock said:

If CBCS had graded this collection imagine how many 10.0s we would be seeing!

[lou_fine]

11 minutes ago, MrBedrock said:

If CBCS had graded this collection imagine how many 10.0s we would be seeing!

On the other hand, is it possible that if this collection was being auctioned off by either CC or CL, imagine how many fewer CGC 9.8's we would be seeing?  

[sagii]

Glad they held up the Pedigree book, so this one will get a chapter in it as well

No need for a revised edition  

[jimbo_7071]

30 minutes ago, lou_fine said:

On the other hand, is it possible that if this collection was being auctioned off by either CC or CL, imagine how many fewer CGC 9.8's we would be seeing?  

Yes. It's been obvious to me for a long time that "gift graded" and "submitted by Heritage" are synonyms.

[MrBedrock]

34 minutes ago, lou_fine said:

On the other hand, is it possible that if this collection was being auctioned off by either CC or CL, imagine how many fewer CGC 9.8's we would be seeing?  

If I had gotten this collection imagine how much nothing you would be seeing.

[skypinkblu]

9 minutes ago, GreatCaesarsGhost said:

If there’s anyone that doesn’t believe at least some of the Promise Collection books are overgraded, let’s play a game. If this is a 9.2 . . . 

then what is this?

 

I've noticed over the years that some things bother some graders more than others. It seems sun shadows/dust shadows are OK on high grade books while dirt stains are horrible....

I'm pretending I didn't see the tear.

[skypinkblu]

Just now, MrBedrock said:

If I had gotten this collection imagine how much nothing you would be seeing.

You'd need a bigger house.

[MrBedrock]

Just now, skypinkblu said:

You'd need a bigger house.

Why?

[skypinkblu]

2 minutes ago, MrBedrock said:

Why?

I figured you'd want to keep a few thousand ...just to admire them for while.