They're Still Out There! 22 22

[onlyweaknesskryptonite]

18 minutes ago, lou_fine said:

Yeah, not sure why CGC would label the book like this because if somebody nefarious got a hold of the slab, they could very easily use it to perpetrate a scam or fraud on some unsupsecting buyer who doesn't really know any better.  Especially if CGC had also listed it in their Census Population Report incorrectly as the original Superman 1 from 1939.  

I completely agree and this was one of many things brought up about it. I wish I had seen the ebay listing a little sooner as I would have bought it just to keep. It was definitely a HUGE mistake.  

[lou_fine]

On 5/19/2021 at 4:22 AM, Timely said:

I know a lot of these collectors, they press their books, not for financial gain, as they’ll never sell (unless a better copy becomes available), but because they want to remain at the top of the census!

Being the type of collector who would never ever even think of slabbing a book unless it came time to sell it, I find it even more strange to consider pressing a book until it came time to sell it.  Especially since although pressed books might be the current "in" thing to do for acheiving higher values, are you not running the financial risk that the marketplace landscape in some future time period when it does come time for you to sell your book might not necessarily be the same.    

Classic case in point being the restoration of books which was seen as ADDING VALE TO A BOOK back in the late 70's and very early 80's.  Turned out to be not so much after that short time period and certainly not with this certification age whereby restored books, instead of selling for higher values, have now been stigmatized through the use of the PLOD labels and are now actually selling for mere fractions of the value of their unrestored counterparts.  

Not sure how the marketplace will react if improving technology at the rate which we are progressing ends up allowing for the fast and cheap detection of artifically pressed books.  Not sure about a company like Genamint right now who's talking about the automated machine grading of trading cards and the detection of pressing on them through simple stretched pixel analysis.  But I am sure if they ever get something like that working effectively for trading cards, they will eventually transfer some aspects of that technology to comic books, especially since we seem to follow closely behind whatever happens in the trading card marketplace, slowly but surely.  

Not too sure if the current comic book grading companies would be too enthused about a possible game changer such as this here, but my bet is that if they see potnetial money in there for them, I am sure they would be jumping on board as fast their little feet can run.  After all, they probably wouldn't want another thrid party service to come in and provide this kind of paid profitable service to the marketplace when they can take the market share for themselves based upon their established track record.  I am quite sure if (maybe really more of when with this improving technology) this kind of service is made available to the hobby place, the demand from the marketplace will certainly be there.  Especially from the those who would rather prefer to pay more for an unpressed book as opposed to one which was artificially maximized up to that same grade.  My bet is that you would then end up with unpressed "virgin" slabbed books selling for more monies than the same equivalent graded pressed slab books, although most likely not quite to the same extent as Universal books to Restored books since we do have a lot of established fans of pressed books right now.  

Actually, if this scenario takes place with virgin unpressed books selling for more monies than pressed books in higher grades, I could even imagine some of these pressing companies of today reconfiguring themselves into professional creasing companies.  Just imagine, trying to add artificial spine ticks and small creases to comic book covers in order to fool the new high tech machines in the hopes of getting an unpressed label or sticker because it would carry a whole lot more value for your comic book.  Wouldn't that be a rather bizarro world, but at the same time quite possible in the not so distant future.      

Bottom-line:  To each their own, but for me personally........................no slabbing, no chasing the census or Registry points while the books are in my personal collection because as history has clearly shown us already, you never really know what the landscape of the marketplace is or what the grading/restoration/labelling parameters will be when it does come time for you to sell your books.  

Edited May 21, 2021 by lou_fine

[jimbo_7071]

14 hours ago, lou_fine said:

Yeah, not sure why CGC would label the book like this because if somebody nefarious got a hold of the slab, they could very easily use it to perpetrate a scam or fraud on some unsupsecting buyer who doesn't really know any better.  Especially if CGC had also listed it in their Census Population Report incorrectly as the original Superman 1 from 1939.  

 "If ANY TYPICAL COMIC DEALER LIKE MUCK WILSON OR DUNG SCHMELL got a hold of the slab . . ."

Fixed it for ya.

 

[MrBedrock]

On 5/20/2021 at 4:28 PM, jimbo_7071 said:

There WAS the Church collection . . . before half the books were ruined by Jon Snyder, Mark Wilson, and others.

Wow! Over 10,000 of them were ruined? Thanks for letting us know. That is awful news.

[lou_fine]

41 minutes ago, MrBedrock said:

On 5/20/2021 at 2:28 PM, jimbo_7071 said:

There WAS the Church collection . . . before half the books were ruined by Jon Snyder, Mark Wilson, and others.

Wow! Over 10,000 of them were ruined? Thanks for letting us know. That is awful news.

Well, if that's the case, I am willing to take the hit and buy them all for full cover price then.  

Oh heck, since I am in a real good mood today, even at full Overstreet condition guide price then.  

[The Lions Den]

21 hours ago, VintageComics said:

 

 

Sorry, but that's not even a 7.0

That is just ridiculous.

That would be a VG range book at best if I was grading it. Maybe a VG/F tops.

I've looked at that one very closely and it appears to be a bindery issue, not a mouse chew... 

[VintageComics]

On 5/19/2021 at 2:23 PM, szav said:

On 5/19/2021 at 2:04 PM, Aman619 said:

Also the guy who lost money on his highest graded Mad 1

Not sure when it hit the census exactly but there’s been a cgc 9.9 mad 1# for a while ... too bad so sad for the people who paid close to 100k for their 9.8s I guess.

People get angry when a higher graded copy hits the census but do they get angry when a stock or some other asset like Real Estate depreciates the same way?

I understand the game well in all aspects of economics but it's important to remember that life is not about only wins. If it was, we wouldn't appreciate the wins and learn from the losses. It's the contrast that keeps things in balance.

And in the long run most collectors are winning more than they're losing. That's the important point to remember.

Edited May 21, 2021 by VintageComics

[VintageComics]

On 5/19/2021 at 2:36 PM, innocuous said:

On 5/19/2021 at 2:26 PM, ttecwaf said:

For example, look at the Mile High Flash Comics #3.  Sold in 2008 for $41,825 and in 2010 for $22,705.  In 2 years it decreased by 45%!  The Flash Comics #12 Mile High sold in 2008 for $33,400, 2010 for $23,900 and in 2011 for $25,095. 

Ok! Lesson learned. No one bid on any of the Flash Comics. Especially the 104, avoid it. Bad investment.

The return of those Mile High books (if my memory and timing are correct) was when someone lost a ton of money on the real estate market after the crash and had to dump his entire runs of Mile Highs to generate capital and cover his losses.

That was an unnatural dip because he bought bidding against all collectors at the peak of the economy (he was throwing around money like a drunk sailor) to assemble the runs and then dumped them all in one shot.

Those books were bought by dealers (Verzyl bought many of them) and they resold for WAY more after.

It was an unfortunate incident but not indicative of a normal market.

Edited May 21, 2021 by VintageComics

[Mmehdy]

6 hours ago, lou_fine said:

Being the type of collector who would never ever even think of slabbing a book unless it came time to sell it, I find it even more strange to consider pressing a book until it came time to sell it.  Especially since although pressed books might be the current "in" thing to do for acheiving higher values, are you not running the financial risk that the marketplace landscape in some future time period when it does come time for you to sell your book might not necessarily be the same.    

Classic case in point being the restoration of books which was seen as ADDING VALE TO A BOOK back in the late 70's and very early 80's.  Turned out to be not so much after that short time period and certainly not with this certification age whereby restored books, instead of selling for higher values, have now been stigmatized through the use of the PLOD labels and are now actually selling for mere fractions of the value of their unrestored counterparts.  

Not sure how the marketplace will react if improving technology at the rate which we are progressing ends up allowing for the fast and cheap detection of artifically pressed books.  Not sure about a company like Genamint right now who's talking about the automated machine grading of trading cards and the detection of pressing on them through simple stretched pixel analysis.  But I am sure if they ever get something like that working effectively for trading cards, they will eventually transfer some aspects of that technology to comic books, especially since we seem to follow closely behind whatever happens in the trading card marketplace, slowly but surely.  

Not too sure if the current comic book grading companies would be too enthused about a possible game changer such as this here, but my bet is that if they see potnetial money in there for them, I am sure they would be jumping on board as fast their little feet can run.  After all, they probably wouldn't want another thrid party service to come in and provide this kind of paid profitable service to the marketplace when they can take the market share for themselves based upon their established track record.  I am quite sure if (maybe really more of when with this improving technology) this kind of service is made available to the hobby place, the demand from the marketplace will certainly be there.  Especially from the those who would rather prefer to pay more for an unpressed book as opposed to one which was artificially maximized up to that same grade.  My bet is that you would then end up with unpressed "virgin" slabbed books selling for more monies than the same equivalent graded pressed slab books, although most likely not quite to the same extent as Universal books to Restored books since we do have a lot of established fans of pressed books right now.  

Actually, if this scenario takes place with virgin unpressed books selling for more monies than pressed books in higher grades, I could even imagine some of these pressing companies of today reconfiguring themselves into professional creasing companies.  Just imagine, trying to add artificial spine ticks and small creases to comic book covers in order to fool the new high tech machines in the hopes of getting an unpressed label or sticker because it would carry a whole lot more value for your comic book.  Wouldn't that be a rather bizarro world, but at the same time quite possible in the not so distant future.      

Bottom-line:  To each their own, but for me personally........................no slabbing, no chasing the census or Registry points while the books are in my personal collection because as history has clearly shown us already, you never really know what the landscape of the marketplace is or what the grading/restoration/labelling parameters will be when it does come time for you to sell your books.  

You raise a great issue about the "future" of comic restoratoin which is not considered or detected by future tech or by changing CGC permissiable non-qualifing restoration and keeping the blue label. I agree with you, that if every one of the 5000+ promise books are pancake pressed that we have upped the level of "non-restoration" and blurred the lines as to what is or is not restoration of the comic book found in originall condition. This promise collection, virgin in nature to the comic book collecting world, certainly tests the boundires as to what is really going here in terms of label color, grading etc.

 I understand your point, it is the comic book itself not the color of the label or the highest point count, that should be the primary focus here. I agree with you that in and of itself The underrlying comic book has gotten lost in this picture. Paying 10x retail for highest point count on a blue or purple slab is unstaninable in my mind. To make that judgement, that IS the best one in existence,, is just waiting to be blow out of the water, like 4500 of these books are gonna do to 95% of those highest  graded  issues.

At some point, to put things are really a even scale, we are gonna have to drop the color label system and just have a deduciton for any repairs or restoration, otherwise when this new Tech undetected  restoration hits the market place it is gonna cause ripples in the GA/SA market place that could affect the long term price stability of this market.

 It certaily does not help that "new"  widget investors are going to invade our great GA/SA market now that cypro$ price wise have become unstable, especially with China going after that. Yes, these buyers will label hunt,filp and get out and never look back. I know you and I love GA/SA comic books, collecting, and sharing real stories and triumph of completing runs or getting hard to find issues, and do not get me wrong,we need CGC more than ever as Tech fiqures out way to get around restoration detection. You are on 100% on your post. What is not discussed on these boards, is the real threat of counterfeit books being made, historicallly which hit the coin fileld from China and other far east counties. That is gonna seperate the men from the boys, and believe me as record after record price is boardcast that you can 3.25M dollars out of very fine comc book that is not gonna help. We need CGC to be fair,strong and alert because it will the CGC that saves us when that dreadful day is upon us.

 I have really never been so excited in years, as this promise collection has brought be back to the "good old days" of going into the Comic and Comics Berkley comc book store and seeing boxs of SF mint GA comic books on the shevles. To me, the promse collection is a third chance with SA/Chuch now being a long time ago in a comic book world far far away.

 

Edited May 22, 2021 by Mmehdy

[VintageComics]

On 5/20/2021 at 12:01 PM, Mmehdy said:

SF collection up there with church, both from both, both the best I have ever seen until promise...we will see after 5000 of them are revealed.

What I find most interesting is how different a well preserved comparable graded 9.6/9.8 can be from each pedigree.

The San Fran copies from what I understand (and from the copies I've seen) are very high grade, bright and white but they feel very different than Church copies. They have a 'stiff' feel to them.

The Church copies have a supple 'new comic' feel that is not as stiff as the San Fran copies.

I wonder how these compare to both of these Pedigrees above.

I realize that only Heritage and CGC have seen the Promise books but @Timely you've handled quite a few books. Do you notice a 'feel' difference in Peds?

Any other characteristics that differ between them?

Edited May 22, 2021 by VintageComics

[VintageComics]

5 hours ago, The Lions Den said:

I've looked at that one very closely and it appears to be a bindery issue, not a mouse chew... 

My post was pretty harsh but I still feel the same way about the grade.

I remember seeing a SA key top out at 7.0 or 7.5 because there was a piece missing (likely from production, but really irrelevant how it got that way) inside affecting the story....you couldn't even see it from the outside. The book looked like a VF or VF/NM copy in the holder.

I remember another SA key book top out at 7.0 (I think that's what it topped out at) because there was a round hole punch through the FC.

I don't see how you can have a portion of the entire book missing all the way through and still keep it in the VF range. It seems illogical to me.

[Pickie]

6 hours ago, Mmehdy said:

At some point, to put things are really a even scale, we are gonna have to drop the color label system and just have a deduciton for any repairs or restoration (...).

At the moment, collectors can do that in their mind. I love reading PLOD labels (certainly A-1s to A-3s), translating them, and pondering about potential bargains. Unfortunately, there's no PLOD label amoung the "Promises" ...  

But only "a fraction" has been graded so far, says CGC in this yesterday's announcement: https://www.cgccomics.com/news/article/9150/ 

[jimbo_7071]

7 hours ago, VintageComics said:

The return of those Mile High books (if my memory and timing are correct) was when someone lost a ton of money on the real estate market after the crash and had to dump his entire runs of Mile Highs to generate capital and cover his losses.

That was an unnatural dip because he bought bidding against all collectors at the peak of the economy (he was throwing around money like a drunk sailor) to assemble the runs and then dumped them all in one shot.

Those books were bought by dealers (Verzyl bought many of them) and they resold for WAY more after.

It was an unfortunate incident but not indicative of a normal market.

What you're saying about the books selling for "way more after" certainly isn't true for all of the Keller books.

Take the Mile High Green Lanterns #26. It sold on HA for $10,755 in 2010 . It then sold on HA in 2010 for $7,468.75. It then sold on CConnect in 2013 for around $4 or $5 K. (Maybe someone with a GPA subscription can find the exact price.) The other Mile High Green Lanterns had a similar story. When Keller sold them, he lost money, but they weren't through going down. When he sold them, the prices were temporarily buoyed by the high prices that he had paid—the GPA effect. Then they went down even more the next time.

Let's look at a non-Keller book lest someone get the mistaken impression that that situation was unique.

The Vancouver Namora #1 in 9.8 is a suitable example. It sold for $13,800 in 2006, but then it sold for $7,767.50 in 2009 (both times on HA). That example offers a good parallel to the Promise books because it was a loosely-graded book that was initially offered in an auction with a lot of hype.

Edited May 22, 2021 by jimbo_7071

[VintageComics]

1 minute ago, jimbo_7071 said:

What you're saying about the books selling for "way more after" isn't true for all of Gary Keller's books.

I couldn't remember his name. Thanks for reminding me!

When I typed out the 'they sold for a lot more after' I was specifically thinking about Verzyl buying them up when they came around the 2nd time and reselling them at his booth in San Diego. They were priced pretty strong.

It's possible and even likely that many that went back through the auction houses sold for a loss even the 2nd time around...appreciate the insights.

[The Lions Den]

6 hours ago, VintageComics said:

My post was pretty harsh but I still feel the same way about the grade.

I remember seeing a SA key top out at 7.0 or 7.5 because there was a piece missing (likely from production, but really irrelevant how it got that way) inside affecting the story....you couldn't even see it from the outside. The book looked like a VF or VF/NM copy in the holder.

I remember another SA key book top out at 7.0 (I think that's what it topped out at) because there was a round hole punch through the FC.

I don't see how you can have a portion of the entire book missing all the way through and still keep it in the VF range. It seems illogical to me.

[Timely]

8 hours ago, VintageComics said:

What I find most interesting is how different a well preserved comparable graded 9.6/9.8 can be from each pedigree.

The San Fran copies from what I understand (and from the copies I've seen) are very high grade, bright and white but they feel very different than Church copies. They have a 'stiff' feel to them.

The Church copies have a supple 'new comic' feel that is not as stiff as the San Fran copies.

I wonder how these compare to both of these Pedigrees above.

I realize that only Heritage and CGC have seen the Promise books but @Timely you've handled quite a few books. Do you notice a 'feel' difference in Peds?

Any other characteristics that differ between them?

There are many differences between all the different pedigrees. Different codes and markings, different smells, different texture to how the cover feels, different defects commonly associated with a given pedigree.

 

For example, I noticed many of the early Lost Valley books almost seem slightly brittle. For some reason the paper is extremely thin and it doesn’t take much to tear them. 
 

San Francisco Copies are the Whitest of all the 1940’s pedigrees. They have the crispest feel to them, but the colors and inks don’t “pop” like the Church books do.

 

Crippen books have a more dirty feel to them with minor to moderate foxing. They have a STRONG musky odor to them.

Big Apple Copies smell like gas, Ohio Copies smell like blue cheese.

I could go on and on... it’s like you could write an entire book on it!

Edited May 22, 2021 by Timely

[tth2]

34 minutes ago, Timely said:

Crippen books have a more dirty feel to them with minor to moderate foxing. They have a STRONG musky odor to them.

That good old muggy Washington DC weather!

[pemart1966]

On 5/21/2021 at 1:49 AM, onlyweaknesskryptonite said:

I completely agree and this was one of many things brought up about it. I wish I had seen the ebay listing a little sooner as I would have bought it just to keep. It was definitely a HUGE mistake.  

...and the poster child of buying the book and not the label  

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

1 hour ago, Timely said:

I could go on and on... it’s like you could write an entire book on it!

If only we could find someone up to the task  

[jimjum12]

9 hours ago, VintageComics said:

I remember seeing a SA key top out at 7.0 or 7.5 because there was a piece missing (likely from production, but really irrelevant how it got that way) inside affecting the story....you couldn't even see it from the outside. The book looked like a VF or VF/NM copy in the holder.

You might be talking about the Sid's Luncheonette copy of JIM 83 ... but it only reached 6.5 when slabbed. It sold VERY quickly when Harry offered it. GOD BLESS...

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)