adamstrange Posted November 24, 2021 Share Posted November 24, 2021 On 11/24/2021 at 5:38 AM, GreatCaesarsGhost said: Gary Keller is a name unknown to me, but I gather he was a force in the hobby. Why did he sell so quickly? Was his exit from the hobby similar to J Parino, the mint? His main living was made in real estate. Given the timing, my idle speculation is that the sale was due to aftershocks of the real estate crisis of 2008. GreatCaesarsGhost and tth2 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Beige Posted November 24, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted November 24, 2021 Thanks guys - All sorted now - they had to send me a form to allow me to ship to a different address. Insurance coverage etc etc Cheers Larryw7, Cat-Man_America, jimjum12 and 2 others 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cat-Man_America Posted November 27, 2021 Share Posted November 27, 2021 This thread holds such Promise, but so far there's only been a trickle! Flies remain zipped, ...there isn't even a queue at the MANNUP room door!!! comicjack, jimjum12 and Mmehdy 1 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robot Man Posted November 27, 2021 Share Posted November 27, 2021 On 11/27/2021 at 9:57 AM, Cat-Man_America said: This thread holds such Promise, but so far there's only been a trickle! Flies remain zipped, ...there isn't even a queue at the MANNUP room door!!! Sorry, at this point, I haven’t been Man enough or crazy enough to pay the prices... Content to live voraciously through the rest of you deep pocketed investors. Cat-Man_America 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimbo_7071 Posted November 27, 2021 Share Posted November 27, 2021 On 11/27/2021 at 1:44 PM, Robot Man said: Sorry, at this point, I haven’t been Man enough or crazy enough to pay the prices... Content to live voraciously through the rest of you deep pocketed investors. This collection has given me a new appreciation for the care that ol' Edgar must have put into selecting copies from the newsstand. Many of the Promise books seem to have funky cuts; they must represent a random sample of what was on the stands. By comparison, the Church books nearly all seem to have good, square cuts. That must not have been a coincidence. Edgar must have made a conscious effort to avoid mis-cut books, otherwise there would be more of them in the Church collection. Larryw7 and Professor K 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robot Man Posted November 27, 2021 Share Posted November 27, 2021 On 11/27/2021 at 10:56 AM, jimbo_7071 said: This collection has given me a new appreciation for the care that ol' Edgar must have put into selecting copies from the newsstand. Many of the Promise books seem to have funky cuts; they must represent a random sample of what was on the stands. By comparison, the Church books nearly all seem to have good, square cuts. That must not have been a coincidence. Edgar must have made a conscious effort to avoid mis-cut books, otherwise there would be more of them in the Church collection. Interesting question. Was he the first “mint freak” buyer? I never look at him as much of a “collector” as he bought the vast majority of his books new off the stands. The few he bought “used” were probably cover price or less. When I see an earlier “coded” copy, I always look to the right side. Supposedly, that number might have noted the amount of copies his newstand dealer received. In many cases the number is very low. He might not have had many choices. But to just stack them up in piles with the newest ones on top is just a little weird. I doubt he even read them. I have a few that the ink dried from the inside cover to the first page. I suspect un-read. I was careful opening mine and when this occurred, I just carefully closed them up and didn’t read them either. jimbo_7071, Badger, Microchip and 1 other 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Cat-Man_America Posted November 28, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted November 28, 2021 On 11/27/2021 at 1:20 PM, Robot Man said: Interesting question. Was he the first “mint freak” buyer? I never look at him as much of a “collector” as he bought the vast majority of his books new off the stands. The few he bought “used” were probably cover price or less. When I see an earlier “coded” copy, I always look to the right side. Supposedly, that number might have noted the amount of copies his newstand dealer received. In many cases the number is very low. He might not have had many choices. But to just stack them up in piles with the newest ones on top is just a little weird. I doubt he even read them. I have a few that the ink dried from the inside cover to the first page. I suspect un-read. I was careful opening mine and when this occurred, I just carefully closed them up and didn’t read them either. That's an excellent rhetorical question that I doubt even Chuck Rozanski would speculate about. In my opinion, for whatever that's worth, Church books are the ones by which all others will continue to be judged for the foreseeable future. I doubt that even the hyping of the Promise Collection story or questionable "top gun" grading opinions will change that. Whatever Edgar's rationale was to continue buying books as reference for his artistic endeavors ...not to mention the care with which he stored them... will remain a mystery, but I suspect they'll continue to be the standard bearer and reference point for high grade in the hobby. The fact that there are numerous pedigrees and interesting stories behind them covering a range of GA books is icing on the collecting cake so-to-speak, ...the flavor being the stories, ...the quality of the cake mix being grading opinions and how those are assessed and reassessed over the long haul. jimbo_7071, GreatCaesarsGhost, Robot Man and 2 others 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buttock Posted November 28, 2021 Share Posted November 28, 2021 I think the overall quality of production of books was better in the WW2 era versus the era immediately following that. Paper shortages, increasing costs, etc., led to a decline in the materials and processes. So rather than Church being meticulous about choosing a nice copy, it's more likely that he just had better copies to choose from. tth2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buttock Posted November 28, 2021 Share Posted November 28, 2021 You're also comparing a different cache of publishers. Victor Fox was notoriously cheap, so a lot of his books were more poorly printed in this later era, and a lot of other publishers were trying to get in the market on low budgets. My bet is that if you look at the DCs you're going to see routinely consistent QP. Larryw7 and Point Five 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robot Man Posted November 28, 2021 Share Posted November 28, 2021 On 11/28/2021 at 7:45 AM, buttock said: You're also comparing a different cache of publishers. Victor Fox was notoriously cheap, so a lot of his books were more poorly printed in this later era, and a lot of other publishers were trying to get in the market on low budgets. My bet is that if you look at the DCs you're going to see routinely consistent QP. DC was a much larger consumer of paper and ink. I suspect that they got a much better price due to their volume. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buttock Posted November 28, 2021 Share Posted November 28, 2021 On 11/28/2021 at 9:29 AM, Robot Man said: DC was a much larger consumer of paper and ink. I suspect that they got a much better price due to their volume. Yeah, and they wanted a quality product also. Dell was the same way. They didn't skimp on the product knowing that it would hurt their brand. jimjum12 and tth2 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Professor K Posted November 28, 2021 Share Posted November 28, 2021 On 11/27/2021 at 1:56 PM, jimbo_7071 said: This collection has given me a new appreciation for the care that ol' Edgar must have put into selecting copies from the newsstand. Many of the Promise books seem to have funky cuts; they must represent a random sample of what was on the stands. By comparison, the Church books nearly all seem to have good, square cuts. That must not have been a coincidence. Edgar must have made a conscious effort to avoid mis-cut books, otherwise there would be more of them in the Church collection. Oh yeah definitely. He knew what he was doing by choosing such nice copies. He was in his 40's during most of his collecting days. 'Hey mister, do you have to touch every single book on the rack?". "Leave him alone, he spends like $10.00 a month here". jimbo_7071 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sarg Posted November 28, 2021 Share Posted November 28, 2021 On 11/28/2021 at 10:29 AM, Robot Man said: DC was a much larger consumer of paper and ink. I suspect that they got a much better price due to their volume. Not just that. DC actually cared about quality and a professional image. Fox could care less what respectable people thought of his books. Larryw7 and tth2 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robot Man Posted November 28, 2021 Share Posted November 28, 2021 On 11/28/2021 at 1:05 PM, Sarg said: Not just that. DC actually cared about quality and a professional image. Fox could care less what respectable people thought of his books. I love his books. I have always been a little less than “respectable” I guess... comicjack, Larryw7 and jimjum12 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cat-Man_America Posted November 29, 2021 Share Posted November 29, 2021 On 11/27/2021 at 12:56 PM, jimbo_7071 said: This collection has given me a new appreciation for the care that ol' Edgar must have put into selecting copies from the newsstand. Many of the Promise books seem to have funky cuts; they must represent a random sample of what was on the stands. By comparison, the Church books nearly all seem to have good, square cuts. That must not have been a coincidence. Edgar must have made a conscious effort to avoid mis-cut books, otherwise there would be more of them in the Church collection. I wouldn't be surprised if the Church Collection has miscut books, but Edgar's collection was discovered long before the advent of precise grading. With precise grading we can overlook annoying flaws that would've perplexed collectors of an earlier generation. We're now able to encapsulate pedigreed books with confidence and accept grade pronouncements that defy all reason. That's progress! On 11/28/2021 at 1:40 PM, Professor K said: Oh yeah definitely. He knew what he was doing by choosing such nice copies. He was in his 40's during most of his collecting days. 'Hey mister, do you have to touch every single book on the rack?". "Leave him alone, he spends like $10.00 a month here". If I were betting on this, I'd wager Edgar never thumbed through comics on a rack. He may have had a running account with either a distributor, proprietor of a drugstore or a newsstand owner who set aside copies of every new comic that arrived which he'd drop by and pick up on a regular basis, probably once a month or every couple of weeks. Of course this is all pure speculation on my part. Only his immediate family ...who've long since passed away... would've known his routine. GreatCaesarsGhost 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tth2 Posted November 29, 2021 Share Posted November 29, 2021 On 11/29/2021 at 11:53 AM, Cat-Man_America said: If I were betting on this, I'd wager Edgar never thumbed through comics on a rack. He may have had a running account with either a distributor, proprietor of a drugstore or a newsstand owner who set aside copies of every new comic that arrived which he'd drop by and pick up on a regular basis, probably once a month or every couple of weeks. Of course this is all pure speculation on my part. Only his immediate family ...who've long since passed away... would've known his routine. I agree. jimjum12 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Professor K Posted November 29, 2021 Share Posted November 29, 2021 On 11/28/2021 at 10:53 PM, Cat-Man_America said: I wouldn't be surprised if the Church Collection has miscut books, but Edgar's collection was discovered long before the advent of precise grading. With precise grading we can overlook annoying flaws that would've perplexed collectors of an earlier generation. We're now able to encapsulate pedigreed books with confidence and accept grade pronouncements that defy all reason. That's progress! If I were betting on this, I'd wager Edgar never thumbed through comics on a rack. He may have had a running account with either a distributor, proprietor of a drugstore or a newsstand owner who set aside copies of every new comic that arrived which he'd drop by and pick up on a regular basis, probably once a month or every couple of weeks. Of course this is all pure speculation on my part. Only his immediate family ...who've long since passed away... would've known his routine. Yes you're probably right about this. I would love to know what his routine was. He probably even had a routine on how he transported them from where he bought them to his home. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Microchip Posted November 29, 2021 Share Posted November 29, 2021 On 11/28/2021 at 6:20 AM, Robot Man said: Interesting question. Was he the first “mint freak” buyer? I never look at him as much of a “collector” as he bought the vast majority of his books new off the stands. I thought the same about the Curator collection, when I saw that the only copy of FF #48 with good registration is the Curator copy. It's. such a consistent issue on eye appeal with that issue, the guy must of gone well out his way to find a nicely registered copy. jimbo_7071 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lou_fine Posted December 2, 2021 Share Posted December 2, 2021 On 11/27/2021 at 10:44 AM, Robot Man said: Sorry, at this point, I haven’t been Man enough or crazy enough to pay the prices... Content to live voraciously through the rest of you deep pocketed investors. Yeah, tell me about it as doesn't it absolutely peeve you right off when bidders like Halperin get right in there and takes the books from reasonable dollar bid amounts right up to nutso crypto like bids. Perfect case in point being that raw silly goofy run of Desperado westerns from the Promise Collection that came up in this past Sunday's HA auction. When I saw this run of so-called raw NM Desperado's 2 - 7 on Saturday with all of them sitting at a reasonable bid point of $0 (except for 1 of them at something like $26), I thought there would be a reasonable chance for me to finally win one of these much ballyhooed Promise Collection books. Figured they wouldn't actually go for much more than that, considering the rather egregious $29 minimum BP juice along with another $100+ to get the living daylights squish squash out of the books so that they could hopefully come back from CGC in a HG slab. Figured that I would give it a shot, especially with the Desperado 3 and 8 since both of these were absent from Chuck's Mile High Catalog, with the others in the run being graded by Chuck as either VG or F. Got my hopes up as the Desperado 3 was sitting at $26 and the Desperado 8 was sitting at a still respectable and reasonable hammer price of $0 as their turn came up on the final bell. Go figure as those 2 books ended up at a totally insane $960 and $1,020 respectively, with the rest of the seemingly worthless run finishing up in the same ball park at price points somewhere between $840 and $1,050: Sarg 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sarg Posted December 2, 2021 Share Posted December 2, 2021 It looks like the lowest auction price for a Promise book so far has been this one. Closed at $104. Crime Can't Win #42 in G+ https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/crime-can-t-win-42-2-the-promise-collection-pedigree-marvel-1950-condition-gd-/a/122148-19245.s?ic4=ListView-ShortDescription-071515 ThothAmon 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...