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Post your Promise Collection wins!
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1,590 posts in this topic

On 9/17/2022 at 5:57 PM, tth2 said:

I was surprised that it wasn't 43 out of 43 went down, although I guess Seven Seas 5 turning a profit was not that much of a surprise. 

Bang on with the Promise copy of Seven Seas 5 because once I saw that one come back to market, I knew right off the bat it would sell for more. (thumbsu

Then again, I guess it had a better shot than most since the Seven Seas 5 was front and centre for the promotion of the Matt Baker Auction.  :luhv:

Edited by lou_fine
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On 9/17/2022 at 9:31 PM, jimbo_7071 said:

This is off topic, but what books are getting split into individual pages? Are they books that were missing more than just the cover? I would think that even a coverless but otherwise complete Cap 1 would be worth more than the pages sold individually. (Of course, I could be wrong.)

And what if a page has an advertisement on the front of the page but artwork on the back? Will CGC turn it around so that the artwork is facing forward in the case?

These are the kinds of deep questions that I ponder in my quiet moments.

Hopefully it’s just destroyed books that are getting pieced out!

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On 9/18/2022 at 12:26 AM, Cat-Man_America said:

 

Looking at this objectively while taking stock of my personal collecting habits, what's notable is what's missing.  No one appears to be in any hurry to flip Promise Collection copies of Continental/Holyoke's Cat-Man, Timelys and most high or highest graded keys from any publisher.  

There are plenty of Timelys and a few LB Coles I hope to see again some day, at 23% less.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by GreatCaesarsGhost
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On 9/18/2022 at 1:19 AM, szav said:

Thank you for the fantastic analysis.  Lost in this may be the macroeconomic influences that may somewhat unfairly tarnishing the books.  Zero interest rates and free money abounded when these first sold, and headlines of inflation, recession, soaring interest rates, and a crashing stock market dominate the news now.

Have these books fared worse than silver and bronze keys, or the DJIA?  Probably not.  I think we’ll get the real story 5 years out from actual recovery, and that real story may well be that the initial buyers grossly overpaid.  I just think any judgment right now is confounded by outside market forces.

What recovery? This is permanent.

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On 9/18/2022 at 9:55 AM, Funnybooks said:
On 9/18/2022 at 12:10 AM, lou_fine said:

Like another boardie here had alluded to before, this collection is really a classic case of Over Promise and Under Deliver.  :devil:  (:

*trademarked or is that *copyrighted?

That should actually be the tagline for the entire collection and go right in the centre of the CGC label itself under where it says "The Promise Collection".  (thumbsu  lol

Edited by lou_fine
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On 9/18/2022 at 4:21 PM, MasterChief said:

recycled books followed a clearly observable pattern of acquisition, manipulation, recertification, and liquidation.

Heritage launched a preemptive strike this time by starting the books out at 9.4 +

Edited by GreatCaesarsGhost
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On 9/18/2022 at 3:01 PM, GreatCaesarsGhost said:

Heritage launched a preemptive strike this time by starting the books out at 9.4 +

I guess for all the criticism CGC took for soft grading on the Promise books, you could argue it would have been in their interest and  they’d have made more money if they graded them harsher so as to encourage repeated CPR attempts.

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On 9/18/2022 at 5:30 PM, szav said:

I guess for all the criticism CGC took for soft grading on the Promise books, you could argue it would have been in their interest and  they’d have made more money if they graded them harsher so as to encourage repeated CPR attempts.

Good point 

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On 9/18/2022 at 2:21 PM, MasterChief said:

Another discovery that became apparent during the ROI research is the archived sales for Promise books that now state “Not Sold” for their original auction. There are currently 9 books in the archive that are categorized as not sold.

Considering around 5000 books total sold, I find 9 non payments to be surprisingly low.  You’d think given that sheer number of books, a certain amount of buyers randomly would die, get hit with divorce notices, or have some financial crisis before completing payment.

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On 9/18/2022 at 7:29 AM, GermanFan said:

What recovery? This is permanent.

Nothing's permanent. The United States won't even last forever.

The current financial situation might last for a generation, though. The millennials and their progeny will be fine. It'll be us Gen Xers who will have worse life outcomes than our parents because we had a terrible job market when we finished college in the mid 90s, so we got a late start on home ownership to begin with, and we were just starting to recover from the economic mess of 2008–2010 when this pandemic hit, and now we're too old to start over and have much hope of succeeding. We're basically the throwaway generation.

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On 9/19/2022 at 6:30 AM, szav said:

I guess for all the criticism CGC took for soft grading on the Promise books, you could argue it would have been in their interest and  they’d have made more money if they graded them harsher so as to encourage repeated CPR attempts.

Maybe when they saw the sheer volume of books from the collection, they realized there was no bandwidth to handle a second wave of cracked Promise books, so they decided to preempt any second wave.

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On 9/18/2022 at 7:15 PM, tth2 said:

Maybe when they saw the sheer volume of books from the collection, they realized there was no bandwidth to handle a second wave of cracked Promise books, so they decided to preempt any second wave.

That seems pretty unlikely.  I'm sure they'd have no problem kicking 1000 or so moderns to the back of the line to grade and charge fees on 1000 books that are worth $5k plus.  Anyway, who knows what terms they had or what % they took on these, I doubt CGC determined their cut based off the standard rules.  How would they have even guessed what FMV was about to be for them?

I was just proposing for those who think CGC acted in bad faith on the grades, they probably could have been even more sneaky about the whole thing (unless they got a cut of the auction wins...and thereby had reason to inflate...uh oh there I go unintentionally starting conspiracy theories that I don't even believe again).

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On 9/18/2022 at 2:21 PM, MasterChief said:

Yes, it is surprising. I found no upgrades. Books appear to be in the same state of original sale.

Historically, books that get relisted in a Heritage Auction in a relatively short period of time, typically 6-12 months, have gone through the post-auction manipulation process and are listed with new certification numbers and higher grades. That’s been the MO since Heritage Signature Auction #803 (July 4, 2002), which was the genesis of institutionalized manipulation. There wasn’t an auction like it beforehand, and Heritage auctions afterward that included recycled books followed a clearly observable pattern of acquisition, manipulation, recertification, and liquidation. There are mounds of data from countless auctions to validate the conclusion.

Hey Mitch;

Yes, for this Promise Collection, there clearly appears to be a sharp 180 degress change in the MO of how Heritage has handled the sale of this collection from the beginning consignment/acquisition stage right through to the final auction stage for these books, as compared to how all of their prior auctions have worked out.  Pre-emptive word of warning here, for all boardies who don't want to be bored to death reading about my theory on what might possibly have taken place here, please skip right to the next post instead of having the usual hate-on for me.  :bigsmile: 

Now, remember back to the original thread on the Promise Collection that was started back in March of 2021 and quite a few boardies speculated on the origins of this Promise Collection and if the family was still involved in it by the time it came to market last year.  Some speculated that they might have sold it off some 20 odd years ago to a dealer while most of us here assumed that it was simply nothing more than a regular consignment and that the family still had direct ownership of the collection when it came to market.  It seems that nobody here really knows as the question was never ever answered, so anything is possible.  (shrug)

Now, consider this possibility here................I was flipping through the latest Overstreet Guide and noticed what I thought was a new one-page ad from Heritage whereby they proudly claim in bold red that "you should know that we have purchased individual collections for as much as $23 million, with immediate payment in full."  I then went back to the Overstreet guide for last year and noticed that they also had the exact same ad in the 2021 edition of the guide, but no such ad in any of the prior editions of the guide.  Now, in the last year and a half or thereabouts, has there really been any other single individual comic book or comic art collection that Heritage might possibly have purchased outright for $23 million?  I can't think of any on the comic book side and I will leave it to others when it comes to the comic art side since I know zippo about that market there.  The only collection that I can think of on the comic book side is this Promise Collection here, unless the other other possiblility is another new collection which they purchased but are holding off on auctioning it off which from my POV would seem highly unlikely.  hm

 

On 9/18/2022 at 3:31 PM, GreatCaesarsGhost said:
On 9/18/2022 at 3:30 PM, szav said:

I guess for all the criticism CGC took for soft grading on the Promise books, you could argue it would have been in their interest and  they’d have made more money if they graded them harsher so as to encourage repeated CPR attempts.

Good point 

Definitely a good point and a strong one for all prior auctions since Heritage was just the auction house auctioning off these books on behalf of their consignors and collecting the auction fees on the subsequent sales.  From a strict corporate business POV and for the realization of business synergies due to their linked ownership structure, it would definitely be good to maximize their top and bottom lines for the head honchos if you could get revenue from the same book not just once, but multiple times and from multiple streams of revenues.  :flipbait:

Now, would your MO change if you consider the other possibility........................namely that the auction house is not only auctioning off these books on behalf of a third party consignor, but is itself the direct owner of these very books here, whether they had purchased it directly from the family itself or from the so-called dealer who had purchased it from the family some 20 odd years ago?  Wouldn't your game plan change and it now serves your best financial interest to ensure that you get the absolute maximum price for all of these books right off the bat on the first go round because ALL 100% of the money will be going right straight into your top and bottom lines.  As a direct seller now, do you really want to leave room (i.e. "potential') in there for the buyer to simply go through the CPR process and collect on the easy money or are you going to use your intra-corporate connections and influence to ensure that the path is cleared for you and not the subsequent winner/purchaser to get maximum dollars for YOUR books.  :devil:

I believe the fact that we have seen absolutely zero attempts at a resub for these 43 Promise Collection resales in this heavily CPR focused grading environment kind of gives us a strong indication of what most probably took place here with this collection.  hm  (shrug)

Edited by lou_fine
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On 9/18/2022 at 3:30 PM, szav said:

I guess for all the criticism CGC took for soft grading on the Promise books, you could argue it would have been in their interest and  they’d have made more money if they graded them harsher so as to encourage repeated CPR attempts.

If we are going to delve into nefarious-motivation theories, you would have to consider the timing of the grading to the timing of the Blackstone acquisition.  Presumably they would have been more concerned with pre-acquisition revenues and graded as high as possible to maximize those revenues.  

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On 9/19/2022 at 11:29 AM, lou_fine said:

Now, consider this possibility here................I was flipping through the latest Overstreet Guide and noticed what I thought was a new one-page ad from Heritage whereby they proudly claim in bold red that "you should know that we have purchased individual collections for as much as $23 million, with immediate payment in full."  I then went back to the Overstreet guide for last year and noticed that they also had the exact same ad in the 2021 edition of the guide, but no such ad in any of the prior editions of the guide.  Now, in the last year and a half or thereabouts, has there really been any other single individual comic book or comic art collection that Heritage might possibly have purchased outright for $23 million?  I can't think of any on the comic book side and I will leave it to others when it comes to the comic art side since I know zippo about that market there.  The only collection that I can think of on the comic book side is this Promise Collection here, unless the other other possiblility is another new collection which they purchased but are holding off on auctioning it off which from my POV would seem highly unlikely.  hm

Heritage paid an average of $4600 per book for a collection that contained few high grade keys, and lots and lots of mid-run and late-run issues from 3rd and 4th tier titles?  Highly unlikely. 

Even more unlikely is that the owners (or their representatives) held out for such a high price, even if they were really knowledgeable about comics. 

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