Some Nice Golden Age Books Just Sold At A Podunk Auction - Deals? 2 2

[bug33fouf]

[Robot Man]

Prices seem pretty “healthy” for raw books sold in a manner like this.

A lot of these small auction houses are really cashing in on the current comics boom. The publicity with big prices are bringing out a lot of non comic people hoping to cash in.

I used a small local auction recently to move some swill. I ended up selling a long box worth of 10 cent Dell and Westerns with just enough low grade 10 cent SA DC to “spice it up” for a little over double guide. There were a couple of guys that seemed to know a little about comics but most of them went to people who obviously knew nothing but got caught up in “auction fever”. Was more than happy to pay the house 10%. They even asked me if I had anymore to bring them in.

It never ceases to amaze me how much great stuff still comes out of the rural PA area. You would think it would be pretty finite and that most of the attics, basements and barns would be cleaned out by now but obviously not the case.

My wife is an antique dealer and pre-Covid, we made a couple of road trips a year to the rural East Coast. I always made a nice score or two of GA comics and pulps. As well as toys, advertising and early sports items that are a lot harder to find on the West Coast.

I sure wish these “cooties” would disappear. I really miss those trips…

[manetteska]

I saw this auction pop up on Facebook as a sponsored ad, with the golden age lots up-front and center. I was interested at first but saw Friday night the prices were already out of the "got a deal" range and kept on moving along.

Without the Facebook exposure I wonder what they would have ended at.

Unless it's an extremely local auction house with limited/no internet exposure (i.e. is not on hidbid, etc), it's difficult to get deals.

[Robot Man]

I get a nationwide estate sale site. I often type comics in the search function. About a year ago, I saw an out of state auction of what looked like some nice GA books. Considered bidding but just don’t trust spending any decent money on these one picture, no returns small auctions so I passed.

A couple weeks later a boardie posted some books he got there for a VERY reasonable price. I remember a drop dead beautiful copy of Batman #23 with a black Joker cover.

He obviously took a chance and scored several real nice books. It can happen but I’m just not a gambler. 

[William-James88]

On 1/19/2022 at 11:23 AM, manetteska said:

I saw this auction pop up on Facebook as a sponsored ad, with the golden age lots up-front and center. I was interested at first but saw Friday night the prices were already out of the "got a deal" range and kept on moving along.

Without the Facebook exposure I wonder what they would have ended at.

Unless it's an extremely local auction house with limited/no internet exposure (i.e. is not on hidbid, etc), it's difficult to get deals.

Looks like this was the perfect storm. While the OP thought that this being a general non specific estate auction would mean there would be less comic book fan eyes on this (which could be true), it seems the results in terms of prices obtained would be the opposite of what's expected.

With podunk auctions like this, you get a lot more people who have no clue what the value of these books are bidding on them (auction fever as Robot man put it). And on top of that it was advertized on facebook and you got yourself a really nice stew for getting prices higher than if these same lots were sold on Heritage.

[fishbone]

Ridiculous prices