Marvel Comics #1, October or November 1939. How rare are the OCT dated copies? 3 3

[Sauce Dog]

On 8/18/2024 at 1:00 PM, VintageComics said:

This happens because collectors are ignorant and choose to remain so, because the purple or Restored label made it easy to shun Restored books, rather than interact with them and force people to learn about them.

Had all books been put into blue labels at the start of the slabbing era with restoration notations, this would have forced people to learn and understand resto better, and restored books would have been stigmatized less causing less of a price gap between restored and unrestored books. 

The entire reason that there is such a large price gap between restored books and unrestored is because of this ignorance, and savvy people who have learned how to gauge what a restored book would look like in an unrestored holder have created an entire industry unrestoring these books and profiting from that price differential that exists from that ignorance.

If collectors were more savvy, they'd be paying the relative unrestored value that is hidden in a restored book and that market wouldn't exist. 

Finally, the main reason most choose to remain ignorant, is because they can afford to do so. As everyone knows, comics are mass produced and if you don't buy one copy of a "rare" book, there are still likely half a dozen or a dozen examples of most of even the rarest books in the hobby (save a few, obviously), so if you miss one copy there is usually another. 

Why look at a restored copy when 5 or 10 other UN-restored copies exist? Shun it and wait for a restored one to come along. You have that luxury.

You can't do that in fine arts, which are a "one off" creation - like a Caravaggio painting. If you miss it, it may never return. You don't have that luxury.

It's the luxury of choice that has caused the ignorance, just like it always does in everything, in real life.

 

This is why restoration on Original Art is far more acceptable. You can have a rip in a page, a repair to a page, or even replace some of the art and it doesn't affect the value nearly as much...because it's the only available example of that page. 

What is going to happen is eventually people will realize that restoration will be mandatory for old comics and it will become more acceptable. 

A lot of people don't realize that Overstreet used to be OK with replacing staples on older books in lower grades. It wasn't supposed to affect the value. Go read your older Overstreet grading standards and you'll see. 

We'll get back there again. Things always come full circle. 

I remember when the oldest comics were 'only' 50 years old. Some of you remember seeing GA keys stacked on piles and handled like new magazines. They're going to be 100 years old soon and people will have no choice but accept things like de-acidification, replacing staples and other preservation techniques. 

Time is going to make sure of it. 

Yup, all of this. How CGC handled Restored books initially (and NOT Conserved) fed into both the ignorance and stigma. Everyone shunned the label, PLOD, pretty much equally across the board regardless of if it was a trimmed book or just one with a minor amount of CT - didn't matter the work or the extent of work, all that mattered to people was PURPLE LABEL BAD.

The funny thing is the stigma isn't there is several other mass produced collectibles, look at poster collectors (especially movies) and I see those buyers happy to restore them as they are meant for display and they want the posters to look as good as possible (and often restored/conserved posters will go for more than an 'original' one simply because the work is already done and it looks perfect)

[Bronty]

On 8/20/2024 at 10:24 AM, Sauce Dog said:

Yup, all of this. How CGC handled Restored books initially (and NOT Conserved) fed into both the ignorance and stigma. Everyone shunned the label, PLOD, pretty much equally across the board regardless of if it was a trimmed book or just one with a minor amount of CT - didn't matter the work or the extent of work, all that mattered to people was PURPLE LABEL BAD.

The funny thing is the stigma isn't there is several other mass produced collectibles, look at poster collectors (especially movies) and I see those buyers happy to restore them as they are meant for display and they want the posters to look as good as possible (and often restored/conserved posters will go for more than an 'original' one simply because the work is already done and it looks perfect)

I get that argument, but I don't think you can just lay it all at cgc's door.    The long history of restoring for underhanded purposes, along with the sharp condition premiums paid by collectors, also fueled the 'purple bad' perspective.    It is what it is at this point.

Edited August 20 by Bronty

[jimjum12]

On 8/16/2024 at 9:46 PM, sfcityduck said:

Why is color touch worse than scraped paper?

Or a stain?

On 8/16/2024 at 9:46 PM, sfcityduck said:

Why is a tear seal worse than a tear?

Or tape?

I once owned a book restored by Matt, it was a BATMAN 11 that had his signed, before and after certificate which detailed the work done. Some of it was difficult to find even with the head's up. It was a beautiful copy that I sincerely miss. No where other than the comics hobby, possibly the coin hobby, is restoration viewed in such an anal-retentive fashion. GOD BLESS ...

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

[jimjum12]

On 8/20/2024 at 10:33 AM, Bronty said:

I get that argument, but I don't think you can just lay it all at cgc's door.    The long history of restoring for underhanded purposes, along with the sharp condition premiums paid by collectors, also fueled the 'purple bad' perspective.    It is what it is at this point.

As you say, it was always a question of disclosure, or lack thereof. Bad apples ruining things for everyone since WAY back. I see a return to sanity, although incrementally with caution. GOD BLESS ... 

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

[Bronty]

On 8/20/2024 at 11:22 AM, jimjum12 said:

Or a stain?

Or tape?

I once owned a book restored by Matt, it was a BATMAN 11 that had his signed, before and after certificate which detailed the work done. Some of it was difficult to find even with the head's up. It was a beautiful copy that I sincerely miss. No where other than the comics hobby, possibly the coin hobby, is restoration viewed in such an anal-retentive fashion. GOD BLESS ...

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

Yes, but that goes back to the premiums paid for condition.    When someone is paying 10x for a 9.8 versus a 9.0, they need to know (or at least believe) that the 9.8 wasn't really a 9.0 with a sneaky fix or two.

I don't know how you really fix that without changing the whole hobby's mindset, which just won't happen in the short term.

[Bronty]

On 8/20/2024 at 11:42 AM, jimjum12 said:

As you say, it was always a question of disclosure, or lack thereof. Bad apples ruining things for everyone since WAY back. I see a return to sanity, although incrementally with caution. GOD BLESS ... 

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

The purple books have crept up a bit, but yeah, only a bit, agreed

[jimjum12]

On 8/20/2024 at 11:42 AM, Bronty said:

The purple books have crept up a bit, but yeah, only a bit, agreed

I actually miss the days when I could snag books with either a cleaned cover or replaced staples for 10 cents on the dollar. Or "Trimmed" books that weren't even trimmed at blowout costs. GOD BLESS ... 

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

[VintageComics]

On 8/20/2024 at 10:33 AM, Bronty said:

On 8/20/2024 at 10:24 AM, Sauce Dog said:

Yup, all of this. How CGC handled Restored books initially (and NOT Conserved) fed into both the ignorance and stigma. Everyone shunned the label, PLOD, pretty much equally across the board regardless of if it was a trimmed book or just one with a minor amount of CT - didn't matter the work or the extent of work, all that mattered to people was PURPLE LABEL BAD.

The funny thing is the stigma isn't there is several other mass produced collectibles, look at poster collectors (especially movies) and I see those buyers happy to restore them as they are meant for display and they want the posters to look as good as possible (and often restored/conserved posters will go for more than an 'original' one simply because the work is already done and it looks perfect)

I get that argument, but I don't think you can just lay it all at cgc's door.    The long history of restoring for underhanded purposes, along with the sharp condition premiums paid by collectors, also fueled the 'purple bad' perspective.    It is what it is at this point.

Saying we're "laying it all at CGC's door" makes it sound like it was either nefarious, or purposeful on CGC's part or that they should be blamed. I don't think even CGC envisioned how difficult it would be for the Restored market before it was established and I think their intentions were honorable.

But the fallout of using a purple label to discriminate or segregate books caused collectors to leave them behind, causing prices to overcorrect in the wrong direction, and drop more than they should have, and caused or even allowed a small group of people to pick them up and unrestore them for profit...sometimes for significant profit. You can't effectively disagree with that logic. 

And you've been here long enough to remember that Borock even tried to reverse that trend, and tried to help the Restored market rebound by campaigning here on the boards to put Restored books into blue Labels but with clear restored notations, but it was trounced by many on here at the time...some with real vitriol.

I know because I thought it was a brilliant idea, and saw the logic, and argued in support of it and a bunch of crusty boardies started attacking me personally for supporting the idea, calling me greedy and all sorts of other names, when in fact, I was in favor of trying to overturn the negative stigma associated with Restored labels and close the gap / margin between restored and unrestored books. 

Something that has finally happened, with time. I tend to be ahead of most logical trends and most just can't hear it from their own ignorance until the masses catch on and change their minds for th em. 

I'll take the discussion one step further and argue that Voldemart actually did that, and took a little heat for it with many people complaining they'd bought restored books without realizing it because they didn't take the time to actually read the labels, and only bought them because the labels were blue and assumed blue = unrestored (I did this myself), and again, this is really the fault of the Pavlovian programming that we've come to associate blue labels with "good" and purple labels with "bad" through CGC's example. 

Humans are very easily programmed and we need to put in effort to change that programming, and I learned my lesson quickly and didn't make the same mistake again. I started reading labels more slowly.

If restored books were put into blue labels from the start, or if they'd been put into blue labels just a few years into CGC's existence, like Borock wanted to do in the mid 2000s, the hobby would have turned, CGC would have steered people's expectations, people would have read labels more clearly moving forward, and the hobby in general would understand how do detect restoration better. 

Finally, Matt's change to the Restoration label, with a scale and nomenclature differentiating between Restored and Conserved books was really nothing more than an attempt to do what Borock tried to do a decade prior, to educate the public and help the Restored market, only they ended up doing it with a much more complex scale, but the net result was that the Restored market did rebound and is now much more vibrant than it was before those changes...AND people are much better educated on what they're buying...which really was the final goal behind Borock's early attempt, and Matt finally changing the Restored system about a decade ago.

So it took a long time but we finally got there as a hobby. 

[buttock]

On 8/20/2024 at 10:04 AM, VintageComics said:

 

Something that has finally happened, with time. I tend to be ahead of most logical trends and most just can't hear it from their own ignorance until the masses catch on and change their minds for th em. 

 

Actually you're so far behind that the time loop has just lapped you. 

[VintageComics]

On 8/20/2024 at 12:41 PM, buttock said:

Actually you're so far behind that the time loop has just lapped you. 

 

[adamstrange]

On 8/20/2024 at 12:04 PM, VintageComics said:

So it took a long time

Longer than it takes to read the post?

[Darwination]

The PLOD label and massive price differentiation between restored and Universal serves the interest of grading companies.  If certain restoration is so difficult to detect that you need pros to do it, and you are gonna be losing multiples of what a comic is worth if you miss it, there's a big incentive to buy only graded books.  Fear of restoration is a huge thing that drives books into slabs.

[VintageComics]

On 8/20/2024 at 1:56 PM, adamstrange said:

On 8/20/2024 at 12:04 PM, VintageComics said:

So it took a long time

Longer than it takes to read the post?

I'm worth every second.

On 8/20/2024 at 2:18 PM, Darwination said:

The PLOD label and massive price differentiation between restored and Universal serves the interest of grading companies.  If certain restoration is so difficult to detect that you need pros to do it, and you are gonna be losing multiples of what a comic is worth if you miss it, there's a big incentive to buy only graded books.  Fear of restoration is a huge thing that drives books into slabs.

The price difference does serve the interest of the grading company to a small degree, but not enough to run a feasible business model on that alone. 

I don't think the CGC business model spent much time factoring in the difference in prices between restored and unrestored books as it did the leveraging of the internet, amplifying the size of the market, and the need for 3rd party grading to be able to buy books site unseen.

I think the dramatic price difference was an offshoot of the labelling system and I don't believe it was by design, otherwise, why would Borock try to remedy it?

 

 

[Darwination]

I'm not ascribing any intention at all and actually think that recognizing and quantifying restoration is maybe the top service a grading company provides

 

[VintageComics]

On 8/20/2024 at 3:04 PM, Darwination said:

I'm not ascribing any intention at all and actually think that recognizing and quantifying restoration is maybe the top service a grading company provides

 

Gotcha. Then I mistook your post for intent. 

And I agree. 

For the record, restoration isn't actually that hard to detect for the most part, but it just takes time to learn and also to detect when the book is in hand.

Years ago I won a contest on the boards and the prize was a sit down lesson with Borock, and I asked him to show me some resto detection stuff. It was actually pretty amazing how aware of resto you can become once you know what to look for. It literally jumps out at you after you learn to detect it.

Like anything in consumerism, it's just a matter of how much effort you want to put into something and CGC takes out all the guesswork, which is not a bad thing, but brings us full circle to buyers not fully understanding what they're buying anymore, which is where this conversation got started in the first place.

[zen514]

On 8/16/2024 at 12:34 PM, GreatCaesarsGhost said:

While we wait on Ben’s pronouncement, allow me to inject some flotsam into the mix: this exact book sold for  $52,580 back in 2018. I’m sure it would have sold higher in the January 2020 - December 2022 peak, but given the price retreat we are now enjoying, I’m going to say . . . I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO FRIGGIN IDEA

 

since this is one of those CC sellers asking for the extra 15% vig, it would have to hammer at $44,693 to achieve the same $52,580 sale price as back in 2018.

 

so there’s your floor, imo 

 

 

150-200k   no sweat 

 

Unrestored  October Copy…  

Collector were sleeping on October Copies

 

a 2.5 modererate to exansive  amateur cbcs sold for 150k

 

Coverless sold for 41k

[zen514]

 

I just looked into it and CGC  2.0  restored C3  restored  sold for 156k in 2021   November Copy

 

1.0 Unrestored and October Copy worth substantially  more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Bronty]

On 8/20/2024 at 12:04 PM, VintageComics said:

Saying we're "laying it all at CGC's door" makes it sound like it was either nefarious, or purposeful on CGC's part or that they should be blamed. I don't think even CGC envisioned how difficult it would be for the Restored market before it was established and I think their intentions were honorable.

 

Well, you are misconstruing my meaning, and then attempt to refute this thing you thought I said.

I said we *shouldn't* lay it all at cgc's door, I can't be more clear than that.

I do think they had a part in it, but I also believe that they weren't in a position when this all started to be able to fully anticipate market reaction.

[VintageComics]

On 8/21/2024 at 2:36 AM, zen514 said:

I just looked into it and CGC  2.0  restored C3  restored  sold for 156k in 2021   November Copy

2021 was a unique time for all asset prices (not just comic books) and should be viewed that way.  

[zen514]

With the same logic that means with a November 2023 in bad comic market a CBCS 2.5 sold in Auction For 144k

This OCT 7.0  Moderate A3 that sold in bad  Auction Summer 2024  228k..

 

Last sept 2023 fugly AC1  0.5   408k

 

 

 

Now that Powell has opened up the markets for rate cuts.  

 

 

Marvel Comics 1  October  blue label goodness 1.0 set to make a huge record☄️🥇☄️

Rarest by far of the TOP 3 Golden Age books!

 

2021 was Silver age  Age Keys, Brong and copper etc…

 

2024 onwards is for Golden age  Comics🔥