PBA galleries auctioneers new collection 40000+ Every DC 9 9

[Mmehdy]

On 7/14/2023 at 7:33 PM, woowoo said:

I have no idea.

Kind of been between Ian messaging me at 3am and Ivan messaging me guess I am the go between since Ian is keeping his word not to contact Ivan.

My understanding from Ian is he sold the books to party A with the understanding he got to keep them till he died.

Ivan had the job to give party A the value of the collection what he thought the books were worth this was before covid and off they went to Auction house at 10 million Ivan said was worth only 3 mil. 

Party A still went for the 10 million he was told they were worth.

Now party A gave Ivan the books to sell and permission to break the set up as he pleased.

Kind of confusing But I am in contact with both Ian who has been an honest guy to me and a friend with the most passion for comics I have ever seen and Ivan who has been one of the most honest social media friends I had very sad situation for Ian who still loves his books but made one mistake that cost him a 40 year collection which might be in low and restored grades but they are there.

Oh, I am in Rohnert Park 8 miles from Petaluma.

 

Great info WW. Was there ever an explanation given as to how the original deal of Ian keeping the books for the rest of his life and how they ended up being on the sold block. Did Ian and buyer amend the deal later? Basically how did it get to the point that books could be sold before Ian's death..I am missing something here...any speculation WW.

[buttock]

On 7/15/2023 at 10:47 AM, Ian_Levine said:

It was actually over 45,000

Ian, in your quest do you feel that there is a series that was more difficult than any other?  Not necessarily individual issues, but overall as an entire run, which one was the most difficult to find.  Thanks. 

[Bronty]

On 7/14/2023 at 11:25 PM, tth2 said:

Okay, so Heritage refused to take your Strikeforce Morituri run.  Time to get over it and move on! 

 

😂

You would think!    But Quite the opposite in fact!  
 

I’ve sent them some Duuuuhhhrek… and some higher value material and have never had them quibble for a second about the drek!

Edited July 15, 2023 by Bronty

[lou_fine]

On 7/14/2023 at 8:46 AM, sfcityduck said:

TAT complaints evidence, in fact establish, capacity limits at cgc/ccs. That TATs increased during the Promise infusion is evidence it helped further overtax capacity.

 

I very much highly doubt that it was the infusion of only a mere 5,000 Promise books that caused the increased TAT's during that 2021 time period. 

I believe the main culprit there was due to the Covid lockdowns with everybody stuck at home and the government throwing free money at them which resulted in the explosion of prices for what were otherwise common books that everybody was suddenly finding in their closets and shipping off to CCS and CGC to press and grade in anticipation of their big big payoff.    

Made even further worse by the pre-announcement of upcoming price increases from both CCS and CGC for their services which served only to entice potential submittors to then swamped the CCS/CGC long term storage warehouse facilities      with even more virtually "worthless" drek for them to press and slab.    

Edited July 15, 2023 by lou_fine

[woowoo]

On 7/15/2023 at 11:17 AM, Mmehdy said:

Great info WW. Was there ever an explanation given as to how the original deal of Ian keeping the books for the rest of his life and how they ended up being on the sold block. Did Ian and buyer amend the deal later? Basically how did it get to the point that books could be sold before Ian's death..I am missing something here...any speculation WW.

Hey Mitch hope all is well.

Ian got upset in 2015 when DC started doing the reboot stuff at number 1 again. I think he thought it was bad and lost interest in starting over with the new number 1 and he was being Haggled really bad by the buyer to sell.

Guess the buyer thought he should have died by now, that is only my opinion. 

I just think he reached the point of DC starting over and being haggled to give the collection to the buyer and at that moment said take them.

Ian now realizes he made a huge mistake selling and its all starting to hit him with seeing his life work going up for sale. 

I really feel for Ian because he was always an honest and fair guy to me with a great collection. I will say I was vary jealous of him since I could not get what he had but that is what people do.

 

[MrBedrock]

On 7/15/2023 at 8:29 AM, action1kid said:

A worthy story for Double Action Rich.

Imagine if I sprained both ankles. That would be some double action, am I right?

[sfcityduck]

On 7/15/2023 at 4:06 PM, lou_fine said:

I very much highly doubt that it was the infusion of only a mere 5,000 Promise books that caused the increased TAT's during that 2021 time period. 

I believe the main culprit there was due to the Covid lockdowns with everybody stuck at home and the government throwing free money at them which resulted in the explosion of prices for what were otherwise common books that everybody was suddenly finding in their closets and shipping off to CCS and CGC to press and grade in anticipation of their big big payoff.    

Made even further worse by the pre-announcement of upcoming price increases from both CCS and CGC for their services which served only to entice potential submittors to then swamped the CCS/CGC long term storage warehouse facilities      with even more virtually "worthless" drek for them to press and slab.    

Could be. It'd be nice to know the actual data.

[Ian_Levine]

On 7/15/2023 at 7:21 PM, buttock said:

Ian, in your quest do you feel that there is a series that was more difficult than any other?  Not necessarily individual issues, but overall as an entire run, which one was the most difficult to find.  Thanks. 

The hardest is a full set of Adventure Comics starting with New Comics, then New Adventure. But then, surprisingly, it's Game Time, and Beautiful Stories For Ugly Children.

Then the Dirtminator promo comic is in a league of its own, way rarer than Supergear.

Edited July 16, 2023 by Ian_Levine

[Ian_Levine]

On 7/16/2023 at 12:57 AM, woowoo said:

Hey Mitch hope all is well.

Ian got upset in 2015 when DC started doing the reboot stuff at number 1 again. I think he thought it was bad and lost interest in starting over with the new number 1 and he was being Haggled really bad by the buyer to sell.

Guess the buyer thought he should have died by now, that is only my opinion. 

I just think he reached the point of DC starting over and being haggled to give the collection to the buyer and at that moment said take them.

Ian now realizes he made a huge mistake selling and its all starting to hit him with seeing his life work going up for sale. 

I really feel for Ian because he was always an honest and fair guy to me with a great collection. I will say I was vary jealous of him since I could not get what he had but that is what people do.

 

This is pretty much the crux of it. But I have never regretted anything so much in my entire life.

 

My insistence that I never wanted the collection to be split up was callously ignored after Sotherby's abject failure to find a buyer for the entire set.

 

The entire business makes me feel sick. But I do still have an enormous collection of Disneys, Harveys, and Gold Keys.

[Mmehdy]

On 7/16/2023 at 8:37 AM, Ian_Levine said:

This is pretty much the crux of it. But I have never regretted anything so much in my entire life.

 

My insistence that I never wanted the collection to be split up was callously ignored after Sotherby's abject failure to find a buyer for the entire set.

 

The entire business makes me feel sick. But I do still have an enormous collection of Disneys, Harveys, and Gold Keys.

Thank you for your explanation Ian. It did not occur to me that you did not want to break up the set as it is doing now upon sale but it makes sense being that it was your creation and your won actions on not breaking up the set when you let it go. On your collection of Disneys, Harveys and Gold Keys, have you thought about going after complete collections of those to add to your legacy! When you say you have an enormous amount would you estimate that you have about a 50% completion on those?

Edited July 16, 2023 by Mmehdy

[Frisco Larson]

On 7/16/2023 at 10:37 AM, Ian_Levine said:

But I do still have an enormous collection of Disneys, Harveys, and Gold Keys.

I'm glad to hear that you've still got a lot of comics to enjoy!!! Once it's in your blood like it is with SO many of us, it'd be hard to go from an enormous collection down to having none! Forgive my curiosity, but when you mentioned Harvey, I immediately wondered if that meant a run of Speed Comics by chance. Do you have some of those? Those would be cool to see! 

[lou_fine]

On 7/16/2023 at 8:33 AM, Ian_Levine said:

The hardest is a full set of Adventure Comics starting with New Comics, then New Adventure.

Not the least bit surprising and actually totally expected since those early pre-hero New Comics and then some of the follow-up New Adventure issues are just so super tough to come across, as clearly evident by the last few books needed in your quest to complete your DC Collection.  

[tth2]

On 7/16/2023 at 11:37 PM, Ian_Levine said:

My insistence that I never wanted the collection to be split up was callously ignored after Sotherby's abject failure to find a buyer for the entire set.

I think it was extremely naive of you to expect that there would be a buyer for the entire collection.  Even if there were many other people who wanted to own every DC ever, how many would (a) want it only if they could assemble it themselves, because collecting is more about the challenge than the completion and (b) be able to pay the Sotheby's asking price?  Clearly the universe of potential buyers turned out to be zero, although perhaps Sotheby's wasn't the best agent to look for a buyer since they haven't been in the comic book business in decades. 

The truth is that the only people realistically interested in buying the collection in one go would be those who could buy it cheaply enough to break it up themselves to sell at a substantial profit.

[Bookery]

On 7/17/2023 at 9:36 AM, tth2 said:

The truth is that the only people realistically interested in buying the collection in one go would be those who could buy it cheaply enough to break it up themselves to sell at a substantial profit.

Exactly.  Just my own business as an example, worth a small fraction of the Levine collection... if I needed to liquidate it is extremely unlikely I could sell the stock as a whole.  There would be different buyers for the comics, for the pulps, for the movie items, for the books.  Even at 10-cents on the dollar, would someone who only deals in comics want the hassle of hauling out all of the other material and finding buyers for it?  Probably not.  Also... if one agreed to the caveat that the collection not be broken up, would that mean issues couldn't even be traded in for upgrades?  If I had the money to buy every DC comic ever published, the only fun left for me, as a collector, would be to search out upgrades over the years for the issues that need it.

[sfcityduck]

On 7/18/2023 at 5:48 AM, Bookery said:

  If I had the money to buy every DC comic ever published, the only fun left for me, as a collector, would be to search out upgrades over the years for the issues that need it.

Ian only obtained every newsstand comic.  He did not obtain every premium, giveaway, promo, private printing, ashcan, or English (let alone non-English) foreign edition. So there were still collecting goals to pursue if you wanted. (Heck you could have expanded to certain Quality, Fawcett, and Charlton titles that were acquired by DC.) Christine also obtained every newsstand and maybe did so first. Ian was picking up some very rare and obscure non-newsstand comics and at least one rare newsstand publication by a DC affiliated publisher. So I think he had the broader collection. 
 

The problem with even a limited newsstand collecting theme would be the chore of keeping up with the variant covers etc. coming out these days. It is an OCD pursuit to an extreme. And that’s setting aside whether you include reprints and collected editions.

I suspect that the auction of this collection will look a lot like eBay except for some very hard to find gems. There will be a huge bunch of fairly easily obtainable comics.  The cruxes will be impressive to see. For example, I saw a Supergear BIN on eBay for around $2k once but did not appreciate how rare an opportunity that was.  I have never seen another for sale and never heard of some Ian’s books. 

Edited July 18, 2023 by sfcityduck

[Bronty]

On 7/18/2023 at 11:11 AM, sfcityduck said:

Ian only obtained every newsstand comic.  He did not obtain every premium, giveaway, promo, private printing, ashcan, or English (let alone non-English) foreign edition. So there were still collecting goals to pursue if you wanted. (Heck you could have expanded to certain Quality, Fawcett, and Charlton titles that were acquired by DC.) Christine also obtained every newsstand and maybe did so first. Ian was picking up some very rare and obscure non-newsstand comics and at least one rare newsstand publication by a DC affiliated publisher. So I think he had the broader collection. 
 

The problem with even a limited newsstand collecting theme would be the chore of keeping up with the variant covers etc. coming out these days. It is an OCD pursuit to an extreme. And that’s setting aside whether you include reprints and collected editions.

I suspect that the auction of this collection will look a lot like eBay except for some very hard to find gems. There will be a huge bunch of fairly easily obtainable comics.  The cruxes will be impressive to see. For example, I saw a Supergear BIN on eBay for around $2k once but did not appreciate how rare an opportunity that was.  I have never seen another for sale and never heard of some Ian’s books. 

It seems like it would be an utterly joyless exercise, month after month.    

The complete early key runs would be amazing, but adding a box of drek to the pile every month would probably drive anyone nuts after a few years.

 

 

Edited July 18, 2023 by Bronty

[Microchip]

On 7/17/2023 at 11:36 PM, tth2 said:

I think it was extremely naive of you to expect that there would be a buyer for the entire collection. 

Best go back and re-read the title of this thread.

 

[Ian_Levine]

On 7/18/2023 at 4:11 PM, sfcityduck said:

He did not obtain every premium, giveaway, promo, private printing,

But I had over 90% of them including ones so obscure nobody even knew they existed.

[Ian_Levine]

On 7/18/2023 at 5:58 PM, Bronty said:

 

The complete early key runs would be amazing, but adding a box of drek to the pile every month would probably drive anyone nuts after a few years.

 

 

Yes it did - the number of variants became sickening.

[buttock]

On 7/18/2023 at 7:43 PM, Microchip said:

Best go back and re-read the title of this thread.

 

Did someone buy the entire collection? Is PBA selling it whole?