War Comics 17 17

[MrBedrock]

Those are big prices for 7.0/7.5 books, imho.

 

Especially when - with some patience and luck - you can find them in raw 6.5-7.0 for $50 a pop.

 

Normally I would agree with you. But I have had a shop for twenty years, and had some incredible stuff walk in the door. I've only had one nice DC war collection offered. And it was mostly in the fine range. And that was about fifteen years ago.

Also, Keith Marlow lives here in Houston. I have a pretty good idea of how hard he worked to put his collection together. He worked his butt off!

I'm kinda lazy...and I didn't have a price guide with me

 

[Jeffro.]

Killer books everyone. Too much dinero for this tiny fish.

 

Oh yeah, and Shep? I agree. I was looking at the OAAW 66 and thought I might have a shot at it. yeah right.

[Aman619]

Those are big prices for 7.0/7.5 books, imho.

 

Especially when - with some patience and luck - you can find them in raw 6.5-7.0 for $50 a pop.

 

Normally I would agree with you. But I have had a shop for twenty years, and had some incredible stuff walk in the door. I've only had one nice DC war collection offered. And it was mostly in the fine range. And that was about fifteen years ago.

Also, Keith Marlow lives here in Houston. I have a pretty good idea of how hard he worked to put his collection together. He worked his butt off!

I'm kinda lazy...and I didn't have a price guide with me

 

yessir... a solid 70 - 8.0 war book from this era , especially Keith's books, are a tick or two away from an unread survivor! As good as it gets, or, at worst, a when all is said and done top 5 copy. Cant believe Keith is selling again! but, shhite happens. I guess.

 

[Jeffro.]

Anyone know why he's selling?

[buttock]

Anyone know why he's selling?

 

Money?

[Aman619]

the usual: hookers and beer,

[MrBedrock]

Anyone know why he's selling?

Personal stuff...but he did keep OAAW 81 - 130 and the good G.I. Combats.

And I imagine he will start buying again very soon.

[bigfiver69]

Those are big prices for 7.0/7.5 books, imho.

 

Especially when - with some patience and luck - you can find them in raw 6.5-7.0 for $50 a pop.

 

Normally I would agree with you. But I have had a shop for twenty years, and had some incredible stuff walk in the door. I've only had one nice DC war collection offered. And it was mostly in the fine range. And that was about fifteen years ago.

Also, Keith Marlow lives here in Houston. I have a pretty good idea of how hard he worked to put his collection together. He worked his butt off!

I'm kinda lazy...and I didn't have a price guide with me

 

Don't get me wrong... I've dropped large $$$ on individual books for a bigger CGC number. Cost me large...

 

I've just been sort of amazed at some of the great prices I've found on really, really nice mid-grade books this year. I wish I had the larger dough to get into more of the auctions. I've had to go slummin' on ebay I've been living vicariously through you guys buying up all the killer books.

 

Shep

 

 

[Paratrooper]

Hopefully these high prices will bring out more HG war books that are snugged away in people's collections. There are some DC war trooper books I need to upgrade. But not willing to pay nosebleed prices.

[MrBedrock]

Hopefully these high prices will bring out more HG war books that are snugged away in people's collections.

Me too!

I also hope that the telepathic signal I mentally sent out will compel someone to hypnotically stroll into the shop with boxes

full of high grade '50s and '60s comics and leave them on the counter as a gift to "that tall, nice man at the comic store".

[Hedge]

 

yessir... a solid 70 - 8.0 war book from this era , especially Keith's books, are a tick or two away from an unread survivor! As good as it gets, or, at worst, a when all is said and done top 5 copy. Cant believe Keith is selling again! but, shhite happens. I guess.

 

 

I always have to keep this in perspective! That I am looking at some of the best examples of some of these books to hit the market..... I have to keep on telling myself that my 5.0 - 6.5 copies of some of these are just fine. Man, I would have loved to pull the trigger on some of those!

 

Larry

[Aman619]

for the earlier DC era, a solid 6.5s are "fine" and dandy. and probably look nicer raw given the scarceness of hg copies. You know the kind of old tough to find book that has a lot of niceness to the cover and you ignore the many little problem areas all around it that--of course--- CGC and their bright lights notice right away..

[bigfiver69]

Actually, this does bring up an interesting part of the war comics collecting dilemma that has been brought on by the migration of the very best books to CGC and Heritage/Clink/etc...

 

To wit... can you put together a great war comic collection today without going CGC 7.0 and up?

 

I'm interested in what you all think - after all, this is the finest group of kick war comics fiends in the universe. I very nearly sold 90% of my raw collection a couple of years back in order to pursue nothing but CGC. But I saw the trend in graded book pricing, and I felt that prices would get so prohibitive for me to put together the breadth of books that I wanted.

 

There definitely are two classes of war comics collector starting to sub-divide... collectors of top graded books on the above mentioned sites, and collectors looking for great raw books through other outlets.

 

Me, I'm falling in the second camp. I almost gave up collecting a year ago because I felt that I would not be able to find satisfying books outside of the big money auctions. How wrong I was.... I have ticked off maybe a half-dozen big wants in solid grade this year off ebay and through traditional dealers for much, much less than I ever thought I would.

 

Maybe this all rambling... but either road you choose, what a great time to be collecting war books!!!

 

For what it's worth, here are a number of ebay/dealer pickups this year. Most were less than $30. Great pickin's.

 

[MrBedrock]

I certainly think it is possible to piece together a nice collection raw through all the various sources known and unknown. In fact, as I tried to say earlier (though it may not have been clear) that is exactly what Keith has done. I would guess that he bought over 80% of his collection raw and had it graded. He scoured eBay and also spent generously with many dealers to establish himself in their eyes as THE guy to contact when collections surfaced. Essentially every worthwhile high grade DC war book that popped up through the big dealers over the last few years was offered to Keith. He also went to probably ten shows a year. That is a lot of work. So it certainly can be done.

 

But as I also mentioned earlier, I am lazy. As far as I am concerned Keith did the work and as a result we have been offered a chance to do some one stop shopping on some books that very rarely turn up for sale. So I figure it is okay to pay a premium for convenience. But that doesn't mean I won't be digging through boxes looking for books. It also doesn't mean I won't be actively pursuing collections that include war books. (In fact, I recently bought a fairly large -300 books- DC war collection which averages about vg gradewise.) But I still believe in the old saying "a bird in hand is worth...".

[Aman619]

O also don think its necessary or even worth going after any 9.2s or 9.4 (HG) of these books. The "formula" will say they are worth 2k - 4K. but are they? A nice 8.0 is a superfine book here and isnt really cheap anymore. And since you will never complete a 9.2 run, why bother passing on all these nice copies?

 

same for Atlas pre-heroes.

 

 

and I hope I havent convinced anyone holding out for 9.2s to start feeding on this lower grade junk!

 

[Hedge]

To wit... can you put together a great war comic collection today without going CGC 7.0 and up?

 

 

 

Absolutly!!! I feel that even all the books in VG would be Awesome.. Its great being able to handle the books without much worry of lowering the grade and hey the storys are still the same as the higher graded copies. I have nearly all the OAAW books from #150 up in low grade (G-VG) and I love paging through these without much worry. I really never take my high grade out of the Mylar anymore, maybe every few months I page through a box to look at the covers. I ask myself sometimes which I enjoy more? Man, those beater readers are great and 10's of thousands cheaper.

 

I still look for higher grade examples though. I think I collect a lot like Shep, Jeffro and many others. Picking off a nice book every now and then.

 

As for my real passion lately DC War OA! I just can't seem to get enough.

[thirdgreenham]

I wouldn't say it's difficult to put together a great collection of DC war books below 7.0. To me, a great collection doesn't necessarily have to consist of high grade books, not at all. A solid VG collection is great. A solid F collection is also great. A collection with mixed grades ranging from G to VF is great as well. I think we should go back to the roots and be happy with the comic books themselves. I know I have. I put together a run of the DC big five, with grades all over the place. To me, it was a great challenge and a whole lot of fun. I wasn't picky with the grades as some of these books proved to be difficult to find a copy in any grade. My collection wasn't necessarily high grade, but was it great? In my opinion, yes, it certainly was.

 

Now, over time, people change. Maybe their focus changes, maybe their financial situation changes, and often their collection will change as well. In my case, I had reached my goal and I wanted to concentrate more on grade. I haven't forgotten about the basics, nor I don't think I ever will. I've just refined my collecting even more.

 

The higher grade books are definitely out there, but many are deep in collections, and these books won't see the light of day for a long while. In the meantime, I'll have to be happy with the 7.0s and 7.5s that have recently come to auction. They are getting large dollars for these books right now, that's a given. Are these prices deserved? I'd say yes. These books are CGC graded and I believe that's why we are seeing big money for them right now. There is often a big difference between a graded copy and a raw copy. Just take a peek at who's selling it. A raw 7.0 will sell for nowhere near that amount. However, there's no guarantee that if another CGC 7.0 comes up for sale that we'll see similar results.

 

DC war has been undervalued for far too long. The OSPG is semi-interesting, but pretty useless when helping with pricing these books. The prices being realised should be recorded, perhaps by GPA. This is the most accurate pricing guide on the market right now and it's unfortunate that CL isn't allowing GPA to datamine their info. I'm getting off topic now, but that should really be discussed further as well.

 

Well, my post has bounced around a little more than I originally wanted, but my main point was "yes". Yes, you can have a great collection of books without going CGC 7.0 and up. Easily.

 

Andy

 

[Karma23]

I agree, absolutely you can. Now, I am not in the same class with some of the heavy hitters here, but I've picked up numerous nice, although common, books from board members like October in recent months.You can accumulate a very nice collection of raw books, they're definitely out there.

 

As long as you don't need the highest graded copy ( not that there's anything wrong with that:) ) you can find perfectly presentable copies of most books easily, key s and the rare books being an obvious exception, but that goes for any genre.

 

These books may not knock anyone's socks off but, boy they make me happy!

 

I'm very pleased with the books I've been finding recently and hope to keep finding them.

[comick1]

Hopefully these high prices will bring out more HG war books that are snugged away in people's collections.

Me too!

I also hope that the telepathic signal I mentally sent out will compel someone to hypnotically stroll into the shop with boxes

full of high grade '50s and '60s comics and leave them on the counter as a gift to "that tall, nice man at the comic store".

 

Is THAT what that was? I was getting ready to buy my plane tickets for Houston just now. Luckily, Pam was here to snap me out of it. Whew!

[bigfiver69]

Great discussion, fellas!

 

At the end of that day, it's all about buying the books you want, in the grades you want, at the prices you can live with.

 

One thing I love about the collectors on this war thread - there appear to be a lot of 'healthy' collectors... smart, focussed lovers of war books buying up their wants at the pace/price that suits them. To me, that's what it's all about.

 

In many other threads all over these boards, I've seen the 'my 9.6 is better than your 9.6' bull.... I love the genuine appreciation of the war books that I've seen here, in low, high and mid grade.

 

 

 

War books. Man, how I love 'em.

 

Shep