Heritage Saturating the Market...Again.

[murph0]

Check out their preview for the next Signature auction..only 5 copies of ASM 1, 2 8's, 2 10's, 2 ASM 15 9.4's, 2 ASM 16 9.4's, 2 ASM 21's, 3 28's and so on and so on. The 2's aren't all that bad it's just the amount of duplicates. Are they TRYING to saturate the market? This can't be good for their consignors or the market, what is the purpose? Just to make some $$? If they asked me to consign an ASM 15 and I had a 9.4, I'd tell them to get lost..

 

Brian

[Aman619]

Im not trying to defend them, but arent that many copies up on ebay all the time? Or just not in so high grade? WIll a few more "flood" the market? And if you are right, maybe they have too many sellers of those books looking to unload and cant put them off....

[murph0]

Putting up 5 copies of ASM 1 in approximately the same grade range certainly floods the market. The fact that a lot of these dupe issues for the other books are all really high grade copies (in some cases, the same grade) will effect the market for that particular issue negatively.

 

Brian

[Aman619]

what were the grades for the ASM-1s?

[murph0]

I don't remember exactly. They were in the range of F/VF to VF/NM though, with 1 at VG/F I believe. That 2 ASM 15 9.4, and 2 ASM 16 9.4's really annoys me though. That will effect all the high grade issues on that book and it certainly is NOT good for the consignor. (Good for me though as I still need an ASM 15)

 

Brian

[joe_collector]

Now I don't want to come off all negative, but no one knows how long these prices will last, and Heritage is obviously looking to strike while the iron's hot and make the maximum cash they can.

[murph0]

obviously looking to strike while the iron's hot and make the maximum cash they can.

 

That's more than obvious. Wonder why they aren't pushing for better material in their bi-weekly auctions..

 

Brian

[Aman619]

yeah..those bi-weekly auctions are real dogs...

[clobberintime]

Watching all the stuff come out of heritage over the last year, I have developed a theory and am not sure you can just blame Heritage. awhile ago they started this deal that if you owe them a lot of $$$ or if you need $$$ quick you can consign your books to them and then they give you a percentage of the estimated value. So I think they are selling a lot of books sent to them as "payment" on existing accounts or by people who need some quick money - I heard that was part of the situation with the guy who had that run with Spidey 1 9.6. So Heritage just takes these books and needs to turn them as quickly as possible to cover the existing debts.

[blazingbob]

Now this is a good theory but that would give the people who run Heritage a little more credit for being smart than is deserved. It comes down to pumping as much through the system as it can take, take our 25% and if we take down a few dealers so much the better for us. Heritage does $180 million in coin auctions, the comic market is a fraction of that.

[CosmicBob]

Well so far there's only one Superboy comic up there, a Superboy #1 in 9.0. Not much saturation there. There's also that Superboy #1 Ashcan that they sold last year too, but I don't count that since it's not a real comic.

 

But it does seem silly to have SO many copies of ASM #1 up at once. Maybe I can pick one up for cheap and then flip it next year when the movie hits.

[LonAllen-migration]

Hi there everyone,

I have not posted to this board very much at all (I used to post to the eBay "comics" chat board quite a bit, 2-4 years ago, my eBay user id is bruce_lee).

 

As far as duplication, there are reasons that this happens, and they are usually beyond our control.

 

If someone calls me up and says, "I have an Amazing Spider-Man #1 in CGC VF 8.0 that I would like to consign.", of course I am going to want to take it. Quite often, one of the other Consignmet Directors has already taken one, possibly in a similar grade. I then call the person that sent the later one in and tell them about it. Many times, the person says that they need the money, so sell it anyway, or, more often, they really don't think that it will affect the price. They will mention eBay, and say that two high-grade copies can show up there within weeks of each other and not have an adverse effect on the price, so...

 

If we have 5 different people, all with copies of Amazing Spider-Man #1, and they all want to sell them through us, and they know about all the other copies, what is the problem, really?

 

If anyone has direct questions that they want answered, feel free to email me directly, I will make every effort to answer in a timely manner!

Lon

[murph0]

So you're telling me guys with 9.4's of ASM 15 and 16 are perfectly fine with another exact same copy going up? They'd have to be pretty hard pressed for cash to want to walk into that scenario. It is at least a plus that you call them, however, I still believe there should be some sort of slots that should be filled. What I mean is that if you already have 4 ASM 1's maybe you should not do first come first in on it after that..

Putting up multiples of High Grade copies of the same book isn't good for the market (unless you haven't bought that book yet) and certainly isn't good for back issue collectors who already own these books.

 

Brian

[blazingbob]

Brian, I would give up trying to be logical with a auction house that has NO IDEA what building up a market means. It's $$$$ and cents baby and since they have no stake in the item except to skim off 25% than look out below.

[murph0]

It's unfortunate Bob, b/c they're going to eventually take themselves out of the market due to this and whether or not they've killed the back issue market by the time they leave is anyones guess..

I was also a bit curious why Overstreet chose to have ppl from Heritage do Market Reports. Are some of their staff selling on the side or something? Why isn't there just a market report for "Heritage" (if there is even one at all..).

 

Brian

[CGCMINT]

Has anyone else noticed that since Ed Jaster has been working for Heritage, he's become corporate and they're customer service is the pitts?

 

John

 

[greggy]

So you're telling me guys with 9.4's of ASM 15 and 16 are perfectly fine with another exact same copy going up? They'd have to be pretty hard pressed for cash to want to walk into that scenario. It is at least a plus that you call them, however, I still believe there should be some sort of slots that should be filled. What I mean is that if you already have 4 ASM 1's maybe you should not do first come first in on it after that..

Putting up multiples of High Grade copies of the same book isn't good for the market (unless you haven't bought that book yet) and certainly isn't good for back issue collectors who already own these books.

 

Brian

 

Yeah...I never truly understood what they were doing. At least when Greg Manning were running their auctions, they had a specific rule that they would not take copies of the same book in similar grades. Sure, it was in the infancy of CGC when there were less copies graded but that seemed totally logical. Now.....?

[BachelorOfComix]

Yep, Heritage runs auctions every 2 weeks. It's not like the seller has to wait 6 months for the next auction...