Showcase New England/Dan Greenhalgh answers questions

[Silver]

It's probably a safe bet that just about everyone (dealers and collectors alike) uses Comiclink and Heritage these days...we have seen a bunch of Robert Roters books showing up in both places for example.

[mar-vell]

So Dan what do you think? Will you stick around the forum? We occasionally have some interesting discussions about the hobby here. We have a pretty tight knit community here that includes a couple of dealers already. You certainly do have a lot of knowledge about collecting & dealing & the forum loves good stories about the old days!

[cd4ever]

Dan, is selling comics your full-time job or is it just additional income added to your other FT job as house painter or computer geek or something.

 

I know this is a tad personal so feel free to ignore. I'm just curious if one can make a living doing this.

[towards2112]

Dan,

What are your views on the NOD and the work that Mark, Marnin, Jim,

and the other's are doing to call attention to problems with out front disclosure.

Witch hunt ? Waste of time ? Proper effort ? Bunch of loonies ?

Phil

[Mr. Zipper]

Witch hunt ? Waste of time ? Proper effort ? Bunch of loonies ?

 

Not exactly a fair and balanced list of options.

[towards2112]

Witch hunt ? Waste of time ? Proper effort ? Bunch of loonies ?

 

Not exactly a fair and balanced list of options.

 

Tounge in cheek buddy from a NOD member, me, or did you forget...

[ShowcaseNE]

I need to help my kids with their homework tonight...

 

I'll make a few comments about the NOD (Network of Disclosure) in the morning.

[tth2]

It's probably a safe bet that just about everyone (dealers and collectors alike) uses Comiclink and Heritage these days...we have seen a bunch of Robert Roters books showing up in both places for example.

And Pedigree.

[testinadical-migration]

Dan, is selling comics your full-time job...?.

 

If selling comics was his full-time job, he would count the pages and not grade the comic by the front cover only without taking the book out of its mylar, right?

[FFB]

"Hell hath no fury like a comic collector scorned."

[testinadical-migration]

Or "the truth hurts"?

[Comicdey]

RE:comicdey

 

Points well taken.....It is not the $200/300 type of book that I was referring to in my post....Even if these books become valueless....the change in value for the single book itself is not a life changing event.

 

But selling a book for $20,000, and having it sink to $5000 a few years later, is a potentially life changing event. Especially if there are several involved.

 

I did not come on this thread to speak poorly about any dealer or collector, or to discuss confidential, or proprietary information.

 

Within those parameters, I will openly answer all questions that affect me and my company. Perhaps I should have been a little clearer.

 

Stockbrokers have been known to jump out of windows.....

 

I'd like to buy a very expensive book from you....where should I look?

 

Don't jump.............just serve the time.

[lou_fine]

Dan;

 

Your comments sure do bring back fond memories of a very special once in a lifetime event!

 

Anyways, here is my take on some of your comments:

 

The Overstreet sale/event was another terrific (a "Kodak" moment in the history of this hobby if you will) experience that, in retrospect, I was fortunate enough to share in.

 

Yes, this was truly one of those moments in comic book history.

 

I still remembered Snyder pestering me for months to attend this event and I kept turning him down. Although he never told me about the Overstreet books, he kept insisting that this was what I had been waiting for. He said this would most likely be the biggest weekend of my collecting life and one that I would remember forever. He even ended up calling me at work the day before the opening and told me that he was going to set aside a few choice books for me as an enticement for me to go.

 

I still remembered the exact moment that I made my decsion to go. Sitting at the dinner table with that faraway look in my eyes, my wife knew exactly what was on my mind and said that I should probably go, otherwise I would be thinking about it forever. Made reservations that night and had to pay full fare for the flight which turned out to be critical since it allowed me to change my return flight to the last flight out on Monday night at no extra charge.

 

 

There was a lot of electricity in the air that night (to help celebrate the opening of Geppi's Diamond Galleries for the first time if I remember correctly). Steve Geppi went all out to make this a special occasion....and it was. Most of the top dealers in the nation were at the gallery that evening, as well as many of the top collectors in the country.

 

Not sure about the dealers, but a lot of collectors were very upset after the fact that they were not given an opportunity to attend this event. Apparently, it was on an invitation basis only and really depended if you was lucky enough to know one of the head honchos at Diamond or considered to be one of the "top" collectors.

 

Luckily for the smaller collectors, this event was taking place on the same weekend as Super Bowl Sunday. As a result, a lot of the newer bigger collectors in the game with the big wallets such as Danny Kramer ended up passing on this event and flew down for the Super Bowl festivities instead.

 

The dealers and collectors crowded around the Gallery Doors in anticipation of seeing the Gallery for the first time, and getting a chance to buy some of the Overstreet Books. When the doors opened, everyone rushed in....and the feeding frenzy started.

 

Typical me, I was still back at the hotel room becuase I thought it would be better to show up fashionably late instead of showing how impatient I was. Also dumb enough to take the tour of the Diamond facilities with the non-comic dignitaries before I made it into the Galleries. Even dumber as I did not realize all the books on display were actually available for sale until Joe McGukin pulled me aside and asked me which books I was able to pick out for myself.

 

That night, Fishler, Rogovin and I agreed quickly to work with one another on anything we bought.

The very first books we bought were the Larson More Fun 52 and 53 for 60K and 20K respectively...record prices (the best copies of these books known to exist other than the Mile High copies). Other books like the Action 1 sold immediately at the open of the Gallery....that book was sold before I, or anyone else for that matter, ever got a chance to look at it.

 

After Joe's enquiry as to what I had selected, it was already too late as the three of you had already gone through the rooms and cherry picked most of the good books by then. Luckily, John was good to his word and still had a few real nice books set aside for me in the library even though there were already several requests to purchase them. If you missed the Action 1 so early, I am almost sure that it was pre-held for a collector as it went to a very low profile Asian collector from California. I believe you three (along with everybody else) were never given the opportunity at some of the books because they were on hold for some of the smaller collectors pending their purchase decision. Good for the smaller guys who just weren't used to how fast the money was being thrown around out there by the big boys.

 

 

We bought a number of key books, including a Detective 27, important Mile Highs and other high grade Golden Age books over the next moments...many of them the best books known to exist.

 

Shortly after this, the three of us just lost control....we wanted to buy everything. We just started making piles of books that we wanted....hundreds....maybe into the thousands were set aside.

 

With the last part, I assume you would be talking about the feeding frenzy after the Saturday morning breakfast when boxes of books were wheeled out for everybody to pick though. Yes, I indeed do remember the huge piles of books which the three of you were amassing. Reminded me of Jack and the beanstalk in comparison to the much smaller handfuls which the collectors were able to afford.

 

Thinking back, I consider myself fortunate for just being invited to attend the grand opening in the first place, as the majority of collectors never even had this opportunity. As each day went by, it seem to become even more exclusive as the Saturday attendees were far fewer and limited to personal verbal invitations from John and Joe during the Friday night festivities. Yes, although the two public events were indeed like a feeding frenzy, it's always better to shop in peace and quiet.

 

It was as if a battle had started....the three of us against everyone else...take no prisoners.

The collectors began sharing the books they had in their possession only with other collectors in the Gallery because, as they knew...once it got to one of us it would be gone.

 

I remember at the time that this was going on that Jon Berk ( a very nice person/collector to whom I owe a huge debt of gratitude for helping me in so many ways...thank you John) had in his possession a very high grade run of early Mystery Men....and, no matter how many times I asked him for the copies he wasn't interested in, He wouldn't give them to me.

 

Actually, the person I remember through the Saturday fiasco was Joe Verenault who was lucky enough to have grabbed the box that had some of the early Allentown Fox books. I remembered Joe asking me if I was a collector and when I said yes, he pushed the box over to me and asked me to pick out one of the Mystery Men and one of the Wonderworlds for myself. I ended up selecting the Mystery Men #2 and the Wonderworld #4 as there were no earlier issues in the box.

 

I also remembered contacting Joe the following week and asking him what he was planning to do with the other Allentown Mystery Men and Wonderworld books. He informed me that they were going to be passed over to Metro as Steve had already asked about the MM and the WW books. In order to keep his word, Joe asked me to pick out one of each that I did not want and then proceeded to sell the rest of them to me. He stated that since this was a sales transaction he would have to charge me a premium and priced the remaining 4 or 6 books at 2.5 guide on the basis that he had to pay 2.0 guide to purchase them from Diamond. A true gentleman and a dealer who wanted to ensure that some of the books did go to the smaller collectors.

 

Another person that left me with a positive impression was Dave Anderson who I was happy to finally meet after having previous positive dealings with him before. Contacted him the following week and asked him if he had manged to pick up any of the More Funs. I told him that I would be interested in the More Funs #48 and #65 which he had picked up. Dave was nice enough to round the price up to the nearest hundred from his original purchase price and only ended up making a profit of around $50 on both of the books. Another class act!

 

In retrospect, our behavior was embarrassing.....and at the same time, we couldn't help ourselves.

 

Our pile of books had gotten so large, many, many magazine boxes full...that John Snyder (who ran Diamond Galleries at the time, and still runs it) told the three of us that we would have to come back at a future date to conclude our transactions.

 

We did that a few weeks later. We sat down with John to begin pricing the books. John and Steve Geppi weren't bashful to say the least.....they priced each of them so high (3-6 times NM guide in most cases, regardless of condition in most cases, or pedigree) that in many cases the prices were just absurd....we ended up not buying the majority of them....and after a while, John Snyder and Steve Geppi got tired of pricing books they knew we would not buy for ridiculous prices. As an end result....we never saw the books in the remaining boxes, not priced, ever again.

 

I believed you guys put yourselves into this situation as the collectors were never charged the absurd multiples that you were eventually faced with. Nothing turns a seller off more than having a long-time collector such as Overstreet save his books for decades and sells his books for hundreds of dollars, only to see the purchasers attempt to flip them in the next few minutes for thousands of dollars.

 

A signature example here was the Terrific #5 which Metro was able to pick up for something like $500 or $600 when top of guide was only $700 at the time. Almost instantaneously, the asking price was up at the $5K range followed by a CBG ad offering the book for something like $6,500. Several other examples also where other 2nd or 3rd tier HTF early GA books were each being flipped not for hundreds of dollars, but thousands of dollars of profits.

 

It was as if these were no longer comic books, but simply monetary currencies to be arbitraged to acheive maximum profit. No surprise that Snyder and Geppi decided to treat you guys the same way that you had been treating the long-term collectors with Overstreet's books. Looking back at it, really nothing wrong with this from a business sense, especially nowadays with CGC and all of the undisclosed maximization of potential that everybody is focussed on, at the expense of the comic books themselves.

 

All in all, still a very memorable and historic event and without a doubt, most definitely the best 3 or 4 days of my collecting life. That is, until I run into an original minty fresh GA collection being tossed into the trash bin, similar to Bangzoom's little treasure trove. : wishluck:

[Ze-man]

Too bad that day was not captured on film.

 

All kidding aside Lou, great post and comments about an event most of us were not privy too.

 

As Paul said earlier "like being a fly on the wall"

 

Ze-

[tth2]

Lou, great post with great commentary on Dan's great post!

 

Sitting at the dinner table with that faraway look in my eyes, my wife knew exactly what was on my mind and said that I should probably go, otherwise I would be thinking about it forever.

Having now met your wife and knowing that she is a wise and wonderful person, this doesn't surprise me one bit!

 

He stated that since this was a sales transaction he would have to charge me a premium and priced the remaining 4 or 6 books at 2.5 guide on the basis that he had to pay 2.0 guide to purchase them from Diamond. A true gentleman and a dealer who wanted to ensure that some of the books did go to the smaller collectors.

Or you could view it as turning a 25% profit within the space of an hour, which on an annualized basis would make for a very nice rate of return on anyone's investment!

[chrisco37]

Wow! Man, that was a great story!!!!

[ShowcaseNE]

RE: Towards2112

 

The short answer with respect to NOD is:

 

I think the effort is noble, and I support the effort as a whole. However, while I agree with the vast majority of the guidelines, I do not agree with all of the definitions. Some of the "fine"detail makes complying with the guidelines for a company like mine impractical.

 

The long version:

 

My biggest disagreement deals with the consideration of pressing a book without the use of solvents or chemicals.

 

My position is best illustrated in a letter I sent to Mark Zaid about this very issue. This letter is related to a couple of letters I sent to Mark and Gemstone when the issue was being discussed by Gemstone for inclusion in this years guide. I think the letter stands alone....for the most part....so here it is.

 

The letter reads as follows:

 

I understand that Matt Nelson may differ from Susan Cicconi and Tracey Heft on what I consider to be the most minor form of pressing. I am of the opinion that this difference in opinion is immaterial considering the entire scope of the comic restoration landscape.

 

Just to be clear, they do not differ in opinion on any of the different types of restoration including pressing a book with the use of any method which involves altering paper through chemical, liquid or solvent additives. This covers 98% plus (I wanted to say 99%) of all techniques considered restoration, on which there is no disagreement. By definition, this pretty much makes disagreement on anything else immaterial.

 

If I understand this correctly, where they may differ is in defining pressing as restoration using nothing other than weight and gravity when it is done intentionally.

 

What are we really talking about here? Is the argument that "if a book is pressed by weight and gravity because it was naturally stored that way, than it is not restoration, but, if you intentionally put something heavy on a book (for example, other books) to achieve a pressing effect, than it is restoration"??? I know there are different versions of this theme, but, as I understand it, that is basically what the argument is. The only difference between the two is that what some would define as a restoration technique is nothing more than the use of an expedited method to replace that which could be achieved naturally and, consequently, not be defined as restoration.

 

With this in mind, I wonder what is gained by the collecting community by adopting this interpretation of pressing as restoration?

 

Would we then have to define wiping dust off a book as restoration??? (which can't always be emulated naturally as dust has an adhesive characteristic to it).

 

Frankly, this wouldn't be an issue absent CGC.

 

Under the Overstreet standards (pre CGC), the driving factor in determining grade was "overall state of preservation", a combination of paper quality, color, gloss, and structure among other things. Under Overstreet standards, pressing using gravity and weight had no material effect in establishing grade and value for a comic book.

 

Under CGC standards, structure, above all else, is the driving determinant in establishing grade, and, consequently value. Under these standards, pressing using weight and gravity can have a huge impact on a books value...BUT NOT THE BOOKS OVERALL STATE OF PRESERVATION.

 

Because pressing using weights and gravity has no "material" impact on the books overall state of preservation, I do not feel it is an issue of any real significance, regardless of where it may fall in the scope of definitions.

 

Finally, as a practical matter, pressing a comic book by using weights and gravity either naturally or in some intentional, expedited form is undetectable. Even if this goofy version of pressing is restoration when the intentional use of weight and gravity are used as aids is adopted as a definition, and, because it is not detectable, CGC would not be in a position to defend the definition in it's grading standards.

 

End letter

 

As you can see from my position, I do not agree with the NOD definition of pressing....and my position on the matter eliminates me from inclusion in the Network.

 

Additionally, there are some practical considerations.

 

I am of the opinion that the use of the words "minor", "moderate" and "extensive" can be used as terms that are acceptable definitions within the context of disclosing restoration. NOD requires specific disclosure about what has been done to a book. If the book is not CGC'd....the NOD requirement to disclose the specific restoration done to a book is a near impossible standard to comply with as it would require all of it's members to be experts in the detection and disclosing of restoration. ( I am assuming that I understand the guidelines correctly....but I may not be).

 

Additionally, disclosing a pencil erasure, or a color touch , or a piece of tape on a $10 book that is a poor, or a fair, or otherwise beat up seems to me to be going a little overboard. The collectors buying these books don't really care about this stuff....and as a practical matter.....the restoration has absolutely no affect on the value of the book.

 

Putting the definition of pressing as including methods used through non solvent means aside for the moment.....If the NOD modified their definitions to allow the substitution of the use of the more expansive terms "minor", "moderate" and 'extensive", and, required disclosure with books that are either worth more than $50, or graded VG or above (either one would trigger the disclosure requirement) than I would be able to comply with the requirement in a way that would not be impractical for my company.

 

As I said....I support the idea and cause fully. The discussion about this last year really helped the hobby.

[ShowcaseNE]

 

RE: Lou Fine....

 

Your insight and story add the perfect balance......I wonder if anyone else out there could interject their thoughts....

 

As an Anecdote....a few years later Geppi held a birthday party for Carl Barks which falls into the same category as one of those "Kodak moments".

 

As part of the party celebration, Geppi and Snyder convinced many of those collectors having original Barks paintings to bring them, and share them with those planning to attend.

 

Diamond took these paintings...at least a couple of dozen of them and maybe more...and displayed them beautifully, and professionally in their Gallery.

 

This event highlighted more of Barks best work, and most important work, than I believe has ever been displayed in the history of this hobby.

 

I remember all of the Money Bin paintings vividly...they were all there. Pictures and prints of these painting don't do them justice. To have seen them in person, as beautifully displayed as they were, is an experience I will always treasure and never forget. .

[ShowcaseNE]

RE: Mar-vell

 

I would like to make myself availble in these forums.....

 

I can always be emailed at dan@showcasene.com for questions.

[ShowcaseNE]

RE: cd4ever

 

They say that if you are doing something you are passionate about....it is hard to call it a job.

 

I gave up a partnership track in public accounting, and all of my accounting and financial backgound to become a comic book dealer.

 

At the time...my wife didn't know what to make of it...my decision to give up my professional career didn"t go over well

 

In my wife's mind....I went from being "a partner in an accounting frim" to " a comic book dealer".

 

Well...she stuck by me and we managed.....the early years were tough though.

 

For work....if you can call it that, I just do comic books. I have been involved with comics, on some level, for over 40 years now....

 

I do have my fair share of spare time though.....and I spend a lot of it with my kids.

 

You can make a living at comics....but I don't know that I could start today and be successful....the landscape has changed so much.