Shrevvy

Are you referencing the Heritage sale from last night? That was $13,000 before the buyer's premium which makes the sale price $15,600. Also, that was an ugly 9.6. It has off-white pages, some light tanning on the cover edge and a miscut. I am old school, but would not grade that as a 9.6. Contrast that to the $18,000 copy sold at Heritage in January. That was a much better copy.

Yes, I thought so too. Be British and Australia makes it all the way up to #2 while Be American is #10. Australia #6 is interesting.

What is that book?

Picked this up at one of our LCS yesterday. I love old school signatures. I also love that I posted a pic in a McFarlane thread just minutes after I posted a pic in the anti-communist book thread in Golden Age. Who says collectors can't be diverse?

We published a reprint of Is This Tomorrow a few years ago. I'm going to read it again tonight. I remember it aging better than I thought it would.

It's rough, but also hard to find. Australian version.

And illustrated by Charles Schulz.

Making transactions easier is the reason that slabbing a comic makes it more of an asset and tradable. Many on here speculate about the "Bitcoin millionaires (billionaires?)" flooding the hobby with their crypto currency pushing up prices. That does not happen in a market comprised of just raw comics. There was no price history on comics by grade until slabbing. GPA and similar services provides the ability to look at historical sales. That has never happened before on a wide scale. It could not. MyComicShop's raw 3.0 is very different from Mile High's raw 3.0. Even if we knew of all raw 3.0 sales of a particular book by various sellers, it would have been worthless given the various grading standards.

I agree. I think slabbing books and making them into tradable assets changes the nature of the books. Doing so makes the prospect of the top comics holding or growing value for a much longer period than they otherwise would.

I agree on the lesser books, that which makes up the bulk of the hobby. For the big books you are referencing, I think it lengthens their life as collectibles. No one in their right mind would kick back on the couch and read the highest grade copy of Action 1. It is no longer a piece of entertainment to be read. It is an asset. It is one that may or may not beat inflation over time. It's purpose has been changed. It is a store of value. It is a trophy to be displayed and ogled, maybe to inspire envy in one's social circle. There will be a small subsection of 11 year olds that are obsessed with the Avengers today that will grow up to create the next tech gizmo, become a movie mogul or make great wealth in any number of ways. He will think back on his fondness for Avengers and display his 9.8 copy for his friends to see even though he never read the book as a kid. GG is a New Yorker that was likely not permitted to own a handgun, much less fire one. Yet, the first thing he does is show Sir Larry Wildman "the rarest pistol in the world." Yes, it is fiction, but I think a good piece of fiction that mirrors reality.

There is a trophy aspect of some collectibles that help them retain value even as the larger hobby wanes. I don't know hummels, but was there ever a seven figure sale? Six figure? Some collectibles transcend the hobby itself and become cultural items. There has been multiple 7-figure sales of the invert Jenny (some were not singles). I can see the inverted Jenny (or similar key items in any category) holding or increasing in value even as the bulk of the hobby stagnates.

This is going to suck me into buying some stamps...not that anyone cares on a comic forum, but this is an encased stamp. Confederate money was no good, coins were being taken from circulation and stamps started to be used as currency. An enterprising businessman decided to encased them in brass and add some advertising on the back. The name of the businessman...John Gault. I always thought that was an odd coincidence.

It will be interesting to see what it closes for. It is a nice example. I saw a few that sold in the $130-$150 range, but they were not this nice. There were a couple that had BIN for $400ish, but sold for a best offer. Don't know what they sold for. Not sure what catalog value he is quoting. There are several catalogs to source. I believe the 15 and 30 cent used values are $72.50 and $100. Scott used values have always been very high relative to sales prices. I have an old Scott catalog somewhere I want to find to see what the values were 20 years ago. My collection, if you can call it that, is small and mostly odd items. I have some fractional currency. I chased some encased postage (stamps were used as currency during the civil war), but never found one I liked. I have a few essays ("prototype" stamp designs used to bid on the contracts with the USPS - stamps used to be printed privately) and some hand cancelled letters that pre-date stamps (one may be signed by JP Morgan). I always like the early airmails and late 1800s through 1930s stamps. Much like early 1960s Marvels, the ink on those is amazing and something you don't see any more. Most of this is very reasonably priced. It should be a collector's paradise - cool stuff, cheap.

That was first thing I thought of when I posted the stamp! Loved that as a kid. Even then I was a stamp nerd...there's 100 stamps left in existence, not one! Brilliant use of his millions though.

Yes, one of the most famous is the inverted Jenny.

I float in and out of the stamp market every couple years. I haven't bought anything for a while, but values have certainly fallen. Like many other collectibles though, I think the nosebleed high-end performs better. Bill Gross of PIMCO fame was a prominent collector and did successfully auction most his collection several years ago. Unlike comics, centering and appearance is a big component of the grade of a stamp in addition to the structural integrity. The gap between low grade and high grade is even higher in stamps than in comics. The 30c, which is the most valuable in the group, has several faults. The upper right corner is clipped, it is missing color along the bottom edge and the top edge is not perforated (was the edge of a sheet). The brief auction description also notes "some with thins" which means there is paper loss from having been adhered to a stamp book at some time. All of those things severely impact value. Still, at one point the quality of a stamp collection was somewhat determined by the completeness the Columbus set. I don't know the Hobbizine link you referenced. Scott has been the "Overstreet" of the stamp world. Hobbizine puts a value of $475 on the 30 cent stamp, but Scott states $225. Scott is still high, but not as high as Hobbizine. Not sure where they get their "values." I would be curious to know what a 30 cent with XF centering, no faults and full gum would bring. I wonder if it would bring $200. To my knowledge, there is no GPA for stamps.

Don't take this the wrong way, but I wouldn't bother. From your other posts, I gather that you own the first few hundred issues of ASM, FF, DD and others. Valuing a $100 book to the dollar would be a rounding error. It is a non-key issue in a non-hot series. So, it has not likely appreciated quickly. Last sale in grade was less than a year ago. That seems as good as any data point for valuation. If it is a more general question on how to extrapolate, it is still hard with just one fresh data point. I have used the value per point recognizing that points are generally valued more richly as the grade escalates. Averaging similar grades helps. If an 8.0 and 6.0 recently sold, you can estimate a 7.0 by taking the average. That probably gives you a better estimate than taking the average per point for a 4.0 and multiplying it by 7. Although, I will take several approaches and compare the results.

A couple early trades.

I like signature series books, but I like raw signed books even more. I bought this one signed. Love the 300 someone posted above with the signature on page 1.

My contribution...McFarlane was it when I was growing up reading comics. That Torment story line in Spiderman is still pretty bleh (I re-read it periodically), but I love those McFarlane Spideys (ASM and Spiderman). Always will.

I am looking for one or both of those books. Those are the Spider's Web copies with the stamp on the back? Nice copies.

per PM

120 gets more money.

Always loved the band aid. It dates the cover. Today, that would be photo-shopped out. Everything has to look perfect. Different time and different aesthetic.