Action252Kid

Not sure if this one is helpful at all to the mystery, but I thought this was a cool one worth sharing that I just came across. Signed on the front like usual, and also signed (larger) on the back cover too.

Do you have a picture of the Action 242? That's a monster grade for that book.

I'll take all of the western groups, per pm.

As others said, this definitely isn't universal. I mainly deal with auctions (both buying and selling) and I have yet to see this for me (either as a bidder or as as seller), but I've seen others mention it. I've heard that it's something that a seller can turn off in their settings and it appears to only be on BIN/Make Offer stuff right now.

USPS Express Mail, can insure for $5k. Or do Registered Mail, can insure for up to $25k, but it's notoriously slow and the tracking will often go days without updating - so you'll drive yourself a bit crazy for up to a week or two while it's in transit.

Hi, I have done business with many people on these boards in the past, and I sell on eBay under the name "blissard". This Sunday night, I have over 250 comic book auctions ending, including over 150 CGC graded books. There are quite a few very hard to find Golden Age superhero issues, pre-code horror, Silver Age Marvel keys, and more. Definitely worth taking a look if you get a chance. I'm happy to accept time payments on any sales, if you reach out prior to bidding. Thanks! Adam https://www.ebay.com/str/adamsrarecomics

In many cases, I feel like the market (currently) doesn't value the two types too differently.. but for certain books/titles (Four Color, for example), there are definitely collectors who only want the non-ad back covers, as it's the difference between an extra one-page story(!) and a boring ad. I think it's one of those things where a lot of people are simply unaware or don't notice the difference (maybe similar to how newsstand copies are now valued higher for Bronze Age books.. but in the past, a lot of people didn't even notice or care about the difference).

Looking back at those page 1 pics from this thread.. the interior pages do look off (knowing what we know now). The cover completely fooled me, I thought that was real (only thing that seemed off was the white line along the top cover edge, which no other Cap 1 seems to have). The interior pages look not wide enough and somewhat glossy/pixelated, looking back at them now.. but I thought that was just from being trimmed and maybe an effect from the book being badly water damaged in the past.

It's not nearly as bad as the card returns were during the big run up in prices.. but I've been forced to take multiple $2500+ CGC graded returns from eBay sales, literally on day 30 of the 30 day return policy in the past few months. You basically 'have' to offer 30 day returns in order to get better placement and get the (small) discount on final value fees, and for 99% of orders, it works out just fine. But the concept of someone buying an expensive slab, having it in hand for 30 days (which of course means you are able to try selling it, take it to shows, post online for sale) and then return it at absolutely zero cost to you/at the expense of the original seller, is obviously not fair.

Try this. Go to your My eBay. Find "performance" at the top, then click on "sales". Enter a custom date for Jan 1 - Jan 31 of last year. See how that matches up against the 1099. I just did that with mine, and like yours, there is a small discrepancy. My guess is that it's some factor of a buyer buying on 12/31 and paying on 1/1 or buying on 1/31 and paying in February. The page I mentioned will show different totals for you, which might help you match things up better.. it shows a total that includes all sales 'plus' eBay collected sales tax, and it shows the total eBay fees and anything paid on shipping labels if you scroll down. I'm pretty sure that the 1099 should show exactly what money was paid by the buyer to you EXCEPT the sales tax (which eBay collects and the seller never touches).

This is 'slightly' longer than I've seen on registered package delays, but (if it wasn't for the part about USPS saying it was lost/to file a claim) it's close to what I have experienced myself on registered shipments. The last several registered packages that I've received, they sat in the big post office facility about 30 miles away from me for up to a full week with zero movement, only to randomly show as out for delivery at some point. Supposedly registered stuff has to be handled with a literal lock & key, with the last employee to touch it having to sign it in and out of a locker, so it's supposed to be 100% secure. Again, if it wasn't for them saying it's lost, I'd say to give it a little more time and that it might still show up this week.

I have 250+ no reserve auctions ending on my eBay account this coming Sunday night. Highlights include: a new to market Okajima pedigree Timely issue, an original owner CGC 9.4 Giant-Size X-Men #1, two single pages from Batman #1 (including the first ever Joker page), a couple of classic Amazing Fantasy #15 pages, a raw Showcase #4, as well as hundreds of raw Golden Age superhero, pre-code horror, early Four Colors, and more! If you'd like to check out my listings, please search for me on eBay (my username is "blissard"), or find me on Instagram (@blissardcomics). I have dealt with many people on the boards over the years and would be happy to offer time payments to anyone who reaches out prior to the auctions ending on Sunday. Thanks! Adam

Do you know what the dimensions are on this book? It looks to be really small and not shaped like a U.S. book would likely be.

I was bidding against you on this one! I had never seen it before either, but it's in the Price Guide under the promo section (there are a few different Comic Cavalcade giveaways listed there).

It's weird, but it's possible there could be an explanation for this. One idea that comes to mind is maybe the buyer who won the auction wanted to split up their payment, so instead of a $13k buy in one shot, the seller let them do this $9500 offer and then the remainder will be sent later/separately. (I wasn't the buyer or the seller, but just a possible explanation where something like this could happen).

It's a scam. This is a common thing that has happened a few times recently on eBay.. someone 'hijacks' an old eBay account with good feedback (so that it looks legitimate), then they just mass-list thousands of 'very' high quality items at auction. The way you can tell it's a scam (besides just the basic 'too good to be true' test), is by searching some of the graded sports cards and you can see a lot of them have "probstein123" watermarks on the pictures at the bottom of many of the images (they were too lazy to even crop out the original seller's name when they were posting these).

Those are so cool!

This was my listing. With a few hours to go, at least five new to eBay (as in, signed up 'today'), zero feedback bidders started running the price up. One of them ended up winning, and I'm assuming this will go unpaid. The reason the price dropped down was because eBay kicked one of the bidders off of the site (but let the others stay on there, go figure). I have sold pages like this many times in the past without this happening, so I'm not sure why this auction in particular was targeted like this, but it's incredibly frustrating to deal with.

Not sure how much added value this gave the book, but if you click on the details for the $46k sale on GPA, it shows: "Label Text: Logo & Superman images from original cover taped to color copy cover. COVERLESS Tape on centerfold." GPA should really have that one sale separate from the other coverless sales, since it was actually "coverless plus front cover logo & Superman image".

This is really cool. I've seen this on books myself, but never really to this extent, dodging the flames so carefully! I've also noticed that a lot of books with bug chews seem to have above average page quality (which would kind of follow this same logic.. maybe the more crispy/tan covers don't taste as good as a fresher cover.. in the mind of a bug!).

Exactly.. I just tested this, and when you list a comic, the era section is not required. They added a ton of new item detail sections (artist, writer, year, edition, etc etc) to the listing submission form, and "era" is just buried in this mess, so my bet is that hardly any sellers will bother with this. On top of that, I don't think many non-comic sellers will really know what "Golden Age", "Silver Age", etc mean, since it doesn't list the years next to them (like the old categories used to). This is obviously a horrible "improvement" and I'm hoping it gets changed back soon.

I had what I suspect was an attempted scam last December on a ~$5k eBay sale. It was a buy-it-now, the guy buys and pays, I tell him I'll Express Mail it to him the next day. Shows as delivered/signed for, then a week later he tells me he was gone for vacation when the package came and that the mailman had signed for him and the package wasn't there any more. I was ultimately protected by eBay, but they can really make your life hell if they choose to do so -- he opened up a case with eBay, they froze the funds for about a month, until finally siding with me. That's why I'd get in touch with eBay now rather than later, to try and avoid that hassle.

I would contact eBay and put them on alert of this. I'd focus more on the fact that you had signature confirmation and that it shows as delivered more so than it being a possible scam -- scam or not, you "should" be covered, since you required signature and it shows as "delivered" -- but better to get ahead of it before the buyer tries to open up a case. The buyer legitimately may not have gotten the package, as USPS really is just dropping off packages without getting an actual signature (as you noted), but as a seller, you did everything you had to do, so eBay should have your back in this instance.

Yeah that is weird! Definitely two different pages though! Just a pure coincidence really. These parted out pages generally come from really low grade/incomplete books to begin with, so being a page from near the front of the book, pieces/corners out would make sense.

Just to clarify, I was the seller of that Bat 1 page (Joker splash). Sold it for $6,305 at auction back in August I believe (should be on GPA).. buyer asked for time to pay for it, but it had dropped off of eBay before he was ready to pay (he took a little longer than we had originally planned). I re-listed it and he bought/paid for it over the weekend. The odd price was just the original sale price (plus $15 s&h) from the auction sale. I put it up at $10k with 'make an offer to owner' on it, so that nobody else would hit the BIN while he was finding the auction and checking out. (so it was a real sale)