lighthouse

Tony. (sorry I thought this was a list of contributors to the slow turnaround times at CGC)

After the last update, it looks like 7 books in the June Signature, mixed between Thursday and Sunday. Grades are: 9.4 White 9.2 White 9.2 White 9.2 White 9.0 White 9.0 White 5.0 White Two books are tied for second census (a single copy graded higher). One book is top 10 census. One book is top 20 census. The other three are scrubs that Greggy wouldn’t allow in his collection lest they pollute his registry. Four are Marvel. Three are DC.

The issue 1, 2, and 3 are all record sales. Obviously that doesn’t mean they’re the most valuable copies that exist. But all three were new records for their specific issue.

I’ll ask Heritage to hurry up. They might listen to me. When you give them a $1.5 million book to sell, the customer service level is as sweet as a pile of Greggy’s Bronze Age DC Romances.

You’re probably right though. Brave and Bold 28 and Adventure 247 aren’t really all that key anymore.

Or is it?

And for a final spoiler… the June book has never been offered in a public sale at that specific grade with White Pages.

Not quite. But there are still two books to come that are more valuable than the 9.2 FF 5 (and less valuable than the 9.2 FF 1). Barring some book I completely missed in my initial triage of the collection, there will be exactly six books from the collection that sell for over $100,000. Four were in the April auction. Two are still to come. I honestly have zero clue how many $10k books there will be. It might be 20. It might be 150. But I’m pretty sure I nailed the $100k count at exactly six.

I think the test is often “the first time this was done on screen was it done well?” Disney seems to have success taking a second or third attempt at a character they didn’t get right the first time. But AT&T throws any character in the dumpster that didn’t take off the first time. So things like Preacher and Y: The Last Man (properties I am very emotionally invested in personally) will likely never get a second attempt.

The collector was far heavier on DC, but there are around 20 Timelys. I sent this one off as part of my grading self-check. It’s one of the few books in the entire collection I might choose to keep for myself.

The 43 is low grade. Two tape pulls, a tear that was previously taped (though the tape itself is now a memory). It’s likely a book we will sell directly raw rather than routing it through Dallas/Sarasota. The Action 43 is top 5 census. But the Detective 43 is just a really cool old Batman for someone’s collection. (And happens to be one I took a pic of the day I did the first triage.)

Yes. Earliest is a 43, I believe. But the collector was far more interested in Superman than Batman. So while the Action run is 90%+ complete from 29-100, the Bat titles are quite spotty in the same time period.

And no, this hasn’t fully sunk in yet. From my limited research, that’s an all-time Top 10 public sale (for now).

I suppose I can say this. The second-most valuable book in the Truckee Meadows collection wasn’t in the April Auction. It’s in the June Signature Auction.

A minor preview of books in the May 2 weekly auction at Heritage. No titles or issues numbers. Just years, grades, and page quality. One of these is a Marvel (the 1965). The rest are DC.

Likely yes. I’ve done VERY little mail order in the last few years. The shop does no eBay, no website orders, etc. Over 2/3 of the packages I’ve shipped out in the last 3 years were to CGC rather than to customers. And my local customers keep me busy to the tune of 75 hours a week. So the infrastructure isn’t there for volume shipping. But we were already in the process of adding additional staff, and when I feel like we can maintain an appropriate service level with mail order, we will go that route.

Yes.

For now I’m still in triage mode. Dividing the collection into what amounts to three piles. Pile that is off to Heritage, pile we will slab and sell directly, and pile we will sell raw. As part of that process, I sent off around 30 grading samples as a double check. I’ve slabbed around 4,000 moderns over the years and am 95+% accurate on my screening for 9.2, 9.4, 9.6, and 9.8 with those. Hand me a high grade raw New Mutants 98 and I’ll get the CGC grade right 19 times out of 20 (fully admit I won’t have that accuracy with a 7.0 of the same book). But I haven’t seen or slabbed anywhere NEAR that volume of high grade 1961-1965. And deciding which pile to put these in required some level of accuracy. So I sent off samples I specifically expected to get 7.5, 8.0, 8.5, 9.0, and 9.2 as well as a few “I think this is a 9.4 but can that possibly be right?” and two “Um, this sure looks like a 9.6 and that’s what I’m writing down but I’m prepared to look silly when it comes back.” So far both I pegged at 9.6 came back exactly 9.6, and I’m running about 80-85% accurate on the rest. That’s probably good enough for what I’m looking for. So the triage process can go forward in earnest. Heritage has more books queued up already for the June Signature Auction. And has a few dozen books in process on their end. I won’t comment specifically on what those books are until Heritage publishes the items. But more are coming. On the direct sale side, nothing is available yet. I expect the entire collection to take two years to process, maybe even a bit longer. But the earliest books should be available this summer.

For perspective on the humidity, I can open a bag of Doritos, eat a few, leave the bag just sitting open on the kitchen counter… and five days later those chips are still completely fresh and crunchy. When I lived in Texas, you had maybe an hour or two and the chips were already getting stale.

I’ll bet a dozen donuts those were mobile deposited. ;)

So far I’ve seen 38 silver grades from CGC. 38 out of 38 white. Including some combinations of words you rarely see together. Like “1962” and “DC” and “9.4” and “White”. There are LOTS of books in this collection that are only “really pretty white paged 8.5 Silver”. But I think even those will find good homes.

There’s more of the story in this thread (a ways down). And while nothing else in the collection is going to top the 9.2 FF 1, there is a lot more to come.

Always loved that cover. Sure it’s a tiny bit cheesy. But I picture myself at age 10 seeing that on the rack (I’m far too young but I picture it anyway), could I pass on that book? Nope. Nope. No way. That one is going home.

It is indeed. I flipped through the pages of a million dollar comic with my bare hands… just crazy to think about.

Can I get you to do all my predictions?