THE AMAZING FANTASY #15 CLUB 39 39

[comicquant]

27 minutes ago, jabats said:

So much for all our wild theories 

Yep, mistakes are so boring

[lou_fine]

8 hours ago, Jaydogrules said:

11 hours ago, lou_fine said:

Okay Jay, here you go:

http://www.comicconnect.com/bookDetail.php?id=700363

Be sure to report back to us here on what you find out. 

Thanks! Email sent.   I'll let you know what I hear back.   They are usually pretty fast with their responses to error inquiries.  

 

4 hours ago, Jaydogrules said:

So evidently the sale was inadvertently omitted by Vincent on his sales report to GPA for that auction.   

The oversight has been remedied, however, and as of now the sale is reflected on GPA. 

-J.

Wow Jay, that was fast and also good to know.

Thanks for getting back to us so quickly. 

[lou_fine]

16 hours ago, jabats said:

19 hours ago, Jaydogrules said:

So evidently the sale was inadvertently omitted by Vincent on his sales report to GPA for that auction.   

The oversight has been remedied, however, and as of now the sale is reflected on GPA. 

-J.

So much for all our wild theories 

 

16 hours ago, comicquant said:

Yep, mistakes are so boring

On second thought here, you guys are all so gullible and would believe almost anything.  By the way, I got some swampland to sell you in Florida. 

A likely story and sounds like a lot of and bull to me.  Makes it sound like these sales have to be manually entered by Vincent one by one at a time, instead of simply being done through an electronic download in this day and age of computers and high tech data transfers.  Even so, are we really expected to believe that Vincent would remember to include a sale of Actual Romances #1 for $27 and yet at the same time, inadvertently omit the AF 15 sale for $57K. 

I believe Jay's confirmation back to us now only gives even more credence to my initial theory:

On 9/15/2017 at 10:02 AM, lou_fine said:

Now I understand completely why Metro didn't bother to include their 5.0 sale on GPA. 

Once they found out that the book was in your hands, they simply didn't want to go on record that they only managed to get a meagre $57K for the book when another dealer like you will be able to get so much more for the buyer.  It's a case of they simply didn't want you to one upmanship them. 

The only reason for this sale to now be included as part of the GPA stats (albeit it 6 months after the fact) is due to the persistent and hard investigative work of the board members here and the fact that we caught Vincent with his shorts down around his ankles. 

 

 

 

Edited September 16, 2017 by lou_fine

[lou_fine]

23 hours ago, chrisco37 said:

On 9/15/2017 at 11:11 AM, blazingbob said:

People should look at grading companies and think like grading companies.

Their goal is to get as many submissions on a book as possible.

How do you do this?  Grade tight at first (1).  

Create the crack out game (2).

Loosen a bit (3).

Introduce pressing to the market place (4).  

Crack out,  grade again (5).

Leave some defects in on the first press  (6),  invites a second press and upgrade attempt.

Throw some tightening and loosening (7+) and multiple that by a grading tier.

If you don't think that is discussed at a business meeting then you are not thinking like a grading company.

 

Absolutely.  We've discussed this very thing on the boards many times and I remember you saying similar things over the years.   With the comic grading, you've always suggested to look at coins and how the grading there "evolved" over the years.  CPR was there to see from the beginning if you looked at coin grading. 

Sadly, this entire scenario is just so true, especially when we look back to when pressing was first outed on the boards here and all of the anger and disconsternation that resulted from this sense of betrayal to the collecting base.  Yet, it was ironic how quickly the speculators and the majority of the collecting base jumped into this mud pile once they saw the dollar signs and supposed pot of gold that was in there. 

Yes, although one of CGC's main purposes was to protect us from the nasty and evil comic book doctors hiding away in their dungeons secretly restoring books during the days of the so-called Wild West, we are now in the age of legitimate professional masters working from their beautiful penthouses and performing their magic to improve and maximize the potential of our books, all without disclosure of course.  What was once seen as something dark and dirty has now been not only fully legitimized, but also actively encouraged and rewarded if done.  Any bets that this was in CCG's business model all along even before they started up CGC, as their real interest being a business entity and all, was understandably in lining their own pockets first and foremost. 

  In terms of additional streams of revenue and getting repeat business, I am rather surprised that CGC hasn't introduced the concept of a Best Before or expiry date on their slabbed books yet.   

 

Edited September 16, 2017 by lou_fine

[lou_fine]

On 9/15/2017 at 11:34 AM, blazingbob said:

While I appreciate the joke the fact is that the 5.0 selling for $57K on Comiconnect sort of kicked off the AF #15 price escalation.  As with any key price appreciation somebody has to go first.  This buyer did and subsequently higher prices have been popping on all grades.  

Now that I gave it some more thought, I don't believe this is quite accurate.

I believe the sale that signaled the start of the price escalation was the 8.5 graded copy on Heritage back in August of 2016 that sold for the monster sum of $77K.  That was the calm before the storm before all of these hurricane sales of AF 15's came plowing in, each stronger than the one before.  

That calm should have been the signal for all of us to jump in. 

Edited September 16, 2017 by lou_fine

[comicquant]

3 hours ago, lou_fine said:

 

On second thought here, you guys are all so gullible and would believe almost anything.  By the way, I got some swampland to sell you in Florida. 

A likely story and sounds like a lot of and bull to me.  Makes it sound like these sales have to be manually entered by Vincent one by one at a time, instead of simply being done through an electronic download in this day and age of computers and high tech data transfers.  Even so, are we really expected to believe that Vincent would remember to include a sale of Actual Romances #1 for $27 and yet at the same time, inadvertently omit the AF 15 sale for $57K. 

I believe Jay's confirmation back to us now only gives even more credence to my initial theory:

The only reason for this sale to now be included as part of the GPA stats (albeit it 6 months after the fact) is due to the persistent and hard investigative work of the board members here and the fact that we caught Vincent with his shorts down around his ankles. 

 

 

 

My response was sarcasm at its worst I guess...  I too think its probably a load but thats the story we've been told.  Unfortunately I think gpa's prices are certainly cherry picked, but we all still use it so...  

[comicquant]

3 hours ago, lou_fine said:

Sadly, this entire scenario is just so true, especially when we look back to when pressing was first outed on the boards here and all of the anger and disconsternation that resulted from this sense of betrayal to the collecting base.  Yet, it was ironic how quickly the speculators and the majority of the collecting base jumped into this mud pile once they saw the dollar signs and supposed pot of gold that was in there. 

Yes, although one of CGC's main purposes was to protect us from the nasty and evil comic book doctors hiding away in their dungeons secretly restoring books during the days of the so-called Wild West, we are now in the age of legitimate professional masters working from their beautiful penthouses and performing their magic to improve and maximize the potential of our books, all without disclosure of course.  What was once seen as something dark and dirty has now been not only fully legitimized, but also actively encouraged and rewarded if done.  Any bets that this was in CCG's business model all along even before they started up CGC, as their real interest being a business entity and all, was understandably in lining their own pockets first and foremost. 

  In terms of additional streams of revenue and getting repeat business, I am rather surprised that CGC hasn't introduced the concept of a Best Before or expiry date on their slabbed books yet.   

 

Au contraire mon ami...

"When CGC was first established in 2000, we thoroughly researched and implemented the best practices in archival preservation. We took a conservative approach and suggested that customers may wish to consider reholdering their books after approximately seven to ten years so that the MicroChamber paper could be replaced. "

Unless you're David Blaine you're not going to be able replace the MicroChamber paper without having the book reholdered.

[Sweet Lou 14]

4 minutes ago, comicquant said:

Au contraire mon ami...

"When CGC was first established in 2000, we thoroughly researched and implemented the best practices in archival preservation. We took a conservative approach and suggested that customers may wish to consider reholdering their books after approximately seven to ten years so that the MicroChamber paper could be replaced. "

Unless you're David Blaine you're not going to be able replace the MicroChamber paper without having the book reholdered.

Also, they keep changing the holders, which is a constant temptation for OCD people like myself to want to re-holder all their older books anyway.

Has anyone created a definitive list of different CGC holder / label designs over the years?  Is there any reason to believe they won't keep putting out new ones?

[Glassman10]

Well, Lou,  Do you think the  4.0 going for $35K was the beginning of the escalation on lower mid grade stuff.  I suspect that 10K per grading point will be the entry level soon.  Right now, it's snap the ones up you can before the stampede. Bob's 7.0 was remarkable at the price it brought.

[Glassman10]

Or even further, in the interest of marketing, I've noticed that the age and condition of the holder itself , not the book is being brought into the evaluation? Man, that's marketing.,..

[Aman619]

As to the value one gets from GPA being less than one expects, as we have discussed many times here, which newer posters may not have read, GPA is a concept that works better or worse depending on what types of comics prices one is hoping to research.  GPA effectiveness is limited by many real world roadblocks... but does the best it can.  

They can only include prices they are allowed to.  Comiclink has made it very clear that they choose to not work with GPA, preferring to keep their sales close to the vest.  Frankly I think they should share all auction and exchange sales that they currently choose to remain public by leaving them listed as Sale Pending.  Anything they want to hide that they currently take down asap can remain private.  

Many dealers will send them data, but have proven to be less than totally inclusive, cherry picking what sales they include. GPA can only try to convince the owners of the sales data to share 100% of their sales so that there is transparency, or they must choose to disallow all of that dealers data.

and as Bob pointed out, while GPA has digital data grabbing systems in place for auction house and dealers, this applies only to those dealers who maintain solid sales tracking and complete data records digitally.  Many many dealers still use pieces of paper and their memories.. for these dealers the chore of reporting data can take days and is put off for months.

basically mots of us have learned what books GPA is perfectly useful to research.  Books that trade often on the sites that report to them enough for a trend line to develop. After that, you just have to do your own research.  I think it's well worth the ten bucks a month for what they can and do report accurately.

 

i wish it were better. i wish the market was totally transparent. I wish. A lot of things that are just not possible given reality. 

[SC22]

3 hours ago, Glassman10 said:

Well, Lou,  Do you think the  4.0 going for $35K was the beginning of the escalation on lower mid grade stuff.  I suspect that 10K per grading point will be the entry level soon.  Right now, it's snap the ones up you can before the stampede. Bob's 7.0 was remarkable at the price it brought.

I don't think we are at that point yet in lower grades to mid grade (5.0 and lower) at 10k per point. Maybe copies with no marvel chipping at all yes.

As for before the ''stampede'' has that not already happened during the last year and now prices are at new normal's for each grade. I don't think we will be seen such intense increases of 200% to 300% for a long while maybe never again (I don't see this happening more than once every 10 to 15 years if at all). We may just go back to the ''normal'' annual increases of 5% to 10% (could be a little more certain years).

I own a CGC 6.5 I am all for a  annual increase of 200% to 300% but that is not realistic at all. I could be wrong maybe some years it will go up 25% to 50% but not every year that is for sure.

There has rarely ever been a collectible (that is already expensive I am not talking about a 5$ thing that moves up to 15$ that there are plenty off) that has increased in value so much over the course of a single year. It is simply not the norm.

Edited September 17, 2017 by SC22

[Ryanfromottawa]

2 hours ago, SC22 said:

I don't think we are at that point yet in lower grades to mid grade (5.0 and lower) at 10k per point. Maybe copies with no marvel chipping at all yes.

As for before the ''stampede'' has that not already happened during the last year and now prices are at new normal's for each grade. I don't think we will be seen such intense increases of 200% to 300% for a long while maybe never again (I don't see this happening more than once every 10 to 15 years if at all). We may just go back to the ''normal'' annual increases of 5% to 10% (could be a little more certain years).

I own a CGC 6.5 I am all for a  annual increase of 200% to 300% but that is not realistic at all. I could be wrong maybe some years it will go up 25% to 50% but not every year that is for sure.

There has rarely ever been a collectible (that is already expensive I am not talking about a 5$ thing that moves up to 15$ that there are plenty off) that has increased in value so much over the course of a single year. It is simply not the norm.

I recon that if marvel ever gets the movie rights back to the fantastic four ,,, the same thing will happen with ff1 as it did with af15 this year

[SC22]

56 minutes ago, Ryanfromottawa said:

I recon that if marvel ever gets the movie rights back to the fantastic four ,,, the same thing will happen with ff1 as it did with af15 this year

Could be I have no idea. Only time will tell. But FF1 is a major key that has fallen back. Great cover great historic book and great series. I don't own one maybe one day I will pull the trigger and buy a mid grade FF1 (as long as it does not get to the point where I just don't want to spend that type of money).

Edited September 17, 2017 by SC22

[lou_fine]

21 hours ago, comicquant said:

On 9/16/2017 at 10:10 AM, lou_fine said:

 

On second thought here, you guys are all so gullible and would believe almost anything.  By the way, I got some swampland to sell you in Florida. 

A likely story and sounds like a lot of and bull to me.  Makes it sound like these sales have to be manually entered by Vincent one by one at a time, instead of simply being done through an electronic download in this day and age of computers and high tech data transfers.  Even so, are we really expected to believe that Vincent would remember to include a sale of Actual Romances #1 for $27 and yet at the same time, inadvertently omit the AF 15 sale for $57K. 

I believe Jay's confirmation back to us now only gives even more credence to my initial theory:

The only reason for this sale to now be included as part of the GPA stats (albeit it 6 months after the fact) is due to the persistent and hard investigative work of the board members here and the fact that we caught Vincent with his shorts down around his ankles. 

 

My response was sarcasm at its worst I guess...  I too think its probably a load but thats the story we've been told.  Unfortunately I think gpa's prices are certainly cherry picked, but we all still use it so...  

Actually, if you re-read my post, it was really meant in a sarcastic tone and to bring a bit of levity to the situation. 

In this particular case, I actually do believe Vincent's explanation  , as it would not make any sense at all for them to exclude a huge record setting sale such as this since it would definitely be a critical and game-changing data point in the upward momentum for this book in the GPA trend line.  I am just surprised that it took an email from Jay for them to spot this omission, especially since it has been discussed for the longest while here on the boards.

I guess it shows you how much attention is paid to what we say on the boards here........zilch, nada, none at all. 

[Glassman10]

I'm sometimes reminded of a review of a high end resort on the tip of Maui in Hana where the "Ranchers breakfast" was $23.00.

. It said "You are the cow, you will be milked"

[LOC Collectibles]

I owned a 3.0 c/ow copy that presented well for the grade that I sold in late February of this year. Had it priced at $12k (just under gpa at the time) and didn't even get a whisper from any buyers. Not even tire kicker type offers. I finally sold it to a larger dealer for $11500. When I saw what some were selling for at auction not long after that it made me question where the demand was coming from.

[alexgross.com]

23 hours ago, Aman619 said:

As to the value one gets from GPA being less than one expects, as we have discussed many times here, which newer posters may not have read, GPA is a concept that works better or worse depending on what types of comics prices one is hoping to research.  GPA effectiveness is limited by many real world roadblocks... but does the best it can.  

They can only include prices they are allowed to.  Comiclink has made it very clear that they choose to not work with GPA, preferring to keep their sales close to the vest.  Frankly I think they should share all auction and exchange sales that they currently choose to remain public by leaving them listed as Sale Pending.  Anything they want to hide that they currently take down asap can remain private.  

Many dealers will send them data, but have proven to be less than totally inclusive, cherry picking what sales they include. GPA can only try to convince the owners of the sales data to share 100% of their sales so that there is transparency, or they must choose to disallow all of that dealers data.

and as Bob pointed out, while GPA has digital data grabbing systems in place for auction house and dealers, this applies only to those dealers who maintain solid sales tracking and complete data records digitally.  Many many dealers still use pieces of paper and their memories.. for these dealers the chore of reporting data can take days and is put off for months.

basically mots of us have learned what books GPA is perfectly useful to research.  Books that trade often on the sites that report to them enough for a trend line to develop. After that, you just have to do your own research.  I think it's well worth the ten bucks a month for what they can and do report accurately.

 

i wish it were better. i wish the market was totally transparent. I wish. A lot of things that are just not possible given reality. 

so, public auction results, like those of comiclink auctions, are proprietary? gpa is not permitted by law to include those in it's results if comiclink does not agree? 

[Sweet Lou 14]

18 minutes ago, www.alexgross.com said:

so, public auction results, like those of comiclink auctions, are proprietary? gpa is not permitted by law to include those in it's results if comiclink does not agree? 

I think what he's saying is that GPA doesn't have the resources to get all that data without help, which puts them at the mercy of the dealers to provide the data in a more easily ingestible format.

It really wouldn't be that much of a technical challenge for GPA to get the data themselves, but then I don't know anything about how they're staffed and how much R&D budget their membership revenue allows them to expend.

[Sweet Lou 14]

Just now, Sweet Lou 14 said:

I think what he's saying is that GPA doesn't have the resources to get all that data without help, which puts them at the mercy of the dealers to provide the data in a more easily ingestible format.

It really wouldn't be that much of a technical challenge for GPA to get the data themselves, but then I don't know anything about how they're staffed and how much R&D budget their membership revenue allows them to expend.

Well, maybe that's not what he's saying.  But it still might be the reality of the situation.