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It would be Criminal not to show your CRIME comics!
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A question for all of the Crime comics aficionados here since I personally don't own a single crime comic in my collection yet.

A fellow collector friend of mine asked me the other week if there was much collector interest in the following crime comic book or not since it was made up of mostly reprints or rebound issues:

bes13.4a.jpg

I think he was trying to figure out if it was one of those worthless Blazing Comics type of rebound books or something that might have some actual value like the EC Annuals. I told him that I was probably the worst person to ask, but since the book was sitting there only in the $20+ range, it was most likely the former as opposed to the latter.  :gossip:

Now that it's sitting in the $200+ range and starting to approach condition guide price, maybe I was wrong and might have pointed him in the wrong direction.  Especially since there's apparently only 2 copies of this book graded, with this being the highest graded copy and the other copy way further down at only CGC 3.5.  Or is this simply another case of a book that really has no collector interest and hence the reason why nobody bothers to slab their copies?  hm  (shrug)

Edited by lou_fine
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I would have jumped all over it for that price or even tripple. It is not a rare book but one you don't see every day. Rarely over 4.0. Best I've found was maybe a 5.0. Problem it is a Crime book. Always and probably forever the poor cousin to the Horror genre. I love horror the most but also love crime books as well. So many great ones that until recently, get little notice other than their covers. This is a bit of an oddity and in my opinion should be in every crime fan's collection. Real gritty and violent stories if you happen to look past the cover alone. Most are lower grade and probably not worth grading. That one is an exception grade wise. A cool book but as they say "Crime Does Not Pay"...

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The first sixty issues of CDNP are renown for violent covers and stories, but only a few garner big bucks.  Like RM, I woulda jumped all over that book myself in raw condition for an easy C-Note. 

AFA crime books in general, I have boxes of pre code crime, including the full run of "Wanted".  A good investment right now might be the L.B. Cole covers in Star Publication crime books (All Famous Police Cases, All Famous Crime Cases, Thrilling Crime Cases, etc.).

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4 hours ago, lou_fine said:

A question for all of the Crime comics aficionados here since I personally don't own a single crime comic in my collection yet.

A fellow collector friend of mine asked me the other week if there was much collector interest in the following crime comic book or not since it was made up of mostly reprints or rebound issues:

bes13.4a.jpg

I think he was trying to figure out if it was one of those worthless Blazing Comics type of rebound books or something that might have some actual value like the EC Annuals. I told him that I was probably the worst person to ask, but since the book was sitting there only in the $20+ range, it was most likely the former as opposed to the latter.  :gossip:

Now that it's sitting in the $200+ range and starting to approach condition guide price, maybe I was wrong and might have pointed him in the wrong direction.  Especially since there's apparently only 2 copies of this book graded, with this being the highest graded copy and the other copy way further down at only CGC 3.5.  Or is this simply another case of a book that really has no collector interest and hence the reason why nobody bothers to slab their copies?  hm  (shrug)

In fairness, it's a niche these days, but within that niche that's a book I'd jump on.

as an aside, of the six issues of Blazing, the first five have some awesome original content, including the Green Turtle, a Chinese superhero, drawn by a Chinese-American artist (name escapes me). There are lots of "#5's" out there with various books bound into the Blazing cover as a cache of these covers were discovered and used much later than original publication of the actual issue. The Blazing #5 with the correct, original content (Green Turtle, Black Buccaneer, Jun-Gal etc) is a Gerber 8 and is seen far less often than the ubiquitous #5's containing various different books of later publication date.

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On 3/9/2019 at 6:42 PM, Readcomix said:
On 3/9/2019 at 2:09 PM, lou_fine said:

A question for all of the Crime comics aficionados here since I personally don't own a single crime comic in my collection yet.

A fellow collector friend of mine asked me the other week if there was much collector interest in the following crime comic book or not since it was made up of mostly reprints or rebound issues:

bes13.4a.jpg

 

In fairness, it's a niche these days, but within that niche that's a book I'd jump on.

I text my friend last night and to my surprise he still sounded as though he was interested in the book even though it had now crossed over the $300 mark.  :whatthe:

I think he likes the fact that there are only 2 graded copies out there (for now at least as I told him) and this is the highest graded copy by a wide margin.

Maybe I'll contact him at the end of this week to see what happened and if he finally made up his mind in the end.  hm  :taptaptap:

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34 minutes ago, lou_fine said:

I text my friend last night and to my surprise he still sounded as though he was interested in the book even though it had now crossed over the $300 mark.  :whatthe:

I think he likes the fact that there are only 2 graded copies out there (for now at least as I told him) and this is the highest graded copy by a wide margin.

Maybe I'll contact him at the end of this week to see what happened and if he finally made up his mind in the end.  hm  :taptaptap:

Cool! Love to hear how it turns out.,it's a gorgeous hen's tooth! Love that date stamp, too.

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1 hour ago, Readcomix said:

Cool! Love to hear how it turns out.,it's a gorgeous hen's tooth! Love that date stamp, too.

At least you and I do.  (thumbsu

Maybe the graders consider it to be a defect and the book would have graded slightly higher without it. (shrug)

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10 minutes ago, Readcomix said:
13 minutes ago, lou_fine said:

At least you and I do.  (thumbsu

Maybe the graders consider it to be a defect and the book would have graded slightly higher without it. (shrug)

I thought they didn't ding for those?

Maybe they don't if it's below a certain grade or if it's part of a pedigree designation. (shrug)

I am not really that sure myself since I don't really follow all of the detailed grading nuances and changes that takes place over time.

All I know is that I would much rather prefer a Church book with the coded dates on the cover as opposed to one without the markings.  Ahhh........a Edgar Church copy!!!  :cloud9:

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On 3/9/2019 at 2:09 PM, lou_fine said:

A fellow collector friend of mine asked me the other week if there was much collector interest in the following crime comic book or not since it was made up of mostly reprints or rebound issues:

bes13.4a.jpg

 

On 3/9/2019 at 5:38 PM, Robot Man said:

I would have jumped all over it for that price or even tripple. It is not a rare book but one you don't see every day. Rarely over 4.0. Best I've found was maybe a 5.0. Problem it is a Crime book. Always and probably forever the poor cousin to the Horror genre. I love horror the most but also love crime books as well. So many great ones that until recently, get little notice other than their covers. This is a bit of an oddity and in my opinion should be in every crime fan's collection. Real gritty and violent stories if you happen to look past the cover alone. Most are lower grade and probably not worth grading. That one is an exception grade wise. A cool book but as they say "Crime Does Not Pay"...

 

On 3/9/2019 at 6:14 PM, fifties said:

The first sixty issues of CDNP are renown for violent covers and stories, but only a few garner big bucks.  Like RM, I woulda jumped all over that book myself in raw condition for an easy C-Note. 

 

On 3/9/2019 at 6:42 PM, Readcomix said:

In fairness, it's a niche these days, but within that niche that's a book I'd jump on.

 

7 hours ago, Readcomix said:

Cool! Love to hear how it turns out.,it's a gorgeous hen's tooth! Love that date stamp, too.

Greatly appreciate all of the feedback from everybody here on the boards with respect to this apparently HTF crime book.  :golfclap:

Since you wanted to hear how it turned out.  It's quite obvious that my friend did not get the book in the end as one of the boardies in the CC Event Auction thread just posted a scan of this book stating that he was the lucky winner of this book and the only book that he was really trying to acquire in this go round.  (thumbsu

I am 100% sure that my buddy must have dropped out well before the end of the auction for this particular book as it ended up going for $2,371 by the time it was all said and done.  :whatthe:  :whatthe: :whatthe:

 

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On 3/9/2019 at 5:38 PM, Robot Man said:

Problem it is a Crime book. Always and probably forever the poor cousin to the Horror genre. I love horror the most but also love crime books as well. So many great ones that until recently, get little notice other than their covers. .................................... A cool book but as they say "Crime Does Not Pay"...

Well, in some cases I would have to say that Crime Does Pay:

cri20.116a.jpg

Especially when this copy of Crime Mysteries #4 managed to fetch $7,400.  :whatthe:

Okay, I'll have to admit there's probably also a bit of horror on this cover with respect to the blood draining.  hm

Well, I guess it's the best of both worlds then.  (thumbsu

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