Mask Comics actual pricing 10 10

[dem1138]

56 minutes ago, szav said:

Somehow I suspect anyone who buys this would be planning to do the CT scrape thing believing the CT is super tiny like I believe it was on a lot of Church books.  Haven’t there been a few where this was done and the book still comes back 8.0-9.0?

Im not advocating For  this, just saying I bet that’s what would happen, and I wouldn’t necessarily jump to the conclusion that the stigma of purple labels is going away any time soon.

@october if you were tempted at 45k why not scrape the CT off yourself (which is obviously why these bids are so high) and then see what you could sell for in a blue holder and maximize the profit for yourself?  I'd imagine you could sell for even higher directly here on the boards.

[Ryan.]

Oh God. Don't do it! 

[Ryan.]

2 hours ago, lou_fine said:

Not sure about the BB 105 catching up so soon which I personally think is an absolutely gorgeous si-fi cover, but I would really expect the Suspense 8 with the classic L.B. Cole spider cover to have a much better shot at getting there first.     

Maybe. I like Contact 12 better than all of them 

[lou_fine]

8 minutes ago, dem1138 said:

@october if you were tempted at 45k why not scrape the CT off yourself (which is obviously why these bids are so high) and then see what you could sell for in a blue holder and maximize the profit for yourself?  I'd imagine you could sell for even higher directly here on the boards.

 

1 minute ago, Ryan. said:

Oh God. Don't do it! 

+1

In definite agreement with you here as I would certainly not want to disfigure and destroy an absolutely gorgeous and beautiful looking copy of this book here.   

[comicjack]

5 minutes ago, Ryan. said:

Maybe. I like Contact 12 better than all of them 

I'm with you but some really don't like it they are just weird 

[piper]

18 minutes ago, Ryan. said:

Maybe. I like Contact 12 better than all of them 

Contact 12 is my favourite LB Cole cover by a mile.

[lou_fine]

27 minutes ago, comicjack said:

34 minutes ago, Ryan. said:

Maybe. I like Contact 12 better than all of them 

I'm with you but some really don't like it they are just weird 

Well, I guess it's really a case of to each their own then.  

Whenever I see a copy of Contact 12, I almost immediately think of the triple set of Captain Aero 26, Captain Flight 11, and Contact 12 because they all seem to have the same artistic style with the L.B. Cole classic si-fi cover artwork.  

Now, if you are referring to Contact 12 more specifically on its own, I personally would much rather have a copy of Amazing Mystery Funnies Vol 2 #1 since it is a much earlier Centaur and also a much much rarer book to boot with a grand total of only a meagre 5 copies graded and slabbed to date so far:    

 

[Ryan.]

5 minutes ago, lou_fine said:

Whenever I see a copy of Contact 12, I almost immediately think of the triple set of Captain Aero 26, Captain Flight 11, and Contact 12 

That's funny, I do too. 

[october]

1 hour ago, Ryan. said:

Oh God. Don't do it! 

Never. 

[adamstrange]

3 hours ago, lou_fine said:

Speaking of Mask #2, does anyboy here know if there are really 2 different editions of this book here or is this one of those intentional errors placed into the guide by Overstreet for copyright purposes?  

Just wondering since every copy that I have seen slabbed says that it is the Fall 1945 Edition of the book and have yet to remember seeing the regular #2 scarce and supposedly First edition of the book that's listed in the Overstreet Guide.    

CGC doesn't show it and neither does Grand Comics Database.  Smells like copyright trap to me.

[The-Collector]

4 hours ago, szav said:

Somehow I suspect anyone who buys this would be planning to do the CT scrape thing believing the CT is super tiny like I believe it was on a lot of Church books.  Haven’t there been a few where this was done and the book still comes back 8.0-9.0?

Im not advocating For  this, just saying I bet that’s what would happen, and I wouldn’t necessarily jump to the conclusion that the stigma of purple labels is going away any time soon.

This. 

[lou_fine]

6 hours ago, dem1138 said:

@october if you were tempted at 45k why not scrape the CT off yourself (which is obviously why these bids are so high) and then see what you could sell for in a blue holder and maximize the profit for yourself?  I'd imagine you could sell for even higher directly here on the boards.

 

3 hours ago, The-Collector said:

7 hours ago, szav said:

Somehow I suspect anyone who buys this would be planning to do the CT scrape thing believing the CT is super tiny like I believe it was on a lot of Church books.  Haven’t there been a few where this was done and the book still comes back 8.0-9.0?

Im not advocating For  this, just saying I bet that’s what would happen, and I wouldn’t necessarily jump to the conclusion that the stigma of purple labels is going away any time soon.

This. 

Considering that it is an easily recognizable Church copy of Mask 1, how confident are you guys that it would actually sell for more than $45K if sitting in a much lower graded blue slab with the amateur color touched area(s) now clearly and visibly scrapped away?    

After all, have we forgotten about the Church copy of Boy Comics 17 which started out as a CGC 4.0 graded blue copy which then morphed itself into a CGC 7.5 graded blue copy, before making its final transformation into a CGC 9.0 graded blue copy at which point it became unsellable and had to be pulled from the auction due to its heightened and very public notoriety.    

Edited September 17, 2020 by lou_fine

[The-Collector]

5 minutes ago, lou_fine said:

 

Considering that it is an easily recognizable Church copy of Mask 1, how confident are you guys that it would actually sell for more than $45K if sitting in a much lower graded blue slab with the amateur color touched area(s) now clearly and visibly scrapped away?    

I think it effects the price some. But you get a return for taking the risk of doing the CT removal and getting the blue label. This isn't as recognisable a book but it lends some credence to this point. Slight ct on a 9.0 Strange Suspense Stories 19 originally sold for $3120. 10 months later the same book sells in the same venue as an 8.5 blue for $11,400.

 

https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/strange-suspense-stories-19-charlton-1954-cgc-apparent-vf-nm-90-slight-b-1-off-white-to-white-pages/a/7211-95264.s?ic4=GalleryView-ShortDescription-071515

https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/strange-suspense-stories-19-charlton-1954-cgc-vf-85-off-white-to-white-pages/a/7231-92073.s?ic4=GalleryView-ShortDescription-071515

[lou_fine]

6 minutes ago, The-Collector said:

Slight ct on a 9.0 Strange Suspense Stories 19 sold for $3120. 10 months later the same book sells in the same venue as an 8.5 blue for $11,400.

When I see absolutely irrationally exuberant auction results like these, it makes me wish that I was the lucky owner of the CGC 9.4 highest graded copy of this book.  

Especially when there are obviously some very deep pocketed bidders out there with bottomless pockets who have absolutely no sense at all about the value of money and are more than happy to throw as much of it your way as possible.    

[lou_fine]

49 minutes ago, szav said:

One thing that's always been sort of puzzling to me is CGCs assigned grade on restored books.  Sometimes it'll be an apparent 6.0 that looks like a 9.4, but there's also purple label 6.0s that look like 6.0s...

  It doesn't always make sense and you don't see a ton of restored GA books with super high grades.  I assume it means for the Mask #1 Church copy that the book is basically flawless since its a purple label 9.6 but who knows. 

I have always found it to be more of the former than the latter in terms of restored books generally presenting much nicer from a strict visula point of view as compared to their assigned grade.   Then again, this might be due to the fact that we don't have the actual book in hand and the graders probably still tend to view the part of the book with the restored work as a defect when it comes to the actual grade which is something which they should probably not be doing since the PLOD label is already there to account for the restoration.  

From a pyschological rationalization point of view, graders are probably more tempted to select the lower grade if they are trying to decide between 2 condition levels on a restored book.  On the other hand, graders are probably more tempted to select the higher graded if they are trying to decide between 2 condition levels on a pedigree book, especially if it's a Church copy.  After all, grading is really still more of a subjective art, as opposed to an exact science.  

[Ryan.]

5 hours ago, szav said:

 I hate hate hate that CGC allows this, thereby encouraging destruction of books

In my opinion this is the worst policy decision CGC has made, and the full negative effects of this decision won't be seen for years as more and more books are destroyed. 

[october]

7 hours ago, lou_fine said:

 

Considering that it is an easily recognizable Church copy of Mask 1, how confident are you guys that it would actually sell for more than $45K if sitting in a much lower graded blue slab with the amateur color touched area(s) now clearly and visibly scrapped away?    

Not confident enough to permanently deface one of my favorite comics in order to possibly make a few more bucks....on something I'm not planning on selling anyway. 

[lou_fine]

15 hours ago, Ryan. said:

21 hours ago, szav said:

 I hate hate hate that CGC allows this, thereby encouraging destruction of books

In my opinion this is the worst policy decision CGC has made, and the full negative effects of this decision won't be seen for years as more and more books are destroyed. 

Not sure what you mean here as I believe CGC did not make a specific policy decision with respect to the scrapping of books in order to remove color touch?  

Based upon both current and past (i.e. prior to CGC) grading standards, I believe that any part of a book where the color is no longer showing, whether intentionally scrapped away or simply worn out naturally over time, is treated as a defect and downgraded accordingly.  Are you suggesting that the CGC graders should be making an arbitrary decision to try to determine if the loss of color from a book was done intentionally or not, and if it is concluded to be the former, than the loss of color defect should be much greater than the same loss of color defect if it was concluded as having taken place naturally over time?  Or are you suggesting that if it is concluded that the loss of color was due to intentional scrapping done by somebody, then they should refuse to grade the book, similar to what they have done with those extensively restored books from IGB?  I believe this would not work because CGC would have a hard time determining with 100% confidence the cause of the color loss and as we all know, CGC does not like to guess.  

The incorrect policy decision that CGC actually made which is encouraging the destruction of books was made some 20+ plus ago when they came up with the hairbrained idea of implementing a multi-color label system.  As Borock himself said when he tried to eliminate this system back in 2005, although this was initially done with all good intentions to allow collectors to more easily identify the restored books from the unrestored books, it had unfortuantely resulted in the unintended consequences of severly stigmatizing the restored books.  Instead of actually paying attention to the type and extent of the restoration work that had been done to a book as hoped for, collectors simply saw them all through the same dreaded PLOD lenses and shunned them all because that was just so much easier to do.  

My personal belief is that if CGC had gone with the uni-color label system while incorporating both the current 10-point condition grading system in conjunction with a 10-point restoration rating sytem as some collectors were asking for at the time, there would be a whole lot less destruction of books and gaming of the system that seems to be so prevalent nowadays.    

 

Edited September 18, 2020 by lou_fine

[Ryan.]

8 hours ago, lou_fine said:

Not sure what you mean here as I believe CGC did not make a specific policy decision with respect to the scrapping of books in order to remove color touch?  

Based upon both current and past (i.e. prior to CGC) grading standards, I believe that any part of a book where the color is no longer showing, whether intentionally scrapped away or simply worn out naturally over time, is treated as a defect and downgraded accordingly.  Are you suggesting that the CGC graders should be making an arbitrary decision to try to determine if the loss of color from a book was done intentionally or not, and if it is concluded to be the former, than the loss of color defect should be much greater than the same loss of color defect if it was concluded as having taken place naturally over time?  Or are you suggesting that if it is concluded that the loss of color was due to intentional scrapping done by somebody, then they should refuse to grade the book, similar to what they have done with those extensively restored books from IGB?  I believe this would not work because CGC would have a hard time determining with 100% confidence the cause of the color loss and as we all know, CGC does not like to guess.  

The incorrect policy decision that CGC actually made which is encouraging the destruction of books was made some 20+ plus ago when they came up with the hairbrained idea of implementing a multi-color label system.  As Borock himself said when he tried to eliminate this system back in 2005, although this was initially done with all good intentions to allow collectors to more easily identify the restored books from the unrestored books, it had unfortuantely resulted in the unintended consequences of severly stigmatizing the restored books.  Instead of actually paying attention to the type and extent of the restoration work that had been done to a book as hoped for, collectors simply saw them all through the same dreaded PLOD lenses and shunned them all because that was just so much easier to do.  

My personal belief is that if CGC had gone with the uni-color label system while incorporating both the current 10-point condition grading system in conjunction with a 10-point restoration rating sytem as some collectors were asking for at the time, there would be a whole lot less destruction of books and gaming of the system that seems to be so prevalent nowadays.    

 

It's scraping, not scrapping. 

CGC owns CCS, if I'm not mistaken. CCS offers color touch removal via the intentional destruction of specific sections of a comic, which are then handed off to CGC for grading. None of these decisions are made in a vacuum. 

[lou_fine]

7 hours ago, Ryan. said:

It's scraping, not scrapping. 

Most definitely my bad here in terms of the incorrect spelling of the word.  

 

7 hours ago, Ryan. said:

CGC owns CCS, if I'm not mistaken. CCS offers color touch removal via the intentional destruction of specific sections of a comic, which are then handed off to CGC for grading. None of these decisions are made in a vacuum. 

Yes, you would be mistaken here as both CGC and CCS are owned by CCG (i.e. Certified Collectibles Group) which also owns a whole slew of other authentication, grading, and conservation companies in the other collectibles fields and has been around long before CGC first opened their doors.  

Sounds as though you and I both view the collecting of comic books as a hobby to be enjoyed.   From a corporate point of view though and which I do understand, CCG views the collecting of comic books more from a business point of view where what rerally matters is both the top line and the bottom line.  

As such, I would much rather prefer a grading system whereby a book needs to be graded only once and done forever more.  From CCG's point of view though, they need to come up with various machinations through twists and turns in their grading systems over time whether it be changes to their grading standards, restoration definitions, labelling changes, pedigree designations, etc. along with creating other additional revenue streams such as CPR, unrestoring of books, restoring of books, signatures, etc. such that collectors will continue to resubmit the exact same book back to them multiple times on a hopefully never ending continuous basis.  As others had said here in the past, we need only have taken a look at what they had done previously in the other collectibles field to have seen what was coming in terms of conflict of interest when they brought out Matt's Classics Incorporated to form CCS.  

Like you correctly stated above, none of these decisions are made in a vacuum.  

Edited September 18, 2020 by lou_fine