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Mask Comics actual pricing
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805 posts in this topic

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?  hm  :p

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

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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.  :wishluck:

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.  :flipbait:  :takeit:

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55 minutes ago, lou_fine said:

how confident are you guys that it would actually sell for more than $45K

Heck if I know, I'd hate to see the book defaced and turned into something like this hit 5....  Just saying that it seems more likely this is someone's plan rather than that people don't care about purple labels anymore.  

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'd bet its probably a good candidate for a CT scraping scheme (but again not advocating for it, just calling it like it is.  I hate hate hate that CGC allows this, thereby encouraging destruction of books, and that people let themselves fall for it.)

image.png.7a78b0aa0341b54702f25f0f953710da.png

Edited by szav
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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.  (shrug)

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.  hm

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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. 

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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.  (shrug)

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.  hm  

 

Edited by lou_fine
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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.  (shrug)

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.  hm  

 

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. 

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7 hours ago, Ryan. said:

It's scraping, not scrapping. 

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

 

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.  :gossip:

Sounds as though you and I both view the collecting of comic books as a hobby to be enjoyed. (thumbsu  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. :p 

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.  :devil:

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

Edited by lou_fine
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8 minutes ago, lou_fine said:

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

 

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.  :gossip:

Sounds as though you and I both view the collecting of comic books as a hobby to be enjoyed. (thumbsu  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. :p 

As such, I would much rather prefer a grading system whereby the book needs to be graded only once and done.  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.  :devil:

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

Okay so I was mistaken in saying that CGC enacted any particular internal policy with regards to accepting color scraped comics as universal labels. However, as you detailed, CGC has certainly been, at least indirectly, complicit in the culture of deforming comics (among other things). I agree with you on that. 

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2 minutes ago, Ryan. said:

Okay so I was mistaken in saying that CGC enacted any particular internal policy with regards to accepting color scraped comics as universal labels. However, as you detailed, CGC has certainly been, at least indirectly, complicit in the culture of deforming comics (among other things). I agree with you on that. 

Yes, in absolute full agreement with you here.  (thumbsu

Sadly, although CGC has most definitely done a lot of good for both this hobby and marketplace, there are some shall we say unfortunate policies or business decisions which they have taken that are not really benefitting the purists or long term comic book collectors who are more interested in the collecting aspect of the hobby, as opposed to the monetary aspect of the marketplace.  :(

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1 hour ago, lou_fine said:

Yes, in absolute full agreement with you here.  (thumbsu

Sadly, although CGC has most definitely done a lot of good for both this hobby and marketplace, there are some shall we say unfortunate policies or business decisions which they have taken that are not really benefitting the purists or long term comic book collectors who are more interested in the collecting aspect of the hobby, as opposed to the monetary aspect of the marketplace.  :(

What they should have done and what I suspect they may still Eventually do is just have a policy change for purple label books that have color touch only, and no other restorative work.  And that is to just give them blue labels and treat the CTed areas like they would stains and grade accordingly, and still notate CT on the label, and maybe note whether it’s professional or amateur.

This way they don’t encourage book destruction, and they still get money from all the books that would be sent in to get regraded, probably more than they get now from people who opt for the scraping.  And people/the market  could still decide how much CT bothered them.

Edited by szav
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Well, looks like the Mask Comics are still running red hot as this copy here of Mask 2 sold for $8,300:  :applause:

https://comiclink.com/auctions/item.asp?back=%2FAuctions%2Fdefault.asp%3FFocused%3D1%26x%3D47%26y%3D17%26pg%3D120%23Item_1427178&id=1427178&itemType=0#detail

RADB97B5202091_124646.jpg

Then again, maybe this is a bit of a slight decrease when compared to stated recent CL auction results of $5,155 for a CGC 1.8 copy and also a CGC 4.0 graded copy for $16,250.  (shrug)

Edited by lou_fine
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:bump:

Looks like it's been awhile since the last posting on this thread here.  :taptaptap:

Is this a sign of a slight cooling or pause in the Mask Comics marketplace as this CGC 3.0 graded copy sold for $7,800 or slightly less than what an equivalent CGC 3.0 graded copy of Mask 2 had sold for back in the CL Auction last Fall:  hm  (shrug)

https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/mask-comics-1-rural-home-1945-cgc-gd-vg-30-off-white-to-white-pages/a/7239-92061.s?ic4=ListView-ShortDescription-071515

lf?set=path%5B2%2F3%2F3%2F0%2F4%2F23304446%5D&call=url%5Bfile%3Aproduct.chain%5D

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1 hour ago, lou_fine said:

Is this a sign of a slight cooling or pause in the Mask Comics marketplace as

Bit of a drop vs the 3.0 that went for 11.4K and the 4.5 that went for 16.9k, but 7800 for a 3.0 of a book that was 1/10th that price a few years ago is still pretty amazing.

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7 hours ago, ThothAmon said:

I was interested to see if this book or the Terrific Comics 5 in same grade would finish higher. Was surprised that the Mask won the day by a sizable 2k margin. 
 

798294FB-2396-40ED-B7A2-4A8C2A021CD4.png

Well, if you was doing a straight comparison between the Mask 1 and the Terrific 5, than that indeed is a definite shocker in the relative auction results between these 2 classic cover books.  :whatthe:  (thumbsu

Though it would seem to be a low price on the Mask 1 relative to recent sales, than that Terrific 5 must have been an absolute steal at only $6,300 or $1,500 less than the equivalent graded copy of Mask 1.   :luhv:   :takeit:

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