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Coverless, wraps or single pages in CGC holders thread
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63 posts in this topic

With the escalating prices of our beloved Golden Age comics, it is starting to become more common to see coverless, wraps or single pages slabbed, especially with pieces of BIG key comics. I would imagine that it's easier to sell once the item is verified as well. Having them in holders also affords the collector a peak at the interior and therefore hopefully makes posting them here fun for fellow boardies to see glimpse of interiors of books that they may not have seen before. So …. post away and share those slabbed incomplete comics. I know this thread won't be everyone's cup-of-tea, but I hope some of you enjoy it! (thumbsu

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1 hour ago, GreatCaesarsGhost said:

I posted on this elsewhere, so if this sounds familiar to anyone, there’s a good reason for that.

since I cannot open my encapsulated Cap 1, the possession of a slabbed page creates a synergistic effect that enhances the pleasure of ownership 

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Excellent page!

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2 hours ago, Chicago Boy said:

Awesome x 2. !!  I used to have the same Action 1 page but it wasn’t in as nice condition. 

I wish it was Action 1 page! Just a lame page from Superman 1. :sorry:

Edited by lhcomics
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Pieces like these were undervalued for a long time and I am not sure how I feel about their values right now. 

I am not saying that the loose pages should be more or less than they are.  But I find it strange and slightly disturbing that the value of books completed by marrying parts together seems increasingly outstripped by the value of the sum of their parts sold separately.  

I have boxes of incomplete books and while I don't know everything that's in them I do recognize from time to time that something on ebay which is also incomplete would complete what I have.  But when I look at the price for the incomplete piece it is often so high that it's well above what I figure I could get if I married that piece to the incomplete book I have.  And this has been confirmed to me when I've asked people what they would pay for XYZ book with a married cf or whatever.

The Cap 1 sold recently which was cobbled together from loose bits may well have taken years, and no small bit of luck, to put together.  Not so long ago it would have been considered a rare feat and appreciated as such.

But it sold for an amount that is clearly less than the seller would have gotten if, instead of completing the book, he'd sold off the married pieces individually -- or even if he'd cut it up into still more incomplete pieces -- and sold them all separately.   

Helf, the completed Cap 1 sold for just a teensy bit less than an incomplete Cap 1 sold for just a couple months ago, which was missing massive chunks from the cover and first pages.  Is the desire for a book to be "pure" (as close as possible to its original state and not "manipulated" to be better or complete), is that desire so intense that we value an incomplete book more than a complete one, just because the completed book was made so by adding in parts from another book??

The intensity of opposition by some collectors to "married" pages has gotten out of balance with the intensity of desire for "any piece" of a key book.  

Edited by bluechip
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7 hours ago, bluechip said:

Pieces like these were undervalued for a long time and I am not sure how I feel about their values right now. 

I am not saying that the loose pages should be more or less than they are.  But I find it strange and slightly disturbing that the value of books completed by marrying parts together seems increasingly outstripped by the value of the sum of their parts sold separately.  

I have boxes of incomplete books and while I don't know everything that's in them I do recognize from time to time that something on ebay which is also incomplete would complete what I have.  But when I look at the price for the incomplete piece it is often so high that it's well above what I figure I could get if I married that piece to the incomplete book I have.  And this has been confirmed to me when I've asked people what they would pay for XYZ book with a married cf or whatever.

The Cap 1 sold recently which was cobbled together from loose bits may well have taken years, and no small bit of luck, to put together.  Not so long ago it would have been considered a rare feat and appreciated as such.

But it sold for an amount that is clearly less than the seller would have gotten if, instead of completing the book, he'd sold off the married pieces individually -- or even if he'd cut it up into still more incomplete pieces -- and sold them all separately.   

Helf, the completed Cap 1 sold for just a teensy bit less than an incomplete Cap 1 sold for just a couple months ago, which was missing massive chunks from the cover and first pages.  Is the desire for a book to be "pure" (as close as possible to its original state and not "manipulated" to be better or complete), is that desire so intense that we value an incomplete book more than a complete one, just because the completed book was made so by adding in parts from another book??

The intensity of opposition by some collectors to "married" pages has gotten out of balance with the intensity of desire for "any piece" of a key book.  

I watched that “cobbled together” Cap 1 sell, and thought seriously about bidding.  I agree it went low.  Although if given a choice I’d take an original book, I don’t mind “married” parts as long as they are all originals; i.e., not reprints or color reproductions.

 When I first saw the practice of pages being sold separately, I thought it was crazy.  But I have found that in the right circumstances, they can be fun to own.  I wouldn’t think there would be much enthusiasm out there for pages that aren’t from keys, but what do I know.

Having said all that, the idea of tearing books apart just to sell them by the page makes me a bit squeamish

Hey, bluechip, was that your Tec 27 page set that was recently on eBay?  I thought that was a marvelous piece of history

 

Edited by GreatCaesarsGhost
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8 hours ago, GreatCaesarsGhost said:

I watched that “cobbled together” Cap 1 sell, and thought seriously about bidding.  I agree it went low.  Although if given a choice I’d take an original book, I don’t mind “married” parts as long as they are all originals; i.e., not reprints or color reproductions.

 When I first saw the practice of pages being sold separately, I thought it was crazy.  But I have found that in the right circumstances, they can be fun to own.  I wouldn’t think there would be much enthusiasm out there for pages that aren’t from keys, but what do I know.

Having said all that, the idea of tearing books apart just to sell them by the page makes me a bit squeamish

Hey, bluechip, was that your Tec 27 page set that was recently on eBay?  I thought that was a marvelous piece of history

 

I have never sold an individual page but I might consider doing so with something if it's already separated.   I have some books like that which were trimmed on all sides so the pages are already separated.  Some people did that back in the day to put them in bound volumes but a lot of people seemed to keep them as a pile of separate pages.  Like this Bat 1 pictured.   I have seen many key books trimmed like this, right to the borders, as if some kid was needing to have his favorite books fit inside a particular box.

s-l1600.jpg

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These are cool to see and I would appreciate owning one of these pages.  But the questions raised above are certainly worth pondering.  It is unfortunate to me to think that with the parts being worth more than the whole, we will see more rough/incomplete books cut apart and sold.  Although I can't say if I was looking at an opportunity to make thousands I wouldn't also separate one.  My question goes to the process of separating.  It would seem to me that the act of separating the individual pages apart, ie cutting a wrap in half, is itself a type of trimming.  Shouldn't this be designated as such?  Or perhaps it is simply implied, given that only a single page is being graded.  

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35 minutes ago, Illustrious said:

I used to own complete coverless copies of TEC #29 and Action #10, now the only GA coverless I have left is this:

 

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Coincidentally I recall this is one of the books for which I have a front cover and never found a coverless until recently, when they've been priced much higher than I would expect to get for both the cover and the book married together.

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