Official TMNT Speculation Thread 14 14

[lou_fine]

7 minutes ago, tvindy said:

13 minutes ago, lou_fine said:

No doubt realizing that I would pay a whopping $300 for his Action 1 instead of only a dime, let alone all of the other books, would surely be more than enough to have us both dancing for joy in the streets.

Um, is Action #1 listed by Overstreet as being worth $300 in 2020? 

Yes indeed, if you pick up the Facsimile copy of Overstreet #1 that was just released earlier this month.  

[TSwift25]

3 minutes ago, lou_fine said:

This is actually a very interesting comment and shows how much the comic book marketplace has changed over the decades.  

I still remember when I first started back in the mid-70's and looked at the guide prices and would hope for the day that I could sell some of my books for that kind of price. 

Now I look at the guide prices and just wish that I would be lucky enough to be able to pick up the vintage collectible books I want for anywhere close to those prices.  

I'm a "completionist" collector so I think OSPG is a great resource for the "gap" non-key issues in a run on well settled titles (like FF, Avengers, etc) but for hot books/keys "multiples of guide" has been a thing for at least 15 years now. It is amazing to see how much it's changed.

[tvindy]

1 minute ago, lou_fine said:

Yes indeed, if you pick up the Facsimile copy of Overstreet #1 that was just released earlier this month.  

Well, that's just evil.  But I guess your devil emoji shows that you already know that.

[lou_fine]

1 minute ago, tvindy said:

4 minutes ago, lou_fine said:

Yes indeed, if you pick up the Facsimile copy of Overstreet #1 that was just released earlier this month.  

Well, that's just evil.  But I guess your devil emoji shows that you already know that.

Well, I guess that's why you can't spell "devil" without having "evil" in there.  

[lou_fine]

23 hours ago, valiantman said:

On 9/24/2020 at 11:00 AM, lou_fine said:

It is rather obvious that there are some rather questionable speculators out there trying their best to falsely manipulate the price of this book.  Are you actually aware of any sale for this book in CGC 9.8 above the $70K mark that would warrant the $88K price estimate as it appears to me to be more of a computerized mathematical algorithm that was flagged and has now been manually corrected.    

It doesn't make any sense to try to manipulate the price of CGC 9.8 TMNT #1, since speculators don't exactly have a stack of them to sell.  A stack doesn't exist.

If any manipulation is working, it's on the third printings.  Dozens of sales have occurred recently, all at multiples of decades of pricing norms.

While there's an argument that if the top grade of the first printings could be manipulated, it would raise the values of all the other grades and printings... but that's a stretch.

Whoever would be "cashing in" on the manipulation of CGC 9.8 TMNT #1 pricing would have to have them in the first place.  That's even more unlikely.

Well, I guess I should have been a bit more direct here with respect to using the term "speculators", as I really meant players or particpants in the marketplace which definitely would also include dealers and auction houses.  

As another board member had posted in the AF 15 thread on the SA boards here:

On 5/9/2020 at 7:36 AM, www.alexgross.com said:

thanks. if all three are from the same source, given the outrageousness of at least one price in that sale (66k for a 35-40k book) i'd wait for data from other sources before drawing any conclusions. there are also numerous allegations of heritage playing games with final sale prices around the collector community. i hope the prices do go up as an owner of af15. but this is not enough data to draw any conclusions, imho.

Although you don't think it makes any sense to manipulate the price of a TMNT 1, it actually makes a whole ton of sense from a business point of view if you look at what actually happened in not only the TMNT 1 marketplace, but the entire early TMNT marketplace.  You simply need to think bigger and outside the box and look at the whole picture here.  

You take a book like a CGC 9.8 graded copy of TMNT 1 (with already 32 copies in this grade and almost a whopping 400 copies in CGC 9.0 and above) that had been selling in the mid to high $30K's, toss in a very high profile auction sale at $90K to get those crazed speculators all churned up and ready to shoot their load off and let's see what happens to the marketplace.  

Needless to say, the rabid speculators take notice right off the bat and the market for CGC 9.8 copies of TMNT 1 immediately spikes into the $50K+ range, with the earlier exact same $90K copy then selling a few short months later discreetly and off the radar through a non-auction sale with another company at a price point of $59K .  Not surprisingly, since a rising tide lifts all boats and with FOMO now in full play, we can see what has happened to the rest of the early TMNT marketplace during the past several months.  So, the trick is to think beyond just the one transaction and instead, think of lighting a fire under the entire marketplace and collecting all of the benefits going forward.  If this was the actual plan, all I can say is that it was planned and executed perfectly.    

If so, since it worked so well with the TMNT marketplace, why not do a rinse and repeat with the once red hot and now flailing AF 15 marketplace and see if we can change the negative sentiment that seems to have set in during the past year or so.  As mentioned above, voila and let's pay $66K for a book that had fallen back into a rut of $35K to $40K and see if it works again.  Interesting to note that the sentiment in the AF 15 marketplace has now seem to changed from negative to slight positive with prices on the increase finally once again since this outlying auction result of $66K.  

Sadly, it seems that this comic book hobby is now much more to do with the money and the books are often times just vehicles being used to generate this big money whether it be through the gaming of the grading system or through the price manipilation of the books themselves.    

[valiantman]

19 hours ago, lou_fine said:

Well, I guess I should have been a bit more direct here with respect to using the term "speculators", as I really meant players or particpants in the marketplace which definitely would also include dealers and auction houses.  

That would have helped.  I don't put dealers and auction houses in the "speculators" category, since they're not the ones paying $20,000 for Amazing Spider-Man #667 super-special-awesome-happy-terrific-variant or $200 for the latest virgin-variant-of-someone-just-introduced-who-has-no-history-except-being-a-knockoff-of-existing-characters-and-I-think-this-variant-will-be-worth-$20,000-soon-too.

Speculators are wannabes... and they'll use any ridiculous arguments out loud (and privately, to themselves, as they ignore all the books they bought that are failures) to convince themselves they're not just wannabes.

[pubmonkey]

Raphael one shot is creeping up. Last sale was $2200 up from $1800 one month previously. This book is very hard to find in 9.8. There are only 49 books in 9.8 out of 919 graded which represent 5% of the population. 

The oversized versions all seem to be doing very well in this market, especially in high grade. Here is a list of the original oversized comics from Mirage Studios 1984/1985:

TMNT #1 1st print

TMNT #1 2nd print

TMNT #1 3rd print

TMNT #2 1st print

TMNT #2 2nd print

TMNT #3 1st print

TMNT #3 NYCC 

TMNT #4 1st print

Raphael one shot 1st print

Fugitoid #1 (although this is larger than the others and could be considered a magazine)

 

[tvindy]

4 minutes ago, pubmonkey said:

Fugitoid #1 (although this is larger than the others and could be considered a magazine)

I think all the oversized ones are considered magazines, at least by CGC. When I sent in my TMNT #1 for grading, it was graded as a magazine.

[Ryan.]

Looks like that 6.5 with the Frank Miller sig sold for just over $10k. That gambit didn't pay off for the seller. I personally have no interest in that particular copy. 

[valiantman]

1 hour ago, Ryan. said:

Looks like that 6.5 with the Frank Miller sig sold for just over $10k. That gambit didn't pay off for the seller. I personally have no interest in that particular copy. 

The Frank Miller signature only cost about $100 to $150 and the last blue label CGC 7.0 sold for $9,600 this month.

"Didn't pay off" implies some kind of loss, but they're several hundred dollars ahead.

[Ryan.]

2 hours ago, valiantman said:

The Frank Miller signature only cost about $100 to $150 and the last blue label CGC 7.0 sold for $9,600 this month.

"Didn't pay off" implies some kind of loss, but they're several hundred dollars ahead.

Your position is that, if this was a blue label, as opposed to a yellow label with a barely relevant signature across the cover, it would have sold for less or the same? 

Opportunity cost is to what I am referring but I feel like you already knew that 

[valiantman]

1 hour ago, Ryan. said:

3 hours ago, valiantman said:

The Frank Miller signature only cost about $100 to $150 and the last blue label CGC 7.0 sold for $9,600 this month.

"Didn't pay off" implies some kind of loss, but they're several hundred dollars ahead.

Your position is that, if this was a blue label, as opposed to a yellow label with a barely relevant signature across the cover, it would have sold for less or the same? 

Opportunity cost is to what I am referring but I feel like you already knew that 

I don't know what price it might have pulled in a CGC 6.5 blue label, but a CGC 7.0 sold this month for less --- so I don't see how you can declare the higher price on the CGC 6.5 SS a "gambit that didn't pay off".

[valiantman]

1 hour ago, Ryan. said:

3 hours ago, valiantman said:

The Frank Miller signature only cost about $100 to $150 and the last blue label CGC 7.0 sold for $9,600 this month.

"Didn't pay off" implies some kind of loss, but they're several hundred dollars ahead.

Your position is that, if this was a blue label, as opposed to a yellow label with a barely relevant signature across the cover, it would have sold for less or the same? 

Opportunity cost is to what I am referring but I feel like you already knew that 

I don't know what price it might have pulled in a CGC 6.5 blue label, but a CGC 7.0 sold this month for less --- so I don't see how you can declare the higher price on the CGC 6.5 SS a "gambit that didn't pay off".

[Ryan.]

The seller relisted, and then immediately pulled, the same book this morning for $11,500 so there MAY* be shenanigans going on. 

 

*Note that this is not a declaration of fact but merely my perception, for pedantry purposes 

[Ryan.]

I don't know where that 7.0 sold but if $9600 is the new baseline for that grade, maybe this book is already on the back slide. 

[jeranimal]

2 hours ago, Ryan. said:

The seller relisted, and then immediately pulled, the same book this morning for $11,500 so there MAY* be shenanigans going on. 

 

*Note that this is not a declaration of fact but merely my perception, for pedantry purposes 

Zero feedback winner!  So that could be the reason why it was relisted.  Maybe the buyer backed out...

[Ryan.]

Maybe. Or it was a shill bid scenario. A 7.0 evidently sold for $9600, and a board member recently said that he sold his 5.0 for over five figures, so it's hard to guess where a 6.5 copy like this would land.

[tvindy]

7 minutes ago, Ryan. said:

 and a board member recently said that he sold his 5.0 for over five figures, so it's hard to guess where a 6.5 copy like this would land.

Over five figures? The lowest value over five figures would be $100,000, so that can't possibly be right. 

 

[Ryan.]

5 minutes ago, tvindy said:

Over five figures? The lowest value over five figures would be $100,000, so that can't possibly be right. 

 

You sure your math is correct here... 

[tvindy]

1 minute ago, Ryan. said:

You sure your math is correct here... 

I think so. $99,999 is five figures (not over five figures). The lowest six-figure value is $100,000.