Auction Highlights #65

ComicConnect April Event Auction

All I have to say is WOW! This auction may have topped the HA Billy Wright Auction of a few months ago.

Does ComicConnect have exclusive rights to sell copies of Action Comics #1 or something?

This was a very stacked auction, if you couldn’t find something you liked here you should take up Stamp collecting!

There were way too many good books here to choose from so I picked a few to highlight points I’d like to make, books I missed out on and a run of books that boggled my mind!

Enough talk! Lets have a look at some noteworthy results.

All books below sold between Monday April 16^th and Friday April 20^th.

 

Action Comics #1, DC Comics, June 1938

A CGC 4.5 copy with Slightly Brittle pages sold for $323,000. The 41^st Overstreet Price Guide has a 4.5 price of $202,500.

There are only 34 Action Comics #1s graded Universal (no restoration) by CGC and this 4.5 copy falls into the top half of the pile as there are 18 graded worse.

It’s almost ridiculous to say but I think there is still room for this book! Everyone wants this comic book! This copy is among the 16 best known copies, there are probably 1,016 very affluent fans worldwide that would love to hang this beside their Renoir!

Advantage buyer!

Amazing Spider-Man #1, Marvel Comics, March 1963

A CGC 9.2 copy with Off White pages sold for $57,523. The guide price for a 9.2 is $54,000.

A super high grade copy of Amazing Spider-Man #1 gets only guide? I think this speaks to the blog I posted last week. I asked if #1 issues are overvalued by the guide if that issue does not represent the 1^st appearance of the character. This just above guide result does not signal the demise of this book but I think it does show that Overstreet has ASM #1 about as right as you can get vis a vis Amazing Fantasy #15.

I think it is a strong book though and the fact remains that Amazing Spider-Man is the most collected title in comics.

Advantage buyer by a whisker because I do not see much of a downside and the winner gets to enjoy this beauty until it is time to sell.

 

 

Avengers #1, Marvel Comics, September 1963

A CGC 9.2 copy with Off White pages sold for $48,002. The guide value for a 9.2 is $15,000.

I picked this example to highlight the Spider-Man example above. How does an Avengers #1 at CGC 9.2 get over triple guide while an Amazing Spider-Man #1 at CGC 9.2 get barely above guide? Well the timing didn’t hurt, 2 weeks before the Avengers movie releases is a good time to sell a high grade copy. But there is also the factor that this is the 1^st Avengers appearance and the comic has room to climb from the current $15,000.

Advantage Seller, though this pick up is about 20% cheaper than the last CGC 9.2 that sold ($60,000) I do see the book dipping a bit post movie before it eventually heads back up.

 

Batman #1, DC Comics, Spring 1940

A CGC 8.0 copy with Off White to White pages sold for $175,365. The guide value for an 8.0 is $100,000.

Again a #1 issue that does not feature the main character’s 1^st appearance! I’ve said before though that Batman #1 is undervalued. Characters like Catwoman and the Joker are no slouches and Batman as a title is only beat by Amazing Spider-Man in terms of collect-ability.

There are only 69 universally graded copies of Batman #1 and only 6 copies are graded higher than this one!

Advantage Buyer!

 

 

Captain Marvel #34, Marvel Comics, September 1974

A CGC 9.8 copy with White pages sold for $303. The guide value for this book at 9.2 is $35.

Man did I ever get excited when I saw this book up for auction! A while back I featured this book in one of my Undervalued Spotlights! I’ve been looking for a very nice copy for a while and finally this beauty shows up. At the beginning of the auction I told a friend I was going to go to $250 just to get this, I guess I did such a good job with my argument for this book that I even convinced myself to get it at all costs. I usually don’t like 9.8s of books from this era because I know a lot are out there in collections sitting ungraded. Anyway the day it closed I logged on and saw it was at $303! I was crestfallen! Perhaps the buyer read my spotlight!

Advantage Seller because 9 times guide seems excessive – but perhaps I’m being vindictive and spiteful!

 

Detective Comics #27, DC Comics, May 1939

A CGC 6.5 copy with Off White pages sold for $414,000, while minutes later (or earlier – I forget) a CGC 3.0 copy with Light Tan to Off White pages and 1 pc of tape on cover sold for $201,000. The guide price for a 6.5 copy is $$330,000 while the guide price for a 3.0 copy is $120,000.

The higher grade 6.5 copy got a 25% premium above guide while the lower grade copy with poor page quality got a whopping 67.5% premium above guide! What gives?

I think we’re seeing the mechanics of utility at work here but I think the market got it wrong! The 6.5 copy is the 4^th highest graded copy! There are only 6 copies that grade higher and the highest known grade is only an 8.0! This book should have sold for over half a million! The 3.0 on the other hand poor page quality, it falls into the lower third of the available copies in terms of grade quality but it is a copy and paying $200,000 to have your 1^st appearance of Batman’s first appearance may actually play out as a smart move.

Advantage buyer on the 6.5, a better deal than the 3.0

Advantage buyer on the 3.0 , still a good deal, this is perhaps the second most important comic book

 

We interrupt this Auction Highlight to bring you a very special, very historic part of the ComicConnect Spring Auction!

Thrilling Comics was a Better Publishing and later Standard Comics title that enjoyed an 80 issue run from 1940 to 1951. The 1^st issue boasts the 1^st appearance of Doc. Strange (no, not the Marvel Dr. Strange). This Doc. Strange was revived by Alan Moore in his Tom Strong series for America’s Best Comics.

The title has always kind of languished, its issues are kicked around here and there most often for well below guide. Whenever I’ve owned a Thrilling Comics it has come to me in a collection and I’ve always had to sell it for below guide!

For the first time in memory though a large run of a Golden Age title of super high grade comics has come to market at the same time. To Complicate matters this run comes from the only pedigree that really matters, the Edgar Church Mile High Pedigree!

This was truly an historic offering and with the Golden Age on the rise I knew the results would be interesting.

What actually transpired was incredible, the market absolutely devoured these books. Prices I’m still scratching my head at were reached, then doubled, then doubled again in some cases!

About 60 copies of the Edgar Church Mile High run were on offer, when the auctions finally closed the books brought in over $610,000!

A quick glance had the average selling price up around 16 times guide, that was the average, #30 hit 44 times guide!

There was really no precedent for this. Most of these comics only have 3 or 4 copies graded and the next highest graded copies below the Mile High copies are often 4 or 5 grades below. Sales history is spotty at best but as I noted earlier the few examples I looked at of random issues in grades like CGC 4.5 or CGC 7.0 underperformed for the most part.

These results were shocking and dare I say thrilling!!

 

Thrilling Comics #1, Better Publ., February 1940

The CGC 9.4 Edgar Church Mile High copy sold for $25,505. The Guide value for the 9.2 grade is $5,200.

This book only getting 5 times guide seems the slacker of the bunch. Still, $25,000 is a lot of money! Perhaps the bidders thought Doctor Stephen Strange’s 1^st appearance was up for bids?

I’m not even going to pretend to know what is right here but my small town boy mentality will stick to rewarding character driven books. I’ll also assume that we’ll be seeing at least a couple of nice copies surfacing and getting graded in the near future because of these results.

Advantage seller!

 

Thrilling Comics #19, Better Publ., August 1941

The CGC 9.6 Edgar Church Mile High copy sold for $23,500, it had White Pages. The guide value at the 9.2 grade for this book is $1050.

A cool book, it features the American Crusader, Better Publication’s answer to the MLJ’s Shield and Timely’s Captain America and it offers an awesome Schomburg Nazi battle cover! Cap everyone knows, if you’d ask me who the Shield was I could tell you but the American Crusader? I’d have said Oral Roberts!

Advantage seller because 23 times guide just seems too much too fast considering this title was deadweight for decades.

 

Thrilling #30, Better Publ., October 1942

The CGC 9.9 Edgar Church Mile High copy sold for $35,500, it had White pages. The guide value for this comic at the 9.2 grade is $800.

Call me dumb but I don’t get this! There are only 2 of these things graded our 9.9 and a 4.5 (which sold for a paltry $349 last December). I mean, doesn’t a 9.8 or even a 9.6 do the same thing here? You have the best copy, the Edgar Church copy, why pay an extra $20,000 for a CGC grade?

Advantage seller!

 

That was exhausting. I enjoyed entering into uncharted territory, that Thrilling run lived up to its name!

Did you win any books at this auction?