Auction Highlights #89

Comic Link Spring Featured Auction

The comic book portion of ComicLink’s Spring Featured Auction ended Wednesday June 10^th with some very interesting results.

The CGC 7.5 Amazing Fantasy #15 ended up as the top book selling for $68,500.00. Personally I’m glad it pipped the second place book, the CGC 9.2 copy of Batman #2 which earned $62,000. Like I said on my last auction post, this about the book and not the grade.

One of the most watched books in this auction was Jamie Graham’s CGC 5.5 copy of More Fun #73, it earned a healthy $52,566.00 giving it 4^th spot in terms of price.

Here are some top 50 tidbits:

• 41 Marvels, a throwback to the old days when Marvel used to dominate
• 14 early Marvel Keys, or what I call Marvel Keys anyway
• 2 Star Wars #1 35 cent variants
• 7Golden Age which is way down from the 23 in the last featured auction
• 4 Hulk #1s which has now become the new AF 15 of the hobby
• 2 CGC 9.9s – a Walking Dead #1 and a Nick Fury #1
• 10 Spidey books, up nicely from last auctions 3

Let’s have a look at some interesting results.

Triumph Comics #12, Bell Features (Feb/Mar 1943) Graded by CGC at 1.5 with White pages sold for $2,250.00.

This was the same book that sold for $2600 over a year ago but that was when there were a whole whack of “Canadian Whites” up for auction which ended up casing quite the feeding frenzy.

I think the book held its own considering it was the lone Canadian wolf in this auction. There are only 2 of these graded to date, this was a bargain pick up!

Notice the “No Date” on the CGC holder? Head over to canadasowncomics.com, most of the publishing dates for the “Whites” are available there.

Advantage Buyer

Star Wars #1, 35 Cent Variant, Marvel Comics (July 1977) Graded by CGC at 9.6 with White pages sold for $36,500.00.

You should make a note for yourself here. Never ever listen to Walt when it comes to this book.

I’ve preached about how this book is overvalued for years now and it’s politely ignoring me on its way to being worth $100k!

Noting that two of these price variants cracked the top 50 it’s easy to see that there is a lot of Star Wars hype these days. With Marvel picking up the line and us being only a few months away from the next movie things could get even hotter.

No GPA data is available for CGC 9.6 but as far as I’m concerned this is waaaay to much to pay for a price variant.

Advantage Seller

Tales of Suspense #39, Marvel Comics, (March 1963)

Copy 1 Graded by CGC at 6.0 with Off White to White pages sold for $5,055.00.

Copy 2 Graded by CGC at 5.0 with Off White to White pages sold for $4,900.00

A tale of two Tales!

Here is a great example of people grading with their own eyes. CGC 6.0 copies of this book trade for well over $6,000 so it seems the buyer stole this one. It’s just that the very prominent pen marks on the cover detract so much of the visual aesthetics of the comic that perhaps too much was paid.

It was interesting to see a 5.0 and a 6.0 with the same page quality go for roughly the same money and it brings to light the dilemma that CGC faces when sticking to a structured formula for grading. Though structurally sound and though I’m sure the right amount of points were taken off for the pen marks it still seems too generous a grade.

Buyers obviously agreed with me and showed it by not bidding.

I think the price adjustment was fair with the market giving copy 1 a CGC 5.0 market value.

Copy 1 Advantage Buyer

Copy 2 Advantage Buyer

Marvel Super-Heroes 18, Marvel Comics (January 1969) Graded by CGC at 9.4 with White pages sold for $2.805.00.

I thought about this one for a while.

“These aren’t the Guardians you’re looking for”. Herein lies the problem, everybody loves the new team.

Plus the fact that a CGC 9.4 for this book should not be getting too much of a grade premium, all the money should be chasing the 7 CGC 9.6s and the 1 copy at 9.8. The book has actually been trending downward at this grade settling in near $2k.

Advantage Seller

Walking Dead #1, Image Comics (October 2003) Graded by CGC at 9.9 with White pages sold for $7,100.00.

Here’s the thing. There are just too many CGC 9.9s on the census right now to support prices above $10,000 for this book. It was all fine and dandy when that first one sold a couple of years back but the census has exploded on this book since, there are 19 CGC 9.9s as of this post.

Expect more to surface and expect the price on this book to drop a wee bit more.

Advantage Seller

I personally was shut out. I made a play at a couple of books including the Tales To Astonish #35 CGC 8.0 and the Nelvana Triumph #12. How about you? Pick up anything?