Talked to Chuck this morning. A few things from the conversation... 1) He had the books slabbed earlier this year to authenticate the pedigree status for his heirs. 2) He really has no intention or expectation that they will sell. He merely wanted to present them as an attention grabber for his booth in San Diego. Particularly because he will have a documentary crew filming his show experience. 3) The Red Raven 1 is a 9.0 because of a small bindery tear at the top of the spine. (As an aside, I have never seen the Church copy but I did hold the other 9.0 before Metro bought it from Chris Foss. Structurally Metro's copy was very clean. But it was very weak in the other eye appeal aspects. Red Raven 1 is one of my absolute favorite books and I passed on the 9.0 in favor of the 8.5(slight - cover cleaned) that I presently own. I have no doubt the Church is a much better book.) 4) Prices - these are Chuck's asking prices. Remember that he has no expectation that they will sell but he will listen to offers. Red Raven 1 - $500,000 Spirit - he has the complete run. There are a few 9.8s, many 9.6s and a few lower. $500,000 for the run. $200,000 for the Feature Book.
How could the RR# 1 be graded a 9.0 when it clearly looks like a 9.4 label in the picture?
The issue wasn't "would they be able to sell for $100M at one time?", but "are they worth $100M?" -- the answer to which is probably, maybe quite a bit more.
This
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#4124972 - 07/06/1004:13 PMRe: Chuck sells RED RAVEN #1 Mile High Copy and more
[Re: Gatsby77]
BrontyBronty You know that guy that shows up an hour early for parties? Yah. I'm him.
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Originally Posted By: Gatsby77
Quote:
I don't think its an exaggeration at all. You could get to $10m with a small handful of the key books. From there you've got 18000 vintage books. to come up with the remaining 90m you need only average $5000 per book. Now think of what's in the collection. All the dc hero runs, all the timely runs, all the centaurs.. all everything! Not to mention all those 9.6s and 9.8s and you still have virtually all the keys. You really have to sit back and think about what all would be in the collection its almost too big to really grasp immediately.
If its not $100m, its scratching at it. Your $30-40 m figure, once we lop off the first $10m for the best handful of books, requires only about $1500 per book (@37m. @30m total, only $1100 per book). Way too low. A mean nothing book like boy commandos 1 is $35k at church example levels.
I still disagree. True--you would only need to average $1,500 per book on the others, but I don't believe the entire collector base is well-capitalized enough to absorb them all at once--
who the heck said anythign about all at once? we are simply debating the aggregate value of a long dispersed collection. you couldn't buy them all at once if you wanted to.
#4125008 - 07/06/1004:26 PMRe: Chuck sells RED RAVEN #1 Mile High Copy and more
[Re: Bronty]
BrontyBronty You know that guy that shows up an hour early for parties? Yah. I'm him.
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I see a couple or three people beat me to it. these boards are fast
Besides, even if we were debating it the other way. Chuck's not stupid. He wouldn't sell everything at once now like he didn't sell everything at once back in teh day either. He'd leak a couple million worth of books a time onto the market and have people SALIVATING for more. The collection would become legendary immediately and show world record prices immediately. Not to mention that if they had all stayed with chuck there would be no restoration to the books and the page quality likely considerably better overall having stayed in colorado for 70 years instead of 35 years. It would be a splash like the hobby had never seen and personally I think there have been enough pedigrees found since the 70s that the "market wouldn't be what it is" fears are overblown.
When it comes to a collection like this, the quality would speak for itself and none of the BS would matter. People would pony up ridiculous amounts now just like they ponied up then-ridiculous amounts then.
Actually....if they were to surface today, many of the books would likely sell for MUCH less than they do now.....why ?.....because they would not enjoy the backdraft of 35 years of legend and mytstique. Without that many of them would just be be runs of titles that were once marginally popular but now have, at best, a few interested parties who may not be willing to pay the "MileHigh" multiple when many other nice copies are easily available on the internet. The original dynamic would be skewed, leaving MANY books sitting around even longer than they did the first time. GOD BLESS...
#4125203 - 07/06/1006:22 PMRe: Chuck sells RED RAVEN #1 Mile High Copy and more
[Re: jimjum12]
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I dunno about that. I know that's the popular conception but my point is there would be instant "mystique" from this collection. Its the best collection ever documented and that would be just as true today as 35 years ago. I mean sit back and imagine the allentown collection being found today except instead of 200 books or whatever the figure was its 18000 and includes EVERYTHING. Oh my god jaws would drop!!! It would be an instant rewriting of the history books and the furore over these books would be immense given not only the technical grades but the eye appeal and whiteness that would be shown. Every other pedigree people would have previously held in high esteem would suddenly be a piece of crepe!
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Back in the day, I think Feature Book 26 was considered more rare than Action 1. It was treated as a grail but it is not a book that is wanted by as many people in the current market. Superman or Action 1 is better known and is a more significant book to collectors. Art is a little better when done by Foster but he had a bigger audience to please and put in the extra work. Red Raven was thought to be very rare but it doesn't have the appeal of the original Torch. The Spirit books are probably the best stories in the group but the profit would have been minimal since they never went up as much as Marvel Mystery. I think these books have never reached their potential but they still should make a big splash when they hit the market. Like most people who were collecting at the time, I wish I had purchased a big stack of Detective Comics and Marvel Mystery Comics and put them in a vault. Unfortunately I have too much fun reading them, scanning, indexing and discussing them. bb
I dunno about that. I know that's the popular conception but my point is there would be instant "mystique" from this collection. Its the best collection ever documented and that would be just as true today as 35 years ago. I mean sit back and imagine the allentown collection being found today except instead of 200 books or whatever the figure was its 18000 and includes EVERYTHING. Oh my god jaws would drop!!! It would be an instant rewriting of the history books and the furore over these books would be immense given not only the technical grades but the eye appeal and whiteness that would be shown. Every other pedigree people would have previously held in high esteem would suddenly be a piece of crepe!
My gut feeling is that this scenario is dead on.
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