Comic Collectors ARGUE Over Grade & Value of RAW AF15...If Only There Was A Third Party To Help... 

I'm kinda inclined to go the other direction on this. The guy posted pictures, quite thorough ones, and then listed his price. People can either buy it, don't buy it, make an offer, or ask for more pictures. If you are worried about things like staples, then ask for more pictures or don't buy it. As long as the seller isn't being malicious then it's nobody else's business.

Mikey, please do a follow up video on this comic. I’m sure the seller will get around $12,000 for this book, so all the negative comments mean nothing when/if the market decides it’s worth.

Plot twist CGC gets the grade wrong too and no one ever really knows 😂

I will say selling or buying this particular book ungraded seems kinda nuts to me! 😂

The biggest issue for me would be restoration detection and or married covers or missing pages.

Looking at even these low grades still brings back painful memories of me stupidly selling my AF 15 over 12 years ago.

As a private collector/grader/seller, I started collecting in my teens and have ended up with close to 10K books, I have learned to know when dealers come at me. There is a hilarious difference between the innocent inquisition and the brazen attempt to put a seller on their heels and accept a fraction of what they should.

I've been grading my own comics since 1985, according to the Overstreet guidelines, and that book, if it's not missing any pages, is a 1.0 at best. And no, a book with a detached cover cannot be a 3.0, according to what I've been told for the last 40 years. However, I have noticed that according to all of the slabs that I've seen over the past year, I have been UNDER-GRADING my books for some time. This was reaffirmed, when I got back seven books from CGC last year and they were almost all graded higher than I had them at.

Low grade af15's are always in high demand and collectors don't often want to part with them. Lowballers and flippers always prey on a desperate seller. Biggest marvel character key. Open your wallet if you want an entry level af15

it cost way too much to grade books of this caliber but ya gotta get it graded for multiple reasons

Just 1 page is probably thousands of dollars

The low grades are always the hardest to estimate. There's just too much going on with them.

A completely split and detached CAN garner a 1.5...per ETA Nick's cheat guide...well trusted in the CGC grading area

Great video. Love the information and opinion. Great meeting you earlier at Flipmode comics sale.

So ... did someone buy it? I'm too dumb to get your point. The grade argument is derivative to objective reality but the value is not. What if that underpaid hack at CGC graded it a 3.0? Would someone suddenly be offering 50k for it? The detection of restoration is an argument for having a professional look it over but CGC doesn't guarantee the veracity of that and examples of their misses are numerous.

I don't think he's wrong for listing it at the price he chose. Grading is subjective as we are even told at nauseum by Cgc themselves thereby making value equally subjective. Someone will buy it at that listing price because of what it is and how it's going to be worth that price and more at some point in the future most likely.

Got to learn to grade. Grading and collecting go together like…peanut butter and chocolate, which I happen to be removing from an old silver age key right at this moment. It is nearly impossible to rule out restoration when buying on line. It is hard enough to detect restoration in person with good illumination and a jeweler’s hoop in some circumstances. I would never (never say never) buy a silver age grail book on line without 3rd party grading. One just never knows for sure what one is going to get given how prevalent restoration is on these books.

the heritage price is with buyer's premium so the book was in the 14k range for just the book not that makes much difference

Great points and discussion. If I might offer two of my own... Point one: The book is only as valuable as what the buyer is willing to pay. Even a poor quality book that is well sold and advertised can fetch a good value. Too few raw copy sales are tracked to definitively state what range of values is unacceptable. People love their slabbed book FMVs, but sold prices across various grades often overlap. And I have seen sales of graded keys regularly sell plus or minus 15 percent from FMV. Point two: Restoration is not as critical to raw comic book grades as it is to slabbed comic books. For an encased book, the grader notes and purple label are essential to let the buyer know what is going on inside the case. That's why everyone loves the CGC "apparent" Qualified grades because they can get a higher number on the label than the book's "actual" grade. A missing page should 100 percent cap a grade at 0.5, but how many would love that number to say 2.0 with a green label, etc.? Going to the Overstreet grading standards, staples can be replaced up to Fine without penalty, and up to Very Fine with age-appropriate staples. And books with some amateur restoration or tape could even be graded up to 3.0 to 4.0. The deal with raw books is that the seller should document the characteristics of the book, and the buyer should ensure there aren't undisclosed damages or repairs. Personally if I needed cash, I wouldn't send anything off to be graded that I needed to sell immediately. Would you tie up potential 15K sales money in a CGC wait line for when you could take a reasonable offer and unload in a week?

I bought a vintage batman reprint of poison ivy and the grade guess was 5.5. I git an 8.5 by cgc

Another great video. Valid points made sir!

14k was the NM price for this book when I was a kid

What people refuse to think about is that there is always, always, always, a reason that any valuable book is left as a raw book. There is always a reason why it’s never subject to any grading company scrutiny. You’re a fool to buy them, if they’re raw and you’re spending that kind of money.

If I'm gonna pay over 10k anyway I'll just go ahead and pay the 35k+ for a decent one! Just my opinion!

I feel like you have to get that graded if you’re going to ask any specific price. There is too much variation in potential grade/value. Just the fact that it isn’t graded and the seller “has to sell it” are red flags for me.

Did I miss the part where the seller was asking for pricing advice? Pretty sure he just wanted to sell the book, so why comment at all? Just PM the seller with your offer, instead of being jerk in public to a stranger.....I know, I know "welcome to the Internet"

Something like that needs to be graded , in my opinion

I hav a ASM 1 and the front cover is off I got a 1.0 so it’s not a 0.5 it’s a 1.0 - 1.5

CGC enters the discussion….gets sent the same comic 3 times and it comes back with 3 different grades

Regardless, CGC is fairly brutal to books in the encapsulation & grading process, so you will definitely see some more flaws in that book, including more cover, ripping during that grading process.

WILD! Literally just recorded a vid about finding valuable comics and one thing i touched on was knowing a comics potential and capitalizing on undergrading. That being said i have a book of this caliber in grade. FANTASTIC FOUR #5 (1st Doom) spine completely split, and detached. Two center wraps detached but COMPLETE. Graded a CGC .5 (maybe the two center wraps being detached knock it out the 1.0 range but the spectrum of grading can be scrutinized till we are blue in the face, and no 3rd GENERAL CONSENSUS = way more conflict

Hold hold hold on……all the information on the internet isn’t always correct!?!?!?

I left the hobby in 1988 and returned in 2005 only because of CGC. I've only bought graded grails ever since.

Buyers should buy a slabbed copy and avoid the gamble... If we believe this is a 1.0 universal grade and have confidence with that assessment, buyer should pay ~ $10k... that said, could be a 0.5... grading is subjective as we all know. Either feel confident with the grade and buy i or.... don't buy it. comic collectors often behave like little girls... it's silly.

Woah, hold on. What’s this hot take that not everything on the internet isn’t true?

I just got a golden age book back with a spine similar to this and possibly worse. It got a 1.0. This book is at least a 1.0.

If someone really wanted that RAW AF15 they would have bought it. Personally, I could never do that, that is buy a book that was that damaged. If I'm going to spend 1000's of dollars on something like that, it's got to be at least in descent shape. Comic's already degrade, even encapsulated the color can wear out over time. Nothing wrong with picking up a nice facsimile and calling it a day.

Look at it this way. All of the disagreement over the grade just shows how inconsistent CGC has been over the years. You’ve done dozens of videos of disputes over graded books. Specifically books that magically go up in grade for big auction houses. So, what’s the difference? Also, I’d argue that it’s much worse to pay $1 million more for a 9.8 that used to be a 9.6 then $5-10,000 more for a 1.0 that should be a .5

Thanks for all the great content. I would like to present a question to you and the community. I recently ordered some books from a well known comic retailer that I had been waiting to come out for awhile. When the books arrived the other day and I opened them all of them were damaged. It was clear that they had been dropped or ran into something. The corners of every single one were bent badly. The fact that someone actually knew they did it and shipped them anyway has been kind of upsetting me as a collector. What would you suggest I do? The books are sold out already and I can't find them anywhere. They offered me a 25% credit, that is all and have not contacted me back.

Why would anyone send to CGC after all their corruption and scandals? At least send it to a different company

I would never sell that book raw quite honestly. too much money in half a grade.

People arguing over the grade (in this case) are generally angling for a discount...assuming, of course, they can actually afford an AF 15...which, for most of them, is not the case. Most, if not all, of those commenters, would be singing a different tune if the AF was their book.

Yeah, it can be amazing how different people’s opinions of grades can be. For instance I am dealing with a buyer on eBay who purchased a Wolverine miniseries #2 in a CGC 9.4. The book clearly has light edge shadow on the back cover in the pictures but otherwise presents well. Clearly the reason it graded a 9.4 is because of the shadow. However, he wants to return it for a full refund because the book is “defective”. In case you guys don’t know “foxing is a known defect in comic books” and this NM book shouldn’t have it. Maybe I should have CGC refund him as they seem to not know about the foxing defect and how it should impact the grade? 🤷

24th!

send it to CGC and it will come back a 9.95

That spine is jacked. It’s a $10K book. Maybe $12K at best.

How many copies of Amazing Fantasy are there, and who owns them?

It doesn’t send up any red flags to anybody that this person can’t send in a book and spends a certain amount of money? He needs money right away? Are you even sure this book is complete? Not restored? This has too many red flags to drop any serious money.

It isn’t graded so you shouldnt charge a graded price. That golden age guru guy try’s to make the argument that his eye makes it okay to do that BS. No thanks.

that copy is a 6.9

I would offer that dude 10 k cash right now if he was down let me kno

"People are stupid" is what I took from this.

1.0-1.5 grade

First off, you can’t grade on just the covers. Secondly, the sale of the book is not based on comps, it is based on what the buyer is willing to pay AND the seller is willing to accept. Interesting that a grading company is the go-to thought.. and not getting the opinion of an independent LCS (or 2) owner hasn’t entered the discussion.. that was the go-to for decades before CGC, CBCS, etc..

Having a disagreement on grade??? …. Do we have a solution for you … send that comic right away to a company that has a proven record of the most random grading results on planet … you are welcome

r/confidentlywrong :p

CGC is pretty much guess work. Remember, "grading" was created as a money making business.