To make a long story short, it has been a couple of weeks since I have posted. I upgraded my computer but between traveling and trying to get the new computer reloaded and back up to speed, it seems like I have taken a two week sabbatical.
Speaking of long stories, as opposed to short ones, Charles Dickens" A Tale of Two Cities opens with the line 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times". That kind of describes the June ComicLink auction.
There were three nice thirty cent price variants in the auction.
Amazing Spider-Man 157 in CGC 9.4 sold for $103. That price is a bargain for a 2nd highest graded Spider-Man issue with only 5 higher graded copies. In fact, in the last three years, GPA only records one other sale of a 9.4 book. $675 in March of this year. I suspect that the Cream to Off-White page quality affected the price. but I also think that many times price variants get lost in the focused ComicLink auctions. Unless a collector looks closely, the price variant books can get lost in sea of 9.8 graded bronze. Anyway, CGC Registry set points don't distinguish on page quality and page quality is the most inconsistent CGC metric. Still, I like my bronze-age books to have Off-White to White or better page quality but I will settle for less on price variants. In fact, I would take a brittle Flintstones 1 35 cent price variant in a second.
The next price variant in the auction was an old label Howard the Duck 3 which has been passed around more than a bottle of Mescal Tequila (yes, the one with the worm) at a frat party. I think this book has changed hands at least three times in the past twelve months. It is commonly believed that the old label books are more conservatively graded than more recently graded books. I have not found this to be particularly true and I am guessing that maybe this book is getting passed around in hopes that someone will crack it out and resubmit it to try and get that elusive 9.8. There have been twelve HTD 3s that have been graded 9.6 but no 9.8s. Howard the Duck 3 and Eternals 1 are the most common 30 cent variants, particularly in high grade. However, if a 9.8 ever shows up at auction, it is going to go real high. Alas, this copy of an apparently unimprovable 9.6 went for 9.4 money and sold for an absolute bargain price of $43.
The highlight of the auction, or any auction for that matter, was the sale of a CGC 9.8 Iron Fist 5 with white pages and a full starburst. The series ran for only 15 issues but there are six price variant issues. Price variants don't come much nicer than this one and there are more than a few bronze age Iron Fist collectors, so when a book like this one comes up at auction you can throw the price guides in the trash. This book brought a hammer price of $1037 and joins the growing list of price variant issues to achieve a four figure price.
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