This of course was the story of the year as far as marketplace sales. My early guess was $6 million-ish, which also would have been way over the Nostomania CGC value at the time of sale. The chat-boards were what you'd expect, rife with doubt and speculation. "There's no way a copy would survive that well in an attic in California!". Is anybody capable of critical thinking any more? California is a huge state, it's not all Death Valley hot. I get it, the story had a few peculiarities, but for me, I know Lon at Heritage well, and trust him. I think the seller did fantastic here. I don't think the book warranted $9 million, personally, but then again, it is the Finest Known copy at this point. On the other hand, Action Comics #1, in this grade, I would argue does deserve $9 or $10 million. Remember, Superman #1 is to Action Comics #1, what Iron Man #1 is to Tales of Suspense #39. It is much less rare, and not the 1st appearance of the character. If you disagree with this logic, I beg you to go listen to what original Nostomania Advisory Board member Gary Carter has to say on this topic.

I hate to do this, but I really feel it's incumbent upon me to bring you right back down to Earth. The vast majority of the COVID Comic bubble continued to deflate through 2025. Even items I normally would expect to hold their ground. Hell, I would gladly handed someone $200 cash myself for this book. A true mid Silver Age 9.6 Thor? Now that's a cool and relatively (in grade!) scarce comic book. So what's going on here? The same comic in the same grade sold for over a thousand dollars less than a year ago. For one, that market bubble was way bigger than people realized. Two, may simply be timing, as the collectibles markets do feel a little soft around the holidays. Three, though I am reaching with uncertainty here, may again be census. There are now 20 CGC 9.6s, and 7 CGC 9.8s. Not a ton, but enough to pump the breaks in cases where people used to throw down many thousands of dollars.

To reinforce that the Thor sale is a trend I am seeing, not an anomaly, let's look at a high grade CGC ASM. One might think this is a decent sale price, and it is. But not in comparison to another CGC 9.8 (also via Heritage) from a year earlier, for $13,200.00. In fact, I believe this current sale is the lowest price ever recorded by Heritage for this book in this grade. That goes back a ways. The draw for this particular issue is not only a Marvel Comics A-Lister, but the fact that black-ink covers are notoriously difficult to find in high grade, due to the most minor stress lines being so much more visible to the naked eye.

Back to the clouds for a minute. So yes, there is a new certification service floating slabbed books out there! And yes, Nostomania is gathering sales and will begin reporting PSA values as soon as we feel we have enough data for reasonable initial values. As you can imagine, I personally suspect this is purely a hype sale and an overexcited buyer, who I doubt will ever recoup that money. This book was manufactured in a way that will guarantee a very high number of exceptionally high grade copies. Why don't people realize that? It's hard to find this book in less than 9.6! "Exceptionally White Pages" ?? Come on guys, what, are they whiter than white? I'm sorry folks, but Nostomania will not be adding a new page quality in our database table higher than white. The sale price was possibly driven by the person who ponied up $28,800.00 for a CGC 10.0 last year, may God rest his soul. Remember, we are on the downslide of the bubble, refer to the Nostomania 500 Stock Index for the visual curve, but you need to be signed in to see the data plot.

I think I will remain in the clouds, let's try to stay upbeat here. How about a CGC 9.9 Thor #337? 9.9s and 10.0s still drive buyers insane. 9.9 is the new 9.8! This is a truly remarkable sale price, over 10X higher than earlier sales in grade, granted those were a decade or more earlier. One possible explanation I can posit for some of the demand here is that this slab is clearly (hopefully) from before CGC began noting Newsstand Editions. In the 60c era, that could be a factor (we do not have the raw data yet, Nostomania is working on it). The Newsstand Editions at this point in time, presumably had poorer odds getting into homes pristine, than the copies which went directly to our local comic shop, where they were carefully handled by our brethren curators.

I should sound like a broken record by now. Scarcity, or at least perceived scarcity, will always be a driver and help a comic swim upstream against the bursting bubble. In this case, we've got a ratty Uncertified PR 0.5 Katy Keene Spectacular #1. What made this rag pop, is being known as a "Gerber White Space". Meaning, Ernie Gerber could not find a copy to photograph for his Photo-Journal books. That, combined with the GCG Census being only 18, does seem to imply this book could be a tough one. This comic is also an interesting oddity, since this regular-sized, 10c issue was a one-shot. I am amused that the Heritage handlers could not even be bothered to fold back the creased corners. Come on guys! Give it a little love, fold those corners back and make that book proud again! Say what you want, it would certainly add to the eye appeal.

Ending the comics section on a high note, remember always, timing is everything. I have not seen a single episode yet myself, but the buildup to director Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein, has been palpable. I personally loved del Toro's The Shape of Water, his homage to the original Creature fom the Black Lagoon. I believe that film won the Academy Award for Best Picture that year. Anyway, clearly Frankenstein has been on collectors' minds, and it is a good time to sell monster-related comic books. According to Heritage, Overstreet had their highest value (caveat to be fair, only 9.2) for this book at $32.00 at the time of sale. I myself wonder how this book could have flown under radar, ignoring any movie. The cover, by rarely touted Larry Lieber and Vince Colletta, is pretty remarkable, and representative of the vibe Marvel Comics had when the Bronze Age was in full force. Since there are only three 9.8s, for some collectors, this could reasonably be considered a grail of sorts.

The power of the CAC sticker. Who could have imagined, the effect this would have on the certified coin market. Personally, the idea of any sticker being applied, afterwards, on a certified holder of any collectible type, has always bothered me. But in this case, clearly the market saw value in context. This coin is a great example. Normally this coin in this grade is a high $100s, low $200s coin. But it's an older, Generation 3 PCGS holder. It has since been realized there is a lot of room between PR-64 and PR-65. And now there are gradations of CAC stickers, this is a CAC Gold sticker. The result is a sale price more than way more than double the average for the grade.

The power of the CAC sticker, Part 2. The next logical step was a new grading company, and here we are! Congrats to the respected Albanese family and the CACG team. Hopefully, the CAC sticker is now part of the actual label, and therefore will no longer bug me :-) Even if it is, essentially redundant (do we really need to say CAC twice on the label?). My recommendation would be to merge it with the CAC already on the label. Even with green or gold variations, it should be doable. I also wonder why we don't say CACG on the label, since that seems to be the official certification acronym used in the greater community? We look forward to gathering enough sales to begin reporting pricing for this service. At the moment, the sales numbers seem to be comparable to the most respected active certification agengies.

It was a brilliant idea for Heritage to run a special auction devoted to high grade, slabbed monster magazines around Halloween. People... went... nuts.. You will see big spikes in value, if you use our magazines category in your collections. This sale was not an anomaly, there were many early high grade Famous Monsters that did incredibly well. The reasons, in my opinion, seem pretty logical, and come down to misinterpreting real data. How do I explain this. Ok, as far as actual CGC Census numbers, many of these 9.8s and 9.6s were Finest Knowns. This drives Heritage buyers into a frenzy. Their catalogers are exceptional at highlighting these details. One would assume the typical Heritage buyer would be smart enough, however, to think it through. Put the numbers in context. Yes, you have the only 9.8, for now. Slabbed magazines, however, are in their relative infancy compared to comic books, coins, and trading cards, which have been slabbed for much longer, and therefore the census numbers reflect enough time for data to accumulate! I don't want to take away from the excitement however, this was a super cool auction, with exceptional items offered.