NostoNews, August 1, 2014 by Tommy Jasmin Random Notes Hey folks. This past month has been interesting seeing the Guardians of the Galaxy hype nearly boil over. As the theater previews morphed the anticipation got surprisingly palpable. I'll check it out myself soon, but the review in the local paper was interesting - it gave the impression the movie flirted with greatness, but came up short. The short version of that review goes something like: Not your typical comic book movie. A little weird. More of a comedy than a superhero flick. Could have been great if not for the typical world-in-peril ending. Meanwhile sales for two books strongly tied to this movie have been insane. One is Tales to Astonish 13, the first appearance of Groot. Last pricing update this book really took off, with the Nosto CGC FN 6.0 value now sitting at an astounding $1,660.00. As you know, our pricing on key books is super tight due to strong backing by actual sales. In fact, the most recent CGC 6.0 sale in our database was a little higher, at $1,732.75. Tales to Astonish 13 - 1st appearance Groot The other white hot book is Marvel Preview 7, first appearance of Rocket Raccoon. Look back to my January Market Report. I could see this book percolating, but I was too stupid at the time to realize it was because of the Rocket Raccoon appearance! A good friend and one of eBay's best and most honest sellers recently auctioned off copies of both of these books. He netted $1,136.00 for an uncertified FN- 5.5 copy of Tales to Astonish 13. What's really amazing though, he pulled in $1,599.00 for an unslabbed NM/MT 9.8 copy of Marvel Preview 7. Ironically, I was alerted to a Collectors Society chat board posting about rampant shilling on these books, with the posting citing my friend's legitimate Marvel Preview sale as "obviously shilled". It's really sad that there is corrupt practices in our hobbies, and there certainly has been some unscrupulous activity surrounding these books lately, but there are also legitimate sales with crazy-high prices, and this was one of them. This is a difficult problem to address, and we try very hard to only let legitimate, confirmed sales get into the Nostomania database. A primary goal of Nosto from the beginning was to provide you people honest, accurate pricing which is not derived from opinion, but derived from numbers - actual sales data. We've made big improvements to our pricing code this year and have even better refinements in the works. I'm confident you'll start to notice these changes over the next few pricing updates. Thanks and enjoy the rest of your summer! Marvel Preview 7 - 1st appearance Rocket Raccoon That's about it this month, as always, thanks for supporting the site! Thanks, we'll see you all next month. Visit our NostoNews Archive.