BLUECHIPCOLLECTIBLES

I don't know if these are niches in the collectors market, but if not they should be.  

Superheroes and/or their friends behaving like absolute d*cks. 

Superheroes breaking bad.  Women scheming to trap the super guy into marriage.  Friends and sidekicks betraying the hero, even murdering him/her while they cackle with evil delight, 

DC comics was the undisputed king of psychologically effed up comic covers in the 60s.  Every other issue seemed to have Superman laughing as he tortured Jimmy Olsen or Perry White.  Lois Lane tricking a very reluctant Superman into marriage;  And Superman triumphantly flaunting his rejection of her in the most hurtful ways. You have to wonder if the DC editors were seriously messed up, and/or were they trying to mess with the heads of pre-pubescent readers.

Daring Mystery 7 

The first superhero comic was actually in the Platinum Age

According to Overstreet this 1930 comic may be the first one made entirely of original material (which I only found out by decoding the oddly, oblique notation -- "not-r"

This predates the original material comics from 1933 (can't recall the names) which supposedly got Siegel and Shuster inspired to sell Superman as a comicbook  

Moving stuff from one storage to another and finding things I'd forgotten about, I had to stop and read through these large syndicated newspaper strip proofs from 1940.  As I recall, they came from the estate of one of the ghost artists for the strip.  I remember they were selling a bunch and I only bought a dozen or so.  Guess if I'd bought them all I could read the complete story.

On 3/30/2024 at 8:19 PM, Dr. Haydn said:

There were quite a few Iron Man stories in 1963-64, as I recall (including the origin story) versus the Communists. The Hulk's origin story might count as well. Also, Thor was "Prisoner of the Reds" in an early Journey into Mystery. Even the FF got into the act, with the Red Ghost and his Super Apes. I think Captain America had a story or two set in Vietnam, if you stretch things a bit.

In Spider-man #1, the Chameleon was a "commie"

On 4/11/2024 at 4:43 AM, delekkerste said:

 

Oh, and it must be said - go look at the page #1 splash and also the pp. 2-3 sequence from Annual #3 that I won last night in the HA archives. Now ask yourself: had D ick Ayers ever actually seen a Vietnamese person before drawing these pages? 

Little known fact: some of the North Vietnamese soldiers were part Apache 

On 4/11/2024 at 4:43 AM, delekkerste said:

I picked up Sgt. Fury Annuals #2, 3 and 4 out of the 25 or 50 cent bin as a kid and all three issues are uber-nostalgic for me.

That said, whenever art from these issues has come up for sale (the best being the Ann. #4 cover which hit the auction block in 2022), it's always gone for more than I wanted to pay. Sadly, that was the case too with this Ann. #3 splash. 

BUT...I saw in the auction previews that 4 pages from Annual #3 were upcoming in the Weekly auction that ended last night and that I liked the two battle pages that followed the page 1 splash even more, so, I didn't go overboard on the splash knowing that these other pages were coming up for sale. 

I ended up easily winning both of the panel pages last night (pp. 2-3) plus the page 4 splash for a combined 61% less than where the page #1 splash sold for. So, I'm extremely pleased with that.  

I also won the lot of 9 pages from Sgt. Fury #94, so, in all, I got a 3-page sequence of two awesome twice-up battle pages and a twice-up splash, plus 9 cool pages from another issue for 75% of the cost of the page #1 splash. Again, I'm very, very happy with that result. 

Oh, and it must be said - go look at the page #1 splash and also the pp. 2-3 sequence from Annual #3 that I won last night in the HA archives. Now ask yourself: had D ick Ayers ever actually seen a Vietnamese person before drawing these pages? 

I did not know those pages were listed or I might have bid against you

On 4/7/2024 at 1:11 PM, batman_fan said:

A few items I was watching but no big bargains IMHO.

This one surprised me a bit.  Higher than I expected by 2x

 

 

 

I thought the price was in line with other Fury splashes.  This is a bit unusual with the Vietnam setting and the direct reference to date of publication

On 4/9/2024 at 11:19 AM, Kevn said:

Curious who did these prelims. I like them a lot, but they look like John Romita rough drawings. Is the "Marie Severin" written on them to indicate that she was to do the finished covers, or were her rough work much more dynamic and balanced than her finished work?

Marie Severin did the Daredevil and Thor covers.  Not sure who did the ASM 96 prelim.  For some reason there were two prelims made of that issue.   One def by Kane and the other by Severin or maybe Romita?  That one has a pasted on piece with prelim drawings of spiders and the Goblin's head by Stan Lee  

On 4/4/2024 at 10:07 AM, Frisco Larson said:

It might take Tony Stark's bank account to get that TOS 39, 'cause that's some heavy bread man!!! Killer book though and sitting alone at the top of the census, it SHOULD be worth huge dough!!!  

I'd pay two million if it was Tony Stark's personal copy with notes in the margins about the arc reactor

On 4/5/2024 at 1:55 AM, tth2 said:

Case in point.  To me, $360k is an unfathomable amount to pay for a second-tier SA Marvel key like DD 1.  But because of the even crazier prices previously paid for the book, a $360k price is now framed as an abject failure. 

Since I follow sales intermittently, I see sale figures now and then that make me go "wow. that's really gone up in value," only to hear that it previously sold for way more and the price that impressed me is considered a crash

On 4/5/2024 at 9:12 AM, Pantodude said:

Sensible advice generally, but too broad a statement because Marvel keys include the feisty UK price variants.  As a practical matter, the Marvel UK price variants would be an exception, as much as GA books would be, due to their undeniable rarity in uber high-grade.  Yesterday's Heritage sale of the Amazing Spider-Man #1 CGC 8.5 UK price variant for $84K is a case on point.

Hailed as the single-highest graded pence ASM#1, it blew past the $66K January Heritage sale of the cents 8.5 OW/W, even surpassing the comic-boom's former all-time high for any ASM#1 8.5 at $72K.  In fact, that pence ASM#1, while the highest-grade for a pence issue, is not even "uber" high grade.  That's the highest grade that has survived, which makes it quite special.  And this phenomenon is true of ALL Marvel UK price variants, particularly of the early SA.  The highest FF#1 pence is only a 6.5!!!, and the highest-graded Incredible Hulk #1 and TOS #39 pence are just 7.5s, and so on, despite all the incentive to grade those babies due to their lofty valuations as mega SA keys.  It's exceedingly difficult to land just one in a high grade, let alone two for the luxury of being able to let a lesser one go, as you suggest.  So a highest-grade pence of a SA key is likely just that, as much as any key comic book can be.   

I remember when the pence copies were considered far less valuable and sold my fairly decent pence AF15 for mid to high three figures

On 4/4/2024 at 10:45 AM, GreatCaesarsGhost said:

Quite. That’s a loss of over $100k in just a coupla years.

Gold is not immune 

I thought this was a good price valued at what it should be (and more than I thought some people would say).  But that was before I discovered here that it had sold for 270K previously.  I'd still say it's a proper price at 156 and that it looks bad only when compared to that stupid 270 price.  

On 3/25/2024 at 5:00 PM, lou_fine said:

Yes, I also thought it was a pretty strong price, especially considering that it had the much dreaded and often deadly "Brittle Pages" PQ designation. 

Detective 36 is an underappreciated book.  Scarer than most in the run and one of the few times that Batman deliberately killed people.  Changes to his costume.  Drug smuggling story.  And the first recurring super-villain* that was written to be a recurring villain -- complete with a last panel in jail vowing revenge on the Batman.

*second recurring villain in DC, after the Ultra-humanite in Action Comics (and before the Joker or Lex Luthor.  ("Dr. Death" had appeared in two issues but it was one two-party story and he died for good** at the end.

**although I would not be surprised if somebody tells me DC resurrected him decades later.  

On 4/4/2024 at 2:40 PM, Mmehdy said:

What a disaster for the TOS 39 seller...it sold for 840K and HA does not sell it for free....1.2 M loss at least...trade or cash or whatever......I would say this just using the same auction I could get Cap 1 9.2, Dect 27 3.0, Bat 1, Avengers 1 etc.....wow

Buyers may be more aware than they have been that highest graded means more in GA than SA.

Of course there can never be 100% certainty, even with Golden Age books.

But if this was a 9.8 Action 1 people would feel pretty confident it is likely to remain the highest graded copy.

If people felt the same level of confidence about the future and ongoing uniqueness of a 9.8 TOS 39, then $2 million might seem more reasonable or even a bargain.

This beatnik/hippie surfer is by Joe Simon ("Sick" magazine) in 1966 prior to Kirby's Silver Surfer.  Prototype?  Rip-off?  Coincidence?  None of the above?     

On 3/31/2024 at 3:28 PM, Aman619 said:

Looking the new second set from with dot copies, the red is more fully inked. Printing solid where the no dot copes look muddled red, like a weaker transfer of ink. 
 

if we have decided that the dot was printed for awhile and the presses stopped to file away the dot, then they ran off the rest of the run…. 
 

then the rough edges might be attributed to the plates sitting around for a “while” allowing the inks to dry a bit on the “mountaintops” then the presses start up again and new ink overlays on them, not clean metal with fresh ink, causing the edges to have extra outside the letter shapes AND cause the poor transfer making the exc text mottled red. But the red all over the covers would have the same roughness so we’d have to look over their entire covers 

so basically, who knows as Lions den says b

We have apparently decided that the operative rule is not Occam's Razor but Owner's Razor:  Whatever answer explains all the variables and concludes that my book is not a second printing or second state first printing, that is the correct answer.

For Superman 1 owners, try this:  If your book has the Action 14 "now on sale" ad -- it was printed before the books with ads saying "on sale June 2nd" because they originally thought the books would be on sale at the same time, hence the words "now on sale"  When the book was printed , they realized the Action comic was not on sale yet, stopped the presses and changed the ad to read "on sale June 2"

, 

On 3/31/2024 at 6:16 AM, jimbo_7071 said:

Since you seem to know something about printing plates, I'll direct this question to you. Anyone else who is familiar with printing should feel free to chime in.

Take a look at these 8 snips from Batman 1s. Do you see how the red along the bottom of the G in "SPRING" looks a bit blurry? (You can see a similar characteristic on other letters, too, such as on the bottom of the S in "SPRING.") Do you know what could cause that? Could it be from burrs on the plate early in the print run? Could it from wear to the plate or buildup late in the print run?

 

So which are these -- and the one below -- examples of?