sfcityduck

Send it in there would be one!

Not trying to put you down, I'm just, perhaps not clearly, stating that you have to define what you want to seek out and why? For me, when it came to records, I collected mainly Beatles, Dylan, U2 and some 60s psych. I had lots of other music, but that was just for listening (I didn't think of it as a "collection"). Collecting the Beatles was what made me realize that I didn't need every record when what I really wanted was every song and every take - whether on an original issue or not. That saved me a lot of money. With advances in technology and the release of ungodly high quality Beatles session tapes on CD, that made me realize all of the official releases were sonically compromised before they ever made it to vinyl, I decided to sell most of my vinyl and migrate to cd as much as possible especially with the new masters and official releases of session tapes. Now, I have a ton of Beatles music (the equivalent of 50+ cds of Get Back sessions alone) at a much higher quality, lower cost, and space savings than what I used to have. For U2 and Dylan, almost everything once on bootleg is getting an official release - so I've upgraded as new material has come out. Where my limits are tested is when I go to my local record store and see something cool (like a still sealed copy the 13th Floor Elevators first album from the later 1960s) that once would have been a grail for me up on the wall looking like a pristine piece of art. (I passed on the $1,000 record.) For comics, I don't seek out "keys." They are readily available as long as you are willing to pay the price. For my enjoyment of collecting, I research and identify cool items I think are worth pursuing (many that are off the beaten path), and then I seek them out. I especially like having a theme to pursue, especially if it creates a nice mini-run or grouping with other books. I have no desire to be a completest any more. I find my collecting very satisfying, even though (1) the hunts can take a long time and (2) I don't end up joining very many "club" threads. An example: Neal Adams just died after a very long career in which he is famous for his cover art. There are very long threads devoted to Neal Adams covers. CGC has been around for decades. But the only person who has bothered to identify, chase down, and submit to CGC a copy of Neal Adams' very first comic book cover is me. I guess everyone was focused on the readily available "keys" and never thought about (or even considered the existence of) the relatively hard to find "first." There is a lot of stuff like that out there that I'm still seeking out in every comic age - but I focus on GA through Copper. I tend to post threads on my hunts after I've made the kill because I like to share cool stuff. I'm doing what makes me happy. All I'm saying is that whatever that is for you, you should do it too.

I do not see the concern. You are not in a contest. To be blunt you are not and never will be in the running for the “best” or “most impressive” comic book or record collection. The competitors on that front are so far ahead you would need unlimited resources to get in the conversation. So what are your collecting goals? What makes you happy? Those are the questions you should be asking … yourself. I do collect more than one thing although there are some intersections. There is no dilemma because I enjoy collecting different things. Money is finite so I always have to make choices as I curate my collections regarding what I buy, sell, and choose to hunt. That is part of the fun.

My sympathy for his family and personal friends. But what an incredible legacy he has left with his work! Few people are so talented and leave such a legacy that they effectively become unforgettable - a form almost of immortality. Neal Adams is one of those greats.

Church is a universal. I think he paid about $40K. So I think he'll do well when he sells. His problem was the excessive, almost panicky, hyperbole he used when he stormed these boards begging people to value his comic for an overly high value for the time by saying something to the effect "It's my life, man!" when it was really just his comic. His pricing shows he doesn't need the money and isn't really interested in selling. It's a beautiful comic and he deserves some pride. My argument for MF 73 is that it is the first appearance of the original versions of two JLA members -- heroes that were in pretty much constant production from their first appearance on into the SA, which is much better than any superheroes other than Superman, Robin, Batman, and Wonder Woman (in that order). Both characters are current media properties. My argument against MF 73 is that golden age GA and Aquaman were third tier heroes. They weren't in the JSA. And they weren't on MF 73's cover or many covers at all. They were backups. Many DC characters had a much higher profile than GA and Aquaman, Plus it is not an early GA book. So in the hierarchy of DC GA books, it is a reasonable position that it is not a top DC and is easily below Action 1, D27, Superman 1, Batman 1, All-American 16, Flash 1, All-Star 8, MF 52, Adventure 40, and is, at best, fighting for the 10 spot with MF 55, Sensation 1, WW 1, GL 1, D 1 & 31 & 33 & 38, Action 7, and maybe others.

Thanks for this thread! Next time I visit my family in Eugene, I will have to check the murals out. Not a secret Groenig was inspired by Springfield, Oregon (which back then was viewed as a loser's town) and the Nuclear facilities near Portland (Trojan nuclear power plant and the Hanford nuclear site). Groenig had referenced it more than once over the years, and many characters are named after streets in Portland (and the Simpson's street is named after the street where he grew up). But the murals are news to me! Thanks again!

Cool homage to both Groenig and Banksy!

Wort noting he did it during his one year stint with ad agency Johnson & Cushing and it was not only his first cover but also his first full story and first full comic. Previously he’d had his first comic work (one panel) and some half and full page gag strips in Archie comics. So this book is significant and should be a grail for Neal Adam’s collectors.

He used to have a checklist of works on his website and it was on it. There is no doubt it is Neal Adams.

Looks like 1960s car and clothing styles, so you might do better on the SA forum.

I stand corrected as "about 1,000" is the number for the books BZ said were bought at a Campbell Bros store. But, I think he hung onto other single purchases. He stated: There are strong reasons to believe that the "Campbell" books were really the "Gilchrist" books.

Bionic man is awesome. Here's something scary: I was watching a Hallmark rom-com with my wife (don't judge me yet), and it turned out that a sub-plot was a Lee Majors/Lindsey Wagner romance. The Bionic Man and Woman reunited and ending up together. It was a fun little movie for that reason alone.

I was expecting a bunch of these to come out of the woodwork after I made this post about the very first NA cover.. It's been three months, and none yet. Maybe CGC is just reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaallllllly slow. LOL!

Bummed. I don't think any X-Men book from 1963 to 1990, the time period X-mens I collected ardently, is "rare." IH 181 GSX 1, not even close, even in high grade. Just desirable and valuable. The Foom is not Wolverine. The giveaways are all pretty obtainable, even the comic collecting one and the Firestar ones. Maybe the 3d is hard.

I've got one of those! Is it rare or valuable?

Of course its the seller's right, and we'll probably never know who the seller is or what motivated the auction. And if it turns out well, as I expect, no one will care. But in this hobby rumors circulate and people also have a right to speculate about the whys of transactions, especially those that don't turn a profit, because it bears on the strength of the market. An "investor" attempting a quick flip is a much different circumstance and says different things about the market than a collector selling to fund a more expensive and desirable purchase opportunity that was unexpected, for example.

My guess, based on Roy having brokered the AS 8 sale last year and the Supes 1 sale this year, is that maybe the guy who bought the Supes 1 is selling the AS 8 to help fund the purchase. And, yes, that's pure speculation based on the Roy angle.

There's been a lot of talk that the video game market was artificially inflated. This might be the result.

I was gonna say that it now has a little gold sticker, but after looking at it that sticker has always been there. So any sale price is going to be without any upgrade, manipulation or change. How high will it go? $1M easily. $1.5M+ or $2M+? Fun to see.

If it is a shadow, it is eerily similar to the WF 8. Great colors on these books. I've always wondered, though, why they don't note the WF 10 with "First and only cover appearance of Green Arrow, Boy Commandos, and Star Spangled Kid on the title." Green Arrow did not appear on the cover again until 1972.

15 copies 8.0 and above is my estimate.

Not a single SA, CA, or BA X-Men appearance falls into the rare category. But, I loved collecting them. And many folks still do. Because of the story and the characters and the artists who worked on those books. These days you can read the stories in Archives, Omni's, and online so you don't even need to chase the down the issues. But if you do want the issues, they are readily available and there's great joy in completing a run for a lot of collectors despite the utter lack of rarity. And if you want something that's rare, there's always things out there even for more recent comics which are "organically" rare: Low print run independent publisher offerings, newsstand variants, rare subsequent printings, giveaways, etc. If you want something related to a mass produced comic that's rare, one of a kind even, there's always original art. And if you want something that's one of a kind and specific to you, you can go the Signature Series route. You can do all of that without messing with the lives of those who want "complete" runs, which used to be a major driving force for buyer support of comics series. I think comic publishers were better off back in the days when collectors focused on series completion. It led to loyal buyers and consistent sales on series (barring a major quality downturn). I understand you think that its ok for collectors to seek out the variants which are manufactured collectibles (intentionally printed in low runs to make them rare and collectible), and I agree that if they exist its ok for a collector to want one if its meets a collecting goal. But my firm opinion is that they should not exist. I'm with Spock on this one: The needs of the many should outweigh the needs of the few. Publishers are evil sometimes and the whole retailer variant thing was an evil money grubbing idea. My two cents. A criticism of publishers not collectors. I blame the start of it on the limited edition Dark Knight hardcover back in the 80s. In my perfect world, those variants would not exist.

I agree with with some of your main points - basically the criticism of folks who take the position that what I collect is awesome and what you collect is junk. But your criticism is misdirected to me, misses my point, and incorrectly analyzes a main issue. First, I began collecting in the late 70s. Byrne X-Men were immediately king to me, also Rogers & Austin Batman, Miller Daredevil, Golden, Sinkz, Perez, were early favorites. Later Cerebus, Moore, Dark Horse, etc. But I do have nostalgia for some GA books despite my "young" age because my father gave me his collection of later 40s - early 50s comics and enjoyed immensely. And, maybe more so because before that two of my favorite library books as a kid were Batman from the 30s to the 70s and Superman from the 30s to the 70s. The point being, you can have a lot of comic nostalgia and it does not need to be for comics from a period in which you actually lived. Second, nostalgia is not what drives my GA comic collecting. What drives my GA comic collecting is history and the joy of the hunt. Which is why I said "I like rare GA comics that are historically important. But, I don't see the point of manufactured collectibles." You see, there are not really that many truly "rare" GA comics (as opposed to the old saw "rare in grade"). Most are readily available if you have the money to pay for them. But there are some that are incredibly rare and historically important that can provide you with one of the best reasons to collect: The thrill of the hunt. Examples?: My personal favorite was my hunt for the book Frederick Wertham called the "only good comic book ever published." Collectors on this board had been searching decades for a copy of it. I found a copy after a two year search. The comic is historically important because of the role it played in the comic censorship battles that raged in the late 40s to mid-50s. When issued, there were newspaper articles about it nationally. It is mentioned extensively in Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent. If you want to complete a collection of every comic mentioned in SOTI you have to have a copy. Yet, at the time I started my hunt there was only one known copy in private hands. I found the second. A third, incredibly beat up copy, just appeared with a few pages of the original art. The hunt was a blast and selling that comic to the guy who deserved it more than any other so he could complete a SOTI collection was personally satisfying. That's a great reason to collect books like that. Read about it here and note what I titled that thread long ago: My second favorite hunt was for what I view as the first true graphic novel as Will Eisner used that term many decades later: A classic comic page format graphic story telling with word balloons of the experience of immigrants coming to America. I searched 15 years for that one. It was my personal grail. You can read that story here (ignore that graphic in the box below - that's not the book): Another rare book that I and others have searched for and located after long searches is the last comic that Ian needed for his famous quest to compile a complete collection of all newsstand DC comics. You can read about that here: So that's me and one of my collecting motivations. Right now, I'm focusing on comics bearing on the Atomic Bomb and Cold War scare that resulted. Some of those books are really rare. Third, but I agree that no GA collectors should be putting down what you collect because its not "as good" as the GGA covers or PCH covers or Cole/Baker/Schomburg covers or Frazetta/Krigstein/Kurtzman stories or Joker appearances etc. etc. etc. that they collect. Again, what I collect is cool to me, what you collect is cool to you, and its ok if we don't agree on what's cool - although most comic collectors do have very broad areas of agreement on coolness. Fourth, my specific statement "I don't see the point of manufactured collectibles" is not a criticism of people who buy them. I know they are doing so because of that familiar feeling of OCD completism or desire for a rare commodity that might increase in value. It is a criticism of the people who create them in order to exploit those buyers. In my view they are cynical creations intended to exploit which have an impact of preventing many collectors from easily obtaining or meeting their collecting goal of having all issues in a particular run of comics. I view them as somewhat evil. And I have no doubt that the publishers of such items hold some back and profit on them later. As someone who was an X-Men completest until a proliferation of cynical mini-series, maxi-series, cross-overs, spin-offs, variant covers, etc. made the financial burden of maintaining that collection financially burdensome to the point that the joy was robbed, I hate those cynical publisher moves. To me, its had a very negative impact on comic collecting. But that's just my opinion. And that's the point you missed. Probably I was too obtuse.

No Robin. The proof?: