Gatsby77

I posted the ballpark prices on the Gobbledygook auction over on page 5 of the thread "There IS a market for ultra-rare Copper books" or somesuch. Basically Heritage, February: # 1 (VF+) $11,000+ # 2 (VF/NM) just under $4,500 Heritage (May): # 1 (NM-) $6,300 # 2 (NM-) $2,400 Comiclink (last week): # 1 (VF/NM): $4,200 # 2 (VF/NM): $1,900

I thought they were in line with (maybe 10% below) the last pair that sold via Heritage, so maybe they've found their price. But note that last week copies were 50-60% below the copies that sold in Heritage in February.

Thanks--it is consolation to know I would have lost anyway. I bought a 3.0 Showcase # 4 about six months ago right before the book started heating up again, and am now looking to slowly acquire the other three (although the two copies of # 13 in tomorrow's C-Link auction are a) too rich for my blood and b) already bid over GPA.

I hate you for that Showcase 14. I was set to bid when my computer battery died and it took three minutes to boot back up. Thought you got the 14 for a steal. I was planning to bid a full $100 more than the ending price.

That issue is the first comic I ever read. I was 7 years old when a few scattered Peter Parker issues showed up at my local used bookstore. I got # 23, 32, 36, and 38. So much fun!

Breed wasn't Ultraverse--it was Bravura. (And awesome!) But I guess Malibu was Malibu, right?

Wow, who is this Boston Corbett guy? Hey Boston: put another way, the flaw in your argument: These prices only hold until the next copy pops up and the next sale. Example A: Hero For Hire # 1 in 9.8 sold in the last Comiclink auction last month for only $2,700, compared to its prior single sale of $15,000. The last 9.6 sale is listed on Comiclink as $1,077, a far cry from the $3,000 you cite above. Example D: Iron Fist 14. You paid $2,100 for your 9.8 copy? Great. GPA shows the 12-month average for 9.8 at a mere $1,163 and falling. Last sale was a mere $926. Paying $2,100 for your 9.8? A good way to lose 60% of your money.

Huh--I thought all of those just came with the Silver X-Men 11. Didn't know they could have contained X-men 303 or 307 too.

My math shows you made about a 6.95% return, compounded annually (exclusive of capital gains taxes, etc.). Total U.S. inflation over that time was 18.3%, so if you bought it today, it would have cost $73,937. Great book that you should be proud to have owned for 7 years, and proud to have profited from now.

Congratulations, Mark! Now what was your buy price again? I'd like to figure out the annual return on that puppy. Consider that, due the 2008 crash, the S&P 500 is up less than two percent total from 2006.

My vote's still for Detective 395 in terms of unrealized potential. Great story, and (I believe) first interior Adams--it's the Batman version of GL 76 or Superman 232. And as the recent 9.6 Heritage sale shows, rare (and expensive) in high grade.

I just picked up a 3.0 copy of Showcase # 4 tonight! Happy to join the club!

I remember going to conventions back in 1991 when the going rate for a NM Astonishing Tales # 25 was $55. {sigh} Oh, and remember that it's George Perez's first professional artwork, too.

Are you sure about that? I thought Overstreet's lists an estimated print run on the Gold UPCs as lower than that of the Platinum. Anyone confirm?

I also picked up Batman: 30s to the 70s and Superman: 30s to the 70s when I was in about third grade. Those books went a long way towards getting me to start collecting comics in middle school. The one weird thing about the Batman book is you come away thinking that Killer Moth is a major villain.

Judging by last week's C-link auction, slabbed 9.6/9.8 mainstream non-key Avengers, FF, and Hulk from 1970-1972.

I think a TMNT 1 9.8 would go for just over $20k. Far more significant book than Green Lantern 76, and if the first 9.6 copies of that book did $25k+ and a 9.8 did $37k, a pristine Turtles 1 could reach actual art values. I could see the same Southeby's collector base who normally go for Rothko or Warhol paintings angling for the most significant comic of the last 35 years (as I think it's easily the most significant book since Giant Size X-Men 1). And I forget--is it TMNT 1 or Secret Wars 1 that supposedly started the Copper Age?

Interesting note re. Bob's story of the "thousand comics" from 1950. At least part of that Ghost Rider # 1 warehouse find made its way to Showcase New England a few years ago. My 8.0 copy of Ghost Rider 1 was one of approximately 40 raw copies, 6.0-9.2, that they auctioned off on Ebay all at once (at 2 minute intervals) about four years ago. Likewise they had dozens of copies each of a few Tim Holt and Fight Comics. I paid $200 shipped for my copy of Ghost Rider 1. Looks 9.2/9.4 from the front but back cover has some smudging that brings it down, so I'd advise anyone buying Ghost Rider 1 online to get a back-cover scan first.

That was a great auction. I bid by phone - I forget what else I picked up. IIRC, they had some Nedor group lots that went for way too much money I thought at the time. I actually got in trouble on that auction - I was phone bidding while at a restaurant with the wife and kid. The wife was none too happy. I picked up the Black Terror 5 (5.5), Fighting Yank 9 (6.5) and the Exciting lot that I paid far too much for at the time but included # 27, 29, 30, and 34. In retrospect, glad I did. Some absentee bidder won an America's Best in the 20s for quadruple guide, and the auctioneer noted that he "must have been the happiest person of the night" because the final price was still way under his max bid. Also noted "looks like we missed one" because they had not sent the book in question to CGC. The one glitch that happened at the live auction was the auctioneer got confused and skipped a lot. Meant that none of us in the room had a shot at the FY lot of # 3, 6, and 7--clearly among the best of the run.

_Wow_. So jealous. Esp. of that Black Terror # 1. I was outbid on that copy at the live auction in Va. where it sold in April 2007. Were you there or did you bid on eBay/by phone? For those who can't see, it's a CGC 3.0, but looks VF or higher from the outside. IIRC, an interior wrap or two is detached, which brings it down. Best slabbed 3.0 ever!

Greg--what's the source for your stat that the Deathmate Red Gold and Black Gold had 10k print runs? I find that hard to believe just because they have always seemed so much harder for me to find than the Blue/Yellow versions. And does that mean that epilogue had a 10k print run as well? I don't have a source handy for the 1:50 ratio, but I believe it was one of those old "Edge-Man" or "American Entertainment" ads that offered the Prologue up for pre-order for either $1.99 or $1.49 each, plus a gold version if you bought 50 at that price. If this were true and the ratio held throughout the six issues, the red gold and black gold would be twice as hard to find than their blue/yellow counterparts, not twice as easy. (And "twice as hard" has always been my experience) Likewise, I've always thought that the Predator/Magnus Platinum was distributed as a 1:50 variant, both from similar ads in comic books around that time and my anecdotal experience at local comic shops then. Superman 75 Platinum and Spider-Man 1 Platinum were "1 per store" but Predator/Magnus Platinum was "1 per 50 copies ordered."

I thought the Deathmate golds were distributed in a 1:50 ratio. So theoretically the Deathmate: Red and Epilogue would be rarest since they were so delayed that retailers had cut their orders in the interim. Prologue had a ridiculous print run by comparison because it was ordered before the crash and before all of the Image-related Deathmate delays. Not that it matters now.

In my world, yeah--the weekend of ComicFest '93 was my awareness of the market crash--_at least_- with regard to Valiant. The night before the convention, I paid $25 for an X-O Manowar # 3 that had finally come in at my LCS (Showcase, in Bryn Mawr). It had been on my want-list for months, and was the last issue I needed for that run. Only--at that point I didn't want to pay $25 for it, assuming I might be able to find one cheaper at ComicFest the next day. The store clerk (rightfully) guilted me into buying it. Enter the weekend. Nearly _every_ dealer at the convention had pre-unity Valiants (except, as I recall, Harbinger 0) in depth. But Ultraverse books (esp. Prime # 2) were the new must-have books. The same dealer from whom I bought those pre-unity Magnus books for $1 per also had a Rai 0 (glossy) for $22. I'd never seen the book before and couldn't tell the difference, so I passed. I'm still convinced that "variant" was made up by "the Edgeman" or whoever was advertising them in comics at that time. But for me--in that one weekend I went from (begrudgingly) paying for a generic pre-unity at its peak value to seeing piles of Turok 1 and books like Rai 6-8 for $1 each. And a week later, I was so convinced that Ultraverse was the next Valiant that I traded 5 NM later Byrne X-Men issues for my buddy's 45 book Ultraverse collection. Oops.

ComicFest '93 occurred October 8-11.