F For Fake

Thanks! Picked up a DVD recorder to use as a comb filter for my laserdisc player. Was hoping there would be a coupon soon!

Wow, what a great thread, exactly the sort of thing these boards are great at! Thanks, I pulled the 16 IInd at my LCS a few months ago and had been puzzling on its origins. Now I want one of those crazy huge packs too!

It amazes me that I can still dig super nice copies of this run out of the 50 cent bin, aside from the BRB issue. Maybe because it's been reprinted so many times in so many formats, I dunno. But yeah, it's an amazing run and still mostly available dirt cheap.

It's true, I was pleasantly surprised to blow out some Spider-Man #'1's just this last week at $10 a pop. I always pick them up if I can find them for, say, $3 or less. There are a blue million of them out there, but people still want 'em.

Yup, figured you were the expert on the subject and storage!

Slabbed 9.8s sell for well over a grand. I think it was up to about $2500 at one point? I dunno, I don't like Greg Land's art, but it was a hot book for sure at one time.

Ha, indeed!

To be certain, there can be nostalgia and enjoyment linked to manufactured collectibles. I still buy X-Men #1 whenever I find them for 50 cents or less, simply because I fondly remember the fervor surrounding their release. They're not worth even a dime, I'd imagine, but I still enjoy buying them. So they don't have to be mutually exclusive.

So glad to not be alone!

No research needed here for the characters, I could name them all in my sleep! I always loved the cover because it was evocative of the (truly awesome) movie poster, while being its own unique thing. Is there a story behind how/where you found the cover??

All of my friends grew up pronouncing Liefeld as "Lee-field". Makes no sense. Lie-feld. It's right there. Why were we overcomplicating it? Sub-mareener and Magnet-o were common, it appears. I hung with those until I saw some episodes of those old Marvel cartoons that weren't really cartoons. For some reason I thought Byrne was "By-ron". Not sure why. I'm probably just an insufficiently_thoughtful_person. Here's one that I've never been 100% on: Mazzuchelli. Is it Mazz-oo-CHelli (CH like "chair") or Mazzu-kelly? Or something else entirely?

Yeah, I'm not sure what got him started on collecting them. It was a series of German plates, and he was big on his German heritage, so that may have been the appeal, I'm not sure. Or he thought they'd be worth something. Again, no idea, as he'd left them sitting in his basement untouched for decades. Part of my motivation for liquidating big heavy chunks of my collection. I don't want my wife stuck with having to move this junk when I'm gone.

Uh-MAZING. That hits me RIGHT in the nostalgia, man. I loved the actual movie so much, I remember hunting forever to find the movie adaptation. I read that thing until it was in tatters. That cover is burned into my mind. Wow wow wow, I know there have been some pretty impressive pieces on these boards, but on a strictly nostalgic personal level, this may be the best thing I've ever seen on here. Congrats!

When my uncle passed, I tried to help my aunt sell some of his collection. She gave me his Pac-Man machine straight up, and I gave her some cash for his Playboys, though they weren't really worth anything. Did well selling his model cars, Hot Wheels , and the like. But for some reason he was also really into those collectible plates, Danbury Mint, etc and we couldn't GIVE those things away. It looked like he'd been part of a subscription club or something in the late 70's, maybe early 80's, and got a plate every month. He'd never touched them, they were still sealed in the cardboard mailers, dead mint, beautiful shape. Couldn't sell them for the cost of shipping, could barely sell them for a buck at a yard sale.

FYI pics of slabs from the competition are a no-no around here. Might want to edit the pic so the thread doesn't get yanked.

Agreed, if the boxes are picked and it's stuff you've been lugging around forever, $60 is a terrific deal. I blew out 20 boxes of 90's indie drek for $25 a box a few months ago and was thrilled with the deal! Get the dead stuff outta here!

I bought what was a complete run of Walking Dead, #1 through I wanna say 60-ish, during the first season of the television show. Got the first ten graded, all came back 9.8. At that point I don't think the Michonne or Governor issues had really popped yet, I guess that's why I didn't grade them. At any rate, around the beginning of the second season, I think to myself "Oh, this thing couldn't get much bigger. The first season was popular, but this sort of genre show can't last forever." So, I sold my 9.8 for what I think was a high at the time, something like $900? At the time I was thrilled, as that sale alone more than paid for the entire run and the grading and a healthy profit to boot, not to mention the money I made off of the rest of the run. So, yeah, I was happy at the time. Several years later, WD 1 9.8 is what is is, I feel a little less smart about the decision. So, no, not disaster, I made a lot of money and I was happy at the time, but seeing how the book doubled and nearly tripled what I sold it for back then, I definitely wish I had that one back.

Should have held onto them a bit longer, then. I remember finding complete runs of Punisher, War Journal and War Zone, including non-deluxe covers in the 50 cent sale at my LCS. I do a lot of dollar bin digging, and was sure that I hadn't run into those books often, if at all, so I scooped them all up. I think I might have squeezed $10 out of one or two of them, but otherwise didn't have much luck. Should have listened to my gut, which told me that they were special. Oh well, it happens all the time. Sometimes you score, sometimes you sell too soon. Let's not even talk about my Walking Dead 1 9.8...

Well, y'all probably ran the OP off, but just in case he's still lurking: The BN Wonder Woman Sook variants sell well raw ($20-$50, depending on which issue, the grade, time of day, which way the wind was blowing, etc), so they'd probably do well graded at 9.8. Some of the other variants also do ok, and by "ok" I mean a bit more than the cost of slabbing them, but probably none of them are selling for more than $100. My advice would be to check completed eBay sales for 9.8 graded copies that have sold, and see what the prices are like, and see if those sold values, compared to the cost of grading, would be worthwhile to you. You can also subscribe to GPA to get an idea of the value. My biggest piece of advice would be LEARN HOW TO GRADE before sending them in, or go the pre-screen route, because none of those books are going to be worth slabbing in anything under 9.8. And the majority of the titles probably aren't worth slabbing even in 9.8, relative to the cost of slabbing. Of course, if you just want to slab them for your personal pleasure and preservation, go for it. Don't let anyone tell you not to if that's what appeals to you. But doing so for future investment is likely not going to yield much of a return. Good luck!

Paging @OrangeCrush

True, anything can happen, and yeah, if the property was ever optioned, the book would likely see a bump, just cuz that's the market we're living in these days. It's already a very valuable and desired book in spite of the fact that it has practically zero cultural cachet these days. And again, to be clear, I'm a huge Cerebus fan. I stuck with Dave to the bitter end on that book. I just don't see it being a property that is on Hollywood's radar right now, as it's barely on the comic book world's radar anymore. But stranger things have happened, and I'll gladly eat my words should it come to pass.

Well, never say never, obviously! We're seeing movies and shows these days that I never thought would happen in a million years. So I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying I'd be really, really, really surprised!

yeah, the first figures I ever bought from them (and they must have been around the very first they ever made) were the Aliens Colonial Marines. Bought them through Sideshow, and at $80 a pop I thought I was being totally ripped off! But they were cool, so I had to have them. $250-$300 for a 1/6 figure seems insane to me, but that's the reality of the hobby these days. Same thing with Sideshow's Premium Formats. Used to be around $300-$350. Now it seems like every new release is $450-$550. Crazy times!

I think it'd be practically impossible to adapt to another medium, because where do you start? The early issues were a funny animal Conan parody, which isn't something that's really marketable these days, as no one cares about Conan and I don't think funny animals are all the rage. The high points of the storyline, IMO, are High Society and Church and State, but, again, I just don't see how it would translate to another medium. Cerebus worked as a comic, and played to the strengths of the medium (yes, even including some of those tiresome prose issues.) I think it's a singular achievement in comics (even when Dave went off his nut in the later years with the woman hating and God stuff) but I just don't see it translating well to another form, or anyone taking a chance and putting the money in to TRY to adapt it. It's sprawling. 300 issues. Maybe you could have made a cartoon out of it back in the 80's when the book was flying high, but what sort of audience is there for the character these days? I don't know what the order numbers are for the recent Cerebus offerings, but if Dave is selling more than a few hundred copies of any of those books, I'd be amazed.

So people care about those Punisher countdown books now? I pulled a complete set of the countdown books as well as the non-deluxe 100 out of the 50 cent bins I'd say two, maybe three years ago, could barely give them away, including on these boards, even though I was pretty sure they were hard to find. I probably sold them for a song, as I don't have them anymore. Oh well, another example of my selling too soon!