F For Fake

Hey, whatever turns your Batarang!

I looooooved 350, fondly remember buying it off the spinner rack at B Dalton books.

Yes, I'm in the same place. I just can't let anything go right now, unless it's something I'm picking up specifically to flip. But otherwise, if I can find keys below market value, I'm buying and holding. I know the market can't go up forever, but...I dunno. I've burned myself too many times in the past, I'm scared to let any of it go now ha

It's cool to see Purves get some love. My recollection from my middle school days was that all of my friends were McFarlane freaks, so when he left Hulk, and Purves came on, he was the WORST ARTIST IN THE WORLD. Their opinion, not mine. I thought his stuff looked pretty cool, and honestly, in hindsight, a lot more solid (though admittedly less flashy) than Todd's.

It's true. It really is true. But man, it can be a hard pill to swallow sometimes. I refuse to look at or acknowledge sales of AF15 since I let mine go. I...truly do not want to know.

For sure! I am always complaining about books I let go of way too early. And when I do this, my wife will say "But did you make a good profit at the time?" and I'll say "yes". And she'll say "Were you happy with the money at the time?" And I'll say "yes". And she'll say "Well there you go." And then I'll try to accept this, but then I'll remember what I sold my Walking Dead 1 9.8, Batman Adventures 12 9.8, and New Mutants 98 Newsstand 9.8 for, and I'll go to the basement and beat myself with a tire iron. But yeah, the wins outweigh the losses by a good margin...but those wins could have been so much bigger! ha I

Ha, it was you! Nah, that's fine, I'm truly fine with having an incomplete set. I couldn't even tell you what I did with my Best of registry awards certificates either, I'm sure they're around here somewhere. I'm more than happy to turn it over to someone much more driven than I am to finish it off!

It's good you've held onto the 9.6's, that's very smart, I wish I'd kept my undercopies. For a few years I had the 9.6 of #1 & #2 as my place holders, as I didn't expect the 9.8's to ever show up. I also had a 9.4 of #1. After I got my 9.8 set, I sold the undercopies, because at the time, there was very little interest in the book. Probably sold them at a loss, too. Definitely ripped myself off there, but it wasn't the first or last time!

Better you than me! I was satisfied with the 1st print set. Once they added the later printings to the registry set, I had to step aside and let a better man take the lead ha

Until I got my 9.8, my #1 was a "NM" I'd bought during a sale at Mile High. Their prices were, of course, outrageous, but with their coupon at the time, combined with Aliens being relatively cooled off (would have been mid/late 90's) I think I paid $15 for it, plus shipping (I bundled some other books in as well. Mile High used to have terrific $1 sales.) The copy they sent was a far cry from NM, so I wrote them, and to their credit, they let me keep it, and sent me a much nicer copy. I never got it graded, I'd say it was pretty safely a 9.2. I sold all of my raws to fund my slabbed collection (minus the #2) so that's why I'm still rebuying some stuff today. I wish I still had that copy, though.

I'm sure there is some print run data out there somewhere, but I'll leave it to a brighter and more tenacious boardie to dig it up. But I would have to imagine it would be relatively slight. Sure, it was a licensed book from a hit film, but it was also a b&W indie from an at-the-time lesser known publisher. Dark Horse was a far cry from what they would become. The print run was probably higher than their other titles, but compared to Marvel and DC, I'm sure it was fairly slim. But once they had a hit on their hands, they were eager to get them out to readers. Five printings on #1 alone would indicate that demand far outstripped their sales expectations.

For sure, #1 was a $40-$50 book. I remember #2 being a little more like $15-20. Of course, eventually the heat died down, but even at its nadir, #1 1st was still a $15-$20 book, unless you got lucky.

You know, I have to wonder if, at this point, what's out there is more or less accounted for. There are some raw copies locked away in personal collections, I'm sure, but I don't foresee the census ever exploding on #1 or 2 first printings. With those black covers, they are genuinely tough to find in grade, so I wonder how many slab candidates are actually out there. Not many, I'd wager. The fact that the earlier issues went through so many printings illustrates not only the demand for the book at the time, but also the fact that the initial print runs must have been pretty meager. I remember buying my second print of #1 off of the stands, and it had taken me completely by surprise, as I'd never even seen the first printing. I'm sure there were collectors that picked up #1 at the time to squirrel away, but how many also picked up #2 when it hit? I just don't think they're out there in appreciable numbers, at least not in 9.8. Would be happy to be proven wrong, though!

Welcome to the club! You picked a good time to start collecting, as many silver age volumes which have been out of print for years have come back into print just in these last couple of months. White whales like Hulk Vol 1, Thor V 1, etc are available for the first time in years.

Wow, that's crazy, gives me anxiety just reading your description! Ha It's a shame that they aren't a bit more durable, because they're not exactly cheap. Seems like a certain amount of sturdiness should be built in with the price point, but I guess it is sacrificed for the overall aesthetic.

I totally get that, but I gotta say, the Doom figure is absolutely one of the best in the line. The "armor" is soft and rubbery, but it has a nice amount of detail, and the cape/cowl are really nice. In fact, if I could only have one figure in the line, he's probably the one I'd pick. They can be hit or miss in the quality dept, for sure.

Wow, we were just talking about this a few months or even year or so ago, right? It comes up so rarely for sale, and census numbers are so thin, it was hard to establish what a base value for this book would be. I think my guess at the time was that it would be at least $1500. It's so much harder to find than #1, i think it's worth every penny of this price. I got mine for about $700 in trade value, and that was several years ago, and was thrilled to do it, because I'd been looking forever, and at the time, there were only 4 copies on the census. By comparison, I'd paid $350 for my #1.

Oh wow, people care about the Eagle Judge Dredd 1 now??? It's crazy how many copies of this book I bought out of dollar bins over the years, but I don't know if I have more than a couple right now. It seemed like this book would never get hot, because it's not the "real" first appearance. How odd and random that it pops now. What a weird market. Anyway, Bolland should get all of the love in the world, so I'm down for it. Gotta dig in and see if I have any copies left.

Right Click - Save - And now I'm rich!

Yup, a ton of stuff has shown up. March is deadly packed. My wish list grows longer and longer, I'm just crossing my fingers that everything doesn't sell out before I get around to buying them! I had good luck with a recent Organic Priced Books order. Priced a few bucks higher than the competition, but shipped lighting fast in comparison to IST and CGN.

I'm curious about the IDW TMNT stuff, but it will be quite a while before I go down that road, as I'm trying to complete so many other lines right now. I feel the countdown with IDW losing the Transformers license, I'm trying to get the entire HC run, and am just four of five volumes short. I paid the price for the Gen 13 HC. It's a pretty slim volume, but nicely done. I wish we were getting the whole run (or at least the entire JSC run) but it seems unlikely.

Wow, that's crazy. The ThreeZero stuff is funky, but cool. But yeah, I feel like I'm going to break it just by looking at this pic! ha

Indeed, at the time this was the closest thing we had to Mego on the market. The reproductions hadn't begun in earnest, and no one else was really making Mego-style stuff. It's kind of crazy how much we have going on today, with Mego back to actually making toys, as well as Neca and several other companies making Mego knockoffs. At the time First Appearances was the only option. I always loved the Wolverine figure with the rubbery mask. I had all of these, and then sold them. I'd consider buying a set if I could find them cheap enough, but I don't want to take the time to piece together the whole collection.

CGC began collapsing into self parody a while back, but as long as the money keeps rolling in, I don't expect things to change. The market has gone from robust to bonkers to altogether unsettling. Too much money in the game, too many people. Bah!

You all are killing me with the yard sale hauls. I was really expecting yard/garage sale activity to be starting up around here this weekend, but it was a bust. I guess everyone was hung over from the opening rounds of the NCAA tourney. This is Kentucky, after all, where college basketball is the official state religion. No one has time for yard sales when Kentucky gets bounced by a 15 seed. (BWAHAHAHA. Louisville fan here. UK can suck it.) Going to a comic show this weekend, hoping the local sales start to pick up shortly. Keep posting the great pics!