fantastic_four

Well, you're not looking at what's High Grade, then. You're looking at 'at what point does a specific book become high enough grade for it to be collectible?'. 'Grade' is an objective, clearly defined assessment of a book's physical condition with no regard for its scarcity or desirability. +1 There are two questions here: grade AND desirability that are getting conflated. An 8.0 is HG for me, for example, but that is not a desirable grade for a book that came out last week (or ASM #300 for that matter). Just as everyone may differ on their threshold for HG they will also differ on the cutoff for desirability of different grades for different books. +2 And since this topic gets brought up every freakin' month of late, if you guys drag this one on for days and hundreds of posts, I promise to begin threadbombing.

....nice and unpressed. The 15 has a tiny chip at bottom and each have light dust shadows. PQ is decent....at least OW/W. The original owner brought them into a friend's LCS in hat boxes and apple crates. The first ones he brought were the Lone Rangers and Roy Rogers, as he thought they would be the most valuable....but that turned out to be the ASM 1 that slabbed out (unpressed) @ CGC 9.2. It was auctioned in what I believe was the first Heritage auction. The old fellow had some mounting Medical expenses and my pal resisted the temptation to offer him 2 grand (which he would have taken) and worked out a consignment arrangement. The guy had over 2 thousand books from 1954-1964....and he collected EVERYTHING....D.C. , Marvel, Dell, ....it was awesome. All the Marvel keys except FF1 nd Avengers 1. Nice books! What do you grade them at?

All the Cracked articles have hilarious, hardcore macho-sounding narration. Here's the awesome intro to that article:

Great Cracked list where the honey badger comes out as the top animal that just doesn't give a fig. http://www.cracked.com/article_18860_6-animals-that-just-dont-give-f2340k.html

Most likely there's a subtle, significant defect--something like a stain on the interior front cover. Call for grader's notes.

First 9.6 on that issue I've ever seen.

Doesn't get any more perfect than that.

Nice copy of #5...hard to even tell why it's not a 7.0 or 7.5 as opposed to 5.5.

FF 31 is one of the hardest in the 1-50 run to find in high grade, and in the 20 to 50 range, it may be the very hardest one to find. It's also usually miswrapped with the front wrapping to the back; yours is amazingly well-centered. VERY nice copy there indeed. (thumbs u

THANKS! If they'd just legalize marijuana, I think it'd actually come long even faster.

Yea the QP and PQ are nice, but it doesn't look undergraded. I count a number of color-breaking spine nicks. I can't tell exactly how many from that scan, could be anywhere from three to eight, although if it's as many as eight it looks as if most are tiny at about 1/32".

THANKS! I started collecting them in high grade in 2000...so yea, a decade is just about right! (thumbs u

This week I finally picked up a nice copy of FF #2 and finished my FF run. I now own the entire run in 8.0 or better with the exception of my #1 being CGC 7.0 and my #3 being a restored 9.4. I'll keep upgrading, but I'm planning to mostly hold off on that until I pick up a nice Amazing Fantasy 15. Since I won't be buying many FFs until I get the AF15, I also went ahead and did what I'd been avoiding for years--I posted my FF run into the CGC Registry, there's a link to it in my sig line. I'll put scans up at some point as well, although if you're good at reverse-engineering scan addresses from book pictures I post they've been available for public viewing on the web for most of the last decade. Glad to finally have the #2 out of the way! I'd been stymied in getting it for the last three years.

The Massachusetts FF #31 is the most overgraded 9.4 I've personally ever seen; it has four color-breaking 1/4" spine dings hugely visible on the black areas. I'd shake my head at four 1/8" breaks, but they're closer to 1/4"--it's just insanity. The book has been sold and re-sold about 4-5 times over the last 6-8 years. The fact that Marnin let it go when he held most of the other Massachusetts FFs says a lot about it. I passed on that book when it sold for $1000 when Bob Storms liquidated it with the rest of his FF collection back in 2003/2004 and I'd pass at that same price again--looks no better than a 9.0 to me.

LOOKING GOOD! (thumbs u I love #13 for some reason, and it can be one of the tougher early ones to find, so you did well getting it early on. I wasn't able to land a nice copy for five long years.

Wow that looks NICE, what do you grade it at? I can't tell how deep that faint crease in the upper-left is...book could be 9.x from the scant defecs I can see in the scan!

He told me you remind him a lot of John Goodman.

I'm not sure I believe you. But just in case you're being genuine, I'd like to announce the birth of a new wart growing towards the bottom of my . I estimate it to be about an ounce in weight, and I couldn't be prouder.

Based upon what?

In a room that's completely pitch black the 23 hours 50 minutes per day you're not looking at the books. Rooms people have to go in and out of throughout the day or even periodically are the last places to choose, and as you suggested, get sunlight-blocking curtains to keep both direct and ambient sunlight out. Use low-wattage incandescent bulbs for lighting; fluorescent emits more ultraviolet light and causes paper to fade faster. Extremely detailed info about conservation and lighting can be seen here: http://www.nedcc.org/resources/leaflets/2The_Environment/04ProtectionFromLight.php

Around Richmond. I've been to Trilogy, cool shop. (thumbs u My weekly box is at Richmond Comix in Midlothian. http://richmondcomix.com

Today, Fantastic Four #1 CGC 7.0 is about a $13K to $17K book. In 2015, I expect it to be a $20K to $30K book, and it's verrrrrrrrrrry difficult to predict where in that range it will be. It has a decent possibility of being a $40K to $50K book by 2020. 7.0 copies of almost any other issue from 1 to 20 will only enjoy comparatively minor increases in that same 5-year timeframe with the exception of #5 and possibly #12, and they may remain flat. I bought an 8.0 copy of FF #9 in 2002 that is worth about the same today as the price I paid back then. Contrast that with an 8.0 copy of #1 I missed out on in 2002--it sold for $14K, which at the time was quite high, and today is a $40K to $50K book.

Focusing on #1 makes the point really simple, I agree. I started collecting Fantastic Four in 2000. Had I bought my #1 issue that year instead of last year for the same amount of money, I would currently own a CGC 8.5 to 9.2 copy instead of the 7.0 I had to settle for almost a decade later because I was too eager to just buy whichever issues hit the market first at the cheapest prices. My collection would also be worth at least double what it is today had I bought the early issues first. Yea, your salary tends to go up over the course of a decade, but a book like FF #1 goes up by a lot more unless you make some truly spectacular career advances.

Your initial desire will be to buy high-grade copies of higher-numbered issues. You unfortunately will do yourself a HUGE disservice by doing this. Buying nice copies of #1 to #13 should be your earliest focus; you'll save yourself the most money by buying those first. They tend to go up the most over time, so figuring that it will take you 5 to 10 years to buy the whole 1 to 100 run in the condition you want, if you buy the 1 to 13 run last, it will end up costing you a lot more several years from now than it will today. Getting those issues out of the way first will maximize your spending dramatically. The hard part is that you're likely to be the most enthusiastic now to get some issues and won't want to save up and wait for the early issues. Your ability to buy those early issues or the condition you're able to afford will go down every year you put them off. The later issues are far more available, and in high CGC grades will multiply in availability and decrease or stay flat in price far more than the early issues will, so buying later issues before the early ones is simultaneously the worst way to invest the money and the worst way to complete the entire run. When you buy copies of 53 to 100, you should think to yourself that you're flushing money away better spent on early issues, and from a pure investment perspective, that isn't at all wrong--it's absolutely correct. That's the frame of mind that helps me save up for early key issues.

Not likely. Iron Man and Thor are unique characters, whereas Daredevil is a Batman clone with the actual ability of a bat. Certainly those powers are uniquely interesting, they've kept me interested since the first issue I read (DD #181). The title was close to going the way of the X-Men in the late 1960s; without Frank Miller the series almost certainly would have eventually been cancelled.