Cpt Kirk

Would love to see final sales price. I have one, and I would be surprised if this one sells for more than $500. I pulled my VF copy out of a 2nd and Charles bin in Naperville IL and bought it for $2. I believe the Clearview Mall variant came from Clearview Mall in Butler PA (recognize the infamy of that city now?). I find it interesting that this comic book was originally given away in Butler PA and then found its way to a second-hand store in Naperville IL.

Great idea to get it CGC'd. There's no doubt it is legit now.

Good point my friend.... so there's no way the Batman 390 shown above could contain a jeweler variant. I've never seen nor heard of a Canadian price variant containing a jeweler insert. That makes sense since the Mark Jeweler ads were inserted into comic books that were to be displayed at US Military PX's.

First of all... congrats... your SM MOS 50 is one of the rarest DCUs. Second, yes the 39 DCU exists (I beleive you will see a photo earlier in this thread and I have one of those). Third, I think you will eventually find your SM MOS 42 DCU. The only catch, there's two versions of the SM MOS 42... stickered and un-stickered.

I hate to say it, but there really does need to be an asterisk. For example, Action Comics 452 has two different versions of the jeweler inserts. One of the inserts is predominantly blue with the code "88" on the bottom right hand corner of the centerfold, and the other insert is predominantly brown with the code "999" on the bottom right hand corner of the centerfold. Who knows how many other issues are like that. Me... I'm not going to worry about trying to chase that down more of those anomolies! To make matters worse, my Action Comics 452 with the brown insert is only a FN-. So now I have to keep an eye out for jeweler variants of Action 452 so that I can try to get a copy that is at least VF.... gol-blammitt!!!

I just received this jeweler variant today. It is Action Comics 579. It was the last jeweler variant that I needed to find in the run of Action Comics after searching for 12+ years. I was beginning to believe it did not exist. But I kept looking. I recently asked a seller of an Action 579 if his copy on ebay was a jeweler variant. The answer was "no" but he was buying some long boxes that he thought contained jeweler variants, and he would let me know if he found any. He was disappointed that this Action 579 was the only one he could find. Me... I was thrilled that he found even one (it has been 3 years since I've been able to find a jeweler variant that I didn't previously think existed). So now I have found every single jeweler variant that could exist for Superman and Action Comics. There are 158 of them in Superman and 157 of them in Action Comics. Now that this Action 579 has been discovered, there's only 4 of the possible 690 jeweler variants in the titles of JLA, Batman, Detective, Superman and Action Comics that I haven't been able to find yet (namely, Batman 245 & 390, Detective 470 & 548). If you find one of those, I sure would like to hear about it on this thread.

Great observation on your part. I believe that this discovery has already been documented way back in this same thread (I didn't have the patience to find the postings that described this discovery but I am pretty sure it is there). Another example of this is the two different DCU versions of Detective 674. I found the DCU version that had "Collector's Pack First Edition" in a pack called "The Batman Collection", so I'm guessing the other version was made for a differnet kind of pack. The other DCU version had did not saying anything about the edition number in the indicia.

For DC Comics, the big ones have already been mentioned.... i.e. Batman 457 2nd print news, Superman 50 2nd print news, and Robin 1 2nd print news. For all others, I would say what drives the price the most is the condition of the comic book plus the value of the comic book itself (for example, Batman 567, Batman 423, Batman Adventures 12, Detective 880, etc.) Another interesting twist would be to list the newsstand issues that have proven to be the hardest to find. I have a friend who's been looking for 10+ years for all the Batman and Detective newsstand issues, and he still hasn't found Detective 867. If you find one of those in FN or better, let me know and I'm sure he would pay you at least $50 for it even though there's nothing special about that issue. I was able to find every single newsstand issue in the titles of Batman, Detective, Superman and Action Comic books. For me, the hardest ones to find were newsstand issues from approximately 2005 up until approximately the 13th issue of DC's New 52 series (especially Detective Comics). Why? Because 2005 was about the time they disappeared from most newsstands (Waldenbooks folded up around then). To make matters worse, Detective Comics (and I'm sure other less popular titles) were distributed to the newsstands in very small quantities. But right around the 13th issue of DC's New 52 series, I would say a lot of collectors jumped on the newsstand bandwagon, so I believe newsstand issues were bought and kept for speculation after that. For example, an employee at Mile High comics told me that they made a deal with someone who would bring in newsstand issues that he got from Barnes & Nobles and trade them for other stuff so that Mile High could keep them in stock and list them on their website at ridiculous prices. So except for a few issues, the most recent newsstand issues can be found if you have a little patience. One notable exception.... Batman Rebirth #14. That darn comic book didn't get sent to all the Barnes & Noble newsstands (those were about the only newsstands where you could still find comics). My daughter-in-law had to travel to a Barnes & Noble in north Atlanta to find it. Just try and find that bad boy in newsstand format! ... and also take note that newsstand issues at that time were price variants as shown below.

I went back to the beginning of this thread and saw the question as posted above. I've been tracking these jeweler variants for years and I don't think anyone has every compiled a listing of all DC comics that could have contained the insert (I could get pretty close to having a comprehensive list... but I think I will wait until I'm retired before I take on that mission). I do know the following for DC comic books: 1. The MJ inserts never appeared in any square-bound giants. 2. They rarely appeared in saddle-stapled giants but there are exceptions. 3. For all non-giant issues, I believe every single DC title that had a cover date of August or Aug/Sept 1972 contained the insert. 4. None ever appeared in issues with cover dates of March, April or Mar/April 1975 (odd that only those two months were skipped). MyComicShop has been selling thousands of them over the span of more than 15 years but I've never seen a single issue sold with those cover dates. I also bought a run of star-stamped Justice League of America issues from issue #'s 97 through 135, and none of 100-page giants nor the #117 dated April 1975 contained the insert. Recall the star-stamp indicated that it was solid in a military PX. Of that run, all the issues between 100 and 135 contained the insert except for the 100-pagers and the April 1975 issue. 5. The last issues that contained the insert had cover dates of July 1986, but the issues with July 1986 cover date that were released in the last few weeks of that month did not contain the insert. 6. To make matters worse, I believe some of the later issues from Aug 72 throught July 1986 may have been either accidentally or purposely skipped. Examples include Detective Comics 548 (Mar 1985) and Batman 390 (Dec 1985). I believe that to be true because I bought runs of comic books that had jeweler inserts but the TEC 548 and Batman 390 within those runs did not include jeweler ads. But... to be fair... I don't know if that was a fluke so I keep looking. For example, I bought a large run (approx 100 issues) of Superman jeweler variants but the Superman 327 from that run was missing the ad, but I have found at least 2 other copies of Superman 327 that contained the advertising insert. 7. So the challenge is this... there must be more than 1,000 issues of DC Mark Jeweler variants. But the variables above would make it very challenging to produce a definitive list of the jeweler variants. So....jeweler variants of Detective 548 or Batman 390? Are they the missing links?

Welcome to the boards Wayne. Those are some amazing comic books you have there!

You got it right.... 6.5. I think it is really more like 7.5 or better though. DIdn't bother me one bit because I was able to pay a 6.5 price pre-COVID. I'm really glad I pulled the trigger when I did.

My all-time favorite cover. I'm really glad I was able to get it pre-Covid. It was CGC'd. Please guess what grade they gave it.

Better yet, a person might be a fool to buy them at $1K. In my case, I won't be selling them.

I really appreciate the insight. I'm now understanding that what we have here is a piece of original art that has been printed onto a thin piece of metal and glued to a comic book. Thanks! But my question still stands... has anyone heard of a sales price (other than the original sales price that Willis told me about)? A good friend of mine who had a set was offered $2K for both versions of the plate. And another friend of mine seemed willing to pay $1K for both of the metal plates. Me.... I'm not a dealer and I'm clueless as to what value should assigned to them for insurance purposes. I don't think I would do it, but I would be tempted to list them on ebay with a ridiculous price (say $5K) and then see what offers might be presented. I don't want to do that though, because I really have no intention to sell so it seems disingenuous to list them. Thoughts?

Here's the story on the ENOR Corp 50 pack for you, @Iconic1s. I think it is a super rare pack and I don't know who distributed it for sale. Here's some images of a pack that I picked up about 9 years ago. It had an assortment of DC and Marvel books. I think the comics were random overstock. There were DCU's, newsstands and direct sales comics in the pack.

So with the Batman 247, I'm only missing 6 Mark Jeweler variants in the titles of Batman, Detective Comics, Superman, Action Comics and Justice League of America. Namely, Batman 245 & 390, Detective 470 & 548, Action Comics 579, and JLA 107. Of those 6, the only one that I know exists for sure is the JLA 107 because I lost a bid on a vg- copy (it went for $91 dagnabit!). The rest remain elusive. I think the Batman 245 and TEC 470 should exist but I can't say for sure.

Here's something that I'm guessing no one has put together.... the entire run of all known Mark Jeweler variants in the title of Batman. I was lucky enough to recently get a copy of Batman 247 from an ebay seller in the UK, which was the last known one that I did not have in my collection. Like the impressive Amazing Spider-Man run described above, the average grade is astounding (I would say average grade of the entire run is 8.5 or better). The lowest graded ones are a couple of vgFN's (namely Batman 243 and 246, which can be seen below). I'm convinced that there should be a jeweler variant of Batman 245, but I have yet to see one after 12 years of looking. In those 12 years, I've looked at more than 300 copies of Batman 245. The only other issue that should have an insert but I'm pretty sure it was skipped was Batman 390. I believe the 390 doesn't exist because I've also been looking for that one for years. I also bought two different large runs of jeweler variants and the Batman 390 that was in those runs did not contain the insert (whereas all the other issues in those runs contained the inserts). If someone offered me a Batman 245 jeweler variant in FN or better to me for $500, I would gladly buy it. I thought the $1400 price I paid for the CGC 8.5 Batman 251 was crazy until I sold my vg+ undercopy of that same Batman jeweler variant for approximately $700. For your viewing pleasure, the following images show the first ten known jeweler variants of Batman (these are all pre-100-pager issues). These all contained the thicker "card board" inserts and if you look carefully at the bottom right corner of the insert shown in the photo below, you will see the alpha numeric code associated with each insert. The Batman 243 insert is the one on the bottom and the Batman 253 insert is on the top (all of them are stacked sequentially).

Update: Kyle Willis (owner of Cowabunga Comics near Jacksonville Florida) was kind enough to tell me the story of these two metal covers. He said he bought the original art that you see on the cover from the artist Daniel Dahl and then got Dahl's permission to create these two metal covers (as stated on the covers, there were 25 of the silver and 50 of the color covers). He then had them carefully glued to copies of Batman 1 (3rd series). He said that he considered them to be "bootleg" covers because he had this all done on his own and just placed the covers on after-market comic books. He thinks this particular piece of Daniel Dahl art has never appeared in or on any comic book. Thus it can only be found on these metal covers. He said he thinks that the original price of this metal covers was in the neighborhood of $80 each. He also said that he stopped making this type of thing because of some controversy associated with similar products that occurred not too long ago. p.s. I realize at this point that it would not be correct to call these "variant covers". So my original question still stands... has anyone seen any sales data on these books? I don't plan to sell these two books... I'm just curious to know the value.

These metal covers remind me of the Neal Adams metal covers that were made by Continuity Comics in 2018 and glued on top of one of the Batman 50 variants. I bought my Batman 50 Neal Adams metal cover directly from the store for $100. I remember receiving it and then thinking "Hey... this is pretty lame... all they did was make a metal cover, got it signed by Neal and glued it to a comic book.... this isn't really a variant!" And now it looks like the lowest listing of that Batman 50 metail cover on ebay is $475 (of course, I realize it might not sell for that much). I see that they also made a metal cover for Detective 1000 (right now there are two of them for sale on ebay; one at $1300 and the other for $2000 along with a whole bunch of other comic books). Following is the Batman 50 metal cover listing on ebay. https://www.ebay.com/itm/154971574204?itmmeta=01J0ZXDFEVQRTZPGGRYEPDTA4K&hash=item2415068fbc:g:klsAAOSwdpZibH3k&itmprp=enc%3AAQAJAAAAwF9EXWx7fa5XpsKVKoxmYMtPI6XDHKXiIJREr%2Fjjb0LtK3bupPT62IYcz2ToF9XNi%2B0CaraLH94gXyaU3oHu2aNUqzszT2vWcA2FC9xPcdYdVceRqGv6JGKgaArmSddVNzJ%2F0rORnhAwYP58dq0WEqQvVsYpGFLHgt6LJwJiviKgEAL1TakoGevu81SijjRZzeWKnbi1RV%2BMcXNBfSNHVYkRKSbF1Q6s5co68pZyoAEANWGG7XbqwNBxPXViEJGTsA%3D%3D|tkp%3ABk9SR8r3tf2HZA

I wonder what @Cowabunga Comics would have to say about these variants?

Good suggestions... thanks!

Does anyone know an approximate value for these two metal variants of Batman 1 ? I was lucky enough to get my hands on them as a result of a trade, but they are so rare that there's almost no information on the internet about them. The following links are about the only thing I could find. https://leagueofcomicgeeks.com/comic/6847385/batman-1?variant=7053491 https://leagueofcomicgeeks.com/comic/6847385/batman-1?variant=3769777 They only made 25 of the black & white cover and 50 of the color cover. What is unique about them is that they are individually numbered. Incredibly, I've got the number "2" copy of each. The covers appear to be a homage to the legendary Amazing Spider-Man 300 cover. Since these variants will rarely be seen, I'm also posting some images of the insides and back covers of these comic book. The books are identical to Batman 1 in every way, except that the metal cover was carefully glued to the front cover. I am not a big fan of manufactured rarity, but I must admit these are beatiful covers and they are in mint condition.

Agreed. This is the definitive place to get a list of all known DCU's. Thanks @revat. I fondly remember Revat reaching out to me back in 2014 to get a listing of every DCU variant that I knew of. The grandfather of this list was Jerome Wenker, who started keeping a list several years before 2014 on a Word document. I feel honored that Jerome shared his information with me (I recall he was very secretive at the time, believing his list of promos and variants had monetary value... so I kep the promise and have not distributed it).

I had not seen that video.... even though dated and a little off base, it was fun to watch. Thanks!!

There's nothing too special in there if I recall, but it is a cool set to have. I'm amazed that it sold for $506.