Cpt Kirk

dude.... great find!

I concur. After obtaining just about every variant ever made in the DC titles I collect, just this past month I said "enough is enough" and I decided to stop collecting the new variants (still going after the old variants like MJs though). I started thinking of it like this: even though I'm only collecting four titles (Batman, Superman, Detective and Action) I am adding about 6 inches of "thickness" to my collection evey month.... that's 6 feet of horizontal storage per year.... I will soon run out of space for these variants, plus I'm convinced that most of these variants will drastically lose their value over time (I noticed recently Batman 92 black/white sketch is now selling for less than half what the going price was when it came out, and it's been less than two years since it came out).

I was lucky enough to be able to purchase a CGC graded 4.0 copy of Superman 28 Overseas Edition recently. I've been looking for this comic book for more than 30 years, so I bought the book the first chance I got (and then immediately broke it out of the CGC case when it arrived so that I could look at the inside). As far as I know, there are only a very few surviving copies of these Overseas Editions and I have't seen any details written up on the internet about the Overseas Edition of Superman 28. So in the interest of comic book history, I'm posting the attached photos as well as my observations about the differences between the regular 28 and the Overseas Edition. The Overseas Edition has the same page count as the regular edition. Some of the ads are the same (and in the exact same position as the regular edition). Some other ads, including the EverReady battery ad on the back cover, were replaced with one-page cartoon stories (typical example is the Private Pete cartoon strip shown on the back cover of the Overseas edition below). If anyone else has any information about these rarities, I would love to hear about it. p.s. I have seen more copies of the Action, Detective and Superman Special Editions made for the U.S. Navy during WWII than I ever have seen of the Special Editions. I have a feeling that many more of those Special Editions survived the war than these Overseas Editions. Since the Overseas Editions were so outrageously rare, I wonder if others were made and are unknown to this day. p.p.s. I need to crack open my Gerber Photojournal books to see if any of those Overseas or Special Editions were documented in there. Back cover of Superman 28 Regular Edition and Overseas Edition:

Great comment. This reminds me of the first time I noticed these Mark Jeweler inserts. I think I was buying some back issues of Action Comics that were originally sold in the late 1970's. I saw those slick ads in the centerfold and thought something like this to myself: "These inserts are ugly and they distract the flow of the comic book by being stuck in the center... I wonder if I these inserts were sold in all issues of this comic book, or do I instead need to try to find copies without the inserts?" As someone said earlier, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. In my case, 10 years later I started the crazy pursuit of trying to find every Mark Jeweler variant in the DC titles I collect, and I can tell you that ain't no easy task.

Amen brother!

Good point on the high grade. I saw earlier on this thread where someone said the jewelers tended to be in better condition because the insert helped make the comic more rigid. I believe it is true that the insert helps stiffen the comic book (especially the earlier jeweler inserts which were made of a heavier cardboard stock). But when you think about what happened to jeweler variants, I can see why they are hard to find in high grade. That's because most of them got shipped overseas to military PX's, sat on a rack in a military PX until someone bought them, and then they had to make their way back to the United States. Add the fact that the oldest DC jeweler variants are now more than 35 years old, I can see why high grade (especially 9.0 and above) is hard to find when it comes to jeweler variants. I was lucky enough to find an original owner collection that surfaced in Belgium where the guy plucked them off the rack at the PX and then immediately put them in storage. I would say the majority of them are 9.4 to 9.8 (Batman, Detective, Superman, Action, and JLA.... I must have bought more than 200 of them... and a few of those got the slightest little creases in the corner of the comic books besause some enthusiastic postal employee managed to drop the box on it's corner....thus my statement about shipping them back to the U.S.). Overall I have approximately 680 jeweler variants in those titles and have managed to get all but 10 or so in FN or better by continously upgrading them when a high grade copy came along.

Well Jim, all your articles on the MJ inserts certainly influenced me. They intrigued me and it became a gigantic Easter egg hunt. Now I'm down to having found all those easter eggs except five of them, I think (namely Batman 245, 390, Detective 470, 548, Action 579 with the MJ inserts.... been looking for more than 10 years and have never seen those.... if anyone has, I would love to hear about it)

thanks @Primetime

Nope. I am just amazed at the collection of stuff he has for sale on ebay and was wondering what his back story was. But I just got connected with him tonight and will share that story if anyone is interested (and assuming it is OK with him). I not aware that he posts on the CGC boards.

I've got an Action 156 too. Probably not nearly as nice as yours, but I love that cover. Whatever you paid, I'm sure it was worth it.

Does anyone know who "Masteraddams" is on ebay?

Superman 255 (and all issues up until Superman 252) were only produced in "newsstand" format. Superman 352 was the first Direct Sales issue of the Superman run. I've never seen a jeweler insert in a Direct Sales version (except for the example that I believe was shown earlier in this thred.... if a Direct Sales issue has a jeweler insert, I beleive that it would have to be a printing error). I hope that answers your question @Spawnfreak. If not, please send me a private message.

WF 37 is one of my all time favorite covers. Thanks for posting. I wonder what a NM copy would sell for?

I have to thank @MrBedrock for at least a few of my Action Comic books between 100 and 200. He's a great guy, in my humble opinion.

Yes, I was able to find Superman New 52 #8. That was the last one I needed. I never seen a newsstand issue of "Action Comics Weekly". I did not try to collect Rebirth Catwoman or Supergirl newsstand issues, so I can't say for sure whether or not they did not get published in newsstand format. According to the following article, it appears as if they didn't come out in newsstand format: https://comichron.com/blog/2018/02/09/end-of-era-last-dc-newsstand-issues/ p.s. The mainstream DC issues such as Batman and Superman all had newsstand issues up until the end, including the "zero issues", "1,000,000" issues, "23.1 issues" and "Future's End" issues. To best of my knowledge, the only issues that didn't come out in newsstand were 23.2, 23.3, 23.4 and issues such as the "Batman 1 Rebirth", which were specially released previews prior to launch of the Rebirth series.

Not right now. I must admit I wonder what it would sell for these days. I have no idea. For me, I keep it for pride of ownership and to show to friends.

That was one of the nice things about DC. Total consistency on release of newsstand issues. As started before, I was able to find all "newsstand" issues in the titles of Batman, Detective, Superman and Action from inception of Direct sales until the last newsstand issues were produced.

wow... I'm pretty sure that would have to be a manufacturing error. Great post!

This is just an educated guess, but I don't think people really started to chase these down until the early 2000's. Thanks for the great images... love it. To answer your question, I don't think that collecting jeweler variants really started to be a thing until the early 2000's. I've been in hot pursuit of them since 2010. In the five titles I collect (Batman, Detective, Superman, Action and JLA), I'm only missing 7 out of approximately 690 possible jeweler variants. If you or anyone else can produce a copy of the ones I'm missing, I would love to hear about it. I'm missing Batman 245, 247, 390, Detective 470, 548, Action 579 and JLA 107.

The following is an interesting website pointed out by my friend Mark Weiss (founder of ComicBooks for Kids!, which sends comic books to hospitals all over the world.... I always have to plug that great cause). This website shown in the link below lists all known bricks. These bricks must have been sold widely, because the bullet, zero hour, and DCU logo variants are fairly easy to find for issues dated from Nov 1993 thru Nov 1994. The only exception in my mind is the 10-pack brick with issues dated June 1995 (many of those DCU's have proven to be hard to find). For completeness, also attached are the images not shown on the website below for the March 1994 pack and the back of the November 1994 pack, courtesy of @Warlord. I sent these 3 images to the owner of this StarTrek website so that he can add them to his website. If you know of any bricks not shown in the website below, please let us know. @Warlord had a great idea, by the way. Someone should attempt to create a listing of every single comic book that is contained in these bricks, even though it can probably be inferred. I've opened about 8 of those bricks and kept a list of all the comic books that were contained, but that's a long way from being able to create a comprehensive list. Maybe that's something I can do when I retire one day. In the meantime, this darn day job is getting in the way... lol. https://www.startrekcomics.info/art/dccomicscollpacks.html

Nice. Those late Detectives are especially hard to find. I wonder if @Lifesuggs found any of the Catwoman (2002 series) newsstand issues ?

roger that. Here's one way to find out.... go to your local Barnes and Noble. Give them the title of that comic book and ask them to look it out. They will have a history of how many issues of that comic book showed up in the store during each month. I am guessing that Catwoman had low distribution for each month. Here's an article that comichron wrote about the last newsstand issues that might lend some clues. https://comichron.com/blog/2018/02/09/end-of-era-last-dc-newsstand-issues/ There is a dude who got a boat load of newsstand issues that were rescued from the trash bin at Barnes and Nobles. I wonder if he might have some. I believe his ID is @Lifesuggs Take a look at this thread:

I giving this thread a bump because a friend of mine, @paqart, is looking for all the newsstand issues of Catwoman (2002) series. Impressive goal. Can anyone produce some images?

wow.... I wonder how many people might now be searching for those model kits. Tempted to do it myself... Never mind. I see a bazillion of them on ebay. However, you discovered a great way to find a high grade version of this mini comic book. Thank you.