Brock

I was never super keen on this one...

Technically, maybe... but nobody's checking inbound mail for this book. It affected the initial distribution, but not secondary market sales.

I listed a (raw) Canadian Price Variant newsstand on ebay yesterday... I have an offer in hand of C$650 (about US$500), and have countered to 2 other offers that were a bit lower. The book continues to be hot!

I have a couple of hundred I keep thinking of selling. I’ve been letting some of my low grade copies go for for awhile, but I keep debating the better ones. Every now and then, they look like the prices are set to spike, but then they settle back down. It may be that if the prices do go up, more may come loose from long-term collections.

A "Class Act" response. Thank you!

Just be advised that Eco is an acquired taste! His novel Foucault’s Pendulum (which I loved) has been called the “most bought, least read novel in the world.”

I just finished Serendipities: Language and Lunacy by Umberto Eco. It's a collection of essays about the Renaissance search for the perfect language of the angels. In the book of Genesis, God asks Adam to name all the animals, and it says that the names he gave them were proper according to their nature. In this Edenic time, there was only a single language, gifted by God, and (as illustrated by the story of Adam naming animals) the words of that language captured the true "essence" of the things they described, giving them magical or spiritual power. During the Renaissance and early Enlightenment periods, many famous thinkers - including the poet Dante and the mathematician Liebniz (who invented calculus) - attempted to recreate or rediscover this language of the angels. Like all of Eco's books, it's incredibly dense and slow-going... And while it also proves to the reader how little they know about things compared to Eco, it can be very rewarding.

There’s also a scarcer “gold” logo variant of this book, though the logo is actually a sort of brown colour.

It's funny how many times Man-Thing has been mentioned in this thread. This one freaked me out as a kid...

I was 12, and bought it off the newsstand. I remember thinking the miniseries idea was such a brilliant and obvious but overlooked idea... In 1977, the TV miniseries “Roots” was the biggest thing on television, but it took two years for someone to think about applying the idea to comics. At the time, anthology titles were in decline, but #1s were a hot commodity among collectors. And I also remember Untold Legend of the Batman as the 2nd miniseries.

I haven’t read it since it first came out, but I remember it for gorgeous art and a reasonably good (but not outstanding) story.

I once tried to think up the worst possible Amalgam Comics combinations. My top (bottom?) three were: Mr. Fantastic + Plastic Man + Elastic Man = the Fantastic Plastic Elastic Timber Wolf + Wolverine = Tambourine Booster Gold + the Juggernaut = the Boogernaut

You could always go for reprint editions other than Milestone books, like Marvel Tales #137 for AF 15, True Believers Daredevil #1 for DD 1, or Amazing Adventures #1 for X-Men 1. There are probably Marvel Legends giveaways for most of these as well.

Treasure Chest

Have you got a list? That could help... In general, although I buy them whenever I see them, most Whitmans are not especially valuable unless in very high grade. I think this will change, so I’m definitely scooping up what I can, but there are a lot of sellers whose prices are getting ahead of the market. I think the Green Lantern, Flash and Batman issues are harder to find than the Superman, Action, DC Comics Presents or Brave and Bold issues, with the rest in the middle, but that’s a huge over generalization.

I just tried bluffing the only Hardy Boys collector on the boards...

I like to think it's 19 slabbed copies of The Hardy Boys #3. All graded at 4.5.

I had a few published... would CGC let me sign those for a Signature Series label?

I like the way he hid the grades on all the slabbed books.

And another - one of the tough ones, courtesy of @DonSal1976

I wouldn't say "sadly"... I think that's a brilliant move.

This problem goes back a lot farther than many recognize. I was a founding members of the Sonic Disruptors fan club, a 12-issue mini that ended after 7 issues. Come to think of it, I may have been the only member of that fan club...

Detective Comics #526 and #627 were the previous anniversary issues of this type, just to confuse matters.

That would make it 1025.

I was hoping for some feedback on the DC Whitman Variant set... I recently added Action Comics #508 Whitman variant in CGC 9.0 to my set. This is a very rare book that sells for hundreds of dollars in high grade, and CGC 9.0 is the highest grade it has ever received. Yet the registry gave me 5 points for the book... I know part of this is because it is scarce... there are only 3 graded copies of this issue, for example. Because this is scarce and thinly traded, does that mean that CGC is not able to assign more points to these kinds of books? I ask this in the context of Action #508 specifically, but am curious about how this applies to the whole set of DC Whitmans more generally. Thanks for any insights you can offer... Due to the lack of recent sales we went with the default scoring value of this book. There was a sale in August of 2020 so I used that sale to update the score.