namisgr

The explanation that production defects aren't counted against the grade is contradicted by the downgrading CGC gives otherwise ultra high grade Silver Age Marvels that have Marvel pre-chips and especially missing chips. As the vast majority of collectors think they should, to the best of my knowledge. An example, missing two very small chips from production but otherwise near mint or better:

Wow. That's a lot of missing cover.

I guess it's the whole team that the hobby generally accepts for appearance in a title other than their own for the criterion of a team crossover. And I agree with you that it's fun as a talking point but doesn't matter a hoot beyond that, much like discussions around when the Bronze and Copper Ages began.

The Thing first appears in the title as a supporting player in ST 101. Sue is a supporting character in 102 and a main part of the plot in 105. But while the FF get mention right from the start of the switch to superhero in 101, they don't appear as a foursome in the first five issues.

It's two auctions. The final hammer prices are anything but fixed.

If the prices on a particular issue like Hulk #181 weren't sensitive to current supply, then auction houses would not have the policy that they do, to limit the number of copies of Hulk #181 in 9.6 condition sold in each auction to one. I learned about this policy when using an auction house to sell my collection of high grade picture frame Marvels, and finding that if they already had a copy from another consigner in the same grade as mine, then my copy would get bumped to the following auction. They have this policy to protect sellers, who stand to benefit from the highest realized price possible so long as their copy is the one and only being sold in that auction and at that grade at a time. I think the number of copies available on the open market across all of the most commonly used venues influences the prices that are realized on them. It's a lot harder to sell a high grade copy of a particular issue above recent GPA average when there are four of them currently for sale than it is to sell the one and only copy in that grade that's been available over the past 12 months. So I do think that a find of a large stash of a particular sought after issue in a warehouse or unopened distributor box or a longbox would be likely to depress the market price considerably if the copies flooded the market rather than trickled out slowly over time. The flip side of this relationship between supply and demand is that if a particular book or run of books in an uncommon high grade hasn't been available from any of the commonly used venues for a relatively long period of time, bringing them to a market starving for them can get surprisingly high and sometimes record prices. These have been my experiences, anyways.

With the Torch and Thing as the heroes for the title, it's hard for me to think of an appearance by Reed and Sue as a crossover for the team as a whole. But yes, it is an appearance by the whole team in a book not named Fantastic Four. So it's a 'tweener' for me.

I never noticed the 'two-on-one' before.

From a warehouse in Washington state in the days before CGC, with large multiples of several 1968 Marvel first and second issues, including for Submariner, Dr. Strange, Hulk, Captain America, Captain Marvel, Nick Fury, and Ironman/Submariner, plus the two Spectacular Spiderman magazines. It had Iron Man #1 as well for sale in VF/NM, NM, and NM/M. Most that I bought had white pages. I agree with the view that warehouse finds large enough to bloat the census for high grade copies have somewhat lowered book value owing to the large supply, but have not cratered prices. The few that I know about were found before CGC existed, and so were slabbed and released to market slowly over time, which probably helped keep the market for them from tanking. I suspect this is what Greggy probably does for selling as well, after he gets back yet another sweet CGC submission with 5-10 ultra high grade copies of the same issues.

The group shots are awesome! When I auctioned off a complete run of the Strange Tales superhero books (#s 101-168 plus Annual 2), the auction house put this group shot together for their catalog:

You'll just provoke another response, making the thread even more about Roy than it already is.

Yep, as I wrote just above: "The system" filed and won criminal cases more than 20 years ago against the handful of niche pharmaceutical companies distributing opioids (the niche being their primary products, unlike the major multinational Pharma companies) for uses they are unapproved to treat. Purdue, Mallinckrodt, and Endo were brought to bankruptcy by the system, and rightly so. It's a shame that the regulatory system wasn't faster in accomplishing it, but the litigation took a long time.

This is complete nonsense and a personal smear. When the topic under discussion was excess all cause mortality in the US and the large readily measurable impact of a certain newly emerged medical emergency, I made clear that the numerical increases in deaths by overdose and suicide were less than 5% of the increase in collective annual deaths in our country, proving they weren't responsible for it.

Among the fallacies here, I'll just respond to one: the false notion that " the system quite literally sold the pills as "safe and effective" when in fact they were neither safe nor effective. Now where have we heard the phrase "safe and effective" before? " Opioids are now and have for the past several decades been dispensed with black box warmings on the package inserts. A boxed warning is the most serious warning by the Food and Drug Administration. Its purpose is to alert people about drug effects that are potentially dangerous. In the case of opioids, they are sold with multiple black box warnings, including the danger for drug interactions with alcohol and other respiratory depressants, the danger of abuse liability, addiction, dependence and withdrawal, and the danger of dizziness while driving or operating machinery. There is no opioid sold legally in the United States without multiple black box warnings on the bottle and package insert. As for their efficacy, there are presently no treatments that alleviate strong pain other than opioids, accounting for their continuing use for relief of strong pain post-surgically and in end-stage cancers and at the end-stage of other terminal disease states. Their continuing value in biomedicine is both genuine and beyond question. "The system" regulates the manufacturing and dispensing of opioids, and the number of prescriptions for them has steadily declined once the restrictions were further tightened, as admittedly should have taken place years earlier. "The system" filed and won criminal cases more than 20 years ago against the handful of niche pharmaceutical companies distributing opioids (the niche being their primary products, unlike the major multinational Pharma companies) for uses they are unapproved to treat. The pill mills responsible in the prior decade for the majority of opioid pill distribution are criminal operations, and anything but part of "the system". Finally, as made plain by the graph above, during the time when opioid manufacturing and prescription distribution have both been tightened and fewer pills dispensed, it is the illicit manufacturing, importation, and sale of fentanyl (an entirely different set of operations different from medical use for strong pain relief) that has been responsible for the vast majority of overdose deaths for the past five years and for the overall increase in overdose deaths in the US. It would be enlightening to consider and compare "the systems" involved with opioids and with cigarettes and alcohol, substances that have social use but are lacking any formal medical use, but that's another lengthy topic.

Off the top of my head, Avengers, X-Men, Tomb of Dracula, Conan the Barbarian, Warlock, and Master of Kung Fu immediately come to mind. For late Bronze, Frank Miller's run on Daredevil is great.

He wants the movie/tv subforum moved to the Water Cooler.

He did some terrific work on the Adam Strange run in Mystery In Space. His pencils really stood out when inked by Murphy Anderson, and they produced some truly memorable covers and interior art. Like these covers:

With the interior edge tanning and general wear to the corners, spine, and edges, in addition to the sizable tear to the right edge of the front cover, I was thinking more in the 5.0 range.

And another CLink win from September, for a de-slabbed upgrade at a now-popular price.

Using their brains to avoid a movie that tells a dull story with childish character development and no depth.

More upgrading, from CLink and courtesy of the drop in Bronze Age prices.

Same.

Won on ComicLink for cheap back in September, then cracked out of its slab and into mylar and a buffering backing board.