GeeksAreMyPeeps

No, I am not assuming that all buyers care about the first appearance. I acknowledge that there are many buyers who like to purchase previews, advertisements, editorials, etc., that are published before the first appearance of a character in a storyline. And I have no problem with that. All the more power to them, if that's what they like. (Even better if I have copies to sell them.) But that does not change the fact that in the vernacular of comic collecting, a "first appearance" means in the context of a story.

Funny, when I was on the hunt for a Ms Marvel #1 9.6, the best deal I could find was for $500 shipped, but that also included a 9.8 copy of #9

Definitely talk to them early. Sometimes they have autograph sessions set up in advance with creators that are expected to get a large number of autograph requests for books to be graded. They may have times when they'll have more witnesses available, that may be better times to get your sigs done. Also, I'd talk to the creators that you're hoping to get 30 sigs from beforehand, to make sure that they're okay with signign that many books

If you go back to the first post that started this string of quotes, it was in reference to s creator picking an obscure character and buying up their first appearance as an investment. That implies a character that someone else created, since if you were the creator you would have already failed to make that character relevant (considering it's obscure). And since that mostly happens in the context where a corp owns the rights, it's not going to make a huge difference if you are the creator anyway.

So is the end goal of this only to identify how many are available on the market, or is some other conclusion to be drawn from that? I imagine that it won't be a foolproof way to determine how the print run breaks down, as I imagine that direct market copies would have been purchased in multiples (and therefore, available for resale later) in greater numbers.

Hulk 449 would probably be a better bet, as I imagine there will be more of those on the market as speculation increases that the Thunderbolts will appear in the movies soonish.

Yes, and you can make some extra lunch money that way, but it's not going to make you rich.

No, it's not, except by people looking to make a buck off of someone that doesn't know any better. Eliminate those people, and pretty much every collector agrees that an appearance means in a creative context, rather than a marketing or editorial one.

The problem with that is that you have to take a character that's obscure enough, and then do something that's compelling enough for people to care.

It might be the earliest printed depiction of the New Mutants as a team, but it's not an "appearance" in the sense that has been popularly accepted by the comic-collecting community pretty much since collecting was a thing

Looks like they changed the cropping to avoid having the logo run over the text on the arch. Instead, it completely obscures it.

Exactly. This is precisely how things of this sort should be denoted. I have no issue with books of this sort being identified as a "first printed depiction in editorial/marketing material" but "depiction" is not the same as "appearance" in the context of comic collecting terminology.

I'm 95% with RMA on this, but I think collecting is more an art than a science, so there's a few things I have slightly different opinions on. Some notes: • The market isn't "wrong" as the market doesn't decide what a first appearance is or isn't. The market just decides what books are worth spending money on, and how much to spend. • Of course story is important. Without stories there are no "characters" but only designs; The reason people might spend more because of covers now is because there are many ways to read the story besides buying a physical copy of a monthly comic book. • While sequential art is important, when Deadpool's Secret Secret Wars popped up, that book definitely had the feel of a first appearance. This is what I mean by being an art form. I don't think a sketch of a character in marketing material should be considered a first appearance, but they both boil down to a single illustration. Maybe it's that the cover isn't marketing material (defining marketing material as a visual meant to get you to buy some physical object other than what the visual appears on). Maybe it's that the cover does tell a story in a way. (There are clearly actions that one can infer preceded the image, in a way you don't have with a pinup.) Looking for a definition to remove the subjectivity in this case, I would say that a first appearance has to be in creative material (whether a story or a cover) rather than marketing material. I'm sure the "previews are first appearances" crowd would point to the 5-page excerpts in Marvel Age as being stories, but those are still marketing materials meant to get you to buy the book that the full story appears in.

I qualified my statement with "apparently" because I saw people here stating that it ties in. People can do their own research if they want to verify that.

I think I got about $10-20 for the regular Boba Fett, but that was probably how much it cost to get in the first place.

I'm not going to make you do anything. I didn't bother checking what the high point for Valiant books in the '90s was, because it doesn't matter. The point was that the result of that sale doesn't reflect the current market, but was much more reflective of what Rai was going for at some point in the early '90s. If you adjust those prices for inflation, maybe you come to the sale price. But that price isn't reflective of what people are actually paying for these books, ungraded. *If* a number of things happen (most importantly, a successful movie that gets more people buying Valiant Comics) then maybe they'll reach this price. But we're not there yet

Okay, so those prices adjusted for inflation.

If Cates, as some people have pointed out, turns books to gold, then I'd highly recommend grabbing a copy of his Image book Atomahawk, and the limited red foil convention exclusive if you're confident in his future, and the error foil-less con exclusive if you can manage to find one. Heard him talk about it at NYCC last year and it sounded wild.

Donny Cates is writing a Carnage book that he said will have ramifications for years to come. Apparently it's tied into this book.

1992 prices

I pulled some of my McSpideys from my storage locker a few weeks ago, figuring it might be time to grade and sell them. While looking through some boxes trying to find where I had my Parvel Tails, I found a copy of Mind Bomb and decided to pull that too. Sold for $116.

Michelinie wrote the book until 1994. That might be the reason you see for the change around then. I still think that the end of volume 1 is a good marker for the end of the Copper Age, but I also think that there's a difference between early Copper and late Copper. The Copper Age was an age of transitions, and I think the shift from beginning to end of those transitions is the umbrella that defines the age.

It would help if there were pics to illustrate what we're talking about. I'm assuming the "tissue-like paper" is some sort of vellum. I was assuming that it was attached (stapled) to the book like an extra cover. Is that not the case?

If you're removing part of the book, it would be incomplete, so it would be either be graded at a lower number, or get the green label, depending on what is removed.

I question that. I don't see a huge difference in the books of the late-'80s/early-'90s, compared to the mid-'90s