GeeksAreMyPeeps

The first thing I thought of when I saw the Deathlok cover was this one. Surprised no one posted it yet:

"-not" is a really useful search term

I'd say it's okay. If I'm looking for a 9.8 of something, I'd certainly be willing to take a 9.9 if it's a similar price, and I'm generally not going to be doing a search for a 9.9 unless I already know that one is currently listed and I need to find the listing that's there. I suspect the vase majority of collectors would agree.

Great. Then I'll never be able to list my issues of Not Brand Echh

If CGC doesn't slab books with content that was in a polybag with a book, I don't see why they would slab a book with something else that was not originally attached to the book. If they're going to slab these, they should remove the foreign cover first

I wasn't making a case that Hulk 180 should be more valuable that 181. I was indicating that the prior appearance by Wolverine might mean it wouldn't rank as high in a list of keys if we were comparing to Silver Age keys.

There are still Valiant books to be had cheap. Just not the obvious ones. There's still a movie-related Bloodshot "first" out there that I've seen no chatter about, even amongst valiant fans.

And then be disappointed when they come back from CGC graded lower than advertised.

The market determines what is more valuable. The market determines what is more desirable. But the market has no say on what is a first appearance. That is determined by the content. I'm not trying to knock down Hulk 181. I'm simply pointing out that the fact that 181 is not Wolverine's first appearance is going to have a negative impact on where the book would fall amongst keys in the hypothetical situation you're proposing. If a one-page (it may be one panel, but it's a full-page panel) appearance was irrelevant, then Hulk 180 would be no more valuable that the other common issues in that run of Hulk. Based on what you're saying now about the market, it seems what you're looking for is not where a hypothetical Silver-Age Hulk 181 would rank amongst keys, but rather where it would rank in dollar value.

I said nothing about "defining"; I said it's Wolverine's first appearance, and it is. The market considers 181 more important, and I don't have a problem with that. But the reality of Wolverine's appearance in the previous issue would certainly have an effect in any ranking of keys. It seems you want to ignore things that are obvious aspects of any comparison.

Scarcity doesn't affect whether something is a key. The content of the book does. But scarcity will have an effect on the value.

My new rules is any powered Spider- or Bat-family character (hero, villain, sidekick, whatever) is a good bet.

Depends. These were in a recent shipment:

That would probably make sales of counterfeits spike, if owners were being rewarded for owning one. My suggestion reduces the incentive of ever buying a counterfeit.

If I were Dave Sim, I'd issue my own counterfeit edition so others weren't making profiting off of my property. Create it the same way the original counterfeiters made theirs

I remembered the books as being excellent from when I read them when they released, but they don't hold quite as well on a re-read. But then I'm comparing them to the new line, which I think captures the feel of the original V perfectly but tells better stories.

Ah. I haven't read any DC in years so I wasn't familiar with the character. I did a quick search online when I was in the store and was led to believe it was the same character

Funny. I saw this on the shelf at Midtown and considered buying it. Looked up the character and apparently she appeared in Green Arrow first? How's that book doing?

I haven't read Marvel books in a while. Is she still in her own timeline, or have they incorporated her into the Marvel Universe yet?

This is probably the closest parallel, and one that didn't occur to me when I was thinking about major characters from the Silver Age that first appeared in someone else's book

My thoughts exactly regarding X-Men. Without X-Men (or more specifically, without Claremont), Wolverine probably wouldn't have exploded in the same way.