Michael Browning

Good try. Others of us have tried, too, but we get the same response. As I've said before, it boils down to those on here who are looking for some of these don't want the "rare" tag placed on them UNTIL AFTER THEY FIND THEM FOR THEMSELVES. Then, you'll see them listed as "rare" or "scarce".

I've traded a lot since really getting involved in the hobby in 1999. My first trades were with George Pantella, Ken Danker, Tom Fleming and Mike Burkey. I have continued over the years to trade with dealers including Burkey, Anthony Snyder, Will Gabri-El, Rob Hughes, Saul Zimmerman, Steve Donnelly (I know people say bad things about the Donnellys, but I had a good experience trading with them), Hans Kosenkranius and Albert Moy. I enjoy a good trade and it can be fun. I've had a few bad ones that soured me on a few dealers and collectors, but, for the most part, I love the art of an art trade. Most recently, a guy had a page I really wanted and I asked him what it would take to get it from him. He told me that he didn't want cash, but, instead, wanted a page of Savage Sword of Conan artwork penciled by Buscema and inked by Alcala, so I reached out to the dealer who had the page he liked, paid cash for a piece I didn't want, only to have the collector to tell me that although I was getting that page specifically for him to make the trade and he knew that, that he had gone ahead and traded away the page to another collector and that I should ask for my money back on the Conan page. What a jerk. I saw the page I was trying to get pop up on CAF this morning and it made me sick to my stomach. I was so naive when I started trading all those years ago and so many people could have taken advantage of me, but, thank God, they didn't. The second dealer I ever dealt with DID take advantage of me being a new collector. After I did the lopsided trade with him and found out he had really burned me, I refused to buy a cover I had agreed to buy, so the dealer threatened to sue me. It almost caused me to leave the hobby. A dealer/"friend" nearly caused me to stop collecting back at the end of 2016 and the beginning of 2017 when he conned me into giving him a good deal because we had been such great friends for so long. I also found out he had been trashing me to other dealers at shows for a long time, while we were still friends. Tom Fleming was great to trade with. I made him a huge offer on my Doom Patrol 1 cover and he said that he liked the art I was offering him and to pick out the art I was trading him that equaled what he was asking in cash, which was extremely nice of him. Tom is one of the good guys in the hobby. On my very first visit to CAF, I found my grail: the Carmine Infantino Flash 323 cover. I made a trade with a collector to get that cover and I offered him WAY more than it was worth then, but he didn't take advantage of me and made me a very fair trade. I will always be grateful to him for that. More recently, I made good trades with Mike Burkey to get my Carl Barks unpublished cover and Will Gabri-El on a couple of pieces and they were great to deal with, as always. So, trading can be a lot of fun, but, beware, there are a few unscrupulous dealers/collectors out there who will do whatever it takes to take advantage of you, if they can.

I collect Team America art, but only from the series. I like this one, but won't be bidding on it.

I think it hurt the final prices by having two main events in the same auction -- and, several weeks ago, I told a friend who was also watching these that it would be a factor in them under performing.

Yes, it's unopened and I didn't want to take it out of the shrinkwrap it if it was worth more that way (not even for that 5-minute DC phone card). Thank you!

So, before I open this collector’s pack, are there DCU logo variants inside?

Out of all the Pitt 19s and 20s I have found over the last week, I've only found a single copy of issue 18. I think it may be rarer than the last two issues.

My favorites from the haul today are those glitter editions. Man, those things sparkle.

Today's haul (Part 3):

Today's haul (Part 2):

Here's today's haul (Part 1):

That Wonder Woman with the DC logo in the UPC box is tough to find. Nice haul. Is the GR 12 hard to find? I see those around here a lot and never thought about them being HTF.

Same thing with Pitt and Maxx. Great artists and books that were hot (and well-remembered) with low-print-run later issues.

A few more nice and rare comics:

The shop had the whole run in multiples, except 18, which it only had one copy of and only two copies each of 19-20. I figured the shop would also have those later Maxx issues, but they only went to issue 29. I ended up getting 25-29 to go with the Maxx 35 I got earlier in the week. I just always look for oddball stuff that I’ve never seen before. Sometimes it pays off and sometimes it doesn’t. But, it’s fun discovering things.

Very hard-to-find last two issues of Pitt and the Showcase is about as HTF and it’s kind of the first Birds of Prey.

And, I actually found two each of the Pitt 19s and 20s and a copy of 18. It was a good day and I’ll try to put up more pics of the comics I found in the wild tomorrow. There are plenty more where these came from.

Found today in the wild for a buck apiece:

Actually, Comic Defense System was a brand of comic protectors that were hard sleeves with flaps that tucked into a band on the back. If you bought a box of them, you got a copy of the Hard Corps comic. You can get 144 copies in one lot of eBay: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Valiant-HARD-CORPS-5-144pc-Count-Comic-Defense-System-No-Cover-Price-Variant/361506208192?hash=item542b72f9c0:g:oSUAAOSwWTRW0JgI

All these caught my eye. I know high-number issues of The Maxx sell well, so I grabbed the 35. I know ANYTHING with Harley Quinn on it from that period is worth buying for a dollar. I knew the two Hardware issues were probably scarce just like the Static last issue, so I grabbed them. I hardly ever see Justice League 113, Justice League Unlimited 46 and Spectre 62, which is why I picked all those up. I don't collect any of these, but they were cool and rare so I figured I'd buy them.

I just found 20 copies of Bloodshot 6 in a longbox of quarter books. All were gradable copies. I don't think any of those that you found are rare (some of those had VERY high print runs ... well, ALL of them had VERY high print runs), but, I will be honest, the Legionaires is one I have only found once - last Friday in a dollar box. All of the Valiants from that time had extremely high print runs. The problem was, very few people were actually reading them. When they did start to read the Valiants from that time period, they realized just how bad they were and they realized that the print runs were so high that they weren't rare anymore and that it was no longer a safe bet to speculate on them and the dumping began. I like to call that period "The Fool's Gold Age".

Found these in dollar boxes: Maxx 35 - last issue Hardware 50 - last issue Hardware 49 - Moebius cover, next to last issue Justice League America (International) 113 - last issue Spectre 62 - last issue Justice League Unlimited 46 - last issue Batman: Gotham Adventures 10 - Harley Quinn appearance

My thoughts are that for three decades, the comics direct-sale market has been in decline. We don't have any YOUNG readers coming into the hobby and it's very hard for most kids to get to a comic shop. Spinner racks were the bread and butter of comic companies and kids' parents bought them comics at the grocery store, the drug store, the convenience store ... wherever there was a spinner rack that usually read "Hey, Kids! Comics!" Let's face it, comics aren't geared at kids these days, but when they were AVAILABLE to kids, they bought them and comics were selling pretty well. My LCS owner was telling me recently that back in the late 1980s, when the newsstand was still the main vehicle for new comics, the shop was selling around 300 copies of Uncanny X-Men a month. Now, the shop sells 17 copies of Uncanny X-Men. I don't think Walmart selling comics in this new format is anything that is going to take away from the comic shops; in fact, I think it helps foster a new generation of comic book readers, if it is successful. Walmart has tried selling comics before and it hasn't worked. The graphic novel sales at my LCS didn't go up or down from Walmart and Target selling trade paperbacks and hardcovers and I don't think this will hurt the local comic shops at all. Also, don't think these LCS owners won't go out and buy these comics from Walmart, hoping to resell them at a higher price point when they become "collectors' items". They definitely will.

Amazing Spider-Man #4s with the first appearance of Silk? Are they tough to find these days? Right after they came out, I bought out a whole bunch of deadbeat boxes at my local comic shop at a quarter a book and got around 20 of these. I just picked up one last week for a couple of bucks in NM.

I didn't get a single copy of that fourth printing until just a few years ago when I saw it in a longbox at a show. It was a long time after that that I started seeing them pop up in dollar boxes in the Ashland, Ky., area, where a couple shops there have had probably 20-25 copies between them. Maybe my shop just didn't order any. It was cool to find it and a mystery as to why I didn't get those. In my area, shops ordered so heavily on Superman 75 the first time around that when I ended up buying them out as they closed, there were numerous copies still stuck back in boxes that they had loaded with premium issues and books that were supposed to go on their walls. From one shop buyout, I got a bunch of nice copies that I've kept, including two of the Platinum Death of Superman trade paperbacks, a platinum Superman 75 and a platinum Adventures of Superman 500. There was also a Superman 75 signed by the writer and artists, but without a certificate. I think it was a gift to the shop from DC. I know there was also a Spawn #1 in that collection that was signed and sketched on by Todd McFarlane, thanking the store owner for buying so many copies. (Unfortunately, I let that one go many years ago for $50, not thinking it was worth much at all.)