Michael Browning

You're welcome! I have been involved in the comics world since I first started collecting in 1976. I used to own a really large collection of Golden Age comics and a huge collection of Silver Age and me finding hard-to-find and nearly-impossible-to-find books caused Overstreet to pick me up as an advisor, which I did for 15 years. I have always had the God-given talent of finding comics that weren't supposed to exist or that was thought to be so rare, only a handful of copies existed. I sold off all that stuff long ago and now I focus on collecting and selling trade paperbacks and hardcovers, some of which are very scarce, too. As a side note and in reference to a couple of earlier messages: My experience in the comics collecting world, having been a collector and seller, has made me very aware of what to tell a shop owner and what not to tell. But, to the same extent, my local shop owners know that when I buy something, it's either on its way up or is a hidden gem in their stores. So, most of the shop owners I buy from make mental notes on what I buy and then they go in and look up the sales on eBay and see what is special about those issues and then reprice accordingly. It's one of the pitfalls of having been around for so long and for having been so successful at finding hot books and reselling them at the right time.

I picked up a bunch of Elvira's House of Mysterys recently and this was the one that was missing.

I loved Daredevil 181 so much, I got a page of original art from that issue.

Absolutely. Being a longtime TPB collector and seller, I have only ever had one copy in the thousands of trades and hardcovers that I've bought over the years. It's the one with the solid black cover. I had a copy and there wasn't another on eBay for about three years before I finally put mine up and sold it. I think I got right at $100 for it and it was mid-grade condition. I have to say that, along with the Captain America Truth: Red, White and Black trade paperback (not the later hardcover), the Ralph Snart Collection hardcover (with the sketch) and Lost in Space: Journey to the Bottom of the Soul, the Mortal Kombat: Blood & Thunder TPB is one of the rarest collected editions ever published. And, as a longtime TPB collector and having watched for these for about 10 years, the rarity of these makes me think that there was only a few hundred of these printed.

I just picked up a NM run of the Punisher Armory that included two copies of #7, three copies of #8, a #9 and a #10. A buck apiece and I brought them home and immediately sold the #9 and #10 for $40.

Nah, the shop owner was watching everything I was picking out (because the owner knows I don't actively collect comics anymore, but knows I like to pick up things to resell every now and again) and noticed that it was all newsstands. The next time I went in, the prices were super high. The shop owner started researching the newsstands that were in the long boxes (that had set there for years) and raised the prices on every newsstand copy.

Terminator 1 newsstand and Terminator: All My Futures Past special edition newsstand 1.

This Syphons preview was a gift from NOW Comics Publisher Tony Caputo back when I was interviewing him for the Green Hornet article that ran in Back Issue magazine.

And a few others I've found lately. Nothing nearly as cool as the Deathstroke 58 or the Nightmares on Elm Street. BTW, one of my local shop owners knows this thread exists and now is pricing the newsstand variants a lot higher.

Here are a few newsstands I found in some long boxes I bought.

Some of the hardest comics to find in shops are the SoMuchFun, Inc. reprints. I think most dealers don't have a clue as to what they are. The few that I've found over the years since I discovered the line and interviewed the owner of SoMuchFun for CBG have been in dollar boxes (mainly because most are in VG or worse condition). I pick them up whenever I find them but I haven't found that many. The best one I found was a VG GI Joe 63 for 50 cents. I ended up selling it for $135.

As far as I know, I have never had any dealings with you, but I knew from your previous response that you had a personal vendetta against me and you prove that by your statement above. Like I have said about you and others who hid behind a screen name, I just wish that would put your real name up on here or on Comicart-L. Whatever your problem is with me, please, feel free to contact me via PM on here or at greatonefrommatewan@yahoo.com and lets talk about it.

I manage my money just fine and don't need a lesson on "liquidity management". There's no contradiction in my "long, long time" conversation I had with the previous owner. I wanted it for a long, long time. When I got it, I really figured I'd keep it for as long of a time. But, that didn't happen. He got mad and I apologized and then he sent me ranting emails about how I'd destroyed the "relationship" he was hoping to build with me. One purchase does not create a "relationship", nor was I expecting it to. When I sell a piece, I don't ask that the buyer give me first option on buying it back. It's his to do with as he pleases. If he sells it, then that's his business. After it leaves my hands and the transaction is completed with the previous owner, what happens to the art next is no business of his or anyone else's. If I go buy a toy at Target and then pop it on eBay and resell it, I don't owe Target a "first option to buy it back". It didn't bother me one bit that the guy who bought it from me sold it to someone else and made a profit. If I buy something today that I've been searching for for years and it arrives in the mail next week and I like it then, that doesn't mean it's going to be permanent in my collection and that I won't want something else even more; if I want, I can sell it the very next day for whatever reason. None of this stuff is truly permanent and, barring it gets destroyed in a fire or something, it will all end up in someone else's hands down the road.

Yeah, I got those last two issues and, surprisingly, they were delivered in NM condition. Somewhere in a box at my parents house is all my old subscription sleeves, which were brown paper wrappers that were wrapped around the comics.

At the time, I got a note that 58 had been allocated and I would not be receiving a replacement. I do remember that clearly since I was so disappointed that I wasn't going to get the full run I wanted. I'm thinking I got a random issue of something else -- or they extended my subscription one issue.

I bought a cover earlier this year that I'd wanted for a long, long time. I made the owner an offer not long after he put it up on CAF and he took it. I was so happy to have it. Then, a couple months later, a collector/dealer comes along and offers to buy it from me at a time when I'd spent everything I had and was getting hit with some pretty hefty bills, so, I sold it for barely a break-even price. The collector/dealer then put it up for sale for 3X what he'd given me for it and sold it. The previous owner flipped out on me and sent me numerous emails saying that he thought he was establishing a relationship with me and that it was so dirty of me to use him to get something I always intended to flip. I tried to explain to him that flipping it was never my intention, but that the offer was made at a time when I NEEDED the cash. He never got over the fact that I sold the art after buying it from him, even though I had a very good reason for selling it (along with a lot of other pages and covers that I bought from other dealers and collectors with the intention to keep, but that had to go because I really needed the money at the time). I hate that he got so angry and I apologized, but he never would accept my apologies.

Ha! I paid $35 and it was the first copy I'd ever seen for sale. I, too, came to DD late in the Miller run, but at the point that I thought he was really hitting full speed -- with DD 185. I thought his storytelling over those last few issues was brilliant and far and above anything else on the stands at the time. Those last few issues still stand out as one of my favorite runs of any comic. I ended up buying those last seven issues off the spinner rack and from a drug store newsstand and loved each and every issue. I still have my original copies. The issues before that, however, were hard to track down. I was so glad when the Visionaries trade paperbacks were released in the early 2000s, so I could read everything all over again in just a few sittings. I bought the omnibuses, but they were actually so unwieldy that I sold them (for high premiums at the time because they were the only printings) and bought the newer versions of the Visionaries trade paperbacks.

I had a subscription to Deathstroke that lasted to the end and when #58 was supposed to arrive, they sent me a copy of something else because #58 had been allocated and not enough were printed to fill subscriptions. I have never seen a copy in person anywhere for sale -- and I've looked.

Most Veronicas are hard to find, especially any with bikini covers. The Betty 8, however, will be one that people look for for years to come just because of that very detailed cover.

The reason everyone honed in on Betty #8 is because of the way Betty is drawn and all that is shown on the cover of an Archie comic. The Veronica is quite tame compared to The Betty.

Yeah, I can honestly say that in the thousands of longboxes from the 1990s-2000s I've looked through, I've never seen those.

Heck yeah. I don't intend to keep any of this stuff. I've said it before, but anyone who wants any of these Image -- and NOW -- newsstands can PM me and I'll let them go.

I found a Splittin' Image #2 newsstand in a long box today, along with a Spawn 5 and WildCATS 2 and 3. I'd say the Splittin' Image #2 is very rare. Anyone ever found a Stupid #1 newsstand from Image?

I don't think the NOW Comics newsstand editions are all that rare. I interviewed Tony Caputo several years ago for a Back Issue Magazine article on Green Hornet and, from what I can remember, NOW had a very healthy newsstand distribution. Just going through some random long boxes of stuff, I found two Terminator #1 newsstands, a Married ... with Children #1 newsstand and a few others. I don't think these are all that rare. NOWs are getting harder and harder to find in dollar boxes - especially in good shape, though. I rarely see Fright Nights and some of those early issues of Ralph Snart are impossible to find. And try putting together a set of all the NOW Green Hornets, including the miniseries. That can be tough if you're trying to do it by buying out of comic shops.

Low print runs on those last issues causes them to be harder to find.