Michael Browning

Getting the Gil Kane Ghost Rider 25 cover BACK after stupidly trading it away many years ago.

4 hours ago, mschmidt said:

Nothing weird about it - used book stores do this all the time.

So, a used book store would put an ISBN number on a price tag? I've never seen a used bookstore do that. And, the funny thing is, this came from a store stock that had all these from when it was published and they had ordered a stack of them from Diamond back then.

And, here's a weird one: Spawn Batman with a UPC code sticker on the back.

I found this in a shop in Kentucky today: Saban's Masked Rider. I have never seen one before.

I know absolutely nothing about these variants, but I did find NM copies of Final Night 1-4, Wonder Woman 96, Green Lantern 65-67, Green Arrow 110-111 and Steel 24 today -- all with the DCU logos.

6 hours ago, chevalmeow said:

I just found a copy of this in a longbox of comics I have. This and about 20 other Image newsstands, along with a bunch of Malibu, Comico and NOW newsstands.

I love Dan DeCarlo, Dan Parent and Fernando Ruiz Archie art and have a few pieces by each.

I found this in some old Comico correspondence from back when I was a letter hack.

I know that back in the early-1990s or maybe the mid-1990s, there was a Wolverine shirt with this image on it because I saw it at a show (maybe it was a Graphitti Designs shirt?) and I wanted it, but, at that time, having money for comics was priority and being seen in a geeky comic book shirt was not.

I would say that both the Wolverine and Silver Surfer images were used - or intended to be used - for T-shirts or posters.

The Spider-Man art is definitely from Marvel Saga, most likely issue #1.

I find the toy reprints in dollar boxes and they are never in any condition higher than VG.

8 minutes ago, maidenmate91 said:

 Thank you for the insight Michael! So informative, I love the boards.

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.

On 9/28/2017 at 7:10 PM, OtherEric said:

Found in a dollar bin today.  Stevens was always amazing:

 

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

On 10/19/2017 at 12:31 PM, Brian48 said:

181 is my favorite book of the run.  Really violent for the times and pushed the code restrictions to it's limits.  Then again, the whole series was like that. 

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

8 hours ago, maidenmate91 said:

Hector, 

Is the tpb of this series*blood and thunder* a hard find as well? (Malibu) 

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.

45 minutes ago, fastballspecial said:

Hmm maybe a boardie talked a little too much with a shop owner. 

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.