Michael Browning

I don't think it's so much confusing dealers with flippers. Rather, it's using dealers interchangeably with retailers/comic shops. Sure, a lot of comic shops are probably dealers as well. However, those who rely on new comics for majority of their income would probably prefer to sell stock quickly rather than tie up capital on old stock in the hopes of the comic appreciating. Ghost Rider #93 may be selling for $30-90 now but during that 18-year period, the retailer could have used the funds to buy comics that sell quickly and dependably. Let's say the retailer makes $1 per comic and they sell every month, over the years, that would have net them $200+. Exactly. Thank you!

I strongly disagree with the statement that "soooo many dealers bought last issues in the 90s because at the time the cat was already out of the bag and dealers knew these will sell at a premium." I don't know many DEALERS who subscribed to the Mile High Comics newsletter. A comic like NM 100 was ordered heavily, because it was heading into X-Force 1. A comic like Conan the Barbarian 275 was not ordered heavily. Neither was Ghost Rider 93 -- because retailers didn't know it was the last issue. Those last issues are rare because those series' sales numbers had dropped so low that they were past Marvel's cutoff point and no one was ordering them. I don't know a single retailer who bought to speculate on last issues at that time -- or many who do that now. When no one is buying a comic, retailers don't increase their orders for speculative purposes that far in the future. I mean, some of these ARE JUST NOW INCREASING IN PRICE, meaning a lot of retailers would have had to have gambled on the long game instead of wanting to make the fast profit and were stuck with back stock they either didn't sell or tried selling at cheap prices to make room for more stock that sold quickly. Retailers don't sit on new comics for two decades with the hopes that they will eventually increase in value. They want to sell new comics now to make their money as quickly as they can. So, to say that a lot of retailers bought last issues doesn't make any sense and the fact that there are so few of these last issues in back issue bins in shops is proof that the print runs on those final issues were very low. I think youre confusing dealers with flippers today. Dealers like Chuck, till this day, have stock to sell. Thats their business, theyre not some kid in a basement buying books to flip on eBay. Dealers dont buy from dealers, just like Chuck, there were many other comic book shop owners that ordered heavily on these final issues because they knew they could price them accordingly. That does not mean that they are rare as much as it doesnt mean that they are worthless. The point is, that what you are saying was a known fact EVEN back in the 90s Again, I strongly disagree with what you are stating and I hope you understand that I KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FLIPPERS AND DEALERS. I've been involved in the comics collecting world since 1978 and have been buying and selling comics since 1990. You are absolutely, 100% wrong that there were dealers who stockpiled last issues with the hopes that EVENTUALLY, SOMETIME IN THE FUTURE - NO MATTER HOW FAR OFF THAT WOULD BE - THESE LAST ISSUES WOULD BE WORTH MORE THAN COVER PRICE. Comic shop owners/dealers sell comics at a profit NOW (when new comics arrive, usually every Wednesday these days, but it has been different days of the week in the past), because holding onto comics can mean a big loss. Selling at the right time, whether it be new comics or old, is the key to maximizing profits. Over the years, many of these comics have ended up in quarter, 50 cent and dollar boxes. So, with your logic, they wouldn't sell until they were very valuable, meaning that comic shop owners/dealers would STILL BE HOLDING ONTO A LOT OF THEM. Collecting last issues is a niche that has been around for decades (I discovered last issues in an early edition of the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide when I noticed how high Flash 104 had shot up in value because of its scarcity), but I don't know a single comic shop owner/dealer who ever banked on buying multiple copies to HOLD ONTO FOR YEARS WITH THE HOPES THAT, ONE DAY, THOSE COMICS WOULD BE WORTH A LOT. Comic shop owners want to sell their new comics now; holding onto a comic for years that only goes up to sell for cover price or just above is something that doesn't happen very often - especially not at comic shops that are very successful. Most of these last issues sell for just above cover price and aren't very valuable. However, there are those that are and those are the ones that dealers didn't order because no one was buying them.

I strongly disagree with the statement that "soooo many dealers bought last issues in the 90s because at the time the cat was already out of the bag and dealers knew these will sell at a premium." I don't know many DEALERS who subscribed to the Mile High Comics newsletter. A comic like NM 100 was ordered heavily, because it was heading into X-Force 1. A comic like Conan the Barbarian 275 was not ordered heavily. Neither was Ghost Rider 93 -- because retailers didn't know it was the last issue. Those last issues are rare because those series' sales numbers had dropped so low that they were past Marvel's cutoff point and no one was ordering them. I don't know a single retailer who bought to speculate on last issues at that time -- or many who do that now. When no one is buying a comic, retailers don't increase their orders for speculative purposes that far in the future. I mean, some of these ARE JUST NOW INCREASING IN PRICE, meaning a lot of retailers would have had to have gambled on the long game instead of wanting to make the fast profit and were stuck with back stock they either didn't sell or tried selling at cheap prices to make room for more stock that sold quickly. Retailers don't sit on new comics for two decades with the hopes that they will eventually increase in value. They want to sell new comics now to make their money as quickly as they can. So, to say that a lot of retailers bought last issues doesn't make any sense and the fact that there are so few of these last issues in back issue bins in shops is proof that the print runs on those final issues were very low.

Last issues, particularly those of 1990s-to-early-2000s Marvels, are generally hard to find. Last issues for War Machine, Ghost Rider, Conan the Barbarian, She-Hulk, Guardians of the Galaxy, Silver Surfer, Marvel Comics Presents, New Warriors, the Punisher titles, Alpha Flight, Force Works and others are tough to find and increasing in price. Some are rarer than others and are in more demand. Nice, high-grade copies of GR 93, Punisher 100-104 and Guardians of the Galaxy 62 can sell for big bucks. As for DC, I see a few New Teen Titans 130s around, but they are getting harder and harder to find. The last issue of Swamp Thing, #171, is tough and I never see those last 10 issues in boxes in any stores. I rarely find Doom Patrol 18 in shops. In 25 years of looking, I have found two copies. And the last issue of Doom Patrol, #87, is tough to find, too.

I've owned and sold probably 15 copies of Ghost Rider 94. While it isn't an issue you find in every shop, there are stores that bought lots of those and they never sold, so they are sitting in back issue bins. Now, a Ghost Rider 93 is a really tough one to find these days. You know a comic is selling high when webuycomics.com is buying them for $26 each. Never seen the Cyblade-Shi before. And I've owned at least a couple of the She-Hulk 60s. It's a bit tough to find and can sell high.

I've had several copies of GOTG 24 and 25 and have sold all of them in the $20 range. I used to find them in dealers' back issue bins and got them for around $1-$3 each. But, I haven't seen a copy in at least a year or so. Maybe they are getting tougher to find in the wild.

Completely agree with both of these comments. I tend to discount 'great stories' in favor of 1st appearance books of key and semi-key characters. That's just where my collecting focus has been for the past 20 years. And Spawn #1 was the beginning of the Chromium Age in my book... Having been one of the people who thought they were going to retire on those 1990s premium books (yes, I'll admit it), I think the age after the modern age should be called the Fool's Gold Age.

Yeah, that's definitely one I have never seen in the wild. Nice! And, while I know it's not entirely new to look for these scarce 1990s issues, it isn't something done widely in the comics collecting community, at least not like collecting first appearances or silver age or things like those. I enjoy finding out about these scarce comics because, eventually, there will be a wider audience collecting them and I want to be able to say I was on the ground floor for this niche.

A lot of the books that have been listed on this thread as tough to find are books I run into a lot at comic shops that have back stock from the 1990s. In most cases, I find them stuck in boxes that haven't been looked through in awhile and in 50 cent and dollar boxes because most dealers don't think 1990s and early 2000s comics are worth anything at all. Those are the shops I like to hit up. Usually, I find scarce 1990s comics in them and trade paperbacks and hardcovers that are rare. At shows, I like to visit the booths that have tables and tables of comics for 50 cents each because there are usually a lot of scarce comics in them, especially because this is a fairly new collecting niche (I mean, who'd have ever thought 1990s comics would EVER be worth anything, right?) and those of us who do collect these rarities make up a very small community -- right now. I usually make my money back on traveling to a show and the ticket price by finding hard-to-find comics like the ones in this thread for cheap and selling them, either on eBay or to webuycomics.com. --- A couple notes: I buy Ghost Rider 93s every chance I get. It wasn't until recently that I noticed they are selling for upwards of $50 on eBay. I have also noticed that those GR 93s - and 94s - are getting harder and harder to find. And who would have ever thought Adam: Legend of the Blue Marvel would sell so high? A shop near me in Kentucky pulled all four of the issues out of their 50 cent box and just sold a set of the miniseries for $140!

Wow, I passed one up in a dollar box recently. I bought the later issues and left the 100...

They are printed to fool Batman/Miller fans into spending money on what they think is a cheap piece of Dark Knight artwork.

No, not a reseller sticker. I've seen a bunch of these. They're out there. I've owned at least one of them.

Actually, the color separations are NOT color guides. They are color separations. Color guides are xeroxes of the original art that are colored by the colorist during production. And, only the 3M transparencies are the real transparencies. The transparencies on ebay are fakes that have been produced recently. Buyers beware!

K Card Companies in the 1990's seemed to create errors on purpose to build up false hype Comic companies don't get any aftermarket money. ...but they do get people, the "speculators" buying. It's simple marketing. Many opt to do "short yet unstated print runs" only to in later releases, once the collectors drive up the prices of previous releases, then crank the presses full steam ahead and flood the market, so capture the greedy money from folks who horde. Comics saw that with Jim Lee's X-Men #1 and the whole 1990's speculation, sports cards saw that in 1987 through the 80's, 90's and Y2K, and later turned to the "elite" marketing of scarcity where single packs of cards can sell at retail for $500+ and there's a "chase" insert of potential cardboard gold, so to speak. It came to a point where with the "chase" cards, collectors bust open cases, boxes and packs, sort through the cards, pick out the one hot card they're looking for and dump he rest in the trash. Comics did that with the whole bagged sketch cover thing DC did this year or last year, and with these variants with 1:10; 1:50; 1:100; 1:1,000 etc odds that a retailer has to order tons to get the one rare book. So, a lot of time the common books go straight into the dollar bins. So, the comic companies are indeed raping the industry with short term greedy decisions instead of building a stable fan base and earning loyalty. There's less single collectors of books and more speculators who never read the books, buy multiples to resell and encase 'em in plastic. Comics are a commodity not to be manhandled and enjoyed by children of all ages, and it's mainly grown middle aged men who are the day traders. You're realllllly stretching. Like I said, they DO NOT get aftermarket money. They may get shops ordering more than they normally would for a variant but those (Shop owners, can you chime in here) situations are either purely personal in what they think will sell (speculative) or because a pull customer made an order for the variant. Comic publishers are in the market to sell comics and make money. Them putting out a weird variant does nothing to make the average person HAVE to buy a book. Most people don't (this place is not even remotely representative of comic buyers as a whole). If it makes people buy more, well...that was their decision. But, back to the specific example that started this (The Green Lanterns error), how would they be putting out fake errors and how would that benefit them AT ALL on a scale that would make even a dent in their bottom line? It's a silly conspiracy and that's why my response was dismissive. When the Justice League 51 error happened, I found 10 of them and bought em all. Did I make DC/Diamond/Books a Million some money? Sure. A tiny fraction of the money I personally made from flipping those, though. So again...NO...comic companies do not get to enjoy the benefits of the secondary market in any meaningful way. It might not even be DC, it might be the guys running the printers. Either way it's happening a bunch and someone eventually ends up with the copies they can sell. Maybe it's a pittance bonus for the employees... "here guys go sell some and head to town next weekend with the wife" .... who knows. Either way the value of that book will only be decided by speculators because there are no hardcore Green Lanterns fans as I said, the writing is garbage. The guys running the printers probably don't care what comes off the presses. Having worked in the publishing industry for nearly 20 years, the pressmen don't usually care what rolls off the presses, nor do they stand around hoping that a certain comic will be pulped and they can save a few copies to sell on the aftermarket. Most pressmen have so many printing jobs going at any time that they just look for errors on their part and they send everything through that looks good. All the bad stuff is called "spoilage" and is tossed into garbage dumpsters, either to be pulped or to be recycled. Here's what really happens: Occasionally, publishing officials order a few early copies for reviews and those are pulled so early that they are already out in circulation when an error is discovered. That's how these error copies get out into collectors' hands.

One crossover that I never see listed is New Warriors #73, in which Rom makes a one-panel cameo in a flashback of the original Torpedo's life and death. I do believe that it is his last Marvel appearance and his last appearance in his armor until the new IDW series came out. Here is a link to the original art to that page: http://www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?piece=1339807

One of the biggest problems with finding and buying 1990s art is that MOST dealers disregard art from that decade and won't even sell it. Right now, 1990s comics do get a bad rap for being some of the worst ever published. But, they really aren't. But, heck, I've seen dealers turn away 1980s art -- if it isn't Frank Miller, John Byrne and Dave Gibbons -- simply because it is "too new". I know a lot of the older dealers are used to selling 1960s, 1970s and 1980s art, but I think they are really missing out when they turn away great 1990s art that is offered to them. I buy 1990s art when I find it cheap, because, one of these days, it's going to be for some collectors what silver, bronze and copper age art is to us older collectors. I do think there is a lot more of the 1990s art out there, but I think most collectors just think it's not worth anything and don't offer it up and dealers don't deal in it much.

Why would there be pencils if Janson light boxed it?

Re: My DD #181 page -- There are pencils that are on the board that you can see that fall just outside the inks in a few places.

My Daredevil 181 page definitely has Miller pencils underneath the Janson inks. I'm glad it was cleared up that Miller did put pencil to the board and then those pencils were inked by Janson on DD 181.

Vision #4 may be tough, but Vision #4 Second Printing is way tougher.

I thought so. I knew I'd seen that Linsner Thor had been posted several times. Michael Browning