joe_collector

And that fat cook is back gloating again. Will he ever stop?

Those hand-straps on the subway, to which I assume Cage is referring to "suits" or downtown NY workers who ride the subway each day.

Tsk, tsk, remember what forum we're in.

That cook (Popeye gone to seed?) sure seems to be getting his share of calories, and check out Kirk Douglas behind Batman.

Both, but it would have been "for what I had" if I didn't manage to keep most of my collection. Even so, my "camping trip disaster" got me hunting down all those issue later and it was a real rush to inadvertently getting an purchase in the mail and finding out it was "one of those books". A great example was Marvel Premiere 24 and 25, which I forget I owned and only remembered after reading them. Same with Daredevil 93 and 94, which were coverless books I got from relatives. I brought my favorite books, like all my ASM's in the 130's and 140's, my X-Men in the mid-late-90's, as well as (drum roll) Hulk 181 (and 180), which bugged me for years. But I also remember books that were out-of-my-price-range when I was a kid, like the early issues of Marvel Team-up and early Starlin Captain Marvels (my first issue was 32) and after staring at them on the LCS wall it was a blast finally getting HG copies and actually reading them.

Great job! I had a Tuska Captain America vibe right from the start, but I couldn't remember him drawing an issue, so I went with Kirby Cap and Tuska on Champions 17.

...in CGC 9.8. it's hardly "a $100 book" and when it comes to 9.8's the $50-$100 range, people are just paying for the grading fees, the legwork, the 9.4-9.6 masses that come back or are rejected, back and forth mailing, etc.

Got any examples, as I don't know of any Canadian or UK variants, other than junk Modern manufactured cover variants, which don't count.

Awesome, thanks.

Exactly, and that ended a long time ago when adults took over. If kids aren't in the comic stores and current "hot key issues" have a half-life of a few weeks, how does your scenario make sense in terms of mass market appeal going forward? A LOT has changed since you were a kid, and I believe that at some level, nostalgia and (using your words) "buying what you used to want" are virtually dead in our ultra-disposal, ADHD digital world.

Agreed, but at the risk of looking a gift horse in the mouth, is there any way you can put the grades after the titles in the "2 copies in 9.0 or better" list?

I'd say the adult shift ramped up around 1989-90, and the "rule of 25" was pretty well dead by 1994.

Thanks, and I thought "hide" had more to do with hiding threads/users from *you* viewing them, like it does on other forums.

I quit buying new comics when Phoenix died, bought the last of the Byrne X-Men issues and then drifted off. Comics were going through a lot of changes them, from Bronze to Copper, and I didn't like a lot of them. X-Men sucked, ASM sucked, MTU sucked, and Avengers really sucked. Then a few years later I was in a 7-11 and saw this sitting on the spinner rack - it reminded me of a classic Green Goblin cover and it hooked me back into the hobby until the trio of Spider-man 1, X-Men 1, X-Force 1 + Wizard turned out to be the straw the broke the camel's back (I just hated going to a comic shop back then) drove me out for good.

I would be very surprised, especially considering I've never even seen a foreign variant. There are probably a few, but they must be exceedingly rare.

Exactly, only in North America would you think a foreign comic is a "variant" - to buyers in that country, they're just regular comics.

With the caveat that this demographic trend only occurs in kid fads/hobbies, and for comics, it was pretty well dead by the 90's when adults took over for good. After all, no 25-35+ year old buying comics today is going suddenly pine away for these comics (especially since his mother never threw them out) when they're 50-60 years old.

In the end, it's probably going to turn out to be some weird Charlton book no one has read in 40 years.

This is a really cool book, First Constrictor:

Here's a weird one:

I'm thinking that might be The Vanisher and it could be Champions 17.

Just read it online and I didn't see anything close.