Get Marwood & I

Are we having a party to celebrate #600 then?

55

I'd make two points based on my own experience. The first is to buy the expensive / key books first, and certainly if there is evidence that they will go up in price quicker than other surrounding issues. Not gold books of course, but I sat out ASM #129 whilst buidling an ASM 1-100 CGC 9.4 run as it was more attractive to me at the time to pick off the volume first. That was a mistake in hindsight as that book virtually doubled in price by the time I got around to buying it. Ditto 121 and 122. The second point is to not 'panic' buy. I would buy a copy that I subsequently became unhappy with just to fill the gap (all 9.4's are not equal as it turned out - miswraps, pencil marks, distributor spray etc). There will always be another chance down the line if you're patient. If there's something, anything about the book that puts you off, maybe wait for another copy. Books are there to be loved. You don't want misfits stinking up the place. Assuming they're not so rare that you'll never get another chance of course.

That comment resonates with me. There's been a few times when I've realised the pursuit of a specific collecting goal meant buying lots of often expensive books that I didn't actually care for. I'm still at it now in a way, but have targeted runs of older books that are less much less expensive and which are really in course just keep me in the hobby. I'm quite enjoying that.

My money would be on it being a printing defect. The covers were printed separately I believe, so it could be a printer chipping type of situation on the internal pages. What occurs to me is how well the book is preserved overall - it's been looked after it seems. So under what circumstances would someone carefully tear random bits of the interior pages away from an otherwise well looked after comic? That makes no sense.

Gotta let em go some time Jim.

Some Miller musings in here, and we may see a book go to CGC. The OP has promised to keep us posted - it'll be interesting to see how CGC handle it:

Splendiferousness

They look nice Try posting them here: You might get more attention... @marmat @Define999

We've all done it Bob. I sold a VFN AF15 for under a hundred quid to buy clothes back in the day. I wouldn't mind, but I had the dress sense of Doctor Who meets Worzel Gummidge in a car crash anyway. Still have. There's never really a good time to sell is there. I have another AF15 now. If I sold it, in ten years time I may be saying "I should've kept it". Probably. If every dealer kept every comic on the off chance they'd be worth more in the future, they'd sell nothing and not be a dealer. Except 'Power Pack'. That hasn't done too well. Nice to see a reference to poorly distributed DCs. We all forget how important distribution was before the internet age. The concept of 'ND' is more or less irrelevent now. Bring back the age of fairs and catalogues....

Be nice if it was still the case wouldn't it...

To be fair, I didn't press CGC on the Millers further as they had only just agreed to label UK Price Variants correctly so I thought that was victory enough for the time being. I would ring them, and ask how they would treat the book if you submitted it. They may ask you to note the variance on the submission form so that it doesn't get missed. Part of the issue for them would be how to reference it on the label. I would suggest something like "UK regional distribution indicia variant / copy" or something along those lines. It would be important I think to word it in such a way that it is clear that it is not a reprint - a badly worded description could imply that and potentially impact the resale value for those to whom that is important. You can always refer them to my thread, so they'll be able to see examples and in which books the variants are confirmed to exist. If you do, pop back and tell us how it goes won't you? Good luck.

Oor Wullie... Your Wullie... A'Body's Wullie!

The Human Torch - Bernie

Dormammu, not Lazarou Ken

Westlife

The Dread Dormammu - Dave Dormammu

So terrible then?

Evening all You know when you order a bunch of comics just to get one or two in the lot and the rest are a pile of old carp? Well that's never happened to me. Every comic is a winner, even the ones that you didn't actually want that came along with the ones you did. No, really. Take this copy of Blondie #189 (please, take it ) Now I'm a big fan of Charlton as one or two threads of mine hopefully suggest, but it's really the early sixties ones that I like. These later ones bear all the hallmarks of creative averageness. Apart from the dogs of course, who steal every scene they are in even when they are asleep: Blondie' s a funny one too isn't she. But not 'ha ha' funny. She never seems to stand up straight and always looks to me like she's trying to squeeze cheese. Zip off? More like ripped one off. The cereal box printer was nearing the end of it's shelf life in 1971, if the internal print quality was anything to go by... ....but what have we here? Some interesting facts of our animal people. Does that make sense? Anyway, one for the Jimmery here @porcupine48 (the reason for the whole post if I'm honest): Quick, erect those quills Jim! That Lynx is getting all fresh on your porky harris! I shouldn't laugh at my own jokes of course. No one else does Now, who was it that said no one knows the print run of any comic ever and that anyone that said they did was a stinking liar out to make money off of gullible people? Well look and learn Meanwhile, when the author wrote the title 'Duty Calls', and considering the lower panel image, what do you think he had in mind.... See you next time

More like ‘Ask CGC And We’ll Delete Your Question’. I can understand why they wouldn’t want to answer questions about what goes into grading (well, I should specify that I don’t understand, but they are consistent about that) but the other questions? Odd. Indeed. How about 'Don't Ask CGC Marwood'?