wardevil0

From my own anecdotal experience, it seems there has been great improvement in the quantity and quality of notes over the last few years. I have books in 7.5 (graded 12 Mar 2016), 9.0 (graded 19 Sep 2013), 7.5 (graded 01 Feb 2016), 6.0 (graded 24 Jan 2014) and others which have no notes whatsoever, but my most recent return (graded 10 Sep 2018) had notes for every single comic, including 2x 9.8s. So, thumbs up for improvement!

Sandman #19 also has a fairly common error version with some pages out of order.

The stickers don't bother me too much. It doesn't obscure any relevant information, after all. I don't like them, but they're pretty far down the list of things that annoy me.

You are in for a huge treat. I wish I could read these for the first time one more time. Ellis' run starts with Stormwatch #37 of Volume 1. It continues through the entirety of Stormwatch Volume 2 and it also includes Stormwatch/Aliens. It ends in The Authority Volume 1. I think Millar's run on The Authority should also be included. He closed out the first volume of the series. You will never look at superheroes the way after you read these books. The Authority and Planetary took liberties and shots at both Marvel's and DC's complacency imo. The only thing I would add that you might want to read with these runs is Action Comics #775. It was DC's answer to how Superman stacks up against an Authority like group. Had his time come and gone or was he still relevant ? The Authority is my favorite series of all time but there is no question that Supes had his place even during that very tumultuous time. Thanks for the info. Looking forward to reading it. It's an amazing run that I wholeheartedly recommend, but it's WildC.A.T.S./Aliens (two covers, same story).

Maverick also got a solo book in 1997... I don't think most people know him now. Maverick's solo book

Well no, it didn't really, because as RMA says it didn't become relevant until much later. I finished off my original 100 issue New Mutants run in 2001 when I bought 50-100 in a lot on eBay for $35. A few years ago I slabbed the 98 as a 9.6 and the 87 as a 9.0. In the early 2000s there was not a lot of interest on the Liefeld books as back issues. Price guides from this era still exist, it's not like we have to just pontificate on it. Anyone have a scan or photo handy? If not, I'll try to get one posted after work.

Why would you burn them? X-Force showcased the best in belt pouch fashion. But yeah, I look at my X-Forces and think what the hell was I thinking. Thankfully I didn't buy a long box of X-Force #1. I think there's some Apocalypse origin material in #37, but it might take another decade before anyone cares.

I'm way behind on my reading, and just got through #1 a few nights ago. I didn't care for the art, but I was willing to go along with it for a while. The thing that did get stuck in my head and completely broke me out of the story was when the pirate called the family "Salusians." It's like that moment where you see something that you can't unsee and it totally breaks the moment. Hey, Rick Remender, when you think you're making up a word, maybe Google it. Maybe you'll find that you're reusing a term that has already been used in comics for more than 25 years. Salusians Maybe Ninja High School doesn't sell as many copies as Remender usually does, but the series has been around for 176 issues of the regular series and a whole pile of spinoffs and specials.

Back when multiple variant covers were so uncommon they could all be given names! All Dolled Up, Lin-GEN-rie, Verti-GEN, GEN-et Jackson, etc...

I can tell you that this is one of the reasons why people get riled up. No one likes their positions to be so wildly mischaracterized. No one has doubted that there were only about 600 made, and some of those will certainly have been victims of attrition somehow. Your initial claim was that there are only about 30 known copies, which set this all off. You've come up to maybe 100, but have reduced everyone else's arguments to the absurd. Plentiful and falling out of trees? How is that helpful? Then, end your statement with a . The books were handed out at a signing. How many people didn't want a GLOD slab with "Name written on front in pen" and are happy with their CoA? How many people like to look at their full run of the series and don't want to break it up by having one or two slabbed for no reason other than to have an "official" grade? How many people put away their comic collections after the series ended in 1996 and have no idea there's a company you can pay to put your books in a plastic case? I don't know the answers to this, but I assume there are at least a few in these categories, and more besides. You think it's more obvious to assume that these copies no longer exist somehow. You indicated that you've lost most of your OO Sandman collection. Do you think it's more likely they no longer exist, or that they were sold/traded/stolen years ago and you don't remember? If so, they still exist somewhere in some store or collection. You cite both the Census and GPA for numbers, but those aren't really two separate sources; nothing will be on GPA that isn't already on the Census. Your sample size may be smaller than you think.

Well, I've wanted a Sandman #8B for years but just kept putting off actually picking one up. My Sandman collection is complete except for 8B and 18B. It's bumped up in priority now. I'm sure I'll lose interest in Cerebus #1 before too long, since I have no real draw to it. The only thing I really have to do is avoid finding one of these temporary fascinations before the appeal wears off. I'm sitting on several recent Image slabs in which I have no real interest because they were readily available on eBay when the urge struck.

I guess I'm easily impressionable, but I really want a Cerebus #1 and Sandman #8B now.

Unsubstantiated anecdotes! That guy's a fiction writer anyway, basically a professional liar. Not a credible witness.

I'm baffled by how quickly we're going back over this. Here's a link to RMA posting a transcript from the Feb 9, 1990 issue of Comics Buyers Guide: RMA and Jaydog talking about this in the Copper Forum For the linking impaired, this is key: So, in a quote from none other than Neil Gaiman himself, who was there when they were given out, the books were immediately recognized as variants and given out during his appearances, even further reinforcing the supposition that these variant copies are mostly safely in the hands of collectors who are keeping them.

Did you not see the photos of Wizard that I posted, or not care because it wasn't GPA? The cover date for Sandman 8 is Aug 89. By Apr 92 it was a $100 comic in Wizard. That's only about 2.5 years. It's a much faster progression of values than Amazing Spider-man 300, New Mutants 98, or Walking Dead 1 demonstrated. I don't have the 90 or 91 OPG to check, and that was the oldest Wizard I had. Multiple owners of the book have come forward to say they have it raw and see no reason to pay someone $20 to put it in a plastic case for them. The book was originally marketed toward adult collectors. The "mature readers" label, art style, and themes pretty much kept it out of the dirty hands of children who were wrestling each other for the one-panel Cable preview in New Mutants 86. I think this comic suffers for having a variant that is not immediately visible from the outside, and not even immediately identifiable to the uninitiated (as opposed to a Mark Jewelers insert or pages-out-of-order error, both of which are pretty obvious). There are probably several copies in peoples' collections that have not been identified. ("I know there's a valuable variant, but which is it? The one with the article by that female executive? Oh. Karen Berger or Jeanette Kahn? Hmm. Oh well, I probably don't have the variant, I just got it at my local comic shop in California.") The Sandman series ended in 1996, and back issue demand began cooling fairly quickly thereafter. The entire series has been in continuous reprints, with at least two different waves of hardcovers, an Absolute set, and an Annotated set. There is no reason whatsoever to buy back issues if you only want to read the stories. But since CGC didn't begin until 2000, the peak of Sandman interest had already passed. Thus, GPA only shows the recent resurgence in price, not the whole picture.

Here is some documentation I offered a while ago... From Wizard 8 (Apr 1992) Known to be $100 less than 3 years after it came out. For comparison, ASM 300 is $27, Batman 232 is $14, Brave and the Bold 60 is $50. This was clearly a huge book. From Wizard 130 (Jul 2002) By this time the series had ended and most new fans were coming in for the TPBs, so it's dropped to $60, but still not something you'd throw away unless you knew absolutely nothing about comics. Personally, I'm on the watch for some former-goth soccer moms...

In my unsolicited opinion, your hyperbolic, pendulum-swing representation of other's statements is a significant reason why these debates persist. You suggested there were only 30 or so known copies, others disagreed, and you insinuated that the only alternative is 100% survival. That's a false dichotomy - there are more options available than 30 or 100%. I wouldn't claim a 100% survival of any comic more than 10 years old. The editorial variant was well-known back in the 90s; I remember looking for it before I got out of comics in 1996. I can probably find and post some old Wizards or Overstreets to show it listed at a premium price vs standard copies. Many comic collectors don't slab their comics at all. Many Sandman collectors put their runs away when the series ended so long ago and may have even quit actively collecting comics. They likely imagine the 8B they got to be a $50-$100 book that they'd rather keep and have no idea it could go for $2k. As time passes, it's possible that editorial variants are finding their way back into the wild from people who never realized they had a premium copy, just that they liked reading it and started following the series. Admittedly, speculation, but based on some observation of comic readers who were only in it for Alan Moore Swamp Thing, Neil Gaiman Sandman, and Jamie Delano Hellblazer. I doubt many of these copies were simply thrown away, since they were given out at comic stores presumably to comic collectors/buyers, not at Barnes & Noble to the general public. I'd say probably two-thirds are out there somewhere in some condition range.

Around the same of most of the recent Image titles Midtown is showing 11 Death of Wolverine variant covers (I don't count any of the signed books) and I suspect more than Midtown has released an exclusive for this book. I know Walking Dead has had a few covers which had a high number of variants. But most of the recent Image titles have? Do you have examples? Wayward had a ton. Between 6 - 8 from what I remember. Nailbiter, Deadly Class, Southern Bastards Surely you jest... Image publisher Eric Stephenson earlier this year mocked the Big Two for their variant covers in his ComicsPRO speech. Apparently, they are bad for the industry, bad for comic shops, and bad for fans. He goes on to say "we can do better," but I guess he's not interested in putting his market share where his mouth is. This was only a few months after Walking Dead 115 shipped with 16 different covers, less than two years after Walking Dead 100 shipped with 16 covers. ComicsPRO speech

Different interpretations of sig lines may be a little more common than you think. Not long ago I was in a conversation where a boardie mentioned that he only owned about 10 slabs, but he had his registry sig line (like I have) that said he claimed lots more. When asked about it, he responded very flippantly that those books were only slabs he PREVIOUSLY owned and had not removed from his set. So, there are apparently different schools of thought about what books you should have in your sig line. While it may well have been off-topic, I don't see it as any more of an insult or attack than asking for supporting evidence for any other claim anyone makes here.

That's not true at all...I mean, at all...but ok. I think this has been happening, and quite often. People talk about books being "hot," people talk about "recent trends," people even talk about DC 100 Page Super Spectacular 5. People compared 9.4s to 9.9s, people made accusations of OPG oversights and conspiracies, people talked about the relevance of "publicly available sales data" and the reliability of dealers' opinions. People celebrated Hulk 181's liquidity and condemned Cerebus 1's scarcity. People compared Wolverine's popularity to Cerebus's niche market. People talked about the relative value of the two books in 8.0 and 8.5. People talked about the run of early Cerebus that went for 25% of guide. I think almost all of this is irrelevant and distracting from the actual source of the disagreement, which was OPG's list of top Bronze Age books in 9.2 in 2013-14. This is not an assumption, this is an established fact, by the words of the OPG itself: "With input from a network of experienced advisors including well established collectors, dealers, and historians of popular culture, we have undertaken significant effort to assemble this pricing information." - Overstreet Price Guide, 40th Edition, page 64 And we need not take Overstreet's word for it, either. We have the direct testimony OF those advisors that they have, in fact, informed the OPG. I was reluctant to state that OPG's acceptance as the industry standard was a fact, since I have no evidence to support that beyond anecdote. For all we know Bob gets the advisors' reports and disregards them in favor of his own interpretation. Unlikely, but beyond my scope of knowledge. I also would not use the document itself to support its own claims, and as you pointed out at least one person implied that there was a clandestine reason behind the exclusion of OAAW from the list. This isn't a valid question to ask. Not only can't it be "100% accurate in every case across the country all the time", it doesn't even pretend to be such a thing, It is a price guide, not a price record.. Asking "is it 100% accurate" necessarily assumes that it is not only possible to be so, but that it probably should be so. And that has never been its function. Some may think this is picking nits, but it's the underpinning of this entire discussion. And you may think it is adequately addressed by what you said following, but I'm saying the question itself is not valid. As a price guide. it gives a reasonable retail value (not price...price is what the individual seller and buyer agree to) for any given book in any given grade. It does not pretend to say "this is what X-Men #47 is worth in VF" (even though that is precisely what it appears to do)...it says "this is ABOUT what it is worth, according to previous sales of this book in this grade." Yeah, that's basically the point I was getting at. The books are only $100 apart on the list, so it's not unreasonable at all to suppose that an individual seller and buyer could agree to a higher price for Cerebus 1 or Hulk 181. There is no new EC material, and yet Crime Suspenstories #22 has been on a tear recently. I do not disagree with you assertion (and have said as much in this thread.) However, lack of new material isn't necessarily going to mean reduced demand in the future (and I hope it does mean that, because I would like to buy them for little money.) That's a great point about CSS22, and illustrates how complex the market can be. I hope Cerebus doesn't fall completely off the map, but I expect it to decline quite a bit (just my personal opinion of the situation). This month's Back Issue! has a pretty good article on the early days of Cerebus, and any exposure is good exposure. This is what several people have said, at various points in this thread. The issue has been the people who think that the OPG is wrong to value Hulk #181 above Cerebus #1, in any grade. That's it. That's the entire crux of the debate. Is that right, or are they transposed? I thought we all accepted that Hulk 181 sells for more than Cerebus 1 in mid to low grade? I'll go ahead and post this and see if you've edited...

I didn't bother to discuss Cerebus v Hulk 181 at the Baltimore Con last weekend, because I had high hopes that most people here would realize that virtually no one is debating the same points toward the same goal while considering the actual source of the disagreement. Of course that didn't happen. I did happen to come across a Cerebus 1 in one booth. It was a raw copy graded by the dealer Fine and priced at $1200. I don't know if it sold or if he carried it home. I also expect that he would have negotiated from there, but I do think that $1200 is a much higher point to start negotiations from than where you'd start pricing your Hulk 181 in Fine condition. Just an anecdote, take it for what it's worth. Can we possibly take a step back and establish the facts vs assumptions? Fact: the OPG list has Cerebus #1 valued over Hulk #181 by only $100, a very slim margin, only about 5%. Fact: the OPG list is based on a compilation of last year's info and cannot reflect the plethora of sales of Hulk #181 that have occurred in the last 30, 60, 90, 180 days. Fact: there are drastically fewer copies of Cerebus #1 than Hulk #181, so market forces are at work differently on the two books. Assumption: OPG is informed by a network of dealers whose experience and integrity has made OPG the accepted industry standard for decades. Is it 100% accurate in every case across the country all the time? No, because there are regional concentrations of comic fans and disparities in income that shift the market locally, as well as individual seller abilities to market, display, and negotiate their sale prices. A well-crafted Heritage auction may net more money than a dubious Craigslist ad for the exact same comic. Points that both sides appear to be willing to concede as "granted:" 1. Wolverine is more popular than Cerebus. 2. Hulk 181 is a "hotter" book than Cerebus 1. 3. Hulk 181 sells more copies on any given week than Cerebus 1. 4. Hulk 181 seems to be on a sharper upward trend than Cerebus 1, and will likely surpass Cerebus 1 on next year's list. 5. Hulk 181 is more "liquid," and is an easy sell at nearly any comic show/store/auction. 6. Cerebus 1 is incredibly hard to find in 9.0 and better. I would also assert that: 1. No new Cerebus material will likely reduce demand for Cerebus 1 in the future, as fewer fans are searching for the book. 2. Wolverine has been the lead in a major marketing event this year that has inspired the same speculators who drove up prices of Marvel Superheroes 18 despite the fact that those weren't the same Guardians of the Galaxy. Sorry about the wall of text, but is there anything here that most people don't agree with? None of it changes the fact that, based on data from 2013, Cerebus 1 in 9.2 was valued by the industry standard price guide as worth $100 more than Hulk 181 in 9.2, and no sale for any amount in September 2014 will change that. This is in the past. Obviously there are enough people who support that for it to not be an outlandish claim. Again, this is all analysis based on available data and provided as a guideline; the OPG was never intended to be a binding document that guaranteed prices at certain levels every time. You want to price your Hulk 181 9.2 higher than your Cerebus 1 9.2? By all means, go ahead. You're free to disagree with OPG, but you should also recognize that there are people who are free to agree with OPG and who would price their Cerebus 1 9.2 higher than their Hulk 181 9.2.

It's all about acceptable margins for error to me. With no other information, it wouldn't be wrong, per se, to assume the single point entry carries forward indefinitely until another point arrives. That's the supporting evidence behind saying it's still an $8-10k book, after all, which is just a field of uncertainty around its last price point. I'm assuredly no statistician, but I've had to analyze data from some pretty spurious and disreputable sources to get some kind of forecast. We need assessments, and in the lack of clean, quality data we'll pound what we have with hammers until its something useable.

Wait..what? The assertion is that Cerebus # 1 is an $8-$10k book in 9.4. GPA (which tracks a vast minority of sales of a vast minority of extant books) shows a copy of Cerebus # 1 in 9.4 already sold for $9k in March of this year. If you're going to extrapolate, it needs to be from that number, advanced six months to today. Sorry, I wasn't clear on my methodology. Because there is one and only one recorded sale of a Universal 9.4, I used the data from the Signature Series 9.4, which has three sales recorded, and three points is enough to make a line (shoddy, and still not enough points to be comfortable with, but 3 is more than 1).

I don't think so. I give them the benefit of the doubt. If they know anything about data quality and data collection.. then they surely wouldn't. It's not "lying" because it's not intended to deceive, just may not turn out to be correct once the theory is put into practice. The problem with this debate is that we can see copies of Hulk 181 9.2/9.4 sell every few weeks or so and have not seen Cerebus 1 9.2/9.4 sell often at all. Every dealer may have 100% intention of selling Cerebus 1 9.4 for $3500+, but until they actually have one to sell at that price we don't know for sure. Uh, Sir, if a 9.4 comes to market for $3500 there isn't a single poster here, jaydog probably included, that wouldn't pay full ask immediately. Easy easy double. Nothing like making 2 weeks salary for 5 minutes of work. Hit the buy button and then ship it out to CCS, then CGC for a miracle bump, then straight to the auction house. That's an 8-10k book in 9.4, sir. Probably 12-15k in 9.6. I don't think that was his point. The numbers are only examples. I used $3500 specifically because that is the amount of the most recent sale of Hulk 181 CGC 9.4 on GPA, but it was essentially a placeholder to represent perceived value vs the amount a buyer will actually show up to give you. You assert that Cerebus #1 is an $8-10k book in 9.4, which is probably making some peoples' heads spin, since they would counter with a downward trend visible in GPA showing the book lost 25% of its value from 2004 to 2009, which would extrapolate to a value of about $5800 today. Not that I agree with that extrapolation, but that is still much higher than Hulk 181 sells for in 9.4, so I'm getting to the point that I don't understand this debate either. I'm glad I'll be busy with Baltimore Comic Con all weekend; maybe this thread will dry up and blow away while I'm gone.

That makes sense to me. Unless something new happens to Cerebus, it is unlikely that there will be any new fans made who would be willing to lay out that kind of money for the first issue. But, because this is speculation on my part, I won't make any assertions based on it to counter the opinions of others who have studied it more. Cerebus 1 is clearly a niche book, which appeals to a tiny fraction of as many people as Hulk 181 does. However, all we need is an auction where two Cerebus devotees want to upgrade the 8.5s they already own to drive a 9.2/9.4 up to a new GPA high. I don't think we currently have any reason to believe that this won't happen. The lack of Cerebus 1 in 9.2+ on the market could well be working up a fervor among those who do want it.