Conacon

If someone finds this, I'd like to see it! Also AF 15 since it's been cover swiped so much. I wonder which of the two has been swiped the most? Is there another famous cover that gets swiped as often?

I think the tape is on the bag, not the comic. It looks like he taped it to the grid board.

Thanks everyone! In it's current shape, it's not worth slabbing, but do you think it would go up a point with a cleaning? If I thought it could get to a 4, I'd consider throwing it in with all the others I need to submit.

This.

I'm more of a "by hook or by crook" guy myself. I wanted to collect Avengers #1-100 (eventually through 200) and I knew I'd have several hurdles. First and foremost, price. This is a hobby that can't eat too much into the family budget, so I went the reprint route and most of my 1-100 are from MSA and MTA. If given the choice between a cheap low grade issue or a fair-priced mid/high grade issue, I'd go the low road with no intention of trading up. My Avengers 14 is faded and my Avengers 10 had Captain America colored in ink pen, but I'm good with that. As long as I can read the story... The second hurdle for me is location. There is one LCS in our area, and I've mined the heck out of that one for low-grade Avengers, MTA and MSA. I make occasional trips to Dallas or Austin, but those are few and far between. I troll the local swap shops, flea markets, and resale shops, but they usually don't carry much in the way of comics. About the only time I upgrade is when I find a decent-priced actual copy to replace a reprint. However, I will replace a bronze/modern with a better copy when I can b/c 10 year old me was not kind to my collection in the 80's!

Marvelmaniac, I wasn't clear. The kid wrote in pen when he read the Legion books. I wish it was a stamp! LOL!

Hello everyone! This is my first post, and I'm excited to find this place. Hopefully I can contribute something positive and interesting to this forum! I picked this beauty up for cheap at an old book store while on a trip through north Texas. The owner had a wall of short boxes stuffed almost exclusively with 90's fodder that he picked up from a collection years ago (believe me, I dug to the bottom of each box). I filled some holes, so it was an okay find. Now, while I was digging, my wife struck up a conversation with him and it turns out he went to college with her brothers in the 80's. I should mention we were passing through the next town over of the college they all attended, but literally hundreds of miles from where any of us live now. While at the register, I heard him mention "the rest of the collection" that he had boxed upstairs. Ever the compulsive digger, I asked if I could see the rest and he hesitated and looked to his wife behind the counter. I threw in that we were practically family now, so what could it hurt? He laughed and said I could come back, but only alone (creepy). No joke, he led me to a room behind a swiveling book case/secret entrance! He only had a short box left because he said he had managed to sell off the rest. I saw some old Adventure Comics (I'm a Legion nut) that some kid in the 60's wrote on the covers. For some reason, he felt he needed to write when he read the books; "Read 12-18-63". I don't think I've ever seen anything like that. I have an autographed Secret Wars #8 signed by my ten year old self, but still... I pointed out the writing and he agreed to cut down the price; they were already the cheapest books in the box. His oldest Avengers was this #10 and I set it aside because he only had $100 on it. We haggled over a few other books and I was about to put it back in the box when I noticed the color was off. At first, I thought it was a misprint, but looking closely, you could tell the kid had taken a pen to everything white on Captain America! I ended up paying $25 and I think I probably came pretty close to value. So here goes: I know, scans! Something wasn't right on my scanner. I think I need some training, LOL! I have no idea what coloring Cap does to the grade. That was my big question. Outside of that and the color peel on his shield, I think a good cleaning and press would help the grade. Close-up of the ink. You can tell it was ball-point and it made an indention in the cover. The indention is evident in the inside front cover, but not in the interior pages. The kid signed the inside of this one. There is no indention on the other side, at least. There are lighter colors up top. Clean spots? This water damage can be seen on the first page and the last, but not in-between. As you can see here. There are three spots near the top right of the back cover. One of them still had dirt in it! Not sure how much improvement there would be with a clean and press. I think the indention would go away and the spots would fade significantly. Two of the spots come through the cover and can be seen on the inside back page. So what do you guys think??? Thanks in advance!

I think the MCU has done wonders for the Hulk. If you'd have asked this question ten years ago (with two "failed" movies of his own and the Avengers movie just coming out), Hulk was a bit of a mess. His comics were 'meh' and at that point only one title, right? Wolverine would have been an easy pick. He was the best part of a big movie franchise and had multiple titles going. While not the hay-days of the early 90's where he was in every title Marvel was putting out, Wolverine was still on two or three teams and had more than one solo title (Wolverine and Old Man Logan, my times are a little hazy). Then Wolrd War Hulk and the Avengers movie happened around '07 and '08. Both seemed to catapult Hulk into the spotlight. And both sold him as awesome! MCU hit after MCU hit kept him in the spotlight. He's running how many titles right now? At least a few (is Totally Awesome still a thing?, Immortal, Weapon H- I know not actually Hulk and also Wolverine-like). Meanwhile, during that time Wolverine was enjoying moderate success with team and solo movies, but in the comics he died (longer than Hulk was dead during that same time, it seems) and was also the victim of the Marvel Freeze-out, where Marvel Comics cuts back their non-MCU properties. FF was canceled, the X-Men were cut down to make way for the Inhumans, etc. I know they've been back for a while, but Wolverine hasn't been a part of that resurgence, being dead and all. The pendulum will probably swing back the other way in a year or two, but Hulk has been on a fresh run for some time now.

Thanks, Keys_Collector!

How would that signature affect the grade of the book? Asking for a friend!