Qalyar

On 5/23/2024 at 7:23 PM, Duopggod said:

Does anyone know why there are so few graded copies of Criminal #1, when it appears to be an important book for Brubaker fans. I think there are only 41 graded copies. It had a 25K ish print run also. 

Mostly? I don't think there are that many people who collect books by writer, even for someone like Brubaker. As evidence, Pajama Chronicles has one (1) slabbed copy, a 9.6SS, and is little better than a $5 book in the midgrades it typically occurs in. I imagine a 9.X candidate copy might do okay, but still. Criminal #1 looks to do a bit better, based on raw prices, but I'm not surprised that the slab count is low.

On 5/23/2024 at 3:24 PM, Stefan_W said:

Just looked through other books in that submission and it included 17 books that were all ASM 361s for the Bagley sig. There are no graders notes for this cert number, but several other books in the submission have multiple tears, etc. I wonder if something happened to the books on the way to CGC or something like that. 

Quelle surprise.

The problem with this sort of thing is that the 9.8 in the -tier slab very obviously would have been sent back on a mechanical error ticket and corrected, but there's no motivation for the recipient to have the dog book in the 9.8 slab corrected. The cynic might even think that a book like this got added to a stack destined for Bagley specifically in the hopes that they'd make this very error. 

The solution here -- well, okay, the solution is for CGC to cut this out and figure out how to distinguish between multiple copies of the same book long enough to get them into slabs with the right labels! But the remediation here is for CGC to actively start monitoring the secondary market for these sorts of things and annotate the Certification Number as "Invalid: Known Misgrade" or something like that (plus allowing a free ME regrade, at a minimum). Doesn't solve the 9.6 / 9.8 swaps because those aren't going to be easily recognizable, but it's something. 

I'm going to take a wild guess here and assume that this is yet another example of a situation where two (or more) of the same book were submitted at the same time and CGC shuffled the labels. It's a strong candidate for the most serious ongoing issue with QA.

On 5/23/2024 at 8:52 AM, wardevil0 said:

Another NHS fan out there!  Excellent.  Is he or she interested in possibly buying/selling/trading NHS items?  

I have another copy of this I picked up online, and it's absolutely wrecked!   Chewed corner, stains, creases, but it's a double cover!  And yes, it's initialed.

I'll reach out and let you know! And yeah, her copy is also firmly in "beater" territory. I don't have many data points, but I suspect there aren't very many presentable copies of this! Well ... not that there are many copies in the first place, of course.

On 5/23/2024 at 8:28 AM, wardevil0 said:

Basically a file copy; I got it from Ben directly a few years ago.  It was never sent to a subscriber.  Since you specified "initialed," can I assume you're familiar with this one?

I don't own a copy myself, but yes. I'm friends with a very passionate NHS fan who owns one of the signed copies. It's not as nice as this one!

On 5/23/2024 at 7:16 AM, wardevil0 said:

Just unpacked this last night: the impossibly rare NHS 70 subscriber edition!  Because of an ordering mistake, too few copies were printed to fulfil all orders so this version was made to be sent to subscribers so they could follow the story (their subscriptions were also extended to make up for it).  Copies that were sent out were signed on the back cover, but not this one...

 

That's an amazing copy of a simply impossible book. And it got into the wild unsigned! 

Do you know if this was a subscriber copy that Ben just didn't initial somehow, or if this was a proof or file copy or something along those lines?

On 5/22/2024 at 7:27 PM, EastEnd1 said:

Now this purchase hits home for me as I was a corporate tax advisor working at one of the Big Four accounting firms at the time.  I was also, and remain, a big Beatles fan, so I'm sure George Harrison's "Taxman" was strumming through my head as I searched that month's catalog.  Can't say I've read this comic, but if it makes tax advisors bad-asses, I'm on board!   

This is generally recognized as Cover B of Taxman. I... don't remember how the two covers were actually distributed. Anyway, this is one of a pretty good chunk of somewhat-interesting, almost-totally-forgotten books by indie comics writer Doug Miers. Sadly, Miers died of a sudden heart attack at age 42, back in 2005. Here's CBR's tribute to him.

On 5/22/2024 at 7:29 PM, EastEnd1 said:

I will defer any comments on this one... 

Randy Zimmermann has done just all kinds of stuff as a freelancer in the indie comics world, including a pretty extensive credits list with Caliber, some issues of Furrlough, just... all over the place, really. Spank and Shock are his personal monkey creations. Not going to pretend they're my thing, but good on Zimmermann.

On 5/21/2024 at 12:30 PM, marvelmaniac said:

Hello,

Is there an easy/simple way to know if I have posted in a thread without having to scroll though 15 - 50 pages to see.

If you post (possibly again) in the thread, then you'll know for sure!

...but otherwise, yeah, the star thing is the real answer.

On 5/18/2024 at 2:30 PM, BA773 said:

The guy obviously quoted my ethnicity i dont know what you want in more... and its not the first time

"Snowflake" has nothing to do with ethnicity. It's (largely American) slang for someone who is overly sensitive and demanding of unwarranted special treatment.

No one here is judging you because you are from Switzerland. People are judging you because what you did -- from the perspective of nearly everyone other than you in this hobby -- was taking a fairly nice book and making it much, much worse.

On 5/11/2024 at 7:23 PM, thehumantorch said:

How was this not a hit?

The fact that they got sued by Hooters for using the name without permission (they didn't even try) may have had something to do with it. To be fair though, they apparently sold out their print run (7000, reportedly) before the lawsuit resolved, so... it kinda was a success anyway.

On 5/11/2024 at 7:17 PM, october said:

There were Cheetahmen video games as well, for the NES. The first one was awful and part of the Action 52 multicart. The sequel was awful, and unfinished/unreleased, though some were made and sat in a warehouse. 

That's actually where that book came from. It was (originally; there was a warehouse find later) primarily as a pack-in with the NES Action 52 multicart. The creator of that nonsense really thought he had The Next Big Thing there. Needless to say, he was wrong. I mean... look at it.

Those advertised action figures never existed.

On 5/11/2024 at 2:11 PM, BA773 said:

Thats one of the badest things in ever seen

However bad you think it is from the cover, it's worse. A scan is available on the Internet Archive.

Don't say you weren't warned.

On 5/10/2024 at 7:25 AM, Oldtimer57 said:

Ughh, oh well.  Thank you for the information though. That was a pretty complete run down on dates for record keeping and lack of any records. Just wanted to let you know that I really appreciate the post and the information!  Looks like I will have to leave it up to not seeing many on ebay at all.  Maybe every once in a while. 

In an effort to make a slightly-educated guess here...

The October 1996 orders (for floppies) are recorded in Comichron. Verotik had two books that month -- Jaguar God #6 and Satanika #5 -- both of which had just over 15,000 orders placed. We also know that Verotik did decent business with its GN-format books. We know this because Diamond released a list of the top 10 graphic novels sold for the entire 1996 year (well, excluding Marvel entirely, since they were distributed via Heroes World at the time). Verotik's Death Dealer #2 (a prestige-bound series that Diamond considered to be GNs) placed #7. Diamond only ranked those graphic novel sales (and didn't index them) so we can't immediately turn them into order quantities.

But...

Just ahead of Death Dealer #2 are two Lady Death books. Most importantly, #5 on the list was Lady Death: the Crucible #1 Leather Limited Edition. Why does that matter? Because that book was advertised by Chaos as a limited run of 10,000 copies. The character was still pretty popular in 1996, and that leather edition is frankly pretty sweet, so I'm willing to bet that Diamond orders were fairly close to the full print run. In turn, that suggests that Death Dealer #2 probably had orders not all-that-much lower. If I had to guess, I'd say in the 8,500-9,000 range. Black Angel didn't make the top 10 list, so we know orders for it were weaker. It's really impossible to say how much so, but there's no reason to think that Verotik would have made this a particularly limited title or that orders for it would have been dramatically lower than other, similar titles from the same publisher.

So I'm going to go with a broad range here to hedge my bets, and suggest that orders for this book were somewhere between 5,000 and 8,000 copies, and likely closer to the high end of that range. Actual print runs for non-limited books (and, often, for limited books...) are always higher than Comichron order numbers, owing to alternative distribution channels, reorders, etc. Comparing that to September 1996 floppy orders, that gives us a book that's likely rarer than, say, Image's Distant Soil #16 but more common than DC's Static #41, which feels believable to me (and Milestone collectors will tell you those last few issues of Static don't grow on trees). The rest of market value is owed to Dave Stevens.

Nothing (short of purple label restoration land) is fixing the holes in the front cover, or those long color-breaking creases, or whatever happened to the LL corner. In theory, a presser could try to correct the slight spine roll here and could even out the back cover wrinkles. But that's not going to change the grade, it's not going to make the book look markedly better, especially from the front, and it comes at considerable risk of something going wrong and ending up with the book in worse condition than when you started.

I wouldn't mess with it. It's a reasonably well-presenting 1.0 of a popular key, and that's just fine.

Normally the bookends of a 12-issue miniseries are about a year apart. Maybe a little longer, if there were some artist or distribution delays. But while Charles Burns is an amazing artist and writer, he's not the fastest content creator. Here are #1 and #12 of Black Hole, from different publishers (Kitchen Sink went bankrupt partway through), and released just three months short of being 10 years apart.

But an honorable mention for this 2nd printing of #9, which was released a full year after the series concluded, for... reasons, I guess? No one's every really figured out why it exists.

On 5/9/2024 at 7:36 PM, KryptoSpidey said:

The 3...

Wow. Yeah, that was a good shopping day you had. I know Cap117 is arguably the "bigger" book, but that Showcase 60 is stunning.

Notwithstanding the normal cautions about Comichron data not being exactly congruent with print runs, that's really true in 1996, where they have no data at all prior to September. This had a September release date, so the orders would have likely been the previous month, and thus eaten by the void. Even if that wasn't the case, graphic novels were reported separately at the time, and Diamond didn't index their GN sales reports; there are no reliable order quantities for graphic novels until quite a bit after 1996.

That's a long way of saying that, no, there's really no reliable way to get an estimated print run on these, unless someone who was involved in Verotik at the time wants to go public with that information.

On 5/9/2024 at 4:13 PM, KryptoSpidey said:

CGC 5.5 OW.

Graders notes indicate missing pieces bottom interior pages.

I guessed wrong about how that would be handled, but I imagine you're much happier with this in a 5.5U slab than you would have been with a ~7.5Q.

Regardless, sharp looking book, and a great deal assuming the sticker price was what you're into it for.

On 5/8/2024 at 10:51 PM, DocGo said:

How do you think the “authenticated” books will score on the registry? At the moment, it has Signature > Universal > Qualified > Restored.

I'm hoping for equal to Universal, but I rather imagine they'll make them either equal to Signature or between Universal and SS.

Frankly, I personally wish that SS books also scored the same as Universal books. I don't see the appeal of signed books and I'm sad that means I've lost first place in at least one set forever. But I understand that's likely a minority stake at this point, and also that CGC has a fiduciary interest in their Sig Series program (and now, in authentication) and so rewards those products with registry points. Or, at least, I sort of understand...

On 5/6/2024 at 7:59 AM, DougC said:

As long as you factor in the BP which I did with my obscenely low bid, as a buyer I did ok as it was still well under what I budgeted for. A seller on the other hand very likely made zero dollars on this transaction, where as if they sent it to comiclink it would have easily hit around $80+ (which is what ebay/mycomicshop had it listed around).

Honestly, from the perspective of both buyer and seller, this is why truly Big Boy Books may be best served by being auctioned at Heritage, but "normal" material generally belongs elsewhere. Which... makes sense, honestly. Outside of comics, you might own very nice antiques or jewelry or coins or whatever, but if they're not exceptional, you don't try to get them into a Christie's auction catalog.

On 5/6/2024 at 3:56 AM, Gaard said:

Live & learn.

I'll never buy off Heritage again. Fees killed me.

I don't see anything wrong here. They advertise a 20% buyer's premium, and that's what you were charged. Well, plus tax and what is honestly a nomimal S&H fee. This is how auction houses -- as opposed to traditional merchants -- generally work, and a 20% BP isn't out of line with non-comics auction houses. For comparison, Christie's buyer's premiums are complicated for very high dollar items, but for anything up to $1,000,000, they currently change a 26% BP.

On 5/6/2024 at 1:14 AM, DougC said:

You'll want to stay away from Heritage if your selling non-super key moderns. The cost is pretty outrageous for both buyer and seller, for reference I planned to buy a replacement copy of X-Men (1991) #54 and budgeted around $75 (around $100 for SS). Ebay had a couple for around that, Mycomicshop had a couple for $90, and comiclink didn't have any in the current auction (not counting shipping). I did find a SS copy for bid at Heritage and I put a $20 bid on it and won it for $16. Here are all the fee's after the fact:

On the other hand, this is kind of annoying. Along with the 20% BP, Heritage also has a $29 minimum BP, which... I guess they argue allows them to include items with expected hammer prices under $150 in their auctions and still make a reasonable profit, but... ehhhh, I don't know. I hardly think HA is hurting financially, so this really just serves as a cautionary note that you should try very hard to buy anything < $150... somewhere else.

On 5/4/2024 at 9:27 PM, Parabellum said:

@QalyarHere are all the variants to the Universal Soldier comics.  The photo covers are the newsstand copies with the toned down story.  Looks like  #2 newsstand has a “variant” due to the “better than ever” slogan versus the UPC.  The painted covers/direct editions contain the more graphic art.  The #1 with the painted cover and UPC was a Walden Books exclusive that came poly bagged.  I didn’t open the poly bag to confirm whether it contained the uncensored artwork or not.  If I come across an opened one I will purchase it and find out.

I'd sort of forgotten about the Waldenbooks version, but they're not actually that hard to find.

On the other hand, the most interesting book here is that #2 with the UPC. Normally, I'd expect the newsstand cover to come with a UPC. However... a quick inventory of the internet reveals only "NOW Better Than Ever" copies. That's what MCS lists for that cover. That's what MH lists for that cover. That's what the GCD shows. That's what all the currently available ebay listings with that cover include. So... what on earth is that other book?

I think there are two options.

First, it could be another store exclusive, maybe another Waldenbooks edition. But if that were the case, I'd expect some sort of label. Either there would be bagged copies with a sticker, like with #1, or stickers on the comics, or... you know, something. Also, frankly, although they're not raining from the sky, Waldenbooks copies of #1 aren't exactly rare. I could buy a half-dozen of them right now. If the UPC Newsstand #2 had the same distribution pathway, I would expect to see more copies.

So, I'm just guessing here, but here's what I think happened. That book should never have had the "NOW More Than Ever" slug in the first place. NOW used that slug in place of a UPC on direct market books that still had a cutout for the barcode (and on quite a few books that don't appear to have had newsstand distribution at all). But based on the covers, this was a newsstand book, which means it should have had a UPC. I'm guessing that one or more of their distribution partners (potentially even Waldenbooks, frankly) had some unkind words for NOW when they realized they got shipped books that couldn't be scanned by point of sale. And that NOW was confident enough in sales of this book (or beholden enough to the whims of one of their distribution clients) that they swapped the cover slug and ran off some additional copies. If that's the case, that's basically a 2nd printing ... although I don't think NOW ever officially had a second printing of anything, and I'm fairly confident they wouldn't have altered the indicia (although you might as well check, with that copy in hand). Frankly, they may have had surplus "guts" on hand to marry to the corrected covers. ...again, if that's what this book is.

On 5/3/2024 at 7:14 PM, newshane said:

MOST DIFFICULT BOOKS OF THE REGULAR RUN (VARIANTS NOT TAKEN INTO CONSIDERATION)

1. - SPAWN 156 

2. - SPAWN 64 

3.- SPAWN 212 

4. - SPAWN 191 

5. - SPAWN 203 

6.- SPAWN 182 

7. - SPAWN 144

8. - SPAWN 207 

9. - SPAWN 201 

10. - SPAWN 26 

Still no copies in 9.8.........

or 9.6. 

A few in 9.4. One of them belonged to me. 

Jet black inks, relatively low print run, the world's crappiest coverstock, and the fact that it was released at a time when everyone had forgotten Spawn...all this contributes to a truly brutal modern. 

Cheers to the person who finds a 9.8! 

THE toughest main-series Spawn by far. 

 

What really hurts about this one is that it's also a really cool cover. Why couldn't the impossible book be one of the hot garbage covers instead?

At least a future ultracompletionist won't have to find a newsstand copy also, as they stopped ~20 issues earlier!

On 5/3/2024 at 11:23 AM, wardevil0 said:

Seems like the kind of things folks here might like: 

https://www.mycomicshop.com/search?ItemID=60911249

(Not my book, not my listing, just ran across it.)

This is not actually the first appearance of the Metal gear characters, however. The 16-page ashcan was essentially a preview for this miniseries, and was distributed a couple months earlier. Not my book: