Qalyar

I remember the before-slab pictures of that travesty of a 35c variant. I think it actually looks ... well, okay, it doesn't look good in the slab, but it looks as good as it's going to get. And that's still an obnoxiously hard book to find. Can't believe you snagged one in the wild. My local HPB... is not the source of such things, shall we say.

Makkari was criminally underused in this film. Even though I liked him well enough, I'd happily sell off half of Kingo's screen time for more Makkari.

At the risk of de-derailing this thread by accidentally responding to the original question ... it depends what you consider a "reason". One of the series I collect pretty aggressively is a low print run indie. In the last two years, I've watched actually-sold prices for 9.8 slabs of #1 go from the $120 range to a recent auction sale well over $300. There's no external reason for this book to double in price. There's no imminent film or Netflix show or the like (it's been optioned forever, in development hell; while I expect an adaptation someday, that's not within the horizon). It's likely that there's simply two or three collectors who have taken interest in the series and so are putting price pressure on the fairly thin supply of high grade copies. Is that a "reason"? Well, not in the same way that "Marvel announces Paste Pot Pete film" would spike the price of Strange Tales 104, anyway.

I don't think I've ever gotten updates when books advance in status, except via the magical power of the F5 key applied to my order listing. I don't mind the long CGC wait times. The books I've got in queue are getting slabbed eventually, and they might as well enjoy a Florida vacation instead of sitting around here in the meantime. The handful of books I've had at CCS since May are killing the drill, though.

Honest appraisal? It's okay. I'd rate it above Iron Man 2 or Thor 2, but below a lot of the more interesting films. Most of the film is a lot different from the pacing of conventional Marvel films, with the threaded timeline and the greater reliance on introspective discussion than just pew pew all the time. That probably bored some fanboys, but I thought it worked well enough. However, that's most of the film. For me, it's the climax where the film falls short. I'm not even going to bother using spoiler tags to say that it opts for a Marvel special effects tentpole combat ending, because everyone probably assumes that for all these films by now. That's disappointing here (even more so than it was for Shang-Chi). But also ...

Depends on the overall grade. Below 8.0/8.5 ish, the owner sign is no longer the controlling issue, so doesn't move the dial. Above that, I would knock it down one grade, and maybe two at the extreme top end (because of area effected; capping the books at 9.4). However, CGC doesn't treat my opinions as gospel for some reason, as the 9.8 proto-Eldon indicates. Still, I think double-signed books above 9.0 ought to take a one tier hit.

To my dismay, I don't have any more information on these than you do. @CDNComix, these are a little more recent than your main area of focus, but if anyone here is familiar with them...

If I remember correctly, the label gets a "MANUFACTURED WITHOUT TOP STAPLE" notation, but I don't believe it's considered a grade-affecting defect. Well, no 9.9 with this, but that's pretty much never an issue anyway.

One of the problems with "keys" is that most of them are "1st appearance of Timmy McGuffin" stories. And I think we all know at this point that character intro stories are lame more often than they are good... even for characters who turn out to be unique and interesting down the line. Comics have a limited amount of space to tell the issue's story while also tossing a new character in, explaining who they are and what they can do, and at least hinting at where they came from. Plus, early installment weirdness plagues a lot of first appearances; whatever your opinion of IH181, the IH181 version of Wolverine is quite a bit different from the character as we understand him now.

That appears to be the case. I... don't really follow the Chaos Comics stuff, so that slipped past my list. In any case, it's a little different, because the Omega Editions were apparently the prizes for winning the contest, while Valiant's #UNITYGOLDENTICKET books were Willy Wonka-esque searches -- and, critically, the contest (and existence of the unique gold books) weren't even announced until after the title had gone on sale. The only difference is a line of text in the UPC box, but it's quite a difference (and unlike direct market / newsstand, CGC recognizes the golden ticket books as distinct). Interestingly, the two "missing" golden ticket books are the two variants with the UPC on the back cover...

I'm sure there are "Gerber 11" books -- stuff that was physically printed but no longer exists. There's reason to believe that quite a few foreign books have been lost, for example, including one or two Canadian Whites, some early British stuff, and a lot of poorly-documented Asian and South American books.. For original US publications, however, it's tough to pin them down for certain because most candidates fall into two categories: Stuff that was supposed to be destroyed, but the pulping machine didn't catch them all. There's a LOT of these, some of which (Elseworlds 80-Page Giant) aren't even that rare. On the other hand, some definitely are. Off the top of my head, examples include famed underground artist Skip Williamson's Snuk Comix #1 (the printer objected to the drug content, refused to deliver the printed comics, and shredded the run; surviving copies were grabbed by Skip before the rest were pulped, and number in the single digits) or DC's Free Comic Book Day 2020 Generation Zero (intended to have been destroyed after Dan DiDio was sacked and the "5G initiative" cancelled; at least one copy survives). Stuff we can't prove existed in the first place. I think the evidence is pretty good that Motion Picture Funnies Weekly #2-4 never existed as complete comic books (covers were prepared, but there's never been any evidence that interiors existed at all). Likewise, Rural Home had a ton of books destroyed for being produced in contravention of their wartime paper quotas, but there's never been conclusive evidence that the mass government pulping expunged any titles or issues that weren't already out there in some fashion (and their probably-intentional slipshod bookkeeping doesn't help with knowing). There are honorable mentions, in my mind, for things that were printed, but weren't exactly released as comic books. DC produced quite a few ashcans as copyright registration shenanigans, and not all of them that were known to have been created are still known to exist. But those weren't ever intended for public viewing, not even in the sense of advertising giveaways or promos. Similarly, the 1933 Siegel and Shuster creation The Superman (note: well prior to Action Comics 1), which they tried to market to publishers in Chicago; when that didn't pan out, Shuster destroyed the copies except for one cover. However, that's more of an artist portfolio piece than anything published (since it explicitly wasn't published, and all...). Ironically, the most-lost comic I'm aware off offhand was never physically printed, but did exist! In the late 1990s, Marvel experimented with digital publication in the MarvelZone on AOL. One of these so-called CyberComics, Gambit: The Hunt for the Tomorrow Stone, is believed lost, despite fans (and Bleeding Cool) who have spent quite a bit of effort trying to locate archives of it. Some of Daerick Gross Sr.'s original art for the e-book still exists, but neither he nor writer Fabian Nicieza apparently have anything close to the finished product, nor did Marvel's own archival project turn up a copy. As far as the OP's original question of the rarest comics ever, strictly on a numbers standpoint, there are several books that intentionally had only a single copy printed. These include, but probably aren't limited to: Bloodshot Salvation #12 Lewis LaRosa Vin Diesel Variant, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic #12 "1 Million" Variant, Quantum and Woody! #1 Second Printing, and the five #UNITYGOLDENTICKET contest copies of 2013's Unity #1 (each with a different cover). Actually, two of those might qualify as Gerber 11s: the Bryan Hitch variant and Paolo Rivera variant were apparently never discovered (in contrast, the J.G. Jones, Travel Foreman, and Clayton Crain variants have all been located and have subsequently been graded by CGC).

I want this to get an 8.0, but I think because of the number of color rubs on the back, it'll get marked down another step for a large-area defect... so 7.5. Happy to be proven wrong there, though! Regardless, beautiful copy from the front, so it'll present well ahead of its technical grade. As you surmised, high grade copies of this don't grow on trees; the black cover and the bargain-basement thin paper conspire to make a mess out of a lot of books.

4.5 purple. While I agree it did more harm than good (as does much "restoration"), white-out intentionally applied to a white area = color touch.

Appreciate the effort. I hope he's doing well in whatever his current endeavors may be.

Yeah, I actually really like the series. Shame that the expanded stories had to be cut short (on account of, well, Marvel not having the rights to do expanded stories). Have to say that finding the pence copies of these in grades higher than "dog toy" is an uphill quest, though.

Not the one book everyone cares about from this short-run title, but it's actually a pretty nice copy for once.

Foxing is... complicated. Also, not all foxing has the same causes or chemistry. As far as rust goes, iron does require the presence of water to rust. However, the air contains moisture unless it's at 0% humidity (which is even worse for preservation). Now, an unrusted staple resists corrosion at normal atmospheric levels of moisture pretty well; that's why most staples aren't rusty. However, once rust has started, there's a problem. Although in principle rust is just iron oxide, in reality, rust contains a variety of partially-hydrated iron oxide compounds. Over time, a desiccation reaction can occur which frees the water from those hydrated complexes... which makes it available to react with the nearby unoxidized metal. In addition, the way that iron in particular corrodes tends to make adjacent "good" metal more vulnerable than it would otherwise be. Rust is bad stuff. In any case, neither foxing nor rust is going to worsen because of encapsulation. What matters more than anything are the storage conditions, and that's true for raw books just as much as it is for slabs.

Personally, I've always wanted to see rust hammered down even more than it is in terms of grade. Even more so than (most kinds of) paper degradation, rusting is an autocatalytic process. That is, the presence of rust will cause the remaining metal to rust more readily...

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/01/28/900000-counterfeit-seized-customs-all-one-dollar-bills/4598937002/

I'm normally sad to see interesting books -- like relatively high grade MJI copies -- end up signed. But you know, I'll absolutely give you this one. Fantastic story resulting in a fantastic book.

Stuff that comes to mind from DC (since we're talking DC books). In no particular order; Gears of War #1 Blockbuster Twisted Metal 2 Scooby-Doo Mystery of the Fun Park Phantom Teeny Titans Aquaman #1 Special (Complex Con), and to some extent the other promo variants Fringe Preview. Fringe: Tales from the Fringe isn't a cakewalk either. EverQuest Online Adventures: The Quest for Darkpaw Edit: Apparently Fun Park Phantom has had more copies turn up than historically has been the case. MCS has a couple low/midgrade copies. But it had wonky distribution, and high grade copies are unicorns, so I stand by mentioning it.

If you didn't know, that Blood on the Moon is actually book 3 of a 3-issue mini series. Confusingly, each one has a different title: White Commanche, Red Raider, Blood on the Moon. In my experience, this one is by quite a bit the hardest of the three to find nice copies of.

It's exactly what it looks like. Taco Bell did a series of these aschcan sized promos as giveaways for their kids' meals. There's this one, Green Lantern, Superman, Wonder Woman. That I know of. I don't think they're super hard to find, especially compared to really tough promos. But, hey, promos. Promos are always fun.

It's not really special, but... I was managing a brick and mortar comics and collectibles store on 9/11. Wasn't much of an ASM fan, but bought this for myself out of our Diamond shipment shortly after. Figured I ought to show it some respect and slab it, as the original owner after all this time. Considering that it has probably moved with me 8 or so times, I assumed the unyielding hand of entropy would earn it a 9.4 or 9.6 even if I couldn't see anything wrong. Happily, even twenty-years-ago me knew how to take care of my stuff.

I dropped GoCollect over the summer. It's unfortunate, I actually liked their (previous) interface quite a bit, once you got used to the foibles. But more and more, their FMV estimates seemed like alchemy, sometimes bearing absolutely no evident relationship to their reported sales. Besides, an awful lot of what I collect isn't the sort of thing that has reliably established FMV anyway. Still, their failure to provide an API to their partner is dirty pool. CLZ was and is a good product; I hope they're able to secure another, and better, data source. As for GoCollect now? New Coke, indeed.