Warlord

Western Gunfighters #7 found at an antique store. Not a bad looking undercopy, with a neat datestamp, for my collection and bargain priced to boot.

Antique store find! These Vlad's have bargain box values, so you'd think I'd have found all three in bargain boxes at cons or LCS, but no, I still need #1. Low print runs could be the culprit.

It made it into comic book form too!

The Robin issues have set me to thinking about which DCU issues are rarer or harder to find. I've been wondering if the issues in some date ranges or certain months are any harder to find than others. So I've done some analysis of all the DCUs that exist per my list (558 issues) vs those that I've found for my collection (393). Excluding a handful of issues where I don't have a month/year date (some annuals and oddballs listed below), here's a look at how my collection has developed. As I've noted in previous comments, my collection is perhaps 95+% sourced from LCS and conventions (plus a couple odd lots of ebay comics with some random DCUs) where I've bought whatever issues I encountered. Those that I've sought out specifically, such as searching for and buying an issue on ebay, have been the exception by far. I've made a couple observations from this analysis. First, January through August 1994 are extremely well represented in my collection. I've found about 150 of 158 issues. But then the last three months of 1994 stand in stark contrast. I've only found about two-thirds of the Sept-Nov issues, and then only three of the Dec 1994 issues. Of the months with any significant number of DCU issues, that is quite the outlier month. The 1995 issues are all reasonably represented in my collection, with perhaps a slight under-representation of the May, June, and November issues. The 1996 issues generally seem under-represented in my collection too. I've done well with March through May but January and February appear to be giving me some trouble, and I'm doing only about 60% or so for the second half of the year. Then, of course, there's 1997 issues of which I have none. But there are only five 1997 issues, so for the moment I'm not making too much of that outcome. I don't think my personal experiences can be extrapolated to form any conclusions. However, I'd be interested in hearing from the peanut gallery on whether your collecting experiences or observations align with or differ with these results. For instance, what about those December 1994 issues? Are they really that tough, or am I just looking in the wrong boxes? I need to nail down appropriate month/year of publication for these five issues... LMK if you can provide that info!

I was looking at the Robin collector's sets and noticed that, instead of unique issues, the sets contain overlapping runs of issues. What were they thinking? The overlap issues are Robin #18-20 and Robin Annual #4. I have all four of these issues in my collection. Of the issues that don't overlap but appeared in just one of the two sets, I have only #15 and #22, so I'm missing #16 and #21. Due to appearing in two boxed sets, assuming that the same number of each boxed sets were made and sold, you could conclude that Robin #18-20 and Robin Annual #4 should be twice as common as Robin #15, #16, #21, and #22. My results suggest that's not a completely unrealistic assumption. These are the only two Robin boxed sets I've seen. Were there any other Robin boxed sets or bundles?

Mike's contests haven't quite yet destroyed my will to grade comics, so count me in!

Nice 6-pack! Thanks for the info. Somehow I've now found all of those issues except Robin #21. Generally the comics from the 6 to 20-packs haven't seemed as hard to find, but issues can be hit or miss like that, at least when most of your collection comes from boxes of random overstock.

New finds! Robin #22 came from hunting through a TON of dollar longboxes with unsorted comics at an LCS this week. Appears to be a rarer one because I don't seem to be able to spot any other example currently on ebay as active or sold. Regardless, it's a new addition for my collection!!! Steel #7 is an upgrade. The Star Trek #62 (which the DCU purists among you may not care about) is a not-HTF issue but still finally filled a hole in my collection, both it and Steel found courtesy of ebay. The two DC bullets (again, DCU purists won't care ) were duplicates encountered in the longbox searching that came home with me too.

OK, I figure after 1.5 years it's about time for an updated list. I've been hard at work trying to get my list updated with the new information I've seen posted. I decided to split the list into two sections to simplify tracking the DC bullets vs the Batman logo/silhouettes. Here are the lists with the updates I've made vs the Nov 2022 list. Thanks to the many contributors who have identified these elusive variants in that extensive interval! Please check my work and feel free to post about any errors or omissions. DC Bullets in UPC Box - Added Batman, The Collected Adventures Volume 1 21 DC bullets: Action 693, 694 Adventures of Superman 507 Batman 502 Batman, The Collected Adventures Volume 1 Catwoman 4 Detective 669 Flash 85 Justice League America 83 Justice League International 58, 59 Legionnaires 9 Looney Tunes 1 Robin 1, 2 Showcase '93 12 Star Trek 55 Star Trek The Next Generation 55 Superman 84 Superman The Man of Steel 28 Wonder Woman 81 Batman logo in UPC Box except where noted - Added Batman Adventures #21 with Collector Pack First Printing at bottom of indicia, #25 with a sticker - Added Batman and Robin Adventures #9 and #11 - Added Batman Forever Standard format - Added Batman : Mask of the Phantasm in Prestige and Standard formats - Added Batman-Spawn: War Devil 2nd print 30 total: 28 Batman logo, 2 Batman/Robin silhouette Batman 279 mini-comic from Monogram model kits Batman Adventures 14 1st print, 14 2nd print, 15, 16 1st print, 16 2nd print, 18, 19, 20, 21 no notation, 21 Collector Pack First Printing, 22, 23, 24, 25, 25 sticker, 26, 27, 28, 29 Batman and Robin Adventures #9, #11 (Batman and Robin silhouette) Batman Forever - The Official Comic Adaptation - Prestige format Batman Forever - The Official Comic Adaptation - Standard format Batman: Mask of the Phantasm - The Animated Movie - Prestige format Batman: Mask of the Phantasm - The Animated Movie - Standard format Batman: Riddler - The Riddle Factory Batman: Two-Face - Crime And Punishment Batman-Spawn: War Devil 1st print Batman-Spawn: War Devil 2nd print

A modest pickup. Found it on the cheap at an antique shop, so I brought it home. The Butterfly by James Cain.

Nothing new to DCU collectors here, but these are my picks from a few comic shops I've visited for the first time over the past month. The Batman, Robin, and one of the Superman comics are new additions to my collection! Some of the duplicates were from bargain boxes, so I picked them up too!

One of my OO copies that I submitted just over a year ago. Shortly after receiving it back, I got it reholdered to fix the splotchiness issue on the front cover. I need to take a new pic! I think when I got it back there was a recorded sale around then for about $800. That link to the ebay results shows a recent sale about 50% higher!

This will do the trick. Test it on a teeny tiny spot first - there are some inks/finishes where it is possible that it will remove color. After determining it's color safe, you'll still want to be very gentle. Do more dabbing rather than rubbing/wiping. Also, use in a well ventilated space to avoid inhaling the fumes!

I checked my collection for the other gift box and was able to identify the 10th comic for this list. The missing comic from this box is Uncle Scrooge #142 from July 1977. Now we have the list of the full set of 10 issues. I'll edit the previous post to add this info!

Here's another gift box from 1977, this time it contains 10 Marvel issues. Sadly, again, this set is missing two of the 10 issues, however this time I've already identified the two that are missing. This gift box includes: Captain America #212 and #213 (Aug and Sep 1977) Amazing Spider-Man #171 and #172 (Aug and Sep 1977) Thor #262 and #263 (Aug and Sep 1977) Fantastic Four #185 (Aug 1977) Avengers #163 (Sep 1977) And the two issues that should also have been in this box are Conan #77 and Hulk #214 (both Aug 1977), so I snagged sample images of them to include here too.