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Is Black Hole 4 the rarest Whitman?

Started by Quicksilver Signs,

97 posts in this topic

50YrsCollctngCmcs

50YrsCollctngCmcs

Posted
Posted
Oh I may have misunderstood your question .Once a book is registered in my set the number is mine no one can use it CGC will not let it be used twice.It can not be used until I release it from my set.

 

I see. I don't understand the point of the registry sets and was just curious about how they worked.

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ayelid-migration

ayelid-migration

Posted
Posted

I created a user name and logged in just so I could ask this lol. Hello guys (and gals). I'm a knowledgeable enough comics collector, but I'm by no means a Whitman expert (or an anything expert, for that matter). I know a little, though.

 

My reason for resurrecting the thread is that I've wondered if BH 4 is truly as "rare" as its recent interest and subsequent price fluctuations indicate. Or is it more of a popularity contest sort of thing. Similar to the inflated prices on copies of Hulk 181. That book and its less expensive companions numbers 180 and 182 are no rarer than Hulk 179 or 184; it's of course the popularity of Wolverine and certain people who can inflate the price as it happened years ago. We've seen this exact same thing happen in the ebay age just recently with Shazam! 28. In fairness, though, I guess that's comic book values in general.

 

I see a lot of stuff worded around the net that seems to imply that others at least have the same doubts about BH 4. How does anyone really know how many copies of it exist, or were even printed? That question can of course apply to any Whitman from that era and distribution format. So, is it possible that because it's a non funny animal book, it has a lttle bit more cred than those? Maybe its "cult favorite" movie status? I know that Buck Rogers 8 and 9 are considered to be difficult to obtain due to low print runs too, but maybe the interest isn't there like it seems to be in BH 4. My interest in BH 4 and wanting a copy of it is because of rewatching the movie a few years ago now that I'm in my mid thirties and deciding it's an underrated, fun movie (even the mondo bizarro ending). That led to wanting to complete a loose set of the 3 3/4" mego figures, figures that I've long admired but can be difficult to get an entire set of. Then I found out about the rare fourth issue of the comic book, and yes I want a copy of that too and since it presents a challenge it of course makes it more desirable (my interest is in a Fineish or better unslabbed copy). There is also an appeal that is similar to the 3 3/4" mego figures... there's a small amount of items needed to have a complete set (albeit several very expensive items are included). Ever since I learned about the Spanish BH 1-6, I'm almost more interested in getting those. I've read an English copy of BH 4 that someone shared online, and now that I've read it the desire to have an actual copy isn't as much (although it is a cool issue with some neat origin details of old BOB). So, yeah. Just wondering other's opinions on the relative rarity or scarcity of BH 4, an intriguing book.

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Brock

Brock

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Posted

Hi Ayelid -

 

WTTB - although I'm a relative lurker, so maybe I shouldn't be the one to welcome you...

 

I think you raise a really interesting question. Hopefully there are a few more folks with greater Whitman expertise than me out there, but I have some of the same questions.

 

I've been hitting flea markets and used bookstores for years, scooping up Whitman variants. I have most of the DC Whitmans, and probably 300-400 Whitmans from Western. I have focused on the August to December 1980 books in particular, and probably have about 150 of those, though mostly in lower grade... This includes 2 copies of Black Hole 4.

 

Of course, my experience is purely anecdotal, but there are lots of books I've never seen, and 2 copies of this book I've laid my hands on... I think data is so scarce, that true relative scarcity among these issues is almost impossible to determine at this point. Doug Sulipa has definitely added a lot of information to this discussion, but I'm not sure anybody else is really tracking what they see/sell/source in any consistent way...

 

As an aside, I find these books to be much more common in Canada than in the US... Could it be that in the anarchic shift from Gold Key to Whitman branding in the period around 1980, that a portion of Western's distribution system fell apart, making these books more widely distributed in Canada than in the US? If this was true for even a month or two, it could point to regional disparities in availability...

 

As always, I'm interested in what others might make of this...

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ayelid-migration

ayelid-migration

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Posted

Hey Brock, and thanks for the welcome .

 

I've had quite a few of the funny animal Whitmans, but none of the scarcer books.

 

I've had a few of the Whitman logo DCs through the years, but I used to didn't think as much about keeping them, much like the Mark Jewelers insert books. Managed to accumulate and keep a few Marvels of those, though. It's only been in recent years that I had a better understanding of those variants... I've noticed on ebay that some people even make note of the relative scarcity of newstand copies of recent books, something that makes sense but I didn't think much about that either.

 

If you ever decide to sell one of those BH 4s, lemme know please lol!

 

I haven't seen much on the net that's probably any more informative than Mr. Sulipa's work. I was reading a discussion in another forum not too long ago, but most of the info was probably culled from his data.

 

I think you might have a pretty solid theory, there. I do know that it is said (and possibly remembered by those who were paying attention and had access to such information back then) that the second series of mego Black Hole 3 3/4" figures were only available in Canada and Italy beginning in 1980, thanks to those countries respective toy manufacturers at the time, Grand Toys and GiGi, making their own production runs when mego itself was not asked by US retailers to provide them with any due to lack of interest and low sales of the first assortment. Maybe there was at least a *few* sold in the US... I'm not knowledgeable about it enough to know. I'm pretty sure I only had a few of the first series as a kid. That wasn't even an uncommon practice in those years... I think Grand Toys produced many mego products that were never or very scarcely distributed in the US. In the case of the Black Hole 3 3/4" figures, they were apparently clearanced at Canadian Kmarts for $1 each! This is obviously just speculation of mine and who knows how well informed it is, but depending on how big the production runs were, people might have still been finding Humanoids and the other rare figures at yard sales and junk shops there well into the 1980s and 1990s. Maybe even some adults socked away a bunch of them to recreate movie scenes that required for multiples, just like people do with Star Wars Stormtroopers and such. Sort of like the vintage Kenner Star Wars Yakface was apparently all but non existant in the US, with maybe a lucky few finding one here and there, but in other parts of the world they were quite plentiful.

 

In the case of the Whitman comics I used to wonder why they were in multi packs but some of the books had no month date, and I assumed that maybe they were all canceled and that's how they got rid of em. No need to put a month on the book if you're not publishing any more next month and the packs might be sitting on store shelves for weeks. I've learned that some titles of course weren't. I remember getting Gladstones from convenience stores in the 1980s and early 1990s, and I had some Whitman comics from packs when I was little but I don't think I ever thought anything about one company disappearing.

 

Maybe a Canadian distributor valued the Whitman product and issued it there when US avenues were not and were having a difficult time doing so, as you say. Based on what little I know about all this stuff, I assume that print runs couldn't have been *too* small on any particular books from packs... could they? But, ah, there's the questions such as how many copies of that probably small print run might have been destroyed by their young audience or even destroyed unsold copies.

 

In any case, there's a lot to speculate on em about, I guess.

 

 

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50YrsCollctngCmcs

50YrsCollctngCmcs

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Posted

I always figured these books were just not widely read and met their end in trash heaps or in second hand stores later. Distribution was terrible then so it is little wonder that few survived.

 

I also dug this movie when it came out and thought it underated; but I haven't seen it since it was in the theater.

 

Years ago I had a copy of the Dynabrite Winnie the Pooh that some collector wanted and accused me of usury for selling it for $15. Man what would they think of the prices on this book today!!

 

I bet if you keep looking you will find one of these in some out of the way place. Also, I don't think there are that many people looking for it to tell you the truth.

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bellrules

bellrules

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Whitman had their own distributor in Canada out of Ontario. The Canadian packs seem to hold two books while the American ones unusually have three. The Black Hole 4 is one of the rarest but not THE rarest. I've come across a lot of Whitmans in 15 years of collecting them, and through years of digging, have probably come up with 10-15 copies myself, not counting the ones I've seen for sale online that I didn't buy. Beep beep the Roadrunner 92, popeye 158, Bugs Bunny 221, Woody 191, Winnie the Pooh 22 are by far the ones I've seen the least amount of. Some are more common than others because of the popularity of the characters I'm guessing. A lot of collectors say they are common but I think they mistake them for the 1981-83 issues for the Aug-Dec 1980 issues. Those are as common as dirt. Some of the books published in 1/81 with 40 cent price errors are even rarer. I've only seen 3 copies of Pink Panther 78 with the 40 cent cover and a handful of Super Goof 63. The more common ones of those issues are the Disney titles (Scrooge 182, Donald Duck 225, WDCS 484 and Huey 67 as well as Little Lulu 262. The hardest to find though, are the Canadian price variants from 1984. Almost impossible to find, I buy them whenever I see them for trading purposes and they are generally beat to heck. Wttb and good luck in your search for these! A fun run to track down! And to clarify the no date issue on the Whitman books, the dates were on the cover up until 1983/84. The last four numbers correspond with the month and year they were published. Cheers!

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Number 6

Number 6

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The movie come out when I was 7 years old and it was a pretty big deal for me as a kid. So my primary interest in this issue is because of the movie, followed by it's rarity as a Whitman - though I'll probably never own a copy.

 

But I remember reading years ago - probably in an OSPG market report - the explanation for the intense interest in this book was because of the dinosaur cover, for people who had dinosaurs as a collecting theme.

 

For those of you who have bought and/or sold this issue: in your opinion, how much of a factor is the dinosaur cover for those seeking this issue?

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Jayman

Jayman

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Posted
For those of you who have bought and/or sold this issue: in your opinion, how much of a factor is the dinosaur cover for those seeking this issue?

 

For me it was just my completionist mentality. I also saw the movie as a kid, bought and read the first 3 issues from the Whitman 3 pack. 20+ years later it was Doug Sulipa to the rescue with my issue 4. (thumbs u

 

The dinosaur is a plus though... :shy:

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