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Why don’t grading companies/collectors consider Marvel Age 97 the first appearance of Darkhawk?
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169 posts in this topic

24 minutes ago, shadroch said:

Pre- internet, The Buyers Guide had a fairly large audience, who were better informed than some people think.

I dunno, how informed do those some people think they were...? hm And why would there be any focus on an SDCC freebie that no one cared about...?

26 minutes ago, shadroch said:

Comics Value Monthly was selling six figures every month for awhile.

Sure...before Wizard began publication in 1991. After that, everyone forgot about CVM, and it limped along until 1995, when it finally ceased publication.

"CVM...we were Wizard before Wizard! But, you know...without the grounding in reality that Wizard had!"

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46 minutes ago, divad said:

Btw, just because RMA writes 5 paragraphs at a time, do not take his rhetoric as definitive. :whistle:

Absolutely. Everyone should do their own research and independently confirm what anyone has to say. Knowledge earned is knowledge kept.

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On 6/16/2019 at 8:10 PM, zhamlau said:

Marvel Age is listed as being out the month earlier, so it clearly came first. What’s more it’s not just an advertisement it’s the actual first 6 pages of the story.  

 

I can get the argument about motion picture funnies not having wide distribution (not sure if we really know how it was distributed) It’s the 1985 star Michael Jordan XRC argument. I’m not a huge fan of that one personally but by making rules like that it strengths collecting so I get it. Where this argument losses steam I think is San Diego comic con issue 2, which cgc treats as the first appearance of Hellboy even though it wasn’t nationally distributed , and for many years cgc treated John Byrne Nextmen 21 as the first appearance.

 

With all this being said I think the general rule is collectors treat MA97 like the premier book to have for DH because it came out first, but following the rules written down in OS years back you accept DH1 as first appearance.

I think this on some level is like “rookie cards” in baseball. You can appear in a licensed set and have it be your first card, and up until about 10 years ago it would be considered your “RC” designated rookie card...But now based on the new rules the card guides have written, true rookie cards can’t come until you played in a major league game and only count for base cards made that year you first appear.

Anyway, thanks for input on this. Something interesting to think about.

 

These types of appearances are one of my main collecting focuses, and I've thought of them in terms of rookie cards, too. When I was a kid, I wanted the first card a player appeared on which would usually be a minor league card. Definitely not the accepted rookie card, but I loved 'em all the same. I think of these ads/preview appearances/ect the same way. 

It's still surprising to me how inconsistent our hobby is with defining a first appearance - for example, I finally bought some key Goon books for my PC. The ad in Avatar Illustrated is just that - an ad, but undeniably one of the first initial appearances of the Goon in print. The one that confuses me, though, is the designation of Dreamwalker 0 as a "preview". It's four pages long, and an original story. The comparison that comes to mind is Milk and Cheese...the accepted first appearance is in Greed 6, and for a while the next appearance in Cerebus Biweekly 20 was considered the first. These one pagers were then reprinted in Milk and Cheese 1, so...why is Dreamwalker considered a preview and Greed is a first? I know it's a very specific example, and that what is states on the CGC label isn't gospel, but still....

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1 hour ago, The Mad Irishman said:

These types of appearances are one of my main collecting focuses, and I've thought of them in terms of rookie cards, too. When I was a kid, I wanted the first card a player appeared on which would usually be a minor league card. Definitely not the accepted rookie card, but I loved 'em all the same. I think of these ads/preview appearances/ect the same way. 

It's still surprising to me how inconsistent our hobby is with defining a first appearance - for example, I finally bought some key Goon books for my PC. The ad in Avatar Illustrated is just that - an ad, but undeniably one of the first initial appearances of the Goon in print. The one that confuses me, though, is the designation of Dreamwalker 0 as a "preview". It's four pages long, and an original story. The comparison that comes to mind is Milk and Cheese...the accepted first appearance is in Greed 6, and for a while the next appearance in Cerebus Biweekly 20 was considered the first. These one pagers were then reprinted in Milk and Cheese 1, so...why is Dreamwalker considered a preview and Greed is a first? I know it's a very specific example, and that what is states on the CGC label isn't gospel, but still....

I think XRC is the perfect way to think about these "pre-first" appearances!

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6 minutes ago, seanfingh said:

I think XRC is the perfect way to think about these "pre-first" appearances!

I'm blanking on XRC. Please explain? Are you talking about Jordan's card in the 1985 Nike set?

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The market is shifting. As more and more speculators enter the fray, and with keys (as well as "keys") skyrocketing, you have an increasingly large buying pool trying to find the next special thing to pump and dump. These faux first appearance books are the perfect prescription. It will be interesting to see how many of them stick. This hobby is still very young, only decades old. If it manages to stick around for more than another 10 or 20 years, I'll be curious to see if any of these "first appearance" books have become accepted as such, or if they all fall by the wayside. We're already seeing things change. Hulk 180 will never catch 181 (181 has that cool cover, obviously) but there's no question that 180 is booming relative to where it was only a few years ago. 181 is out of reach of a lot of folks, 180 is the next best thing, so it's off to the races. And look at Black Spidey. Secret Wars 8 was the book everyone wanted for years, but today it is considered, what, the third or fourth appearance of the black costume, and ASM 252 is king.

We're in the midst of a very volatile period in the hobby. I'm very much interested in seeing where it all settles.

Also, I did buy a copy of MA97 in a lot for about 10 cents and then sold it for $25 a couple of days later, so, hey, keep bringing us these new first appearances. As long as they sell, I don't care if they're "real" or not. 

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21 minutes ago, shadroch said:

I'm blanking on XRC. Please explain? Are you talking about Jordan's card in the 1985 Nike set?

Kind of, yeah - XRC = extended rookie cards. Used to be used for the Topps and Fleer extended sets that came out after the season. Any rookies in these sets weren't considered "true" rookie cards since they weren't available in packs, only sold as sets. 

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2 hours ago, seanfingh said:

I think XRC is the perfect way to think about these "pre-first" appearances!

That’s what I said earlier. It’s like the 84-85 star Jordan’s. They didn’t have distribution nationally only got them I think in Chicago but they were licensed cards. Maybe someday we will evolve the same way in comics, view stuff like that as X-first apperence like XRC.

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2 hours ago, F For Fake said:

Secret Wars 8 was the book everyone wanted for years, but today it is considered, what, the third or fourth appearance of the black costume, and ASM 252 is king.

MSHSW 8 certainly increased in demand at certain points, but it is appearance #20-something of the symbiote costume and ASM 252 has always been king.

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2 hours ago, seanfingh said:
4 hours ago, The Mad Irishman said:

These types of appearances are one of my main collecting focuses, and I've thought of them in terms of rookie cards, too. When I was a kid, I wanted the first card a player appeared on which would usually be a minor league card. Definitely not the accepted rookie card, but I loved 'em all the same. I think of these ads/preview appearances/ect the same way. 

It's still surprising to me how inconsistent our hobby is with defining a first appearance - for example, I finally bought some key Goon books for my PC. The ad in Avatar Illustrated is just that - an ad, but undeniably one of the first initial appearances of the Goon in print. The one that confuses me, though, is the designation of Dreamwalker 0 as a "preview". It's four pages long, and an original story. The comparison that comes to mind is Milk and Cheese...the accepted first appearance is in Greed 6, and for a while the next appearance in Cerebus Biweekly 20 was considered the first. These one pagers were then reprinted in Milk and Cheese 1, so...why is Dreamwalker considered a preview and Greed is a first? I know it's a very specific example, and that what is states on the CGC label isn't gospel, but still....

I think XRC is the perfect way to think about these "pre-first" appearances!

Analogy fail.

Comics are a storytelling medium. Sports cards are just licensed attempts to cash in on the popularity of real people.

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56 minutes ago, Lazyboy said:

Analogy fail.

Comics are a storytelling medium. Sports cards are just licensed attempts to cash in on the popularity of real people.

Disagree, since I said that "I think" of them as pre-rookie cards. You have a different view, cool. 

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1 hour ago, Lazyboy said:

Analogy fail.

Comics are a storytelling medium. Sports cards are just licensed attempts to cash in on the popularity of real people.

This. Future generations of collectors...if they happen to exist...will look at the attempt to turn previews into "first appearances" with contempt and scorn, recognizing it for what it is: a way to cash in on the unwary and fools by lying to and misleading them. 

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3 hours ago, The Mad Irishman said:
4 hours ago, Lazyboy said:

Analogy fail.

Comics are a storytelling medium. Sports cards are just licensed attempts to cash in on the popularity of real people.

Disagree, since I said that "I think" of them as pre-rookie cards. You have a different view, cool. 

This illustrates the difference between card collectors and comic book collectors. 

I disagree with Lazyboy from time to time, but he is spot on here. Even the biggest comic book sellers
will tell you the same thing.

 

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13 minutes ago, fastballspecial said:

This illustrates the difference between card collectors and comic book collectors. 

I disagree with Lazyboy from time to time, but he is spot on here. Even the biggest comic book sellers
will tell you the same thing.

 

I’m both, actually. And, as I’ve said, this is how I view these types of comics. As a collector I want the first time a player appeared on a card, or a comic character appears in print. Again, this is my perception of collecting the things I love and how I correlate them. Nothing more, nothing less.

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6 hours ago, Lazyboy said:

Analogy fail.

Comics are a storytelling medium. Sports cards are just licensed attempts to cash in on the popularity of real people.

Yeah, and I hate "real people" . . .  :whistle:

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I'm not sure what we're all disagreeing with here. Sure, the collecting medium is different (sports cards vs. comic books) but I don't think it's such a bad analogy. Not perfect but it gets the point across for me. 

Sports cards - XRC (cards that were released in Topps year end extended sets and not part of a regular set) and minor league cards = Not true rookie cards (but often the first card to feature a player). 

Comic books - Comic characters that appear in a preview book before the true first app (example, the aforementioned Darkhawk appearance in Marvel Age 97) = Not a true first appearance (but the first time the character appeared.)

In both cases, the XRC or minor league cards is not the true rookie card and not the card that collectors focus on when desiring to own the true hobby accepted rookie card.
Similarly, the preview comic that just happens to feature a character before it appears in a sequential comic book is not a true first appearance and not the comic that collectors focus on when desiring to own the true hobby accepted first appearance or first full appearance.

The difference now is that there seems to be a (growing?) fringe element of huckster and opportunist trying to make a buck on the unwary and ignorant by trying to pawn off a preview book as the true first appearance of a character. 

 

 

 

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41 minutes ago, Jeffro™ said:

I'm not sure what we're all disagreeing with here. Sure, the collecting medium is different (sports cards vs. comic books) but I don't think it's such a bad analogy. Not perfect but it gets the point across for me. 

Sports cards - XRC (cards that were released in Topps year end extended sets and not part of a regular set) and minor league cards = Not true rookie cards (but often the first card to feature a player). 

Comic books - Comic characters that appear in a preview book before the true first app (example, the aforementioned Darkhawk appearance in Marvel Age 97) = Not a true first appearance (but the first time the character appeared.)

In both cases, the XRC or minor league cards is not the true rookie card and not the card that collectors focus on when desiring to own the true hobby accepted rookie card.
Similarly, the preview comic that just happens to feature a character before it appears in a sequential comic book is not a true first appearance and not the comic that collectors focus on when desiring to own the true hobby accepted first appearance or first full appearance.

The difference now is that there seems to be a (growing?) fringe element of huckster and opportunist trying to make a buck on the unwary and ignorant by trying to pawn off a preview book as the true first appearance of a character. 

 

 

 

This is a much better explanation of what I was trying to say! I despise the sellers that try to say these appearances are anything other than what they are - previews. I have no illusions that anything other than Spawn 1 is his first appearance, or Batman in Tec 27, ect. But, I love collecting oddball "pre"appearances that are, by and large, much more difficult to track down than the traditional 1st app. 

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While I agree with most that previews aren't first appearances, the thing that amazes me about this specific Marvel Age/Darkhawk issue is that for most of these situations, the preview is always significantly less expensive that the true comics. FOOM #10 is much less valuable than GS X-Men #1, Capes #1 is much less valuable than Walking Dead #1, and so on. But Marvel Age -- which had a decent sized print run, so nobody should ever say it's rare -- is about twice as valuable as Darkhawk #1.  

And this coming from a third-tier character!

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