Overstreet Leatherbound #27 0

[David Stone]

The final deluxe leather-bound editions of the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide were produced in 1997, with a print run of 25 copies of each cover variant. The two books pictured were offered by Heritage, but in a rare book auction, not a comic book auction. This is the only public offering of these books I have been able to locate. For many years these editions were available on the Gemstone Publishing website for $125, but they have recently sold out of both varieties of the #27. I wonder how many copies are extant. Does anyone have any information about auction appearances or purchases from Gemstone, etc? Thanks if you can help!

[theCapraAegagrus]

Seeing as they are not comic books, it would make sense that they're under another section.

What is the purpose of "Flash" or "Green Lantern" on the cover?

[David Stone]

Thanks for the question! For regular editions 1 through 26, the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide featured just one cover design. For edition 27, they began producing two different cover designs for the yearly edition, a practice they continue today (for the most part). One design for the 27th edition featured the Flash and the other show-cased Green Lantern (see images below). The two versions of the deluxe leather-bound edition had one of the softcovers bound-in with the text and the featured character's name embossed in gold on the cover. Hence the "FLASH" or "GREEN LANTERN" inscription.

Deluxe leather-bound editions were produced for editions 14 through 21 when Bob Overstreet owned the Guide. In those years, purchasers of the deluxe edition could have their names embossed on the cover to personalize their copy if they ordered ahead of time. You may see copies from this time frame with the owner's name, like "STAN LEE", embossed on the cover. Gemstone Publishing purchased the Guide from Overstreet in 1994 and revived the deluxe leather-bound editions for editions 25 through 27. I have never seen a personalized copy of any of the Gemstone-era editions and I doubt the service was offered for those books.

I realize these are not actually comic books, and with a print run of 25 copies each, they certainly qualify as rare, but I would expect their main appeal to be to comic book collectors, rather than collectors of rare first editions, etc. That is why I was surprised to find them offered in weekly internet rare book auctions, rather than comic book auctions. I think they would do better in comic book-related offerings (Green Lantern sold for $62 on 12/5/2013 and Flash realized $30 on 11/27/2013).