Post Your Top 3 Personal Comic Book/Original Art Acquisitions of 2021! 10 10

[Chief1332]

On 12/1/2021 at 7:56 AM, theCapraAegagrus said:

He's being facetious.

Well darn.  Was hoping for a neat story to pass along to my buddy who has been after a Green Giant for years.

[Chief1332]

Top 3: the items that I was most excited to acquire this year,

GCE #12 mid grade

Hulk #181 high grade

Going Steady #12 reader

[piper]

[davidtere]

Hard to pick my top 3 this year...but these are the ones that immediately come to mind if asked. 

The FF 36 has been on my list for some time now. It is one of my favorite covers from the Kirby run. I just got it so the book is fresh to my collection

The Amazing Adventures was a surprise acquisition. Opportunity availed itself and the trigger was pulled. A big thank you to my friend R... who decided to let it go. 

The True Bride To Be Romances OA is absolutely my best addition of the year. I was the only bidder on the auction (the 'bay') and no one more surprised than me. It is definitely my favorite this year. A Kirby romance cover. Yowza!

[wombat]

Because I'm lazy I will just go with this picture. Started my Famous Funnies collection this year. 

 

[piper]

On 12/1/2021 at 9:57 AM, wombat said:

Because I'm lazy I will just go with this picture. Started my Famous Funnies collection this year. 

 

I found 215 and 216 toughies to find in my grade and budget range.  Good luck!

[Ken Aldred]

On 12/1/2021 at 4:57 PM, wombat said:

Because I'm lazy I will just go with this picture. Started my Famous Funnies collection this year. 

 

Nothing lazy about an array of 3 classic Frazetta covers.

[Ken Aldred]

Once again, nice to see the items that other boardies are proudest of from the year, especially in these extremely expensive times.

Great stuff, as per usual.

[batman_fan]

Just one piece for me,1959 Peanuts Sunday

[chrisco37]

On 12/1/2021 at 2:02 PM, batman_fan said:

Just one piece for me,1959 Peanuts Sunday

[Msgarmar]

My fav three from this year. Especially excited to finally find that beautiful 30c copy! 

[Qalyar]

My three are all firmly "modern oddities". I collect a lot of weird stuff, and some of it -- even though it's modern era books, often printed by real publishers -- has proven immensely difficult to chase down. I got two of my grail-list pieces over the last year via this board (and picked up another rarity from a lucky hit on Ebay). These aren't classic pieces like the Golden Age stuff some of you have taken home, and they certainly don't have the FMV of popular hot-book keys, but they're harder to find than most of those more familiar books (okay, some of you GA collectors, I don't mean you).

1. EverQuest Online Adventures: The Quest for Darkpaw is my prize book for the year. This is a real chase item. The origins of this promo piece are unclear, but I believe (although I can't prove it yet) that this was offered as a mail-away promo via the console gaming magazine Tips & Tricks, which is better known for a different video game tie-in promo comic. They ran the contest that distributed the Twisted Metal 2 book. Based on my searches, in the last 10 years, there have only been about a half-dozen of the EverQuest Online Adventures book pass through the documented secondary market, so they're likely around the same scarcity tier as the Twisted Metal book, just ... with less collector interest (and value). I strongly suspect that extant copies of this number less than 50.
2. Babylon 5. There's no other title on this little 6-pager with Kaare Andrews art, but the B5 community knows this as The Lost Tales. It is the comic book companion to Bablyon 5: The Lost Tales, a direct-to-DVD special, released in 2007, that was the last original story done for B5... well, so far! This thin book was produced as a tribute to Richard Biggs (Dr. Stephen Franklin) and Andreas Katsulas (G'Kar), who had both passed away before the production of The Lost Tales. Copies were handed out at the 2007 SDCC exclusively to attendees of J. Michael Straczynski's panel (many of which are signed by JMS), but most distributed copies were pack-ins in a "Special Edition" of the DVD sold exclusively through Best Buy in the US (plus another 10-20 copies that were surplus from the "normal" distribution and eventually entered the secondary market). There are no public sales data for the Best Buy Special Edition, but I'd conservatively guess there were never more than 1500-2000 of these, and quite possibly a lot less than that. Plus, survival rates from the DVD release are poor, and B5 collectors closely hold most of the remaining pieces. With the announcement that JMS is about to reboot the Bablyon 5 property, I am amazingly happy to have this one taken care of for my collection. This copy was a DVD pack-in copy (held down by the plastic case clips, yikes!) so it's currently on vacation at a pressing resort for obvious reasons. Shame about that spot of spine trauma near the bottom, but still.
3. Legends of the Dark Crystal / Return to Labyrinth 2006 flipbook. Sorry, don't have a picture handy of this one right now. In 2006, a three-DVD box set of the films Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, and Mirrormask was released. The producers of that box set worked out a deal with manga publisher Tokyopop to include a flipbook comic, previewing Tokyopop's upcoming release of manga spinoffs off the first two films. Partway through the box set lifecycle, 2007 happened -- and the first manga actually released. Rather than continue to offer a preview book for something that no longer needed previewing, Tokyopop prepared a 2007 version with a new cover, replacing the Legends of the Dark Crystal preview with a preview of Legends volume 2. I've had the 2007 one for some time, because I happened to own a 2007 copy of that box set. But this year, I was able to track down a copy of the 2006 companion piece. The box set sold well, but there are very few remaining sealed sets (and no way to tell if they have the 2006 or 2007 book), and essentially all unsealed sets have long seen their promotional pack-ins lost. I doubt more than a couple hundred copies, between both versions, survive.

[Artifiction]

2021 has blessed me with some, to me, awesome acquisitions, and more than just three. However, since I have to choose just three, I pick the three pictured. Chosen only because I have the most $$ tied up in purchasing them.

[Artifiction]

Qalyar, nice books and write up. Thanks for sharing. 

[Ken Aldred]

I miss contributing to this.  It was a nice way to end the year, in more affordable times.

[Galen130]

On 12/1/2021 at 1:50 PM, Ken Aldred said:

I miss contributing to this.  It was a nice way to end the year, in more affordable times.

I agree.  I may have overdone it a bit, but my own sales are what funded a few gems this year.  Since I'm no longer interested in getting my own books graded, I'm on the lookout for slabs done before 2020...especially CGC SS.  I managed to find a few this year that I was/am excited about.  Oh krap!!!  Spoiler alert!!! 

[MattTheDuck]

As I've posted ad nauseum here, I had been out of the hobby basically from 1978 to the end of last year.  I had never heard of "slabs" or "page quality" or "9.8."  I went after books with little discipline for most of 2021, especially at garage/yard/estate sales.  I picked up so many great books this year that I have wanted for 40 years, even if I didn't realize I wanted them.  It was very personally fulfilling.

My top 3 are:  ASM 3 - most I've ever paid for a book, and the oldest Silver Age book in my collection; ASM 103 - first slab I ever bought (from CL) and an upgrade for my original copy, which suffers from rusty staples and migration, and; Conan The Barbarian #34, purchased at a yard sale and the first book I ever sold.  

In the spirit of cheating, I'm also going to post #4, which should probably be listed second.  It's one of the first Golden Age books I've purchased and my first Pedigree book - Planet Comics 52.

 

[wombat]

On 12/1/2021 at 3:19 PM, Artifiction said:

2021 has blessed me with some, to me, awesome acquisitions, and more than just three. However, since I have to choose just three, I pick the three pictured. Chosen only because I have the most $$ tied up in purchasing them.

You need to spend more time in the magazine section. 

[Jesse-Lee]

So hard to choose - here are 3 favorites:

Dark Nights Death Metal 1 signed and remarqued by Puppeteer Lee. Lee is one of my favorite new artists, and I won this on an eBay auction at an absolute steal. I just love how it looks in-hand:

 

This is kind of cheating, but I bought these three in 2021, and I think they make a wonderful set, so I'm counting it as one entry - not the highest grades, but I look for deals and I did fine on these, at a spend level I was comfortable with, and I'm thrilled to have them:

 

The third choice was tough because I've added so many cool books this year, but I'll always be a Joker fan (and a Neal fan, wonky leg be dam*ed) at heart:

[Readcomix]

Well, I don't know if this is cheating or not, but we said Top 3 acquisitions, and some items were acquired together, so....

The 2 Timelys changed hands as many Timelys do; via private, direct offering from another long-timer; the Peanuts 1 came via trade that was hammered out over 2 hours with another collector in the region. We were put together by a mutual friend who knew the book was not in that guy's collecting wheelhouse, and that he wanted to move it for silver age Marvels.

And the two original art pieces came directly from Dan Green, whom I met at local cons back when I was in high school. I became reacquainted with him through an LCS fairly recently. The Kull page is from the early Copper #1, John Buscema inked by Green. The watercolor Doctor Strange is all Dan Green, pages 24-25 from the Marvel Graphic Novel "Into Shamballa," which is all Dan Green watercolors.