Grade is in: Hulk 330-Mark Jewelers; Saga finally concludes 3 3

[scburdet]

I've got another book much higher in the queue to post later, but I thought the forum participants might find this book interesting. I just found this Friday while sorting through books. It definitely needs pressing, and my untrained eye thinks it's a good candidate to remove the superficial non-color-breaking defects. This probably wouldn't be anywhere on my grading list, but for the MJs insert, albeit this is still a milestone issue as the first McFarlane Hulk. I haven't been able to find a price point to help ascertain how worth the grading expense would be. None sold recently or listed for sale. I wish there was a quick way to ID these MJs in a bagged/boarded comic b/c I've only found them by randomly opening books, not yet when I intentionally grab a handful thinking there might be one and sort through it.

Edited February 7 by scburdet

[MrRoboto]

8.5-9.0 due to staple stress breaking color and that bottom right corner of cover.

[scburdet]

On 6/26/2022 at 8:12 PM, MrRoboto said:

8.5-9.0 due to staple stress breaking color and that bottom right corner of cover.

9.0 is about the max I was thinking with C&P. 9.2 if super lucky. From why I've been able to determine, the majority of the MJs out there are in garbage condition. That or they're stored safely by a specialist collector and not for sale. Getting a 9.0 is about the equivalent of a 9.8 with a regular comic

Edited June 27, 2022 by scburdet

[grendelbo]

8.5-9.0 after a C&P.

Minor key IMO. It should get more love but the cover is kind of dull and most folks love the MacFarlane Spidey era stuff.

 Might be worth grading with the Mark Jewelers insert. I rediscovered many of these fairly recently as I rebagged and boarded my Bronze and Copper Age ASMs. They'll be thicker and have more rigidness than a regular edition but trying to feel that out when rifling through a long box is hard.

Thanks for sharing.

[comicginger1789]

I am also in the 8.5-9.0 camp for the reasons others have stated

[scburdet]

On 6/27/2022 at 12:57 AM, grendelbo said:

8.5-9.0 after a C&P.

Minor key IMO. It should get more love but the cover is kind of dull and most folks love the MacFarlane Spidey era stuff.

 Might be worth grading with the Mark Jewelers insert. I rediscovered many of these fairly recently as I rebagged and boarded my Bronze and Copper Age ASMs. They'll be thicker and have more rigidness than a regular edition but trying to feel that out when rifling through a long box is hard.

Thanks for sharing.

Recent sales for this book (direct edition) in ~9.0 CGC are a bit all over the map. Newsstands are higher, but there aren't many of them. No MJs that I've found. All things being equal, $24 is a pretty small price to pay if some of the prices I've seen for minor keys with MJs are indicative of demand.  It seems like MJs demand 50% or more premium depending on the significance of the book. Since I have no intention of selling anytime soon, I'd love a TM signature series for it. I'm going to say the TM Hulk run is the more important between Spider-man and Hulk b/c my Spider-mans look like dog 💩

[comicshark]

8.5 due to the bottom right corner will get you no more even if you pressed it. 

[Galen130]

Needs a press…9.0 afterwards.

[scburdet]

With the C&Per now, then off to Sarasota and Todd McFarlane. I would not have paid the premium for the signing if this one wasn't a MJs.

[scburdet]

Update on this book. The comic CGC returned from the TM signing, was not the one we sent  They sent back a 7.5 newsstand. No Mark Jewelers. I am mentally preparing for this to be the 2nd book they sent to the wrong recipient and will never be able to find again. The first was a DC Comics Presents 47 Newsstand that I sent for a DeCarlo signature that came back as a signed/sketched Direct Edition. Because I'm an honest person, someone will eventually get back their book (if it ever exits Mechanical Error Hell), but I learned that one should maximize the claimed value so you're not shopping for replacement books on a limited budget. At least they're only losing harder to find variants 

 

Edited February 3, 2023 by scburdet

[mephistopheles]

On 2/3/2023 at 5:29 PM, scburdet said:

Update on this book. The comic CGC returned from the TM signing, was not the one we sent  They sent back a 7.5 newsstand. No Mark Jewelers. I am mentally preparing for this to be the 2nd book they sent to the wrong recipient and will never be able to find again. The first was a DC Comics Presents 47 Newsstand that I sent for a DeCarlo signature that came back as a signed/sketched Direct Edition. Because I'm an honest person, someone will eventually get back their book (if it ever exits Mechanical Error Hell), but I learned that one should maximize the claimed value so you're not shopping for replacement books on a limited budget. At least they're only losing harder to find variants 

 

 

[jcjames]

That's just horrible. 

Sorry for your additional frustration. Enough to drive a person mad! 

 

[grendelbo]

This is wrong. 

[scburdet]

On 2/6/2023 at 11:12 PM, grendelbo said:

This is wrong

I found a CGC 9.0 w/MJs on ebay & went ahead and bought it b/c I assume there will be a settlement check in my future. These aren't easy to find obviously (I only had it b/c of dumb luck), so I could see a scenario where I waited until the process played out, and never found a comp. It won't be signed, which is the main reason I sent this one in. I imagine the census of TM-signed Hulk 330s w/MJ inserts graded by CGC is a very small number. Maybe I'll end up with 2 graded Hulk 330MJs, but I doubt it.

[WilliamLunt]

This is a crappy feeling, I wish everyone involved a happy ending.

[scburdet]

On 2/7/2023 at 1:14 PM, AhsokaTano Jedi Apprentice said:

so it's somewhat rare

All MJs are rarer than regular editions. Newsstand vs direct editions started in ~1979 until newsstands disappear in ~2013. In 1987, the Direct/Newsstand split appears to be 60/40 according to information on Google. Of that 40% newsstand, some limited % would be MJs. IDK if there's much data on numbers, but if one extrapolated from frequency they come up for sale, I'd guestimate 10% or less of newsstands were MJs. The dogma of MJs is that they were sold on or near military bases (i.e. a market that might be disproportionately looking for jewelry for significant others, etc.). That said, IDK if there are other places MJs were distributed, and haven't seen much discussion on this. All but a couple of MJs I own came from full run purchases I made in the late 90s/early 00s when I had no idea about their significance, or that they weren't just how all those books were sold. Not sure people were paying a lot of attention to them yet then (i.e. dumb luck in acquiring them). I never bought one new in the "wild". The star stamp is more definitively a military marking I believe, and there are stamped books from before MJs started appearing. All told, if you look at sales, collectors will pay a premium for MJs, especially for key issues in higher grades. MJs in the VF/NM range like this one would fall into this category IMO, but if you get 9.6/9.8 MJs, there's the additional build in premium.

 

[Gonzimodo]

On 2/7/2023 at 12:14 PM, AhsokaTano Jedi Apprentice said:

  WOW................This is crazy..........So this book is a M.J.  so it's somewhat rare ?  Is it a Military oversea issue ?  There is no star on upper left corner  ?  Did the M.J. inserts make there way into a select few regular copies sold at Normal Comic Book Stores ?  Or maybe the Military Base issues stopped the star stamp ?  It's all a little confusing.....

 

I was in the Army from 1989 to 1991 and have a lot of MJ variants.  They must have discontinued the star stamp before that, because none of mine are stamped.

Unfortunately, I recently realized that I sold my Uncanny X-Men 266 MJ about twenty-five years ago to upgrade to a better copy, not thinking twice about it being an MJ variant. 

[scburdet]

So, the carbon footprint of this one has to set some kind of record. It's been back & forth to CGC several times over the past +1 year b/c of all the drama documented above. By the certification, they did re-grade this in January. We hypothesize they regraded this last time b/c of the recent MJs drama. All that said, I think this got graded too harshly.