35 cent variants - feet on the ground

[Dr_Neff]

"I am one of roughly four dozen collectors I know personally that checks EVERY store in EVERY town I visit for price variants. All of them. All the time. There isn't a shop in this country that has been there more than five years that hasn't already been hit by at least one price variant collector. And most of them have been searched a dozen times over. The only way new price variants hit the market now is when they return to the marketplace from long-held private collections, or from back stock that hasn't been searched in several years. You can find variants in any part of the country, but the ones you will find in shops are ones they recently bought in collections".

 

Absolutely right. If C-G-C would use a variant 30 or 35 center to advertise their holder, they'd scare a few of them out of the woodwork. (like Inc. Hulk 181)

 

We should all team up to finance a card set that features the variants. Like Marvel had that first issue thing in 1984 pretty cool...

 

 

[Warlord]

 

OK, who said that the 30-cent variants were ugly? Here's a nice looking one!

 

[underthebigw]

Can one of you variant collectors explain the appeal of collecting these books?

 

Man, I'm such a sucker. I just gotta bite, despite the fact that we've been through this in about 10 other threads. Here goes my little speach. The collectability of an object is determined by the person collecting. You get enough people who desire the object, it becomes worth money. The appeal of variants to me is that I love BA books, especially books from '76-78, when I started collecting. Believe it or not, the summer I began collecting was also the tail end of the 30 cent variants and I actually still have a few I picked off a newstand on the Jersey shore. So, for me it's nostalgia, more than anything. FD and I have discussed how everyone has "their" books. For me, "my" books just happen to overlap with the two periods in which variants were issued. You collect what you love.

 

Reason 2: covered by Joe C.--price variants are real artifacts of the history of comics. They were not manufactured with an eye toward collectability, but served a genuine purpose. Were I not interested in them for my first reason, I would probably still collect them because I love comics--all of them: the stories, the artwork, the covers, the smell, the ads, etc. To me, variants are simply another interesting aspect.

 

Reason 3: They are occassionally truly rare and almost always a challenge to find. Especially if you had to find them the hard way--by rummaging through boxes and bargain bins, ferreting out collections and, when ebay hit stride, finding unmarked issues. Hey, the thrill of the hunt should count for something.

 

Reason 4: Why should comic collectors be any different than coin, stamp, or any other kind of collectors? You have two identical coins, except the mint mark is different. One is worth a few bucks, the other a fortune. Same with stamps: same stamp, different number of perforations-- different scarcity, different value. It is the completist in me, but that is often part of collecting. I may never own every comic ever published, but I can sure as heck try to own one version of every book I love.

 

Reason 5: It has been damn fun finding them. For me, this was different from the thrill of the hunt. It gave me something to look for in even some of the worst comic stores I came across. More importantly, it definitely rekindled an appreciation for non-HG books and wading through 10's of 1000's of books helped me remember hundreds of issues I had forgotten about or hadn't seen in years.

 

Just some of my reasons.

[underthebigw]

Four dozen variant collectors out looking thru every shop? You may be right.I won't dispute that. From my limited experience I have found that most comic dealers don't even know what the hell I'm talking about when I mention 30 or 35 cent variants. Many dealers keep a good chunk of their stock off the floor so I can only assume that your guys never got to the people in the Tri-State area or never asked the dealers I've been to.

 

Don't doubt this. I know I've tried to scour every store in MD, Delaware, eastern WV, Northern and Central VA, Central and SE PA, Pittsburgh, Northern NJ, many of the NY suburbs, many NYC stores, western CT, all of MA, NH, VT. And, while you may not get into every store's backstock, you can get into many of them. And, personally (JC may rake me over the coals for not being forthright, but I have no scruples about this when the seller is a dealer who purports to be an expert) I rarely tell them exactly what I'm looking for. That may be why they don't know what variants are, not because no one has searched their stock. I'll only tell them if I think they have another 10, 000 Marvels from the 70's around somewhere or if I've already done well going thru what's on the floor.

 

Now, does that mean there are none out there. Heck, no. I've personally found 1 collection where every possible 30 cent variant issue was, in fact, a variant. And, I just picked up 30 35 cent variants from a single collection. I'm sure there are many out there like this. But the initial wave of available variants is likely exhausted and new ones only come around when a collection with unrecognized variants is sold.

[joe_collector]

And, personally (JC may rake me over the coals for not being forthright, but I have no scruples about this when the seller is a dealer who purports to be an expert) I rarely tell them exactly what I'm looking for.

 

Jeez, why does everyone think I'm part of the moral majority...?

 

As many of you know, I've got a big beef with a certain transaction, and can easily recognize the difference between "finding a deal" and "paying cover price for a million dollar GA collection, and laughing about it later".