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quizzicalTopic: Comic Book History
 A comic book may be truly 'rare', but if there is no demand for it... then the value of the comic book does not increase just because it is rare! Additionally, there are several collectors who collect by topic... ie dinosaurs on comic book cover, bondage covers, favorite artist covers, etc etc.! The above comic book is not 'rare', but because it has a cover and interior art work by Jack 'King' Kirby it is highly desirable in high grade and collectable.
 Some collectors buy certain issues not because they are rare, but because the issue contains the first appearance of a villain.... like the above issue of Fantastic Four #5, the FIRST appearance of Dr Doom! This is considered a 'Key' Issue as Dr Doom has gone on to be the FF's primary villain in the 46 years of the title's published works!
Note From Make It So Marketing: Each comic / comics book or magazine in our eBay Featured Store is individually graded, inventoried, priced, bagged and boarded, before being listed for sale! We attend several pop culture and comic books conventions during the year to replenish our inventory for resale!  Thank YOU for being one of our NOTE: This Blog Post May Not Be Viewed Properly On YOUR Screen Due To the Changes eBay is Making on the Blog Format At this time OR in the Future! Additionally, this blog post is written for IE Browsers. Netscape, Firefox and the others serve the page up differently.
| Is 'My' Comic Book Truly Rare?! We have been asked again about 'rare' comic books and who / what decides a comic is rare? We ran a blog post over a year ago about this subject, so am updating it in this blog post today! So often you will see the word 'rare' in an eBay listing for a comic book. It is often an overused word in describing the listing. How does one figure out if the comic book is truly 'rare'?? Back in 1990, Ernie Gerber published two volumes of his 'Photo Journal Guide to Comics'. He later added two additional volumes just for Mavel Comics. In those volumes he rated comics in regards to his research on rarity. Please remember this is before the advent of mainstream use of the internet, and before internet auction sites like eBay came into existence. This is the top of the 'rarity' scale per Gerber on a numerical number value: #11 No copies known, but they are suspected to exist #10 1 to 5 copies believed to exist # 9 estimated 6 to 10 copies #8 estimated 11 to 20 copies # 7 estimated 21 to 50 copies # 6 estimated 51 to 200 copies # 5 estimated 201 to 1000 copies Each listing in the Gerber books comes with its' own rarity number value. Additionally, private companies like CGC have begun tracking comics in their own census. This only takes into account the books that have been submitted to CGC for grading, although they recently hit the 1,000,000 mark in graded comics! Even though Gerber's books were printed in the early 1990's, most comic experts think that what Gerber has in his books are probably still a good estimate today. There are copies of these Photo Journals for sale in eBay listings at times, and they are a good reference for the comic book investor, or those collectors that don't want to overpay for what is not a true 'rare' comic book. Thanks for reading this popular culture - comics - comic books blog post! Michael |
