We received the Comic Con Update #3 a few weeks ago and on the inside splash page was an 'Open Letter' to all interested parties.

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.