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.

(This is a repost of a popular archived blog post for those of you who haved missed it!)

You May Be Thinking... What Do You Mean That I Haven't Seen the First Fantastic Four Movie ???

The first live action Fantastic Four Movie was never shown in theaters after it was produced in 1994 by Roger Corman.

Roger quickly finished the film as his rights to the FF were running out... 

I met three of the four actors who portrayed the FF at the 1994 San Diego Comic Con. They were sincere in their portrayals of the FF and I really enjoyed meeting them and having my pic taken with them!

However, the movie wasn't to be released, and upon purchasing a bootleg video at a later comic con, I realized why....  It was really bad,  terrible actually what had happened to my favorite comic book superheroes.

It wasn't until ten years later at the SDCC in 2004 that I saw the new actors who had just been signed to play in the new film have a program at the SDCC, and they were introduced to the con goers.

I thought the choice for Mr Fantastic, and the Thing were great. I thought the choice for the Invisible Woman was all wrong... she was too sexy to portray Sue Storm.  And I couldn't figure out the actor that would portray the Torch. 

The capper to the program was the choice of director.... and what he had directed before...  oh no I thought, not another upcoming clunker movie of my FF !!!

Well I was wrong... the 2005 movie was a lot better than I expected, better than I hoped it could be.... and I came away a lot happier!!!

I looked forward to the second installment, 'The Rise of the Silver Surfer' for the Summer of 2007! 

But I still thought Jessica Alba was too young and sexy for the Invisible Woman role !!

For those interested in Fantastic Four comics on which the movies are based on, we have several listed in our eBay Featured Store.  

Make Mine Marvel ! 

Michael