House of Secrets #92? Only ten bucks.
Thanks to reader John for sending along another addition to my “homages to House of Secrets #92″ collection:
(Art by Don Cardenas and Steve Bryant.)
This comes this Kickstarter campaign, which makes me wish I had more money and more time to peruse Kickstarter for swell projects like this. I am unsure how to purchases copies of this outside of Kickstarter, so maybe keep an eye out for a campaign for issue #3? Or I’ll ask John and see if he can point me in the right direction.
Speaking of purchasing, John also sent me this 1977 Supersnipe comics ‘n’ art catalog:
Imagine getting an Amazing Spider-Man #1 (either version here) for this cheap:
I recently had both of these and they sold for a little bit more than these listed prices.
And check this out — three Peanuts originals for under $600 for the lot:
Yes, I know this is all in 1970s dollars, back when you could buy a car for a nickel and houses were basically free, but it’s still — amusing? Is “amusing” the right word here? How ’bout “depresing” — to see these dollar amounts attached to these items. And I just barely scratched the surface here…there are just pages and pages of price listings that I’m pretty sure will keep me shaking my head in mild disbelief for hours on end.
According to an inflation calculator that I used online, $200 in 1977 bucks equates to $1015 today. So that Spider-Man still seems pretty reasonable. Or current prices are just insane.
Although the catalog I sent you wasn’t one of my personal ones, I did order some stuff from Ed back in that era. I had a relative that lived in New York and mailed one of the catalogs to me in 1979. I believe my Detective Comics #400 in VF was only $4 or $5 bucks and shipping was $1.
ASM #1 in 1977 is about 15 years old, the newsprint is probably in pretty good shape all around. Lots of the people who had one bought it themselves off the stands when they were younger. Nobody needed to recoup a $100,000 investment.
In 2023 it’s 61 years old, time takes its toll on availability and condition.
Unless you are quite old you did not buy it yourself off the newsstand, the ONLY way to get one is from a very well established collectors market with a half century of markup. It’s probably traded hands a half dozen times since the early 80’s, and the price goes up every time. Nobody ever “finds” one in a closet somewhere anymore.
Can you get one if you want? Absolutely! \
But now there’s a census of all the copies that have been professionaly graded and slabbed and a big open market with lots of data on pricing.
Your local antique shop is not going to go “uhhhh, give me $100 I guess”, an eBay powerseller or Mile High is going to give you a book with documented provenance and a condition score everyone accepts.
That is going to cost you.
The curve for achieving that 9.0 gets harder and harder every year, take a look at a book from ~1860 that was printed on GOOD paper and what it looks like, now think about disposable pulp ephemera from 75+ years ago.
I often tell the Mrs. that if we win the lotto I am buying that All Star #3, and the plan is to call Sotheby’s, not start looking throiugh the dollar bin hoping to get lucky.
@DK
In the meanwhile you might as well purchase the facsimile edition of All-Star Comics no. 3 from Mike Sterling–it was just released this week…the Wonder Woman no. 1 facsimile edition came out as well.
Hi progressiveruin.com administrator, Your posts are always informative and well-explained.