The Major Spoilers Nerd Room of Doom is packed with toys, statues, comic books, and toys, that we’ve collected over the years. (Word has it we had to move just to accommodate the growing collection of “stuff”.) Recent MSQotD have pondered wonders lost and found, and things you wish you could afford to buy, but today, it’s all about the here and now.
This week, we learned about a rare Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle illustration that sold at auction for over $70,000, which brings us to the MS-QotD: What is the most expensive/rare/cherished bit of ephemera you have in your pop culture collection?
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My Mike Norton sketch of Booster Gold giving Blue Beetle (Jamie Reyes) a noogie.
Incredible Hulk #181 CGC 9.6 and signed by creators. Saved up a whole year for that one.
My Heartcatch Precure half-figs, imported all the way from Japan. No one knows who they are, but I don’t care. They look AWESOME on my bookshelf.
At one point I had Uncanny X-men 93 and 94 that I had won at my local LCS but, after a bad roomate incedent, it’s now my Amazing Spider-Man 73 signed by Stan Lee.
I have a book entitled “The Secret Service” which was about newspaper correspondents in the Civil War, which was printed in April, 1865. About three quarters of the way through the book, there is a footnote to the effect that the publishers had just received word that President Lincoln had been assassinated. I found it at a used book store, which had picked it up from a defunct IOOF library in Salem, Oregon; where it had been gathering dust since 1865! On the comic book front, it would be my Pacific Comics Groo #1 which was selling for $60 last time I checked.
Mine is a beat up copy of Tales of Suspense #48, the first appearance of Iron Man’s classic red and yellow armor. It’s in bad condition, well read and yellowed, the cover barely attached. It occupies a place of honor and is prominently displayed in my nerd room of doom.
A batch of Iron Man comics (issues in the 40s and 50s) bought at a yard sale when I was about eight is what got me into comics to begin with. From that point on I was completely hooked on Iron Man. I found this copy of ToS at the barber shop my grandfather used to go to. I read it every time he took me there to get my hair cut, and am sure hundreds of other kids did the same thing.
I was talking to my grandfather about it one day and he told me I should save my money and offer to buy it from the barber. He asked me how much I thought it was worth, and being only nine, I had no real idea, so I told him, “I dunno, a lot, like ten dollars!” So, he gave me two quaters and told me now was a good time to start saving.
Over that summer he always had a job for me to do; mow the lawn, weed the garden, help paint the picnic table, the kind of jobs you give a nine year old boy. It took me three months to save the ten bucks I thought I needed and I was always anxious when we went to get my hair cut, I was afraid the comic wouldn’t be there, but it always was.
When I had saved the money, we went to the barber and I offered to buy it for the ten dollars, afraid that he wold say something like “It’s not for sale.”, or “It’s worth more than that.”
But instead, he looked at the comic and asked me what the cover price was.
“Um, twelve cents.”, I told him.
“Well,” he said, “Give me twelve cents and you can have it.”
So, my most cherished bit of pop culture is that ratty old comic. Due to its condition it’s worth about five bucks, I paid twelve cents for it, but the memories it brings back are priceless.
I have a signed Jim Lee issue of Superman 204 and a signed Phil Jimenez issue of New X-Men 150. I also have a Jason Todd action figure still in it’s box. No idea if they are worth anything.
They are not. :)
Near complete run of JLI, but right off the type of my head is the Brain Boland Batman Black & White (BBBBW?) that I got from my major spoilers.
A box of surprisingly great condition comics from the 50’s – 60’s my friend’s uncle gave me years back, including early numbers of Amazing Spiderman, X-Men, etc as well as various non-superhero comics.
To this day I’m still surprised that he simply gave them to me because some were worth a pretty penny, but he said I was like family and he had no kids of his own to pass them off too and his relatives wouldn’t appreciate them as I would. For that reason alone, I’ll never sell them.
At the Emerald City Comic Con I was able to pick up the original cover art from Atomic Robo The Deadly Art of Science issue #3. I had it framed and is on my wall in my office. It’s not every day when you can find the original cover art to your FAVORITE issue. The bonus was that my son and I got to hang with Scott Wegener for a bit and find out what a cool guy he really is. If the house catches fire I’ll be really tempted to run back in to save that art….
Original art for the cover of Atomic Robo v2 #5
stare at it every day over my morning coffee and feel like a champion
This falls under the cherish heading because I know they aren’t worth anything, but I own every appearance of Deadpool up to the point where in his own series where they tell him his real name is not Wade Wilson. After that I quit buying that series regularly.