By Benjamin Nobel, November 6, 2023 Hi everyone, I hope you’ve all had a great year! For our latest (2024) edition of the CPV Price Guide, I thought it would be useful for me to write an article highlighting noteworthy brand-new CGC 1st appearance credits that have appeared on their labels since the time of our last (2023) edition, among issues with CPVs. CGC often marches to the beat of their own drum when it comes to what information appears on their labels, and in my own efforts to get them to include information, I’ve been told that even though they didn’t disagree with me, it is ultimatel ..read more

Spidey Goes to Tobago By Stephen Cranch, September 2023 “A rare book with a nice acquisition story. It doesn’t get much better than that.” Hello Many years ago when the world was a much simpler place, and I still had hair, I was, for a time, a Spider-Man Completist. If you’re not familiar with the term ‘Spider-Man Completist’ it basically refers to someone who one day, for reasons inexplicable, decides that they must gather every appearance of Spider-Man in a US comic and then duly sets about achieving it. Unfortunately, having everything means just that – everything. Not just a copy of every ..read more

By Benjamin Nobel, October 31, 2022 It is that time of year again: a new edition of our CPV Price Guide has just been published online, which means a fantastic new batch of Market Reports & Articles is now available. Many of my fellow guide collaborators have contributed reports and articles this year, and I felt that others on the team already did a great job of describing the current state of the CPV market. So, for my contribution to our articles section this year, rather than write a “market report” I thought I’d talk about a 1980’s Marvel cover price variant that I’ve been asked about ..read more

By Benjamin Nobel, October 2022 “Amazing Spider-Man #238 is not incomplete without Tattooz. It was printed in a standard, old-fashioned way, independent of the Tattooz inserted later, just like many other in-house or paid advertisement inserts from any era. … All any grading company would have to do is say ”no Tattooz” on the label and have a blue label, leaving it to the collector to decide on the relative importance of its inclusion. … The only cure to allow for promotional extras, be they trading cards, inserts, or spare tires, is to eliminate them from the nomenclature as the extraneous an ..read more

By Stephen Cranch, September 2022 “We have sixty 75c Canadian Price Variants spread over the twelve titles that Charlton were putting out during the eleven months comprising September 1983 to July 1984. They’re not the easiest set of variants to collect and some appear to be quite scarce. This may be due to the fact that few collectors go for Charlton and more copies might come to market if there was a greater enthusiasm for them. I love Charlton myself, so will be slowly picking off those remaining books until I hopefully one day complete the set.” Hello. A total of sixty Charlton Canadian Pr ..read more

By Benjamin Nobel, September 28, 2022 “CGC is pleased to announce the identification of newsstand editions and multi-packs, beginning September 26, 2022. Because of their rarity, newsstand editions and multi-packs have been increasingly sought out by comic collectors in recent years, making the recognition of this attribute an important component of certification.” — CGC Comics, 9/26/2022 I would like to publicly applaud CGC for their announcement that they will now differentiate newsstand comics (and multi-pack comics) as distinct census variants and on their labels! I know that for a great ..read more

By Benjamin Nobel, December 21, 2021 Let’s start with a game: I’ll show you twelve images, and you mentally mark which ones you recognize as John Constantine. From your selections, we’ll learn where you stand on the true first appearance of John Constantine in comics. (Don’t worry, I’ll explain what I mean by that as we go). Ready? Play!   OK! Have you reviewed all twelve and decided which ones you recognize to be John Constantine? The first answer that I want to ask you about, is what you decided for #10. Here is the context: the panel pictured in #10 follows a “horrific ac ..read more

By Benjamin Nobel, November 2021 Hi everyone, this is my market report for the 2022 edition of our CPV Price Guide just released, marking our 5th edition! [Be sure to read all the other great reports too!] Our guide usage has grown steadily since we “carved out” the price guide onto its own web domain name in 2019, and during this year we surpassed the 2,500,000 cumulative total hits milestone — here’s our monthly hits chart: I attribute a lot of the growth in our guide’s website usage to one of the “mega-trends” that has been slowly unfolding in our hobby: investment grade newsstand comics f ..read more

By Benjamin Nobel, October 16, 2021 Earlier this year, I updated my lists of key comics by year with updated census counts/rankings and with CGC label notes included. For those who have explored the 1992 page, you may have noticed three books mentioning Spider-Man 2099 on the CGC label made the toplist (here they are in the order of how they ranked by highest census count): ◉ Amazing Spider-Man #365, published 8/1992, has this CGC label note: 1st appearance of Spider-Man 2099. Gatefold Venom/Carnage poster by Mark Bagley. Hologram cover. The CGC label for Amazing Spider-Man #365 credits this 8 ..read more

By Benjamin Nobel; NOTE: my original plan was to chronicle mis-listed variant opportunities here as I spot them over time, but unfortunately I’ve had to discontinue that plan and will not be appending new updates. Hi everyone, from time to time I spot an eBay listing for a book on my watchlist, where the seller has pictured what is clearly a price variant (or other type of variant)… but where the title and description of their listing make no mention whatsoever of this fact — making their listing unfindable in refined searches (in other words, the usual buying competition may not find it!). Fo ..read more