I put my Avengers in order and put the others aside to be sorted later. When I was going through them later I noticed that I had an autographed Cap. America. I was very lucky indeed because the autograph is rare and made even more rare by his recent death. Yes, boys and girls it was signed by the Capt. himself. I can't remember the issue(90's comic), but it had on it as plain as day Captain America, am I lucky or what!!!!!!

This issue is probalby skyrocketing in price even as I write and U read about it.

Remember, no matter where you go there you are.

Sooo....does Joker work for CGC? No disrespect, but CGC, along with variant comics, are going to ruin the comic collecting world.

The pros and cons of CGC have been debated ad nauseum, and I agree that there are some good points to having a book graded by a supposedly unbiased 3rd party. (I say supposedly because there are definite ties to Wizard--otherwise Wizard wouldn't have a few extra pages at the back of their mag dedicated to tracking ebay sales. Who benefits?) CGC will detect restoration, will determine a counterfeit from a real copy, and will try to give an accurate grade to help determine the value of a book. But isn't the value of a book dependent upon who wants to buy it? Woe to the collectors spending hundreds of dollars trying to complete their set of 9.8 Deathmates in the hopes that it will bring a massive return to them in the future. Speculators--they do more harm than good. And do people realize that "slabs" are not meant to last forever? It clearly states that fact on their site, and they encourage you to resubmit your book to be placed into another slab every 7 years. Think about that for a second. Every case they've slabbed should be replaced every 7 years. Talk about a great marketing strategy. There are more issues (no pun intended) I have with CGC, but I want to address the variant "phenomenon."

Most variants today come from a store who needs to order x amount of books to get that special variant everyone chomps at the bit for. (You know, 1:10, 1:100, etc.) So they order tons of books to get that ONE book and then put it on ebay in the hopes of making some of that money back + some. The lower ratio books do make their way onto the shelf but at an immediate inflated price. Soooo....what happens to those countless books that don't sell? They're going straight to a warehouse where one day they'll be sold for a quarter. Yep, those same books you're spending 2-3-4 or 5.99 each for are basically worthless. And those special variants? They eventually drop their value too because they're not the "hot" book anymore. Remember that Batman 612 sketch variant? How about the Identity Crisis 1 variant? They sold upwards of $40-50 or more when they were hot. Now, maybe $15-20. And 5 years from now they'll reach that $5 mark. Did we learn anything from the holofoil stamped gatefold craze? Just because it's dressed in a shiny new case or the cover has a sketch on it doesn't make it any different.

If you don't think history is going to repeat itself, think again.

Until then, I'll take my high grade variants to every con, let some hippy scribble all over the thing while some nerd watches him do it so I can get it placed in an untouchable plastic coffin where I will stare at it for the next 7 yrs. until I get it replaced. All the while, I'll read the regular copy I also bought, just for the fun of comics.

"Psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them...I don't give a fu-- how crazy they are."