I buy a lot of books...

As someone who buys and sells comics on the side and runs a small comic business, I have to keep buying in order to keep selling. As such, I come across a lot of books. Some you see all the time, others not so much.

Because I am a huge Batman fan, my personal collection currently consist of Batman books (among other things and keys) and my personal goal is to eventually obtain every Batman book ever published. So far, I have every Batman book from 250 - current, save one. I had an opportunnity to purchase my missing book years ago, but at the time, $250 was too much for me and out of my budget, so I passed and never had another opportunity to get the book in high grade at a reasonable price, until yesterday.

I was making my daily craigslist rounds when my "Batman" search lead me to a post from a seller looking to sell his lot of DC RRP variants. The lot included Superman 204 RRP, Superman/Batman 1 RRP, Identity Crisis 1 RRP, and my modern Holy Grail, Batman 608 RRP all for $500. I couldn't believe it. Here, on craigslist of all places, is someone who is willing to part with this key book for a price that falls well within my budget, not only for the Batman 608 RRP, BUT FOR ALL FOUR! Immediately I was skceptical, but after some quick communication with the seller, we arranged to meet up a few hours later.

At the meeting, as he brought out the four books, I kept thinking, "please be the real deal Batman 608 RRP... no Euro or double feature variant please please please". Plus, the books were described as being in great condition. As the seller wasn't an avid collector, he didn't know how to accurately give a grade or description to the books, so I didn't know if they were beat up copies or what.

Once he laid them out on the table, I immediately focused on the Batman 608 RRP, sure the others are great books and hold their own, but for me, nothing comes close to the Batman 608. Just to hold the book in my hands was worth the trip. I started my inspection on the book and it was beautiful. The edges maintained its deep solid black border and the corners were still sharp. I could tell this book was never opened or read. It laid completely flat with very little surface wear, minute stuff. The back cover was just as clean as the front save one small hairline spine stress. For a moment, as I looked at the back cover, I thought Tom Brady winked at me. This book was a solid Near Mint copy. Such a key book and notoriusly difficult book to find in high grade, and finally, after all these years, I have it, in my hands, and it is going to be MINE!

I learned more back story about the seller and the book next. Turns out, the seller back in the day worked for DC and somehow received these copies over the years from DC. Pretty neat to have fringe benefits like that. Anyways, I settled up and carefully put the books in my bag and headed home (had to pick up the girlfriend first though, and she was just as excited about the book and buy as I was). When I got home, I gave the Batman 608 RRP one more look over before I placed it in its rightful place among the other Batman books in my collection. 250 - current now complete. Will the 608 get the CGC treatment, probably, but for now, I am content with just owning the book. Modern Holy Grail checked off the list. Next up, Bronze Age Holy Grail)....