spideysenses

White Venom is the next Heisenberg specialty, no doubt. Or the next hair-metal band.

Sure, guys. Here you go.

Thanks for reading!

I replied to RadiantGraphix in a PM but figured I should update the thread too. My wife, m'lady, was able to get a new job. Not too long after I posted here, actually. I ended up selling pretty much my whole collection though. BUUUUUUT I kept the white cover. Was going to sell that last -- if I had to -- and, luckily, I didn't have to! It looks so great now since I put a nail through the case and hung it over my radiator! So long for now, guys 'n' gals! No, I didn't nail or hang the white cover over a radiator or anywhere else.

Hey everybody. I just saw these messages here now. I got a few PMs too from some of you which I'd like to reply to individually but right here at once seems the most efficient way. As you may imagine, I never wanted to sell it and didnt really even intend to in the first place, hence the huge price point on ebay. I thought that would have been somewhat obvious. Suffice to say I paniced over the weekend and started listing all of my comics, a couple of which have since sold for cheap prices. My wife was let go from her position at a florist in NYC on Friday; so, down 50% of income, I freaked a bit...um, or quite a lot, as she could attest. I convinced myself that if it did sell, well, that could buffer us for a couple months comfortably as she searches for another job. So it would have been a fair trade-off to me for that, "RIP white cover forever though," that being the case. Today however, I'm in a better more hopeful place today than I was this past weekend. Both the white and black covers mean so much to me (the black cover I own being memorable because I bought it raw and ungraded). So I'm going to keep those but I definitely have to get rid of everything else in the meantime. I mean, I was done collecting but I wasn't done admiring and enjoying my collection. So this still sucks but I don't have to purge it all which is definitely better than how I felt on Friday night. She and I discussed our options and I'm now optimistic about the next few weeks, months. Hope it isn't that long though. Hopefully I can report back soon with good news on the job front with her! Fingers crossed. My original post in this thread still stands. I meant and still mean every damn word I wrote. Stay positive, everybody, in your own situations. Good things come when you least expect them to. That's what I'm focusing on.

Thanks! And thanks, Cyclops. The black cover is so sick. Freaking love how it looks, and how the red foil is different for all, or most of, the copies. Actually the first 10.0 was a Black cover of Lethal Protector. There are only two white covers. This 9.8 is the highest grade. The other is a 9.6.

Haha! Nah. I had to though. It was the right thing for me to do. I was sort of losing site of why I loved comics in the first place. It's very uninteresting, believe me. Hah!

That's entirely accurate, bdog. Haha! That Spawn issue is awesome. I got into Spawn pretty heavily too, after Venom. I followed McFarlane to Image, though Spawn was at issue 27 when I first read them. (Another great memory getting that issue. Rainy fall day.) Thanks for the love everyone.

This is gonna be a long post and it's gonna be a story-time post. So please keep that in mind. And if this isn't your thing, that's cool too. I will try to be brief but it's important to me that I share my story and the significance this issue has to me. I'm not sure why, but I feel like I need to share this. Last night I won the Comiclink auction for my Rosebud, the Venom: Lethal Protector white printing error cover. I haven't made a bid there since 2009. In fact, I was done collecting comics. I love them but I retired from the hobby a few years ago. Though I always said to myself and to my friends that I would jump at the chance to own a white cover, no matter what, never believing I would be able to actually own it or let alone see it come up for auction. I first learned about the white cover from recalledcomics.com, while searching for a black cover. That was a decade ago. Or close to it. Since then, I've never seen this come up for auction. All I had, in fact the only thing we all had, was the CGC census that said two exist and a few smatterings of the books existence online. It was and still is such an unusual and rare book. It had never gone up for sale anywhere to my knowledge. But back in the day, I wanted a copy from that moment; pipe dreams we all say to ourselves one time or another. Not to be so melodramatic and cheesy, but this specific issue represents a decade-old promise to myself, a once-in-lifetime dream to own one. Your very own board member, bcarter, is a close friend of mine. He knows all about my love for this fabled white cover. Yesterday, he just so happened to randomly check Comiclink and viola, there it was. He shot me an email and I got it with 4 hours left in the auction. Thankfully I got to it so late because I wouldn't have been able to handle the anticipation for more than that amount of time. I don't know what compelled him to randomly check the auctions when he did, or on that day. But I'm so thankful. Now this is all well and good up to now. So far, what I've described has probably happened to all of you at one point. But what makes this issue truly special to me is on a personal level. Please allow me to indulge these thoughts. I was 9 years old when Lethal Protector was published in February, turning 10 later in the year. I had always loved comics at that point. I used to draw my own, make my own superhero cards of my own creations. I mean, that was what I did. I don't remember the exact day, but my family and I were heading up to Pennsylvania to visit my grandparents whom I loved dearly, one of whom is still alive today! Anyway, that morning I forget why or how we even got to the comic book store, named Baseball Heaven, I suppose I got a good grade in school or something and my dad promised me a comic. There I saw it, a beautiful, shiny red holografix foil cover with my favorite character on it! Venom! I read that issue probably a hundred times on that vacation at my grandparents' house. I carried it in the bag from the comic book store. I still have that bag somewhere, surely. I'll never forget that day. It's so vivid in my mind's eye. Bagley's Venom art was like nothing I had ever seen before at that time. I was 9 and I did not own alot of comics then. Most of the comics I saw were from friends at school or whatever; we used to bring them in and show each other our issues. I loved reading and staring at each panel. The way Bagley drew Venom, and the suit, they felt alive to me. I never read/collected the whole mini-series until I was probably like 11 or 12 when I started to get some money of my own. It was rare that my parents would take me comic book shopping. So I had this sense of wonder about the story for so long. Of course, it's a pretty lame story, Lethal Protector, but that first issue, it was a wonder to me. "Did they really fall through time?! Gosh!," as the last panel reads. So there's something about that issue to me. Lethal Protector, number 1. It's my Rosebud. It's a tangible thing I can actually hold, that existed on that special day for me. It's a physical, literal memory that I can look at, hold in my hand, and be taken back to those innocent days of my childhood. Not to harp on this, but I was diagnosed with leukemia a few years after. So Lethal Protector, holds a lot of emotions for me. I had to share my scattershot thoughts about this. I'm still a little shocked I own a white cover. Out of all the comics I've ever bought in my collecting years, I never felt joy like I did last night after that purchase. It was like I was back in the comic store, in 1993, again. ...Not to be cheesy. I can definitely say, this is the last comic I will ever collect and I couldn't be more content. Money value is one thing, and that's great if that's how you collect. Do your thing. But to me, for my money, the honest-to-god true value is what the comic means to you. Sure, seems obvious. But as someone who always chased the first appearances, keys, and whatnot, the old adage is true -- collect what you love. I learned that last night during my very last purchase. Thanks for reading this if you made it this far. Good luck to all of you; I hope you all find your Rosebuds too.

oh, no, don't get discouraged! These things are still out there, you'll have your day, just keep looking! I got extremely lucky finding these while following a lead on something else (a GA book, actually), sometimes it just takes a bit of luck. bk It's done. I'm out. I'm compiling my entire collection for sale soon. I'm serious.

I need to stop collecting. This is getting out of hand. Nothing like this will ever happen to me.

I love the detail in the flesh of his left hand. Well done!

Wow. That's incredible.

Has there been any news on when or if the original or most recent TMNT comics will be converted into a digital format?

I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean CGC swapped the labels or the comic? If it was a comic, was the comic graded to be 9.8? If so, how many 9.8s are there now? If it was a label, is the comic within the case still a 3rd print and they're just calling it a 1st print?