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ASM 300 Appreciation/ Club Thread
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1,166 posts in this topic

39 minutes ago, lou_fine said:

I guess it's sort of regional because I always had the impression that there were a ton of Spidey 300's out there as they were always all over the place at the time.

Of course, it was probably skewed due to the fact that McFarlane was pretty much a home town boy in our area who tended to show up at the local cons to signed his books before he became a big star in the comic book world.  And Spidy 300 was definitely one of the more popular books that local collectors would grab for him to sign at the time.  (thumbsu

Where, Phoenix? I would imagine so!

As far as Spidey #300s, I imagine they WERE ultra common, as any Spidey book would have been, during the months after release.

By the spring of 1990, however, they were GONE, sucked out of the market like a giant vacuum. You couldn't find them anywhere (and I tried!) None of the local stores in the SF Bay Area even had a copy to sell, and none of the local 1-day motel meeting room "cons" did, either. 

They started trickling out after they QUADRUPLED in price from the 1990 OPG to the Update (April to June!), and after Spidey #1 was officially launched.

I was just a year or so too late. :(

 

Edited by RockMyAmadeus
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1 minute ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

You couldn't find them anywhere (and I tried!) None of the local stores in the SF Bay Area even had a copy to sell, and none of the local 1-day motel meeting room "cons" did, either. 

I was just a year or so too late. :(

This happens a lot, and I don't think people realize it.  We tell ourselves things like, "if I had known what the prices were going to be, I would have bought a stack of XYZ" but there are two problems with that statement.  First, the total costs for the stacks of loser books you would have purchased would far exceed the couple of wins you might have gotten, unless you were prepared to wait 40 years before selling.  Secondly, there are books which were never available in multiple quantities in the first place.  I literally bought every single copy of certain 1990s Valiant books on Ebay for years at a time and I didn't end up with more than 25 copies of any of them.  There are a few books that are from the 1990s to present which have only been sold on Ebay about 5 times in 21 years. There are other books that I've tried to buy multiples as soon as they came out, and there weren't even 5 to be found.  This is particularly true of books like the multi-thousand dollar variants ASM #667, #678, etc. They were never available in quantity anywhere, so the idea "I could have bought a stack of them" is usually a fictional scenario above and beyond the fictional scenario that you could go back in time.

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10 minutes ago, RockMyAmadeus said:
50 minutes ago, lou_fine said:

I guess it's sort of regional because I always had the impression that there were a ton of Spidey 300's out there as they were always all over the place at the time.

Of course, it was probably skewed due to the fact that McFarlane was pretty much a home town boy in our area who tended to show up at the local cons to signed his books before he became a big star in the comic book world.  And Spidy 300 was definitely one of the more popular books that local collectors would grab for him to sign at the time.  (thumbsu

Where, Phoenix? I would imagine so!

No, in Vancouver Canada as he apparently used to live in New Westminster, one of the nearby local suburbs of the city.  :gossip:

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4 minutes ago, valiantman said:

This happens a lot, and I don't think people realize it.  We tell ourselves things like, "if I had known what the prices were going to be, I would have bought a stack of XYZ" but there are two problems with that statement.  First, the total costs for the stacks of loser books you would have purchased would far exceed the couple of wins you might have gotten, unless you were prepared to wait 40 years before selling.  Secondly, there are books which were never available in multiple quantities in the first place.  I literally bought every single copy of certain 1990s Valiant books on Ebay for years at a time and I didn't end up with more than 25 copies of any of them.  There are a few books that are from the 1990s to present which have only been sold on Ebay about 5 times in 21 years. There are other books that I've tried to buy multiples as soon as they came out, and there weren't even 5 to be found.  This is particularly true of books like the multi-thousand dollar variants ASM #667, #678, etc. They were never available in quantity anywhere, so the idea "I could have bought a stack of them" is usually a fictional scenario above and beyond the fictional scenario that you could go back in time.

ASM #300 is certainly not a rare book, but the only time you could have ever bought "stacks" of them was when they were brand new. They were disbursed far and wide, and by the time 1990 rolled out, McFarlane was done with ASM (#328 came out in November), and people were having fits waiting the EIGHT MONTHS in between that issue and Spiderman #1, the whole collecting world just went insane over those ASMs. 

I certainly own hundreds of copies of single books, but that's because I bought them (usually long after the fact) from the people who published/printed/distributed them directly. 

ASM #300 is a special book, in that it never experienced a time, in its entire history, where it was devalued to "cover or less."

Certainly, Harby #1s could be found for cover price by the late 90s (and some people even found them, rarely, in dollar bins), and that was against the $10 or so they were selling for on eBay. All of the regular issue Valiants could be found for cover price or less. Batman #426-429, Gen 13, New Mutants #98, even New Mutants #87, all sank to $5 or less...often less...by 1999 - 2001 or so. I own a long box of just Batman #426-#429, most of which I bought for $2 each or less.

My first copies of Magnus #0 and Harby #0 Pink were bought for 30 cents each from Tom Kalb in one of his "I'm tired of selling comics to fleabag comic geeks" phases in the summer of 1999.

But not ASM #300. I imagine there were a handful of lower grade $5-$10 sales on eBay in that time period, but a copy described as "NM"? Probably you were going to have to shell out $20-$30, even at the lowest of the low period of the late 90s. 

The lowest price for a slabbed copy ever recorded is $10 for a 5.0 in 2002 and 6.5 in 2003. That was a loss. lol

The lowest price for a 9.4, however, is $41 in 2002, and with the cost of slabbing being a mere $12 (with discount) back then, that's a raw cost of about $25. And that price was a fluke...next lowest is $52. And the lowest price for a 9.8, ever? $250.

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Hey guys. First time poster here !

I recently was cleaning the basement and looked through my old comic books.

I found a near perfect copy of Amazing Spider-Man 300.

I'm thinking of sending it to CGC for grading.

I've included some photos.

What grade do you think it is ?

 

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37 minutes ago, migmtl76 said:

Hey guys. First time poster here !

I recently was cleaning the basement and looked through my old comic books.

I found a near perfect copy of Amazing Spider-Man 300.

I'm thinking of sending it to CGC for grading.

I've included some photos.

What grade do you think it is ?

I'd go with 9.4 due to a bit of fanning and the one bottom corner of spine that might be close to frayed....

..... But :foryou: there is a "PGM" "Please Grade My" forum

https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/forum/42-hey-buddy-can-you-spare-a-grade/

Where you can start a thread designed for this purpose, to estimate grades of raw books :whee: sounds like a keeper to me :) 

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4 minutes ago, ADAMANTIUM said:

I'd go with 9.4 due to a bit of fanning and the one bottom corner of spine that might be close to frayed....

..... But :foryou: there is a "PGM" "Please Grade My" forum

https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/forum/42-hey-buddy-can-you-spare-a-grade/

Where you can start a thread designed for this purpose, to estimate grades of raw books :whee: sounds like a keeper to me :) 

Thanks ADAMANTIUM. I will post in the correct thread in the future !

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1 hour ago, migmtl76 said:

Hey guys. First time poster here !

I recently was cleaning the basement and looked through my old comic books.

I found a near perfect copy of Amazing Spider-Man 300.

I'm thinking of sending it to CGC for grading.

I've included some photos.

What grade do you think it is ?

Welcome, that's a nice book to find!

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On 8/30/2018 at 5:13 PM, RockMyAmadeus said:

ASM #300 is certainly not a rare book, but the only time you could have ever bought "stacks" of them was when they were brand new. They were disbursed far and wide, and by the time 1990 rolled out, McFarlane was done with ASM (#328 came out in November), and people were having fits waiting the EIGHT MONTHS in between that issue and Spiderman #1, the whole collecting world just went insane over those ASMs. 

I certainly own hundreds of copies of single books, but that's because I bought them (usually long after the fact) from the people who published/printed/distributed them directly. 

ASM #300 is a special book, in that it never experienced a time, in its entire history, where it was devalued to "cover or less."

Certainly, Harby #1s could be found for cover price by the late 90s (and some people even found them, rarely, in dollar bins), and that was against the $10 or so they were selling for on eBay. All of the regular issue Valiants could be found for cover price or less. Batman #426-429, Gen 13, New Mutants #98, even New Mutants #87, all sank to $5 or less...often less...by 1999 - 2001 or so. I own a long box of just Batman #426-#429, most of which I bought for $2 each or less.

My first copies of Magnus #0 and Harby #0 Pink were bought for 30 cents each from Tom Kalb in one of his "I'm tired of selling comics to fleabag comic geeks" phases in the summer of 1999.

But not ASM #300. I imagine there were a handful of lower grade $5-$10 sales on eBay in that time period, but a copy described as "NM"? Probably you were going to have to shell out $20-$30, even at the lowest of the low period of the late 90s. 

The lowest price for a slabbed copy ever recorded is $10 for a 5.0 in 2002 and 6.5 in 2003. That was a loss. lol

The lowest price for a 9.4, however, is $41 in 2002, and with the cost of slabbing being a mere $12 (with discount) back then, that's a raw cost of about $25. And that price was a fluke...next lowest is $52. And the lowest price for a 9.8, ever? $250.

There are probably stores that still have bulk ASM 300s in back stock/warehouses that are not aware of them. I passed on a long box of ASM #300s in 2001 or 2002 when a former LCS owner was cleaning out a storage locker that they withheld from the new owner when they sold their store in 1997 or 1998. They also three longs of McSpidey 1s - 1 long each of gold, silver and regular covers. I bought a few copies of ASM 300 at $5 box apiece to flip on eBay, but backed out on the entire long the first day I saw them since they had a bunch of Silver Age that I wanted instead. When I went back later that week, all of the ASM 300s were gone. doh!  

 

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10 hours ago, kimik said:

There are probably stores that still have bulk ASM 300s in back stock/warehouses that are not aware of them. I passed on a long box of ASM #300s in 2001 or 2002 when a former LCS owner was cleaning out a storage locker that they withheld from the new owner when they sold their store in 1997 or 1998. They also three longs of McSpidey 1s - 1 long each of gold, silver and regular covers. I bought a few copies of ASM 300 at $5 box apiece to flip on eBay, but backed out on the entire long the first day I saw them since they had a bunch of Silver Age that I wanted instead. When I went back later that week, all of the ASM 300s were gone. doh!  

 

I hate regrets, so I generally pull the trigger on all bulk purchases if I can. :wink: The hardest thing is finding a place for them (and when my beautiful wife is off doing something.) lol

 

Edited by divad
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1 hour ago, zeeto said:

Here's my entry. I sold off my prized copy, that my 12 year old self saved up for months to afford, when I was in college and just recently picked up a replacement. 

 

^^

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Just got a 9.8 in the last Dig Auction.  Waiting for it to come home this week.

 

im curious from avalue standpoint, if we think the book continues to grow or after the movie, will is start to stagnate.  I mean long term is this on the same type of level that Punisher and Wolvie are in that the books continue to increase despite a lot of graded copies.

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On 9/8/2018 at 5:39 PM, Drbearsec said:

Just got a 9.8 in the last Dig Auction.  Waiting for it to come home this week.

 

im curious from avalue standpoint, if we think the book continues to grow or after the movie, will is start to stagnate.  I mean long term is this on the same type of level that Punisher and Wolvie are in that the books continue to increase despite a lot of graded copies.

The majority of movie speced books fall stagnate or decrease. No one has a crystal ball, so there's no way to know. Chances are it'll keep going up for a bit, then may dip shortly after the movie is released. Granted dip is relative in this sense. For those who have owned the book longer than a year they'll make out great either way.

With 17K+ graded copies, a significant amount of those being 9.8's, it's hard to tell what will happen.

Edited by Howling Mad
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Local comic store bought out another comic store way back in the 90's and stuff sat in an offsite storage for years since the owner said he never had any time or the store space to go through everything, fast forward to last year and now. since he has employees now work for him they've gone through that old storage. They found an entire unopened case of Spidey 300's, half sized boxes of Batman Dark Knight 1-4's of each issue, a bunch of killing jokes, TNMT 1 2nd and 3rd prints, a ton of watchmen 1-12's on and on. I've bought about a half dozen of those Spidey 300's over the course of this year, I've already went through 3 9.8's, 2 9.6's (brother bought 1 that came back 9.6) a 9.4 and a 9.2 and still have another at cgc now.  I just sold my last 9.8 last night for 2500.00, paid $225 at the shop before the book took off.  

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6 hours ago, Kevin76 said:

Local comic store bought out another comic store way back in the 90's and stuff sat in an offsite storage for years since the owner said he never had any time or the store space to go through everything, fast forward to last year and now. since he has employees now work for him they've gone through that old storage. They found an entire unopened case of Spidey 300's, half sized boxes of Batman Dark Knight 1-4's of each issue, a bunch of killing jokes, TNMT 1 2nd and 3rd prints, a ton of watchmen 1-12's on and on. I've bought about a half dozen of those Spidey 300's over the course of this year, I've already went through 3 9.8's, 2 9.6's (brother bought 1 that came back 9.6) a 9.4 and a 9.2 and still have another at cgc now.  I just sold my last 9.8 last night for 2500.00, paid $225 at the shop before the book took off.  

I think we all kind of hate you right now :-P

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On 9/10/2018 at 5:05 PM, PeterPark said:

I don't think the price is movie-hyped very much. It's a very important book for thw age and has been for a long time. To me, it is the most important readily available issue of the copper age, like a Hulk 181. NM 98 wasn't big til ten years ago or so...but ASM 300 has always been desirable.

ASM 300 or TMNT #1 (which wasn't really readily available)... fair points

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