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Hulk 181 Rookie Card sells for big money!
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Went digging for the remaining Marvel Series 1 cards I had... found them in a plastic snap case.   I am pretty sure there are a few others somewhere... More importantly was what was mixed in thankfully nice and crisp... 

3 x Score Pinnacle Jeter Rookies.  That was like stumbling into a few hundred after seeing what they go for on eBay graded at 8's or higher. 

I have to make some decisions this year... 

Part of me would not mind leaving early, selling it all and putting it toward property. 

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1 minute ago, Buzzetta said:

Went digging for the remaining Marvel Series 1 cards I had... found them in a plastic snap case.   I am pretty sure there are a few others somewhere... More importantly was what was mixed in thankfully nice and crisp... 

3 x Score Pinnacle Jeter Rookies.  That was like stumbling into a few hundred after seeing what they go for on eBay graded at 8's or higher. 

I have to make some decisions this year... 

Part of me would not mind leaving early, selling it all and putting it toward property. 

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SELL SELL SELL.  

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13 hours ago, comicwiz said:

I posted the O-Pee-Chee (OPC) Luke 1 I've got, that's a multiple, I won't break my set and I'll give some others a go as I'm checking more prices. I also have a few anomalies - the first is an error card that was produced by OPC for the Star Wars trading card set. This was the first series (blue) trading card set from 1977 and the error is on card #57, which shows Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker. The error is a misprinting on the reverse of the card, which should be showing one of the puzzle pieces, but instead shows the backing for what should be card #17. Out of all the sets I've built from an early age, this is the only error card I've ever run across:

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And then I've got this Topps Star Wars 4th Series Wax Box with a transition "Cantina Scenes", 5th Series white sticker/label on the top and front panels. In the very early print runs, Topps used some of the left over 4th series boxes for its 5th series of Star Wars cards. This is the white sticker which is rarer than the yellow sticker that you see more often. So this one for some unknown reason was stickered with the 5th series white sticker, but contains 4th series wax packs.

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I got these from a fellow who initially listed a Topps SW trading card wax box on a local classified site about 10 years ago. His dad had a general store in the US when he was growing-up. He recalled his Dad opening one of the cases and seeing these transition boxes, and opening them up to notice they had the 5th series packs. So he opened them and sold them as packs in his store. When he opened this one from the case, he noticed the packs were different and put it aside. Somehow, over time it went unnoticed until much later when he was clearing out his dad's old store after he had passed and noticed these lying around. He also found a proper 5th series wax box, which I ended-up with as well. He was initially very reluctant in selling me this because he thought it was "special."

The original listing he put up was for the proper 5th series wax box. I was on him for awhile, but admittedly I didn't think the deal was going to happen. Partly because he seemed so insistent on it being something he wanted to keep and I wanted to respect that if it was because of the memory attached to his Dad's store. Then out of the blue he calls and says he was helping his local church with fundraising for a mission, and was willing to sell. I actually met him at the church to buy it. I felt strange doing the deal inside the church, so I waited in the parking lot until after the service ended to meet him. I kept it for years not having really any interest in selling it because it represented my 4th series box because of what it contained, but over time I began learning about the different transition sticker labels used (yellow and white). There is also another wax box on feeBay with a white 5th series sticker on the exact same spots (covering the printed 4th series caption) but that one has the 5th series packs. My guess is that with any circumstance where Topps utilized previous series packaging in between printing the next series, there is a remote chance product passing through with the incorrect contents. I also think the guy wouldn't have made the story up and when I discovered this it made me wonder whether I should try to find a sealed box, but these transition white sticker boxes are so rare to begin with that you would have to find one, and still open it to determine if the packs are 4th series. Beyond the packaging transition characteristic and wax pack assortment variation error is that the 4th series packs are the one containing the notorious C-3P0 "golden rod" error card.

Even after the believability of this story, I tried to run this this through my mind. It's impossible to get in the minds of people making decisions in that era, but here's some thoughts on it anyway. You get a sealed case of wax boxes (16 count of wax boxes in a staple sealed case) and as you're getting the first, second, third box out of the case you are seeing either these green wax box with transition stickers, or the correct orange 5th series wax boxes intermixed with a few of these green boxes. Either way, you've sold in succession from those orange boxes, or green boxes that had the correct 5th series packs, then you pull this one out to replenish stock, it too has the 4th/5th series transition sticker, but when he opens it, he finds 4th series packs. This was at a time when remaindered stock was purposed in all sorts of ways, but as a shop owner, you've already climatized customers to the new 5th series packs, and seeing this in the box feels like Topps sticking you with old stock. Who knows what was running through the guys mind, but all I have is the word of a guy who says what he did, and Topps who found some reason to purpose old boxes in a manner that could have been confusing for shop owners, and given the population of these being so small, perhaps the very early cases shipped had a full case of these, but I'm willing to accept that they were intermixed with yellow and white sticker labels, and given the rarity of the white sticker, they had to have been one or two of's in a sealed case.

I would also add that returned unsold stock probably would have had a time limit based on series releases, and because they were using 4th series stock in this manner, that window closed quicker than normal. Who knows if him bringing this up when it was discovered, or if he brought it up at all, whether Topps put a time limit on the retailer to return 4th series packs. I know in comics, they had an affidavit return system where retailers had to first tear off the top portion of the comics, and later deface it with marker on the price box, and not be expected to incur any added cost to ship back to Marvel. I have seen 80's era Topps non-sportscard wax boxes with marker on them to indicate unsold stock, but have never seen a Topps SW era 1st through to 5th with any mark or defacing, so for this to have sat there without having a single pack sold indicates to me the shop owner may have had intentions of receiving a credit, but he either got pushback, Topps didn't honour it, and/or it just slipped his mind. Keeping in mind also that his son found a 5th series wax box as well with this 4th/5th transition box (also full). So it might have been one of those things where enough time had passed for Topps to have been willing to address the screw-up, or he may well have received a credit on that single box, and Topps told him he could keep it. Who knows. I know I asked if he still had the case, but unfortunately he didn't find anything other than these two wax boxes.

In the scenario however that Topps did give him a credit on his word, they may have told him not to sell the packs. It would need to matter that it was a person of integrity to have kept them unsold, but that probably makes the most sense, because if Topps told him to hit the road, he probably would have sold them to make up his cost on that box. I know in the affidavit return system with comics, it was heavily abused, to the point where there was an underground distribution that reached as far as big cities like Toronto. Jim Shooter talks about the other ways this was abused. Chuck of Mile High talks about how a lot of this stock was basically hoarded by the criminal underworld, and was pretty much what constituted the Mile High 2 find. But I also know retailers that didn't want to have their status with Marvel to be impacted in any way by disobeying their affidavit return (honour system) and even found a huge backstock myself years back where all the comics had been defaced by marker in the price box. Those were never even in the back issue bin, they were in the basements of these shops 20-30 years after those comics hit the newsstands. The profile of it being a small shop owner fits because they had less of a risk tolerance for being reported for or caught reselling "returned" stock.

Anyhow, thought I'd share, not sure if it makes sense to sell some of this stuff now or hang on to it.

Really cool post, Joseph. Thank you!

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On 2/12/2021 at 9:38 AM, Sensei Ryan said:

Will CGC not grade any of the Marvel cards or was it a specific type of these cards that CGC will not grade?

I recently hypothesized to Bronty that I believe one reason  CGC isn’t even considering grading Marvel cards is because they lack the case for those type of cards. Take a look at the CGC card cases currently used for Magic and Pokémon. They aren’t designed for cards that don’t have rounded corners. They have also said they wouldn’t grade TCG version of Pokémon cards.

Shortly after I said this to Bronty someone posted in the Trading Card section they were disappointed because they signed up for a membership to submit cards but after doing so discovered CGC doesn’t even grade Yugi-Oh Cards. Someone that works for CGC responded one reason CGC doesn’t grade them is because they are smaller and would require a new case by CGC.

After seeing that comment it seems pretty obvious what I told Bronty about Marvel cards not being graded by CGC due to a lack of appropriate cases for those type of cards is at least one of the reasons they aren’t jumping on board.

At this point it wouldn’t surprise me if the company CGC is starting to grade sports cards winds up handling Marvel cards.

This would likely be foolish given those cards are not even going to bear the name CGC and comics and CGC go hand in hand. Either way with CGC dragging their feet on grading Marvel cards they are missing the boat on potentially being the Market share leader and standard for these cards. Once a company becomes “The accepted Standard” it’s tough to take over. Most of the PSA population numbers are 10 or less for this stuff so there is (quickly becoming was) a chance for someone to push them out of the way when it comes to Marvel. 

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9 hours ago, F For Fake said:

 

The thing about the "rookie card" is that in a lot of instances, the 1990 Marvel set really ISN'T the "rookie card" for the character. I thought it would be a good idea to get some of these "rookies", and the earliest Wolverine card I could find was from a Comic Images set, years before Impel 1990. And most of the classic Marvel characters were released on sticker cards in the 70's. I'm sure there are a few true first appearance/rookies in Marvel 1990, but not nearly as many as people are being lead to believe.

Would this be considered the "rookie" card for AoA Wolverine/Weapon X? It's a promo card that wasn't part of the 95 Fleer Ultra Set, but it came with other cards that were part of that. I believe the books with the card were released in March 1994. X-Men Alpha wasn't released until February 1995.

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No Weapon X under "Alternate X"

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Edited by awakeintheashes
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14 minutes ago, thunsicker said:

How are the Donruss Marvel cards from '66 not the rookie cards for the heroes that appeared on them?

I came of age in the 90s. We bought whatever garbage was fed to us. The buyers of these "rookie" cards are the likely those 90s kids whose wallets got fatter but failed to refine their palates.

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54 minutes ago, thunsicker said:

How are the Donruss Marvel cards from '66 not the rookie cards for the heroes that appeared on them?

Yes, makes no sense to me that those much older and HTF cards are not worth more than the 80 million plus Marvel cards from the 90's.  :screwy:

Then again, I guess the ready availablity of the cards from the 90's is the answer because it allows everybody in this pump and dump game to make money all the time over and over again on something that should actually be worthless.  :p

Edited by lou_fine
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16 hours ago, Wolverinex said:

Interesting... would a press help? Yes. I'm bringing it up. 

Not say pressing with cards doesn't happen, but from my understanding and from what others told me, pressing can cause problems by widening the card and flattening the thickness to the point of making the card ungradable outside normal accepted tolerances. Or counting as damage on its own because of the flattened unnatural shape.. It also can damage the surface fibers and make existing damage just a bit harder to detect but then shows up during the light.

It also depends on the card stock made.  Beckett had a small article on it I remember.

https://www.beckett.com/news/how-tell-sports-card-pressing/

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The trickle down effect is real. I can't believe a box of Spider-man Fleer 1994 gets $600 a Marvel Masterpiece Tin (1992) gets $400 and a Marvel Masterpiece 1993 box gets $300.
Not sure if I should sell these now or what.

Edited by Rip
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1 hour ago, an99 said:

Just checked all my comic boxes and found 22 copies of X-Force #1. Only 3 have Deadpool cards. 

I'll probably list one on ebay and keep the other 2.

Same (I may have started out with more copies too). If I can offer some advice. And this is coming from someone who prefers keeping bagged (multipacks) sealed, if you intend on selling those cards, I'd take them out of the bags, put them first in a penny sleeve, then a top loader or card saver. Leave them in there for a few days just to try to even out any slight bends or impressions made by the other card in the bag. One of mine looks a lot better today than when I first took it out, and I didn't do anything other than what I described above.

Edited by comicwiz
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