COMIC DETAILS
|
Comic Description:
|
Showcase 4
|
|
Grade:
|
9.2
|
|
Page Quality:
|
OFF-WHITE TO WHITE
|
|
Certification #:
|
1032387001
|
|
Owner:
|
Mississippi Mudcats
|
SET DETAILS
Owner's Description
This is the biggie and probably one of the more rapidly appreciating books in the comic book world. It features the introduction of Barry Allen, the Flash, and Central City.
The book contains two stories: “The Mystery of the Human Thunderbolt” and “The Man Who Broke The Time Barrier”.
The first story introduces readers to Barry Allen, a police scientist who is doused with chemicals that are struck by lightning. Barry soon finds that he has been endowed with super-speed and creates a costume which contracts and hides in his ring). He takes on the name of his favorite comic book character: The Flash.
In his first mission as the Flash, Barry goes after the criminal known as the Turtle Man, dubbed the world's slowest man. The Turtle Man tries to rob a bank. However, he is ultimately thwarted by the Flash, despite the fact that his super-speed often worked against him going after the plodding Turtle Man. Ultimately, the Flash captures his opponent and turns him over to the police.
In ‘The Man Who Broke The Time Barrier”, Central City is hit with a number of strange crimes where a series of items begins vanishing from people's possessions. Barry Allen becomes involved as the Flash when a beaker he's experimenting with vanishes as well. Tracking down the culprit puts Barry up against Mazdan, a criminal from the future who was supposed to be sent to the 50th Century to serve his sentence on a desolate Earth but was sent to the past by mistake instead.
Able to avoid Mazdan's weapon, Flash captures the crook. However, he manages to break out of prison using his superior scientific knowledge. Catching up with Mazdan again, the Flash tries to capture him again but stops when Mazdan petitions the Flash to allow him to return to his own time. Instead of allowing him to go in his own time capsule, the Flash instead breaks the time barrier by running at super speed, turning Mazdan over to the authorities in the future. Mazdan is sent to the correct era to serve out his punishment. The Flash then returns to his own time and resumes his civilian life once more.
This copy is a very clean 9.2, one of the top 5 graded overall and certainly the best we can afford in today's market. We acquired the book from Vintage Comics, who is an old friend and knew I wanted a better copy. He bought the book raw and I received it directly from CGC. It is thus one of the few books in our collection, which has never been owned by anyone else as a graded book. As an aside, I really wish I had done an all-cash deal and not traded by Nick Cage copy as part of the transaction, which because of the appreciation of this book would be more valuable today than the 9.2 was when I bought it. But I have never been that smart LOL.
2024 Update: Of course, the big Flash news over the last year was that the 9.6 copy of this issue sold not once but twice. The first sale was a private brokered one for about $1.5 million. The buyer then flipped the book at auction for a loss of roughly $700,000 ($900,000 sales price). Obviously, it was not a wise investment, but the owner was reportedly a whale who had bought every major key in sight and then flipped them all. He undoubtedly lost more than he made, but I am told that he is so rich that it was all immaterial.
But what all those purchases and sales will mean to the market long-term is hard to know? Will they tend to chase the silly investor money out of the market, which would mean a big downtick for the major keys? Stay tuned……
|
|
|