COMIC DETAILS
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Comic Description:
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Justice League of America 4
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Grade:
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9.4
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Page Quality:
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OFF-WHITE
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Certification #:
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1175948008
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Owner:
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Mississippi Mudcats
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SET DETAILS
Owner's Description
Issue #4 features Green Arrow joining the JLA. In "Doom of the Star Diamond,” Carthan of Dryanna learns that his ruler Xandor wishes to exile him, because as the planet's greatest hero Carthan may lead a revolt to usurp Xandor's command. Unable to kill Carthan because of a protective aura about him, Xandor exiles Carthan to Earth. Knowing of the Justice League, Carthan is unable to contact them telepathically hoping he can trick them into helping him stop Xandor.
As the JLA considers who will be the next super-hero inducted into their ranks, Carthan sends an arrow with a message telling them of ultra weapons which will destroy the Earth if the Justice League does not stop them. The JLA decides to split up into groups and tackle the problem head on.
Martian Manhunter and Wonder Woman seek the first doomsday weapon in Keystone City, and have to battle giant animals - insects, birds, and cats - that have been mutated by the weapon. Defeating their attackers, they succeed in switching the device off using its invisible handle. While Flash and Aquaman race to Australia where they have to search for the device with the help of Aquaman's undersea friends. After locating the device, the Flash's super counter-vibrations allow Aquaman to get close enough to the machine to disable it by its control lever. And finally, Green Lantern tackles the last device located near Italy, battling movie prop aliens brought alive by the last machine protected by their yellow coloring, he uses his power ring to create petrified wood around them before shutting off the machine.
While this is going on, Superman and Batman have located Carthan's ship, and the two heroes board and find that Green Arrow is Carthan's prisoner. Also, Carthan has captured the other JLA members and imprisoned them in a giant crystal. However, before Carthan can explain his situation, Superman, Batman and Green Arrow attack damaging the device that can free the other members in the crystal. Using a diamond tipped arrow, Green Arrow manages to destroy the diamond prison that is holding the other heroes by firing at the crystal's stress point. After hearing Carthan's story, the JLA offers to aid him in overthrowing Xandor, however Carthan declines stating that it is his own fight. Returning to their headquarters, the JLA votes in Green Arrow as their newest member.
Our 9.4 here is tied with one other book for highest graded. I actually know the recent history-last 6 years or so-on both copies. At that time, this book was owned JLA Brad, who put together an amazing JLA collection. He was one of my big collecting rivals at the time (sort of like Indiana Jones and his rivals chasing antiquities LOL) and we certainly cost each other a lot of money until we started corresponding about what we were each doing. At that time, there were five big JLA collectors: JLA Brad, JLA All The Way, MintyMint, ourselves and a fifth collector I will call RR-not using names here, but I obviously know them all. RR had some amazing books, but by that time was no longer actively buying. Probably the way CGC scores registry sets, his collection would have been #1, at least in the expanded JLA set, because he had the best B&B #28. But RR never registered his collection. JLA All the Way was ahead of everyone in the registry up until 2016, when he started selling his books. That collection was initially listed on E-Bay, but MintyMint, JLA Brad and I all started contacting JLA All The Way off E-Bay and the bulk of his books were basically sold in private auctions. Needless to say, JLA All The Way made out very well with three active bidders who were somewhat obsessed with their collections. JLA All The Way’s books really catapulted our collection, but none of us got them all, quite frankly, none of us are middle eastern collectors who could afford them all at once.
Once JLA All The Way has sold his books, JLA Brad assumed the top spot. He had been collecting JLAs longer than Minty Mint or us and had more slots filled. He remained atop the mountain for a couple of years, until Minty Mint and I basically pooled our collection-more about that below. Then around 2020, JLA Brad started getting some extraordinary offers on Heritage Make A Bid for some of his key books-basically 3 or 4 times what he had paid. JLA Brad decided at the time to cash in, so once he sold those books on Heritage, Minty Mint and I started competing for the rest, which he initially sold one at a time over the next few years.
Also around that time RR’s books started appearing on the market. RR’s Collection was never complete, but every book he owned was highest graded, including Issues #1, #2, #3, #4, #17, #!8 and #24. Those books were sold privately and the prices were sky high. At that time, I had never met RR, as there was a dealer handing his JLA, Flash and GL collections. I passed on the first four issues, as did the other guys, because of his prices. I do remember the price on his #4 9.4 was $30,000. I eventually ended up with his #3 9.4, but that was after it had changed hands at least a couple of times. His #1 9.6 is the book currently listed for sale by ComicConnect for $350,000. There are too many #2 9.6s for me to track that one.
In 2018, MintyMint and I came to terms, as we decided that bidding each other up on every book was financial suicide. MintyMint is probably the smartest comic collector I know, and he knew he had something that we coveted even more: a run of very high grade early FFs. So we swapped a number of our JLAs for FFs, which moved MintyMint past us and JLA Brad up to the top of the registry. We did retain a right of first refusal on the JLAs we traded, that deal would make a Wall Street banker blush with its complexity.
So for 2018-2019 MintyMint had the top JLA collection. But his collection always stopped around Issue #75, he never took it any further, I should note that MintyMint acquired in that timeframe the other #1 9.6 off a Heritage Auction. During that period, we kept the JLAs we didn’t trade MintyMint, but did not bid against him on books he wanted, so we each had a lot of books the same grade, MintyMint just had all the single highest graded ones.
In early 2020, we reacquired our JLAs from MintyMint in another books exchange (another very involved transaction involving some even more valuable books that we eventually reacquired as well) plus his #1 9.6, which vaulted us to the top of the registry. But, what we did not know at the time was that MintyMint had acquired JLA Brad’s #4 9.4. So, since we missed on both the #4 9.4s, for several years, Issue #4 was the glaring hole in our collection-we still had JLA All The Way’s 9.2, which we had swapped to MintyMint and then reacquired LOL, but wanted to raise the minimum grade of this set to 9,4. MintyMint kept a 9.4 JLA collection for several years, but eventually in April 2023 we acquired this book for a single highest graded Detective and cash. We probably overpaid, but it gave us highest graded copies of the first 25 issues, how could we pass?
I do not know where the other #4 9.4 is now, but that’s the story, which I am quite certain nobody but us will ever read LOL-as I have said, these descriptions are largely our diary of our collection and probably of no interest to anybody but us. Needless to say, having been owned by two of our collector friends, this one is special to us.
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