COMIC DETAILS
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Comic Description:
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Tales of Suspense 39 Apparent MP
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Grade:
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9.4
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Page Quality:
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OFF-WHITE TO WHITE
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Certification #:
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1056551002
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Owner:
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Mississippi Mudcats
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SET DETAILS
Owner's Description
TOS #39 initiates the Iron Man run in Tales of Suspense. As a Marvel key, it has always been very expensive. We bought the pictured 9.4 in a CL auction back on 10/29/2011. Our book has undergone a moderate professional restoration, which borought the purchase price down to below $10,000.
We also had a copy of this book that we purchased on E-Bay when I first started collecting again. It was advertised as being a 9.8, but ungraded. I shelled out about $8,000 for the book in a competitive auction. It really looked great and became the first raw book I ever submitted to CGC at their booth at Dragon Con in Atlanta. I remember how devastated I was when I got the book back and it was only an 8.5. I subsequently sold it and was able to recoup my money. In hindsight, I should have just kept it, as CGC 8.5s make more than $8,000 these days.
It seems nowadays that you rarely see supposedly super high grade copies of key issues offered for sale in the raw. As one of my early mentors in the hobby told me, there is a lot more money to be made if the book is graded, why would they sell it as ungraded unless they are inflating the grade? During the early 2000s, I bought a number of ungraded books, paying in some instances several hundred to even over a thousand dollars. They were usually graded by the seller. I did submit some for grading, about half were restored, none came back as high as they had been graded by the seller. I quit buying raw books except as readers many years ago, but I still appreciate the looks of sharp books in a Mylar sleeve, rather than plastic encasements.
Through the years, I have been offered high grade unrestored copies of this issue many times. But they are always very expensive and I prefer to concentrate on completing runs rather than just key issues, which definitely makes me a dinosaur in this hobby. The real appreciation I have seen has been in the keys and continues that way. It has certainly been the way to go as an investor, but I have always just been a collector. In other words, I am not the sharpest tool in the shed LOL.
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