By request... the cover to Five-Score Plus Comic Monthly #23... this appears to be an elusive issue for collectors... I think it's fair to say that sometimes, issues aren't necessarily scarce as they are elusive... that is, there is no reason to assume there are fewer copies in existence than other similar issues... and yet, they nevertheless remain stubbornly elusive and unsighted for a period of time... until such time as a few copies start to appear, and we all wonder why we thought they were so scarce... and I'm betting we'll be saying the same thing about Five-Score #23 in a year or two...
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2 comments:
Your comments about "scarce" versus "elusive" raise a question I have been wondering about for some time. How scarce or rare are some of the early issues?
Are we looking at only a handful of issues in existance? Perhaps only one or two for some issues? Maybe there are no copies of the Hundred Comic Monthly 2...
Do you have a sense of how many people are collecting? Or how many copies of various issues might be sitting in collections?
Numerous issues of Five-score actually seem to be more "elusive" than is the case for many other series. Perhaps readers didn't think much of it and there are only a few left in any condition.
What do you think?
James
All good questions James... and really, I'd need to dedicate a blog entry to answer them thoroughly (or a couple of beers...) because they prompt further questions... a few random responses... I am privy to the content of a number of collections, and indeed to the priorities of many collectors... for example, some are series completists, some aren't... some collect only Blackhawk, and some collect all the major series except for Five-Score... As to how many copies there are of early issues... if you mean 'sighted' or in 'the hands of collectors', then I'd broadly say there is hardly an early issue (1956-1959) which hasn't been sighted/confirmed multiple times... The unquantifiable question is How many copies of particular issues are potentially on the collectors market...? and most pertinently: Are there enough copies of particular issues potentially in circulation to satisfy the hardcore collectors...? And related to this are questions such as How many copies of a particular early issue have turned up in the last 10 years...? This is where specific answers become very interesting, and which I often find myself discussing with fellow collectors... As you suggest, the demand for Five-Score #1 is not quite the same as the demand for Colossal Comic Annual NN/#1, as evidenced in the copies of each which sold on eBay in the last two weeks... Oh, I can confirm The Hundred #2 exists, it has a Congo Bill cover...
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