Helping Out a New Comic Store Owner… and Finding a HUGE Comic Book Signature!

hey guys Mike here from lunch money comics with a quick followup to my last video Yeah in that last video I found a brand new comic book and collectible store near where I live I met this awesome owner named Rick and the only thing more amazing than how beautiful this store was was his fantastic prices I said in that video I'd be heading back soon to help him go through some new comic books he got in he had a ton of long boxes I was helping him you know pull out the keys price some things out well that's exactly what I did I took about 3 hours of footage and condensed it down to about 5 minutes so go check out that footage there is a voiceover then I'll meet you back here afterwards where I want to address some comments I got on that last video and also show you two comic books I got from him that I'm pretty darn excited about check out the footage and I'll see you back here in a few minutes so here we are of course starting with the X-Men books my favorite like I said in my last video I can price these in my sleep we're starting with the X-Men series 1991 series started by Jim Lee most of these guys are only a couple of dollars I did find this X-Men number four first Omega Red but even in the cases of these like minor Keys Rick was pricing everything at a couple dollars you know this is sort of the way he operates his business he likes to price things cheap move them out the door make people happy and I think that's fantastic obviously uh but yeah this Xmen series you know everything's a couple dollars at most there were a couple cool ones like this you know number 24 famous Rogue Gambit cover Everyone likes uh I got to apologize for the camera angles I was using my camera mount I was talking so much I was just really bad at aiming it I did find X-Men numbers 52 and 53 for first appearance of Bastion and Cameo if you watch X-Men 97 you know what that is and first Onslaught which I think we can expect to see in a future season of X-Men 97 here we are in The Uncanny run lots of annuals which are all great reads by the way if you ever have a chance to pick them up you know we have first uh Nimrod right here in number 191 cool book we get the famous Doom cover not a great one we have Life Death part two we have number 2011 first appearance of baby cable we have a first appearance of Omega mutants right there in a number 208 uh number 210 first Marauders is a great book 212 this is the first Wolverine and Sabertooth fight here I am talking about the death of the mutant Destiny I'm explaining the relationship between mystique and Destiny and their relationship to Nightcrawler which was convoluted and this was a long complicated conversation here I am looking at Thor lots of Walt Simonson Thor run which people uh find it very highly acclaimed lots of early beta R Bill actually we did find the first appearance of Beta Ray Bill Rick already pulled it out that's number 337 very very cool boy I think he sold it pretty much immediately here you see I find number 341 I think I've talked about this on my channel in the past this one's funny because it has a cameo of Clark Kent in Lois Lane I was explaining it to Rick uh and he wanted to see it so I figured I'd flip it open and here you see them literally bump into uh you know Clark and Lois by name it's kind of neat uh here we are now looking at uh the throg storyline so there's actually three issues of when Thor turns into a frog that's the last issue we found all three here's a random box we found tons of teenage M Ninja Turtles most of it was reprints of the early issues but I say it all the time guys you know out here in New England we find Ninja Turtle stuff everywhere because this where they were printed uh this box was pretty random I'm jumping around here we have some Secret Wars that was in there he did find a secret Wars 8 at some point he pulled out here we have first uh us Ultram man I believe or at least early Ultram man uh had the card in there Rick thought this was cool he threw it in with all of his Kaiju figures and stuff his Japanese figure case which is kind of fun uh there was a lot of the Marvel team ups with Spider-Man there's a few decent books in that run nothing great I was kind of eager to get over back to the Wolverines which you'll see in a second we found a ton of these Marvel Universe though these are sort of the Encyclopedia of uh Marvel characters he had pretty much whole run in multiple copies he bundled them together so if anyone is looking for like the whole encyclopedia they're there tons of the other Publishers you know uh image and Valiant lots of pit of course lots of preacher I cut most of this footage guys it was pretty much half a long box full of this stuff we see pretty ubiquitous 90s stuff here I am back in the X-Men stuff we're in the xfactor run this is a pretty good book first appearance of AR Angel always a great book to find just kind of tucked in this box and here we are uh sort of the late 90s X-Men all the things sort of associated with mostly the Age of Apocalypse which I'll talk a little bit more about in a few minutes and now we're moving to the Conan guys I know nothing about Conan I really don't I know a few things but there was a lot of this stuff for those that are interested in it so here's a reprinting of Hulk 181 great option if you want to read about this iconic fight between Hulk and Wolverine without cracking open a multi thousand comic book to do so here I am finding a comic book I had as a kid and I've been looking for recently I'll talk more about it in a second but it wasn't just ' 80s and '90s books here's a collection he had just gotten in guys it's one of those things if you build it they will come in the two months since he's been open people have been walking in constantly with vintage toys and Comics they wanted to sell or trade and he had just gotten these in some pretty awesome books here some iconic Joker covers Joker number one I've always loved this cover was Joker with sort of the laser heat ray eyes uh first appearance of Black Canary not very high grade but a cool book anyways here's a big one guys this is Batman number 251 iconic Neil Adams cover everyone loves this book uh another Neil Adams book the first appearance of the reaper very very cool very sharp high grade and this is probably the best book I found in here first appearance of Rosal ghoul in very high grade pretty awesome book to just walk through the door and here we are at the end of the night it was over 3 hours we were tired Rick was collapsing on the floor I just took the pricing gun uh we were getting punchy guys we had a really fun time hanging out my buddy Ben was there filming just a great time hanging out with these guys but there's one more comic book I found at the end of the night and this is not your typical X-Men number one is it pretty iconic signature right in the front that everyone recognizes let's go back down to the basement guys I'll talk about my experience and how I ended up with this beauty in my collection so there you go that was once again has been collectible toys and comics in wil Bram Massachusetts an awesome store an awesome owner I got to be honest guys you know I've been in contact with Rick quite a a bit from the first time I met him at that store you know he's been sending me pictures of collections that he's gotten in amazing stuff honestly all the time um I know a lot of people actually found this store on their own in the area everyone's sort of saying the same thing not only are the prices great and it's a beautiful store but Rick is an incredibly personal awesome guy uh you know and I've been trying to help him out uh just because you know he's trying to grow the store and he's got a lot of attention people have been going in there a lot he's actually trying to expand the store he's uh hiring a new person actually uh but he definitely could use a little bit of help of people who uh you know are dealing with comic books a lot and that's why I've been trying to help him out I'm happy to have a brand new comic book and collectible store near where I live it's always exciting to have that I wanted to do well and I just honestly really like Rick he's such a really cool guy so a couple things I want to address really quickly that came up in my last video um you know I said several times in that last video I thought the prices were a little too low I feel like I misspoke a little bit I don't think they were too low I just think they were lower than usual and I'm comparing him relatively to other brick-and-mortar comic book shops and especially comic shows like I said he prices a lot of his stuff by going on eBay recent sold prices and he just picks the lower numbers and he does know his comic books he's doing this intentionally guys so I think if you compare his prices to stuff you find online I think they're exactly comparable I think that he's really competitive uh in that regard you know a lot of people go to Comic shows and they look up on eBay recently sold price they like look you're too high Rick doesn't want any of that he doesn't negotiate he just picks the lowest price so that's the first thing I don't think they were too low I just think they were competitive secondly uh a comment I got last time and I can't tell if people were being factious about this or not uh some people said never tell a comic store owner that their prices are too low um one if it's someone you like of course you can you can tell your friends that right I think your prices are a little low I was just being friendly um but people think people are going to price up things when you tell them that Rick doesn't I had no influence on this grown man running his own store absolutely not guys you know he prices his books low on purpose didn't really matter what I said and even when I was helping him price out books I'm a pretty conservative guy anyways I tend to price things low whenever I gave him a range on a book say it was like $5 to $10 he'd always put $4.99 even if I told him you could probably get 10 for $4.99 that's how he runs his business I love the fact that he does it uh he just has fantastic prices and a lot of other people have absolutely discovered it so I was over there helping him out I have a great Report with the guy he's really cool I didn't set out to get some new comic books from him but I did uh there's a story behind each one of these before I show you what they are if you like this sort of stuff head on down like comment subscribe follow me on Instagram on lunch money Comics IG you can also follow Rick on Instagram as well I'll put links down in my description uh the first book I want to show you you saw in the footage it is this this is Xcalibur spelled funny issue number three from 1995 and this is from the Age of Apocalypse crossover event so this came out in a very formative time in my life in the mid 90s uh and the Asia apocalypse was a another alternate reality you know marvel does this all the time all Comics do too DC does it as well but I feel like the X-Men do it more than anyone else uh yeah basically how this happens is the character of Legion goes back in time and accidentally kills his father Professor X and it's the old you know grandfather Paradox what happens when you go back in time and you kill your own grandfather or your father what happens well in Marvel Comics you get an offshoot reality usually dark and dystopian what happens in this without the uh X-Men being led by the noble Professor Xavier apocalypse takes over the world and the X-Men are instead led by Magneto and because it's Magneto and it's a dark dangerous world most of the X-Men characters that we have in this version are anti-heroes or just kind of straight up bad guys and that's sort of what we have here and here's the thing guys it captured my imagination Not only was it a cool take on a lot of the X-Men characters we know and love it was a very different take on my favorite character of Nightcrawler you see him right there on my shirt well this is his dark counter point in the Age of Apocalypse you know in our normal 616 Universe he is Kurt Wagner he is swashbuckling he is fun he's nice he's a religious man despite the fact he looks like uh demonic you know uh entity he's actually one of the nicest kindest X-Men and because of that although he teleports around and will punch a new swords he never kills people right he's a very nice guy well not so much his Age of Apocalypse counterpart because this isn't Kurt Wagner this is Kurt darkholm and that's his name because in this alternate reality he's raised by his mother Raven darkholm otherwise known as Mystique so he's definitely not the nice Nightcrawler we know and love and unlike the night crawler we know in love he is willing and able to use violence whenever necessary so here we have a short 4issue sort of side series tying into Asia apocalypse called Excalibur a play on the Excalibur team we all know it starts with an ex only four issues that's all it was the only thing really in common with the two teams is in fact Nightcrawler uh and what's going on in this issue is you know these mutants they are actually trying to hide basically from apocalypse who's trying to hunt them down apocalypse like normal Has His Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in his Horsemen of death is none other than Wade Wilson he's called Dead Man Wade yeah he's a bad version of Deadpool and he's trying to hunt these guys down actually one of the characters damask is her name uh she actually defects and becomes a good guy when she sees how bad apocalypse is we also have this new character right here called Switchback very cool character you know who her power is she can actually go back in time 10 seconds and change things wicked cool concept I'd love to see more of her alas she didn't really ever appear outside of X Caliber issues 1- 4 love for them to bring her back right uh so dead man wave this evil version of Deadpool is hunting them down and what happens at the end of this book well Kurt darkholm wants nothing to do with it and decides to stop him pretty easily he teleports behind Wade Wilson and then teleports away with his head killing him instantly well he doesn't really die of course it's Deadpool and he can regenerate that's what he does but this just goes to show how powerful Nightcrawler can be when he uses his powers on the offensive and he's not such a nice guy now the reason why I wanted this book was uh because I've been talking about it recently I was recently on a show called the Council of X it's run by my good friend Ryan the Colossus collector and we were talking about our favorite X-Men moments you know going through each X-Men character and I brought this up although it's not the main 616 Nightcrawler I thought this was a cool thing I went to go find it and I couldn't find this book I have no idea where this book is maybe it's back there somewhere in my back issues but here I saw it you know in Rick's long boxes I said hey it's not worth much can I grab this I explain to him you know what was going on in it um yeah guys and I always thought this was really cool uh when I was a kid but recently this also has a little bit of modern comic book connections because spoiler alert for those of you that are reading the fall of X in sort of the end of the Ken era in the recent X-Men number 35 the X-Men are fighting once again against Apocalypse in Nightcrawler tries to stop this incredibly powerful mutant how does he do it he actually says I know you think I'm a nice guy but I'm not that nice and he teleports away apocalypse's eyes yeah pretty hardcore for the good nature Nightcrawler of course it does do anything to apocalypse he just regrows his eyes back cuz he can change his molecules but I thought it was pretty cool and when I saw that I was like hey that's exactly the type of you know Kurt darkholm things that he would have done so that's why I wanted this book guys it's not worth a whole lot uh but it definitely brings me back to my childhood happy to pick it up and share that story with all of you let me know if any of you have read the age of apocalypse story lines I'd love to hear from you down in the comments so this last book uh you saw in the footage uh no point in beaten around the bush it's this this is an X-Men number one from 1991 and yes it is son signed by Stan Lee right there on Professor X's wheelchair uh has a COA from Becket and Associates uh and guys this is really cool but I think the story behind it is even better because you know where Rick got this Rick bought this himself in 1991 when this book came out on QVC the Home Shopping Network for those uh kids out there who have no idea what I'm talking about way back before the internet there was a television show you could watch and if there was something that you saw on that show that you liked you could call a phone number and they would send it to you you can actually buy things with your telephone watching TV that's what Rick did in 1991 uh QVC was selling a ton of these signed by Stanley with a COA and Rick ordered one and had delivered to his house uh even came with the uh the original case that it was in uh and these are awful like this hard plastic here it's old it's cracked it's yellowed it's dirty this is what it was in when I found it uh when I saw I'm like Rick that's really cool he told me the story I said well how much do you have on it and he said $50 and I said Rick that's too low that is too low a Stanley signature is almost always at least $100 even on a book like this that was you know a dime a dozen so I looked it up and sure enough yeah you can find some graded ones you know some of the other variant covers of this a little bit higher but I found a copy of exactly this book recently sold for $100 so I told Rick it's at least $100 Rick but I'm I'm curious you know I'm I'm definitely interested in it I've never owned a Stanley signature ever what kind of Comic Collector am I right uh and he said he'd like to sell it to me for $50 anyways that's the kind of guy he is you know like he wasn't going to change the price it was 50 bucks I wanted it 50 bucks was the price I thought that was fantastic this is my first Stanley signature and here's the thing guys you know I don't like it when people sign books they had nothing to do with right uh people do that sometimes but I make an exception for Stanley on this book for a couple reasons even though he didn't work in this exact book of course he invented the X-Men along with Jack Kirby as well as four the characters that are on this variant cover Jean Gray Professor X beast and Angel uh you know you could say indirectly storm right cuz she's an X-Man uh but also the other reason it's Stan Lee it doesn't matter what he signed right people had him sign all sorts of crazy things because it was Stanly uh didn't have to be a book that he worked on so I thought that was pretty cool anyways uh the only bad thing I'll say about it and I'm nitpicking here right I love the comic book but I am going to argue about this case right here because uh like I said this is old it's over 30 years old they get brittle they get discolored and this one here it actually cracked that's how brittle it got and when it cracked it actually slightly damaged the book whenever this happened you know the last 30 something years uh you know it's get a bad uh rap anyways and it damaged this top Corner again I still love the book it still looks fantastic but uh for those of you that have these old books that came in these awful hard plastic cases throw them them away get rid of them toss them and put them in a put them in a new bag and board ASAP so uh yeah guys I'm Blown Away to have my first Stanley signature and it's on an X-Men book even better uh so that's pretty darn cool I didn't go over there looking for comic books guys but I couldn't say no to these so there you go guys a quick video but I felt like the last one definitely needed a follow up and Stanley signature definitely deserved a followup head on down in the comments let me know what you think of everything you saw uh and that's it guys keep hunting for comic books in strange and unusual places always support your local comic book and collectible stores especially if they're new thank you all so very much for watching and I'll see you all next time

Channel: Lunch Money Comics

Views: 8,766

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Id: LJFMWO0xugs

Length: 16min 58sec (1018 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 21 2024