None of those books were tough to find in 9.8. $800 for the ICE would be insane but so was the $500.

I'm only reporting what I've read on the boards about the books having various flaws generally (the regular and ICE covers) and you and I can shake our head all we want about the regular cover being at $500 but it is and it's not going anywhere but up in the last few minutes of the auction for sure. I don't know that the ICE SS will bring $800 but it will bring more than the regular cover and one already sold for $500 (and that only took a few hours) so I've got to think the ICE variant (which is 17 times as rare) will bring a few hundred more than the regular cover. Hell I think it was a mistake to put a $800 BIN on the ICE book when the regular cover is at $500 in an auction. The way sales have been going I won't be surprised by anything.

So when you go to your LCS, do you automatically assume that all books on the racks are 9.8s? And if not, does this suddenly mean the book is hard in 9.8?

Moderns that are truly hard in 9.8s are incredibly rare and are almost all caused by printing defects or errors (that aren't accepted as such by CGC) - just because a couple of people complain that they can't seem to find 9.8 copies of a certain book does not mean that it's suddenly hard in 9.8.

Please don't keep perpetuating this myth - every single copy of ToT #1 that I've run into so far has been no better or no worse than any other modern book that came out that particular week.

I look at it this way. Speculation, plain and simple. But then again, it is a great story and the variants were completely damaged.

So yes, a mixture of the two could bring in that kind of $$

Look at Chew!

I look at it this way. Speculation, plain and simple. But then again, it is a great story and the variants were completely damaged.

So yes, a mixture of the two could bring in that kind of $$

Look at Chew!

My recollection is that the regular Thief of Thieves 1 had a weird printing problem with color ... I don't have one of those copies or I would try and photograph it and show it. Also the people who I know who were at Image Expo complained that finding high grade copies of the book was very difficult. In fact, I paid extra for some of my copies of the ICE variant so that I could get potential 9.8 candidates because they were apparently hard to come by. Now is all this BS. I don't think so because it was floating around before the AMC deal, but it could be. Unfortunately, the comic industry suffers from a lot of puffing and a lot of self fullfulling prophecies and a lot of people spreading rumors that help their particular situation (e.g., the Saga RRP is a $25 book b/c I want to buy 10 copies for $25 each). I'm the first one to admit that I don't understand the prices on these boos, but it seems that I was dead wrong and that the prices aren't going anywhere but up as people continue to stockpile more and more of the quality copies of the title. The tough thing about the heat on a lot of these image books is that it happens at a time when it is relatively inexpensive for a motivated buyer to put a big dent in the market by gobbling up a few hundred or even a few thousand copies for a few hundred or a few thousand dollars.