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Do you have comic book gold in your closet?

Most folks know to look for first issues hoping for an uncovered comic book gem that will yield a small fortune. But did you know there are many other lesser known issues, found in many collections, that could bring you a tidy profit?

It’s true!

Whether in your closet, under a bed, in a basement or garage, or in a box at a flea market, this new feature will give you some comics you may overlook but could be worth a pretty penny! These hidden gold comics range from the old to the new, and many of them are found in you average collection.

Keep watching the Closet Gold category for these books, who knows, you may find a small fortune!

The Iron Man 2 movie is deep in production and we’ve found photos of the villain, Whiplash, in all his glory. Mickey Rourke is playing the villain who made his first appearance in Tales of Suspense #97. Comic Book Secrets continues to watch the prices on this issue and so should you. Click on the link below to see the latest sales and prices for this comic book.

Tales of Suspense 97 - First Whiplash Iron Man 2 Villain

Marvel Comics is celebrating the anniversaries of several characters and titles with special numbering and covers. One of my favorites, due on the stands July 15th, is ALL SELECT COMICS 70TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL #1.

Featuring a Blonde Phantom cover, it is tribute to Timely days gone by. It features new and reprint stories.

Here’s another classic All Select Cover:

From time to time I like to check the actual selling prices for the “hot books” in the Wizard magazine comic book price guide. Make sure you read my comments about the modern titles below. The titles for today are:

Wizard’s Top 5 Over 5
Watchmen 1
New Mutants 98
New Mutants 87
GI Joe 155
Batman: The Killing Joke

Selected Hot 10
Spawn 185
Ultimatum 1 (McGuinness Variant)
GI Joe A New Beginning 0 (Templesmith variant)
Batman 681 (Daniel Variant)

I’m very concerned for anyone purchasing the modern comics as an “investment.” If you notice, most of the comics are variant covers. In my opinion, once again, this looks like a manufactured collectible. If you study the prices of newsstand comic books over the past few years, the variants are the “valuable” issues. I put valuable in quotations because the value is fleeting. I think you are play hot potato with these books. History has shown a quick rise and a sudden plunge in price. Personally, it’s a game I don’t play. Consider yourself warned.

I hope you all have a wonderful Memorial Day. Make sure to take a moment and remember those who have sacrificed for our country.

We’ll be remembering many of our fellow soldiers, and especially my fallen friend and fellow U-2 pilot, Duane Dively.

Freedom isn’t free.

The Bethlehem Pedigree comic book collection originated in Bethlehem, PA and included approximately 18,000 comics! The Bethlehem collection starts in the 1950s and continues through the Silver Age. There are several issues with multiple copies, and the E.J. Kery Kodak-Film-Magazine-Shop stamp on several of the back covers identify many of the books.

Due to the shear size of the collection you stand a decent chance of adding one of these highly collectible pedigree comic books to your very own collection.

Take a look at some Bethlehem Pedigree comics below.

Sony pictures is still committed to a Venom standalone movie. The project is in the script stage. If this continues, now could be the time to pick up some Venom issues, mainly Amazing Spider-man 300, Secret Wars 8 and Amazing Spider-man 252 (for the black costume). These have had a pullback since Spider-man 3. Take a look the issues for sale below and start tracking. As a reference, Spider-man 300 peaked at $1700 (2006) in CGC 9.8, Spider-man 252 hit about $720 in CGC 9.8 (2007) and Secret Wars 8 hit $350 (2007) in CGC 9.8.

If you want to discover more about the comic book movie connection, make sure you check out our free Comics-Movies-Cash Crash Course.

Below you will find the current sale issues of these comics for sale or for your price tracking as more news about the Venom movie is revealed.

The opening weekend numbers are in for Wolverine and he’s a hit. U.S. domestic ticket sales hit $87 million and 101 international locations brought in $63 million for a grand total of $160 million. Not too shabby!

So how are comic books doing on this news? Check out the Comics-Movies-Cash Report to find out!

Plus, here are the latest E-bay sales related to Wolverine for tracking purposes:

Imagine you had a time machine and could go back to the late 1930’s in search of comic books that would later be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. What titles would you purchase? Marvel Comics #1? Green Lantern #1? All-Select #1? Captain America #1?

It’s fun to dream, but like many things, truth can sometimes be stranger than fiction. The Denver Pedigree Comic Book Collection is such a case. A woman in Denver had the “crystal ball” thinking that led her to purchase only #1 issues of comic books from the years 1938-1944. Talk about an investor!

The Denver collection only contained 153 comics. It contains mostly superhero and adventure comics. They were all stored for posterity, not kept as a “reader” collection, leading to amazing condition. Most of the collection is considered the best preserved comic books in existence. The priced realized on these books are in the stratosphere, with a Marvel Comics #1 CGC 8.5 selling for $155,350.00 in February 2009 at Heritage Auctions.

Do you think you have the ability to see the future like a special lady in 1938? If not, try our comics for pennies system to capture key comic books for literally pennies on the dollar.

I was going through some comic books the other day, prepping them and reviewing before I put them on E-bay. Thanks to a new traffic and sales generation technique I’ve been using on E-bay, I started thinking about some comics I’ve sold in the last few years that I wish I didn’t. You can call it sellers remorse. Some of the prices have increased significantly and a couple I was more disappointed at not being able to take a look at them and have them in my collection. Here are a few:

All Winners #1 - I bought this book as part of a small Golden Age collection and unfortunately it had amateur restoration. I sent it to Matt Nelson for some professional fixing. The book that came back was awesome (a tribute to Matt’s fantastic work!). I don’t mess around with restored books too much because of resale, but for my own collection sometimes I don’t care. This is one of those instances. I wish I had this book back, restored or not.

Amazing Fantasy #15 - Same collection, same poor restoration. I sold it around the first movie. Having this back would be pure greed, it sells for more and would help my E-bay strategy. Oh well.

Human Torch #2 (#1) - This book was a VG copy, unrestored, and yes, I just would like it in my collection still. These Timely keys get sucked into personal collections and aren’t seen for years. There is nothing like some real comic book “geeking out” than fanning out a several copies of these old Timely comics - Human Torch, Submariner, Captain America. Sheer bliss for the Golden Age collector!

Amazing Spider-man #1 - See Amazing Fantasy #15 - same collection, no restoration!

Oh well, back to the collection and sorting out the keepers!

Happy Collecting!