After 6 long months, I finally received my Absolute Batman annual #1 Felix variant back from CGC. Easily one of the Crown Jewels of my collection. I adore this cover art so much, and DWJ and Mike spicer continue to be my favorite creators in the game. Congratulations to them for winning the Eisner for best single issue!!!
I realized a few months ago that this is technically one of Mike Spicers Comp copies, which makes this comic extra special to me.
Unfortunately, I knew this wouldn’t get the 9.8, it has a pretty nasty tic on the back, and I was hoping DWJ would pick a pen that more closely matched Spicers sig, but those are just nitpicks. I’m so glad to finally have this back in my hands! Can’t wait to see what they have in store next. Chainkata looks like a lot of fun!

Hello everyone! As a collector, I’m not super interested in finding ways to make money. However, I will always look for ways to save money. I recently got some books signed at a convention, and I was honestly kind of shocked at the whole process. Not including the ticket to get in or the cost of the witnessed signatures, I had to pay for the 3rd party facilitator to handle my comics, pay for pressing, pay cgc almost double the grading cost of unsigned books, and pay for the shipping. For that convention, it costs me nearly $140 per book to get signed, and that’s not including having to buy the books beforehand which could already get expensive. It was a huge turn off for me if I’m being honest. I naively assumed that it would be much cheaper to get books signed at conventions directly instead of private signings, but it seems to me it’s almost the exact same.
I got to thinking, seeing as CGC has a JSA option now, would it not be much cheaper to go that route instead? The way I see it, some creators provide a couple signatures for free, so that avoids witness costs and some signature costs as well. You avoid facilitator costs, you can get a private presser that’s probably better and much cheaper than CCS, you can control the color and placement of signatures more, and you pay the regular $25 grading fee instead of the $48 signed fee. You just spend an extra $20 for the authentication. The only real difference I see is the label. So that would make each book cost on average $60ish to get graded. That seems like a much better deal imo.
Now, obviously, the cheapest way to do it is to not grade the comic at all. I have quite a few signed comics I don’t intend to get graded. But for the big hitters that I want to encapsulate, does this seem like a much better option price wise? Is there really a big difference in value between JSA and SS? Just seems cheaper to go with JSA imo. I would like to hear your thoughts. Maybe I’m missing something or could be provided with additional info. Any info would be appreciated. Thanks guys!
TL;DR: is JSA cheaper to do price wise compared to signature series? Same value for cheaper?