Iron Man #1 is the start of the solo title from 1968, six years after the character actually first appeared. Owners price it as a debut and it is not one, and 355 documented sales show exactly what that mistake costs.
Fantastic Four #5 is the first Doctor Doom, and it is the one book on my Silver Age list whose high-grade decline is documented sale by sale. Twelve results in two grades tell the story without any interpretation from me.
Doctor Strange debuts in a five-page back-up story in Strange Tales #110, not on the cover, which is why the book sat undervalued for decades and why plenty of copies survive in collections nobody sorted.
Amazing Spider-Man #2 has the first Vulture and the first Terrible Tinkerer, and it spends its life being priced against the issue in front of it. The sales record shows exactly what that comparison costs an owner who makes it.
Amazing Spider-Man #4 gives you the first Sandman and the first Betty Brant, and it is one of the early Spider-Man issues that survives in real quantity. That changes how it should be sold, because condition does nearly all the work on a book this common.
The first Green Goblin sits in Amazing Spider-Man #14, and it is the issue that pulled the whole early Spider-Man run upward. Here is every documented sale I can attribute to a house and a date.
Avengers #4 brought Captain America back after twenty years, and it is the one Silver Age Marvel with a 1966 reprint that looks almost identical to the original. One detail on the cover separates them.
Galactus fills the cover of Fantastic Four #49, which is why people assume it is his first appearance. It is not. He appears at the end of issue 48, and the two books trade as separate markets.
Tales to Astonish #27 is the first Hank Pym, and that is not the same thing as the first Ant-Man. The costume arrives eight issues later, and knowing which book you are holding changes the number by a lot.
The Justice League’s first appearance is not Justice League of America #1. It is Brave and the Bold #28, a year earlier, and confusing the two is the most expensive mistake an owner of either book can make.
