and French reprints and graded books. In the third
phase more numbers for each series were available
(not only American key issues) and also the variety of countries represented increased (Spain, the
Netherlands, Italy, Greece). After that the European
comic variant market become the worldwide comic
variant market (e.g. Brazil, Argentina, Mexico) and
a magazine, Foreign Comic Collector, appeared on
the horizon to inform buyers and sellers alike about
the potential of the market! :-)
Liam: Who do you find your customer base to be?
Is there a significant ratio between North American
customers, European customers, and the rest of
the world?
Mario: Yes, this is the case. Roughly 80 percent
of my customers are from the United States and
15 percent from Canada. The other 5 percent are
buyers from the UK, Asia (Singapore, Malaysia and
Japan), Australia, Israel and Russia.
Within the US there are a lot of buyers specifically
from Texas, New York and California, but also lots
from other states.
From my point of view, the US comic collector
market is the most professional (and ambitious)
comic market in the world [when referring to the
foreign comic market].
Liam: Which books stand out as most desirable to
your general customer base?
Mario: The following list shows the most desired
(overall):
1. Incredible Hulk #181 German variants (Regular
and Gold Foil)
2. Amazing Fantasy #15 German, Italian, and Spanish variants
3. Amazing Spider-Man #1 German variants
4. Amazing Spider-Man #300 Spanish, Italian and
French variants
In the Mexican La Prensa Spiderman
run, Gwen Stacy didnt die but married
our favorite webslinger!
Officialy sanctioned by Marvel, or done
on the sly? Depends on who you ask.
5. Amazing spider-man #129 German, Italian, Netherlands, Spanish variants
6. Venom #0 Italian variant (Platinum Cover)
7. Amazing Spider-Man #238 German, Spanish,
Italian variants
8. X-Men #94 German variant
9. Fantastic Four #1 German variant
10. Tales of Suspense #39 German variant
Liam: Very interesting – I see some books on there
that I personally search for on a regular basis, including a few I’ve bought from you!
Thank you so much for sitting down and discussing this with me! I think we’ve touched on some
points that will be interesting for our readers to
think about, and I really enjoyed learning a bit more
about where you came from in the collecting world.
Do you have any thoughts you want to leave our
readers with?
Mario: Collecting foreign comic books is about
much more than the book itself. It is a journey into
other countries, cultures and languages. Most of
the comic books are adapted in some way to the
different national comic book markets.
One ^[\H\