Added To The Collection - A Great Lot of Coverless Batman Comics

One of the funnest aspects to comics collecting is that of the hunt, and eBay is tailor made for the experience. The watching, the bidding, and, of course, getting proxy outbid at the last second. Every so often you end up winning a real gem and this is one of those times.

I'm more of a reader than a collector, so I tend to go after books in the lower (and cheaper) grades. I like to have complete books, but if I can get a coverless book in great condition, that's good enough for me. I came across a lot of ten coverless issues from the fifties and early sixties periods, with an opening bid of $9.99. Four of the issues were complete and specified:

Batman #135 ("The Menace of the Sky Creature")

Batman #156 ("Robin Dies At Dawn")

Detective Comics #283 ("The Phantom of Gotham City")

Detective Comics #284 ("The Negative Batman")

The auction also mentioned four issues of Batman and two issues of Detective Comics, no specifics, each missing the first and last couple of pages. I couldn't make out the issues from the image as they began on the third page, but overall, it looked like a deal to me. I ended up being the only one to bid and won it at starting price. When the issues arrived and I began figuring out what the mystery comics were, they turned out to be better than the ones I knew about:

Batman #103 (The first Silver Age issue of Batman)

Batman #114 ("The Bat-Ape")

Batman #124 ("The Mystery Seeds From Space")

Batman #126 ("The Menace of the Firefly")

Detective Comics #231 ("Batman, Junior")

Detective Comics #251 ("The Alien Batman")

The Batman issues have two stories complete out of the three, but that's fine with me. This was the far and away the best $10 I ever spent on comic books.