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Rarest Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Comic Turtlemania Gold At Auction
There are rare copies of comic books. There are, for example, only eleven known copies of the unreleased Motion Picture Funnies #1 that features the first appearance of Namor, Sub-Mariner. And then there is the Turtlemania Special #1. Of which ten copies of the comic were made.
By 1986, as actual Turtlemania courtesy of the kid's cartoon had taken off, Robert Wilson, owner of Metropolis Comics, published a one-off special with original material donated by Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman, including previews and unseen artwork, including a Bob Burden centerfold poster with the turtles, Flaming Carrot and Cerebus. The gold variant only sold ten copies, each with an original sketch and autograph on the back. And this copy is part of Heritage Auction's Platinum Collection, going under the hammer on Thursday,
This copy (10/10) is signed by and was previously owned by Flaming Carrot creator Bob Burden, who sold it to a collector in 2018. And now here it is. At the end of May 2019, Turtlemania Gold 7/10 (graded 9.0 by CGC) sold for $58,000. This copy has already hit $63,000 with days to go…
Turtlemania Special #1 Gold Edition (Metropolis Comics, 1986) CGC Qualified NM+ 9.6 White pages. Talk about a small print run: only 10 copies of the Gold edition were produced; consequently, it's safe to call this the rarest Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic in the world. We offered a CGC Qualified 9.2 copy earlier this year that sold for $72,000, so suffice it to say, we think demand for this Qualified 9.6 copy, the highest-graded copy of the issue, will be very strong indeed. The issue has a gold/orange outer cover, and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Cerebus, and Flaming Carrot pin-up by Bob Burden. Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird drew the cover and art for the book, and there are two wonderful turtle sketches on the back. CGC notes, "3 Names, Sketch and '10/10' Written on Back Cover in Pen & Marker." Not listed in Overstreet.