Tales from the variant hunt - Iron Fist 14

I have been asked several times how I find variants.  I don't pretend to be the best variant hunter out there.  Frank (ebay seller comichunters), Terry (cosmic spider-man), Harry (horkorp) and a few others in the Variant Mafia would get that award.  Searching for them is a blast and can be addicting.  Here is the story of one successful hunt.

A couple of years ago an ebay seller listed a lot titled "Iron Fist 14 variant and others" with a high starting bid of $1000 or so.  Here is the picture of the Iron Fist book that was included in the auction.  There were no bidders.

Since the auction had no bidders, I emailed the seller and asked him if he would send me more pictures of the Iron Fist and information on the other books in the lot.  Here are the additional pictures that he sent and he said that he would throw in a Silver Surfer 3 and a Silver Surfer 4 if we could agree on a price.  I offered $600 for the lot.  He countered at $700.  We split the difference at $650.

So was this a good deal or not, you ask.  It is always difficult to grade from scans or pictures on ebay.  At the time, Iron Fist 14 price variants sold for around $350 in CGC 3.5, $700 in CGC 6.0 and $1700 in 8.0.  Is that a tape pull on the T on the cover or is it a fingerprint?  Tape pulls are a grade killer, fingerprints or smudges keep a book from being NM but this book obviously isn't NM anyway.

I submitted the book to CGC and it was my registry set book until I was able to get a higher graded one from Jon McClure.  I gave the Avengers 4 to Shieldagent because it was one of his grails and I have a nice one already.  The rest of the books are in a box somewhere. 

Here is the book back from CGC.  After I received the McClure Iron Fist 14, I sold this one so I was able to buy more high-grade variants.