There's been a lot of talk among collectors over the past week about the strong selection in the just-opened Comiclink focused auction — and bidding has been heated on a number of books right out of the gate — but it's a rather interesting lot that has captured my attention on the opening evening of the auction: The first and only CGC 10.0 copy of New Mutants #98 — the first appearance of Deadpool — written by Rob Liefeld and Fabian Nicieza and drawn by Liefeld, has topped $7000 within one hour of the opening of the auction.

UPDATE: Already up to $7,754 a few hours later.

There have been over 3900 copies of this 1991 Marvel comic graded by CGC, with only this single copy evaluated at 10.0.

Rather amazingly, this isn't yet a record sale for this issue. In 2009, the first copy graded at CGC 9.9 sold for an astonishing $12,250. That eye-popping sale triggered a flurry of other high-grade submissions which have resulted in a 8 additional CGC 9.9 copies on the census to date, with prices in the $3500-$6000 range.

But none were graded CGC 10.0, until now. You can bet comic market watchers will have their popcorn out for the remaining 12 days of this auction.