Yuku free message boards

It's not surprising that there would be a limited edition of a comic book with the author unaware of its existence. "Variant cover" editions are commonplace in the comics world, and they're almost never signed or numbered, merely released in a lower quantity than the primary version.

I find it very hard to believe that an author would forget an actual signed/limited edition, particularly of a hardcover release of an otherwise staplebound or squarebound item. Over the course of many years, perhaps... I wouldn't be too stunned to discover if, purely as a hypothetical example, A Change of Hobbit had created a slipcase for 50 copies of an Anne McCaffrey paperback original back in 1972, she signed them, and had forgotten about the event during the intervening decades. But something like this? If it's not on the author's website somewhere (bibliography, faq, message board), it's got fraud written all over it.