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Please share this website with others in the collector community.  Tell your friends about Comicbookspeculation.com. We are on Instagram @cbs_daily and on facebook as Comic Book Speculation.  You can also find us on YouTube at Comic Book Wars where we discuss comic book news, market trends, speculation and investment strategies each and every Tuesday around 9:30 pm.  We’ll be back, each and every week to discuss comics, market trends, speculation, investment, sales strategies and more! Without further ado,

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This is your Weekend Update! 

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I want to give a special thanks to ETA Nick for joining me last Saturday afternoon to discuss the comic market and the perils of Tabloid Collecting.  

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Nick’s astute observation that many collectors are learning the hard way by buying comics based upon “news” articles that are as reputable as the stories in the National Enquirer was spot on.   Making speculative predictions based upon clickbait reporting from unsubstantiated sources is not a recipe for success in the comic market. By contrast ETA Nick has made a habit of providing serious collectors with the tools necessary to thrive in any market.

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Do it for the Love

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One of the foundational ideas that Nick and I both agree about is how silly and dangerous it is to tell less experienced collectors to “buy what you like.”  No one would think it was appropriate for a mentor to tell someone they are supposed to be mentoring, “do what you want,” nor would anyone find it wise to suggest that someone who lacks information to “make an uneducated guess.”  Nevertheless, “buy what you like” has somehow been acceptable advice among talking heads in the comic game.

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The reality is that it is shorthand for “I’m gonna run my mouth about some stuff that I don’t know about, encourage you to take the risk with your money, but I don’t want any accountability for your decision because I told you ‘buy what you like’”.  It’s a garbage statement and I hope that you remove it from your vernacular.  If you are like me, you are here strictly for the love of the comic game.
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“Notorious B.I.G. said it best: Either you’re slinging crack rock, or you got a wicked jump shot.’ Nobody wants to work for it anymore. There’s no honor in taking the after school job at Mickey D’s. Honor’s in the dollar, kid. So I went the white boy way of slinging crack rock. I became a stock broker.”  Seth in Boiler Room 

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In today’s world there’s no better market to play around in and make money in than the comic book market.  The comic book industry is a billion dollar industry. We are truly living in a time when comic book culture is mainstream and global in its scope.  Diamond alone distributed more than a half a billion dollars in new comics in 2019. There’s another 120 million dollars in slab sales recorded on GPA alone.  All of this revenue is a fraction of the revenue generated by comic book related film and television projects. Films alone generated more than 3 billion dollars.

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If you are like me then you appreciate that the comic market is in uncharted territory.  While major keys are down about 25% from the high prices these back issues enjoyed just a few short years ago, there are more and mid level keys and minor keys that are bringing top dollar than ever before.

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This is the reason that I have consistently encouraged our listeners to work hard to create a collection that you don’t want to sell.  Buy books that are so precious that opportunities to buy them rarely happen. Buy books that are so cool and so rare that you can’t stand to part with them.  Do it for the love of the game.

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PreCode Horor for the Personal Collection and/or the Flip

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People often ask me to explain that allure of pre-code horror.  “Why do collectors covet these rare books?” In the words of our friend Mikey at Heritage, “because they are fucking cool.”  This week we saw some amazing PCH sales in live auctions on eBay. One that is incredibly noteworthy is the sale of a CGC .5 copy of Chamber of Chills #19 (1953) for $1,963.00.  This book sold for $1,500 in CGC 1.0 condition on January 27, 2020. Obviously this book has historical significance. The punk rock band the misfits appropriated the image and used it on the cover to the single for the song Die Die My Darling.  But it is not a particularly rare book. There are almost a hundred copies on the CGC Census. What I would desperately encourage our readers to do, rather than chase this book up the proverbial ladder of success, look for other titles whose time is coming.  For example a copy of Chamber of Chills #21 can be found for a fraction of the price and has just as striking a cover image. Ironically, a CGC 9.0 copy of issue #21 sold for $2,015 on January 25, 2020. Catch some of these other covers where there are sill deals to be had.

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Another profoundly popular PCH book is Crime Suspenstories #22.  This famous decapitation cover is coveted by collectors because of its association with the Seduction of the Innocent Senate hearings.  One cover that is less popular among collectors, but super cool is Crime Suspenstories #13 which has an amazing Lizzie Borden cover. Shout out to our friend @hidden_gem_comics on IG for reminding me that this comic exists.  As the onslaught of buyers gobbles up PCH books from the back issue market, EC Comics are becoming increasingly difficult for collectors to secure. There’s an opportunity to catch some of these books on the upswing and make some money in the market.

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I’m super interested in PCH books that have dual appeal.  Books like Mystery Men Comics #1 (1939) which is the first appearance of the Blue Beetle and has an amazing cover.  The book has dual significance and appeal to a cross section of collectors. It is truly an investment book with great potential for long term sustained growth.  If Time Warner does for the Blue Beetle what it did for Wonder Woman, this comic could be a mainstream monster that doubles in price over the course of the next several years.  Other collectors are acutely aware of this potential and an incomplete copy of this book slabbed as a CGC .05 sold for $1236.00 on Sunday.  This was the first recorded sale on GPA in over a year.  The last recorded sale was a CGC 3.5 which sold for $7800.00 in November of 2018.

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The same kind of cross appeal exits with books like Captain America Comics #74 (1949).  It features a gorgeous Red Skull horror cover with a striking red border and classic look.  There are two copies for sale on Heritage. There’s less than two weeks until these auctions close and I’m really anxious to see the prices these big books bring.  Like we discussed above, there are under covers which have less value and are less coveted by collectors, but that makes finding a deal on these books more probable.  Captain America Comics #75 is the only other strictly horror comic, but I would encourage you not to sleep on Captain America Comics #72 and #73. They are monstrous covers with cross-appeal to collectors.  Issue #75 sells for a fraction of the price of these other books because Cap is not on the cover but the book is beautiful by any collector’s estimation.

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Acutely Modern – Gamer Comics cross appeal 

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As I discussed above, the intersection of collector cultures is ripe with opportunity.  We are seeing a real push for graded video games and have been for more than a year. Collectors are divesting huge sums of money for WATA graded games.  This intersection of gaming collectors and comic collectors presents an opportunity. These are some of the books I believe you should be aware of in the secondary market.

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Doom was the first person shooter that changed everything.  It had adult themes, cutting edge graphics and was played online.  It was a milestone in gaming technology. This book is a monster. My understanding is that there were two different editions of the comic produced.  One is a giveaway from a gaming convention, the other is a variant included with ID Anthology.

The difference is that on the Anthology version the # sign is on the top, while on the convention giveaway version the # sign is on the bottom.  Also, the convention edition has the #1 italicized but the warning banner at the top of the book is not italicized while on the Anthology version the warning banner is italicized.  I know this is mildly confusing, but I think it is an important distinction because collectors pay a serious premium for these kinds of variations. It is particularly important with this book because the convention edition of the comic has been noted at the first print and is believed to have a fraction of the print run.  There are some vague theories about what convention it was actually given away at, but no consensus opinion about that. By contrast, the Id Anthology was an insert in a box set of 19 games that came with a t-shirt a figure, dog tags, poster and a phone card. I’ve never seen this sealed, but I suspect that if you find one, you hit the jackpot.  Websites suggest that there may have been 10,000 copies of the ID Anthology box set distributed worldwide in 1996.

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A pristine copy of the ID Anthology copy that was opened sold for $403.00 on February 12th on eBay.  By contrast, a ripped and taped version of the giveaway comic sold out of the UK for more than $300.00 on February 19th and a VF copy sold for $350.00 out of Germany on the 12th of this month.

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There are a ton of other comics I think you should be acutely aware of in this niche.  I am only going to run through a few of the more major ones. The first is Resident Evil #1 (1996 Capcom Giveaway).  This book features a gorgeous Bill Sienkiwicz cover. Resident Evil is coming to Netflix and it is an institution on the big screen.  This is a long term investment by any estimation and may be one of the major modern keys of the 90s when all is said and done.

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Castlevania: The Belmont Legacy #1 through #5.  These books are available online. Good luck finding them in the wild.  Castlevania may be the premier video game to slab, the Hulk #181 of the graded video game market when all the dust settles.  I like these books.

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The Last of Us: American Dreams is one of Jimmy’s favorites.  I like the 3rd print because it’s inexpensive for the time being yet relatively hard to find. Another one to chase is the variant for #1 which came with the Survival Edition / Post-Pandemic version of the video game. These comics that come with video games always prove tough to find, especially in high grade.

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Metal Gear Solid is another major video game.  The first issue of this book has a Diamond Retailer Rewards Program variant that is a tough book to find in any grade.  There are some wild prices that are being asked for variants of this series and sometimes the listing prices for these books is astronomical compared to what these books move for in a live auction.  It is worth familiarizing yourself with these titles.

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Until next time, “Happy Hunting you bunch of Savages!” .

– Nico, Esq.

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