SUPERMAN TO THE RESCUE!
For those who didn’t catch the recent news item, it was reported that a family was facing foreclosure on a house they had been in since 1950. While cleaning out the house for the move, they found a box of comics in the basement. Guess what was in there? Yep, ACTION COMICS #1 !!! They have contacted Stephen Fischer from Metropolis Comics out of New York and he has convinced the mortgage company to hold off the sale of the home due to the value of this comic. It will be going up for auction later this month with an estimated value of a quarter of a million! Yes, Old Blue to the rescue, again! (I wonder what the other comics were.)
And, of course, you had to have been living in a cave to not know that an 8.5 copy of ACTION COMICS # 1 sold for $1,500,000 a few months back. The new Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide is in and it seems to reflect the recent sale records. As previously reported here, an 8.0 copy was the first comic to crack the $1,000,000 mark, only to be beaten a few days later by some “Batman crazies” who bid a copy of DETECTIVE COMICS # 27 up to $1,075,000.
Naturally, news of this kind gets some people to believe that ALL comics, especially the ones they have, are valuable. Currently, someone on South New Jersey Craigslist has a posting for 48 comics from the ’80s and he wants $300 for the batch. There is no list or picture, and I’m trying to figure out what comics he has that he believes will bring over $6 per issue on the average. That’s just one example. I check Craigslist everyday, hoping to find a bargain and I’m constantly amazed that some 
people can’t figure out that the odds of finding a collector who happens to want every issue they have is practically zero. Only someone like myself, who plans on trying to resell, would take the whole group–and then only if it is at a wholesale price. A hint to potential sellers out there: if you truly want to sell all of them and time is an issue, DON’T let the first buyer pick and choose specific issues unless you are getting close to guide price. They will be “cherry picking” and what you have left will be practically worthless to the next person. I’ll buy a whole group and give a fair price (even stuff from the ’80s and ’90s) as long as there are some key books. And, of course, condition is critical. You wouldn’t believe what people bring in that was described on the phone as “mint”.
This brings us back to the Overstreet P.G. I did a short analysis of the top Golden Age and Silver Age changes last year and will do another one for this year’s edition. Last year, if you remember, the top Silver Age books gained more in value, percentage-wise, than the top Golden Age. I figured this was partially due to them being familiar to all demographics and being less expensive, making them even more attractive. Golden Age comics probably are purchased by the older, and possibly more affluent, collectors.
Some different numbers came out this year. The top 10 Golden Age books grew at a 25.73% rate, while the top 10 Silver Age books grew at a 24.38% rate?! BUT, this is terribly skewed due to the incredible jump experienced by the “big two” – ACTION # 1 and DETECTIVE # 27. They gained 60% and 83 %, respectively. ACTION COMICS # 1 is now listed in the Overstreet in NM (9.2) at $1,200,000. Last year is was only $750,000. Batman’s first appearance jumped from $575,000 to $1,050,000. If you take those two outliers out of the mix, the next 8 golden age books only rose by 9.72%. However, the next 10 golden age books (11 -20) gained 17.53% in value compared to 11 – 20 of the silver age gaining 15.61%. Regardless, in these tough economic times, people are still respecting comics as a sound investment.
Still, when it comes down to it, it is the key issues and in top grade that exhibit the highest percentage of gain. Last week, I was shown a decent silver age collection, but there were hardly any keys, and although those present added up to a significant amount, they are a slow, slow sell. Think about it – people will buy an Avengers #1 or a #57 (1st Vision), but how many want #56? – Only someone whose goal is to collect ALL of them, and those collectors are few and far between. Single digits and key issues sell. The rest, unless in high, high grade (we’re takin’ 9.2 or better) sit and wait, unless you sell well below guide.
Back to the Overstreet and a few observations. It seems that they have decided that the ratio of NM to Good is now roughly 15:1. When it first came out, they had an arbitrary 3:1 ratio between Mint to Good for ALL issues. It appears that as more and more information is gathered, they are trying to make a conscientious effort to reflect the actual scarcity of the high grades compared to the lower ones. Last year, Hulk #1 had the widest spread at 40:1 (that was $40,000 in NM to $1,000 in Good). I believe it continues to have the widest margin, but it has now spread to roughly 46 : 1. (As an aside, I have owned probably a dozen #1′s over the years and never even saw a copy at a show that I would grade higher than a F+. True top condition Hulk 1′s are rare, accounting for that spread.) And, it has surpassed both Amazing Spider-Man #1 and Showcase #4 (1st S.A. Flash) to jump to the #3 position at $65,000. Just above at $70,000, is Fantastic Four #1, with Amazing Fantasy #15 still holding on to the #1 spot at $100,000. Again, these are only “guide” prices for a theoretical “9.2″ copy, as there are those willing to shell out more for CGC high grades. A Hulk #1 has sold for over $125,000 and a copy of AF # 15 brought the hammer down at just over $190,000. A Green Lantern #76 has sold for over $30,000! Superman #1 has taken over the #3 spot among the golden age books with its 
$500,00 price tag bumping Marvel Comics #1, which actually saw a $10,000 decrease to $450,000. A few other quick snapshots would be that except for the big 67% jump for GL # 76, the bronze and copper age books showed a moderate, single digit increase on the average. Big Little Books were stagnant. Platinum age saw NO movement. Except for the 1st 3 ever crime comics (Crime Does Not Pay 22 – 24), the Crime genre saw only a very small upward movement. The top 10 Horror, Romance, and Sci-Fi books showed small increases, while Westerns actually showed a decline across the board?! When it comes to investment advice, all I can say with any confidence is buy high grade gold or silver age. Personally, I wouldn’t “invest” in current books. Buy ‘em ’cause you like ‘em!
The story above should give all of us that glimmer of hope at stumbling across an old collection ourselves. Last Spring, I picked up two collections of golden age that were from the original owners. My biggest coup, though, was years ago when a former student alerted me when her Dad came upon comics that he had when he was a kid in the late ’30s/early ’40s. Among the box that he found in his parents’ attic were Superman 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11 and more, Batman 2, Captain Marvel #1, the first appearance of Wonder Woman in Sensation Comics, Sub-Mariner Comics #1, Detective Comics 12, 26, 28, 29 31, 34, 35, 38 & others I can’t remember now. Look at those numbers again. The owner remembered having had TWO boxes of comics. He only found ONE! I couldn’t afford to buy them, so we set up a consignment deal and each month, I would stop by, give him an update, and a pile of money. There are still long-forgotten stashes of comics out there, folks. I spent my off days trying to find them.
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