kimik

It is simple - as AF #15 gets out of reach for most collectors they bid up prices on ASM #1 as a back up. For the cost of a 0.5 AF #15 you can have a 4.0 ASM #1, which has much better eye appeal.

Put it up on eBay with a high BIN ($5K or $6K) and see what offers come in.

Must be Greggy. I have heard a lot of things about him.........

How is Ant-Man 2 doing after the main events of earlier this year? It is tanking even with an extended summer release with no other superhero film competition that benefited GotG and Suicide Squad. There is no guarantee that a Surfer film would fare any better as a B lister. After Black Panther, DP 2 and Infinity War, I think that most comic movie goers were tapped out and it is showing. Mind you, I thought the first Ant-Man film was bad and that Rudd is a weak leading actor (but a decent supporting one) so the box office result is not a surprise. We will likely be seeing a market oversaturation soon on comic movies, but until they hit the point where they are generating negative returns they will keep being pumped out. Even if it does not crack $500M WW, Ant-Man is still likely in the black which is all that matters. I would prefer that the studios keep the B and C listers as supporting characters in broader ensemble films/guests in the A list character feature flicks. That way they are still used on the big screen, but the oversaturation point can be delayed or eliminated.

I can remember a time when you were saying that GL was going to be a huge movie.......... A Surfer movie may or may not beat the grosses of those films. By the time it came out there will be so much oversaturation of the market that $600M will be tough to reach. FWIW, how is Ant-Man and the Wasp doing this year?

IH 181 is plentiful in grade and kept going up, along with how many other keys that are easy to find. What hurt FF #48 is outside of the specualtive runup we are finally seeing now, there was low to middling demand for it. As we have seen with countless other books, demand drives prices more than lower supply. Silver Surfer is maybe a 2nd tier character if you want to go with a broad definition, but that is it.

This is definitely the direction the hobby has been trending the past decade. Trades/ominibi? are the way of the future before comics go totally digital. You would be surprised at how many of these collectors are also dropping $5K+ on SA and even GA keys.

If you are on the pacific NW, then come up to the Calgary Expo or Edmonton Expo. There are plenty of dealers from across Canada at the show with a great selection of GA/SA/BA books, as well as more modern stuff. The Calgary Expo is the bigger of the two, and it is now attracting US dealers who just take a booth to be able to buy at it which means the grading/pricing/selection must make it worthwhile. There are a ton of nice GA and SA/BA collections tucked away in Alberta that are slowly starting to surface again as well, so the next few years should be interesting from a buying perspective.

There is only a 5 or 6 year difference in the average age of Alberta and BC so that is not really the issue. I think differences in levels of disposable income play a bigger factor than age since real estate in BC is overpriced/overvalued while it is still relatively low in Alberta, and the median after-tax income is about $20K higher in Alberta than it is in BC (and this holds true for Calgary/Edmonton vs. Vancouver/Victoria on a city basis). That trend has been in place since 2000 or so, but we did not see the big upswing in young collectors here until 1) the success of the New 52 relaunch (2011) and recent Image new release peak in 2012 and 2) comic movies becoming the big draws at the box office over the past decade. The DC New 52 relaunch brought a ton of new female readers into the hobby, and as Dave/thehumantorch will now concede, they are a big factor in the marketplace now (especially for Artgerm variant covers over the past year).

Interesting comments re: the pre-show skim and how things work at shows. I have been doing shows locally since 1997 as a small part-time dealer (primarily to blow out stuff I did not want from collections) when I was in university, and here are some observations: 1) While there will sometimes be new small sellers at shows that have stuff underpriced, for the most part I find it that they will be overgrading and overpricing rather than the opposite. If they have something that I or other dealers want they may negotiate a bit, but more often than not deals do not materialize due to the overgrading/overpricing issue. After a couple of shows with no or low sales they either correct their grading/pricing or stop coming out. 2) Most pre-show sales between dealers are at prices close to market. My simple rule is this - other dealers will not get the best price from me. That is reserved for my long term regular customers and a small circle of collector friends. I may have something underpriced once in a while in my back issue longs that I miss (but at that price I am still making $$$ so I am fine), but other dealers are typically chasing wall books. They either pay full market or the small discount I may give to other buyers, but that is it. Most dealers have no qualms in paying those prices since they either i) mark things up well above current market value anyway (I can't believe the prices they get in Eastern Canada for books), ii) know they have a sale right away to a regular customer and are fine making 5 - 10% to keep them happy, or iii) they want to add more copies of a key issue that is still running up. 3) As I have stated before in other threads, the hobby is trending to younger collectors now and has been since 2010 or 2011. I can remember doing shows in the 00s when baby boomers and older collectors made up the crowd and I was worried about the hobby. Now, there are a ton of new male and female collectors in the 16-30 age group that are buying back issues. The difference is they are predominantly key/1st appearance/hot cover issue collectors only. For run books, they either buy the omnibus or read the filler issues digitally. It is the Gen Xers and older collectors that still chase runs. These new collectors also are fully aware of what current GPA or online prices are for books and have no qualms paying full market for them. 4) The hot modern variant collectors are a much stronger subset of collectors than I anticipated. I thought that this group would have died down a long time ago, and I was wrong. If anything, I see more people chasing Campbell, Dell Otto, Hughes, Artgerm, etc. covers year over year.

"In a rational world FF 48 & 49 should be worth much more than Hulk 180 & 181 but the comic market is not always so rational right?" Going to have to disagree with that. Wolverine>Silver Surfer Surfer in pretty much every category. Popularity, marketability, brand, etc. It's a supply/demand issue no doubt. I'm not saying that the current IH181 explosion is rational, it isn't, but what about comics is? Look at Fawcett comics, absolutely exploding due to the upcoming Shazam movie. 10 years ago? +1 Silver Surfer is a 3rd tier character. There is a reason FF #48 was a dog value wise for so long, even with the Surfer appearing in the second Fox FF film..........

It depends on the market. At the local shows in Alberta keys and $100+ books sell steadily, while dollar bins are slowing due to oversaturation. Everyone has dollar bins at shows, filled with similar books. They may pay for the table at the cheaper shows, but the keys/better books are where the money is made. At the small one day shows the past couple of years, 70 - 80% of my sales have come from wall and $20+ bin books. $1/$3/$5 books are slower due to everyone else having them. At the 3 and 4 day shows, I would say 80 - 90% of sales are wall and $20+ box books, if not higher. The key is buying the big books properly. There are certain times of the year that it is better to buy than others. That being said, if you can continuously turn over $1000 books for a 10% profit weekend after weekend, it adds up fast.

But......will Beckett result in tighter/better grading? If not, then it does not really matter.

You have it wrong - the people that need to change their view on the significance of the previews are the pump and dump types that try to hype them up all the time. The market has decided which appearance it considers more significant/valuable, and it is not the preview in this case.

Sell it now and turn it into as many Hulk 181s as you can.........

I hope they do it soon. I just dumped a nice run of Bomba in my 50% off boxes for the fall shows. Maybe someone would buy it now.........before it goes into the $2 bins.

Is that because Holland is still 12 and would not be able to watch it if it were rated and higher?

Until I see something more interesting, I doubt I will be seeing it in the theatres. Levi reminds me too much of Rudd as Ant-Man which means bad. Besides, the only time Shazam/Captain Marvel has been a decent character since the GA was in Kingdom Come.

The Whitman pre-pack only and cover price variants at the end of the runs have value and demand. The other issues, no real demand despite what the guide says the value is. Ask if they have 9.8 70s Archies instead. I tend to see Ducks and Archies together.

Great books as usual, Andy.

Sorry, I deleted part of my post by mistake. I paraphrased it back in. He is keeping the HG copies but selling the low grade and incomplete (no MVS) copies now to buy other books. There are a ton of HG copies out there, but those will be the ones that collectors hold onto until the bitter end. They will dump their undercopies first.

It would be better to describe it as a dwindling number of collectors who are interested in selling and/or slabbing their raw copies that are neatly tucked away in mylars. There are a ton of raw copies still out there. As long as prices keep running up, there is less incentive for the owners to part with them. For example, I was talking with a collector friend that buys books from me at the LCS today. He is starting to part with the dozen raw copies he accumulated over the years to buy other books, selling the ones missing the MVS or that are low grade. He is keeping the HG copies to capture future price gains. He said the first two or three copies cost $5 apiece (still in the old bags) and the last purchase of his highest graded copy was a whopping $75.

Wow. It only took Andy four months to post pics from his iPhone to the boards this year.

He has been churning out some nice covers for DC recently, but this Catwoman #3 is the best so far.