Drokkit

Two other early key 200ADs that could have good investment potential for Dreddheads: Prog 5 - first Dredd cover, art by Barrie Mitchell. Fairly easy to get hold of, decent ungraded copies around £25 and up. No free gift. Prog 3 - 2nd Dredd strip inside, cover art by Ramon Sola. This issue presented with a free 'Red Alert Code Wallet' which came as a flat sheet. A fine, ungraded copy with unmade gift sold on eBay for £600 in January. Both images c/o BARNEY, an amazing fan-generated resource for all things 2000AD!

They were just loosely inserted into the comic, not taped or stapled in. Surely one of the most fun free gifts ever, inspired no doubt by the 6 Million Dollar Man. I can't answer as to how the condition of the stickers contributes to an overall grade but you'd imagine it must be factored in. Values of this key are certainly rising, a far-from-perfect ungraded copy with the stickers fetched £1600 on ebay earlier this month.

Again, it's hard to say yet. There are only three graded copies listed so far but plenty of ungraded ones out there, most in VG condition at best. Dredd only appeared as an advert in prog 1 (below) and prices for ungraded copies are lower than prog 2. Prog 1 came with a plastic 'space spinner' which, I understand, can not be encapsulated with the comic like prog 2's biotronic stickers. The spinner came taped to the front of the comic and taking it off to chuck around the garden usually caused damage in the form of ink removal, tape reside or a tear; I can only recall ever seeing one copy for sale that seemed to be unmarked. Sadly, I didn't buy it

I think you're probably right to hold off getting a poorer copy graded if it's without the stickers. I've had my eye on the market for 2000AD (especially prog 2) for 20-odd years and there are an awful lot of them out there in lower grades. Given the recent prices realised on Heritage for graded copies (and ebay too, though ungraded sales predominate) people will be hoping to cash in so I'd expect the numbers on census to rise steeply over the next 12 months. I anticipate that only those with decent (perhaps 6.5+) stickered copies will make a good return though; at least until the mooted TV series comes to fruition or even better Dredd 2! Then there's the 50th anniversary in 2027...

Without stickers would be graded as qualified - it seems the copy below was on eBay last year. I don't know whether it sold. The market hasn't yet settled on prices for 2000AD prog 2. Rough (ungraded) copies have recently gone on eBay for prices in the low hundreds of pounds so it may be worth a punt but its unpredictable. There isn't the past volume of sales of CGC-graded copies to reliably predict future (or even current) values.