Gatsby77

To be clear, I've personally never specified a timeline, and I've used IM 55 as my baseline (i.e., 9.8s doubled in the three years since we first saw Thanos on screen). However, I would wager good money that the 9.8 census doubles to 270-300 in the next 4 years (i.e., July 1, 2019) -- sooner if we actually get a cast confirmed by year's end or a teaser trailer by Dec. 2016. (And I recall the Bret Ratner movie hype, etc.) I simply disagree with the argument that a confirmed movie announcement wouldn't result in a "flood" of new 9.8s or the implication that the vast majority of eventual CGC 9.8s have already been slabbed. That's ridiculous. The steady growth in 9.8s despite the book having lost 80% of its value since 2008 demonstrates this isn't a GI Joe 21 situation, let alone a Wolverine 35 one.

I'm digging this Solar # 3 homage:

To assume that anyone and everyone with potential 9.8s rushed to slab them 7 years ago when the first few went to $2,500 is misguided. Many many folks just weren't thinking about the pre-Unity Valiant books they had left over from the downturn. And many folks just aren't plugged into CGC. There is zero evidence to back up the assertion that effectively anyone who had 9.8 potentials would have slabbed them in 2008-2009. If that were true, the number of 9.8s would not have tripled since Jan. 2010 (which it has).

Wait...so Del Toro overcommitted and told the world about a project that may never materialize with him at the helm? I'm SHOCKED. SHOCKED I tell you!!!

Yeah. X-Men 244 was one of the first comics I ever bought back in 1989 or 90.. It came in a pre-pack of leftovers at Woolworths, along with Hulk 344 and Air Raiders # 4. Always thought X-Men 248 was the more deserving book. And today, I'd pick X-Men 256 over either of them for speculation potential.

You're not wrong. They're vastly different. IM 55 is far older, more expensive, more key, and orders of magnitude harder to find in 9.8 (in both absolute [48 vs. 135] and relative [3.3% of submissions vs. 18.3% of submissions] than Harbinger 1. It sold for $1,800 at its nadir, so there was every incentive to slab it prior to the Avengers film. And yet the 9.8 population's still doubled in 35 months. Put another way -- Harbinger 1's print run was low for the time, but it would have made the top 30 of last month's Diamond list. Even assuming that half of its print run has been literally destroyed in the last 25 years, that still leaves tens of thousands (say...20,000) raw copies out there. To believe that the 9.8 population won't double to 270 in say...the next 4-5 years, is to bet that fewer than 0.7% of the remaining copies would hit CGC 9.8 if submitted. Yet the census shows that 18.3% of submitted copies that are submitted do. (Granted, not a direct comparison because of high self-selection bias, but still). So let's say out of 20,000 copies only 5% are submission-worthy. That's 1,000 copies. Then 18% hit 9.8 & boom -- your census has doubled. Proof this isn't an ASM 301 situation? 2 new 9.8 Harbinger 1s have appeared in the last 30 days alone, 50% of those submitted. And that's before the movie announcement. You're right -- it's beyond reasonable to compare IM 55 to Harbinger 1. The latter is far more common, common in high grade & has been a collected, cared-for key since year one.

Nah -- because then you're back at the "what % of AF 15s are still raw" conversation going on over in the Silver Age thread. With a small minority believing there's no way anyone would keep an AF 15 raw, so 90%+ of the copies must be already slabbed. Aside from the explosion in census #s in 9.8 Harbinger 1s since 2008, the % of slabbed copies hitting 9.8 rose as well. It used to be considered "rare in 9.8" because of a bindery production flaw -- back when less than 6% of submitted copies hit 9.8. Now that % hit rate has tripled. That matters. A lot.

Granted. I'll retract that. Might never have been $.25 bin fodder. But arguably, neither was Harbinger 1. I've pulled Magnus 1 and Magnus 12 from $1 bins post-1994, but never seen a Harbinger 1 for less than $5. In each case, the survivability of high grade copies should be much higher than say...Astonishing Tales 25 in 9.8, which had very few collectors taking care of it prior to 1990. And yet, Stalin cosmic story and all, only 1 in 30 of Iron Man 55s submitted have hit 9.8, vs. 1 in 6 Harbinger 1s. Sure...that's not a fair & direct comparison because folks aren't rushing to sub 6.0 or 7.0 copies of Harbinger 1 the way they might IM 55. But it remains a very tough book to find in 9.8 -- with GPA recording it hasn't sold publicly for less than $1,500 in the last decade. And the 9.8 population has still doubled in the three years since the movie announcement.

The census will not double on this book any time soon. It has taken 7 years to get from 12 to 135. Harbinger #1 selling for $2500 was a watershed. Everyone and their grandmother slabbed whatever copies they could find. In that same time period, starting in Jan of 2008, Batman Adventures went from 1 9.8 to 280 9.8s. New Mutants #98 went from 128 to 1597 9.8s. There will be no "census doubling", just like with ASM #301 (which, since the discussion last August has added NINE 9.8s to the census, despite selling for $1000 several times.) Some people may believe that there are endless copies of every single 1980-up book out there in raw 9.8, just waiting for attention to be paid to it so it will go in that slab. That isn't the case. Will there be a few here, a few there? Sure. But will there be a large jump in the census? Of course not. The book hasn't sold for less than $300 in 9.8 since 2002; it is a easy money. So where was the flood...? You're looking at it. 135 copies. That's the flood. The book had a relatively low print run, a good chunk were manufactured with spine splits and bindery tears, and another good chunk had the coupons cut out. If...and granted, this is a colossal if...but if Harbinger were to ever gain any sort of mainstream, widespread buzz....the book will have no problem being a $2,000 book again. And this time, there will be no flood to mitigate prices.... Rebuttal: Iron Man 55. Like Harbinger 1, it's been worth money for the last 25 years. Haven't looked it up, but I'd wager that it too hasn't "sold for less $300" in 9.8 since 2002. I'd also argue that it languished in quarter bins for a good 12 years from 1973-1989 before the Infinity Gauntlet made it a super key in 1991. Census shows there are now 48 copies in 9.8, precisely double the 24 copies in 9.8 that showed up on the census on Apr. 9, 2012, immediately prior to the release of The Avengers movie and the revelation that Thanos would be hitting the screen in a big way. So the 9.8 census for the book has doubled in almost 3 years to the day following the movie announcement. Further, only 3.3% of all Iron Man 55s submitted hit 9.8, vs. 18.3% of all Harbinger 1s submitted.

Interesting, Greg. I haven't thought of specific CGC books in terms of market cap in those terms. That said, I've long thought that in order to truly manipulate the market for a comic book, you only needed 0.1% of its print run. (i.e., for TMNT # 1, only 3 copies; for Spidey 1 Platinum, 10 copies, etc.) For CGC books, it's a bigger percentage but probably smaller number -- (i.e., for Punisher Ltd. # 1 9.8, you'd probably need 1% or 8 copies of the 806 total) Why? Because only a small % of extant copies will be available for sale at any given time. So if only 5% of the copies of Punisher Ltd. # 1 9.8 (i.e., 41 copies) are for sale in a given month and you own 1% of the total run (8 copies) you could drive the price down by flooding the market. Or drive the price up by withholding because your copies are definitionally off the market. You've got asymmetric information because you know you own them & they're not on the market. Other players might pass on the 41 copies for sale in January figuring they'd get another shot in February, since there's a total population of 806. But you know there's really only 798 possible, as you hold the other 8. All of this is to say...how many copies of Unity 0 Red do you own? And how many Magnus 5s?

True. But if you were around and actively chasing Valiants back in 2003-2008, you knew how near-impossible the book was to find in true 9.8. Collectors took notice of the nosebleed prices & now we have 10x+ more on the census, hence the value dropping by nearly 90% in the interim. Now 9.8s are going for 25% of their peak even with 10x copies, with room to grow.

Or...the number of 9.8s on the census will double, through a combination of new submissions and pressing, now that the book is worth nearly 3x what it was 3 weeks ago and a whole new generation of collectors who haven't even thought about Valiant in 20 years now decide to submit the books they haven't looked at since 1995. Causing prices (and potentially, your "market cap") to fall after they've been absorbed into the market and people have moved on to the newer TV/movie rumor flavors of the month (believe today's was Hawkgirl).

Not to pick nits, but there were really only two covers to Spiderman #1. The Platinum wasn't intended for (and couldn't be purchased directly by) fans, it was a thank you for the retailers, and came after the fact. And the gold is also an after-the-fact printing. Sure, ok, there were the bagged versions...but the variations between those are minor. You have silver..and "green"...and that's about it. I'd love to see your article rebuttal. I count Spidey 1 as important for both the 4 covers (bagged vs. unbagged--or at least the Silver bagged) & the Platinum retailer incentive. Sure, DC did it with the Man of Steel raffle edition, but Platinum Spider-Man started a trend. LOTDK 1 was the first modern to break 1 million copies & had 4 covers, but Spider-man 1 really kick-started not only the variant cover phase but also the retailer incentive deal with the Platinum. The variant cover madness went far beyond LOTDK and probably peaked with Gen13 1. How many of those were there ultimately? 15? Don't disagree with you re. Byrne or Kirby in terms of popularity -- but neither came close to selling 1 million copies, let alone 3 million.

Wow -- that top 10 books of the 90s list is bunk. And I'm a huge Valiant fan, but thought Harbinger was the least innovative Valiant title -- it was a grittier take on the X-Men, but nothing Byrne hadn't done earlier in Next Men. X-O, Archer & Armstrong, Shadowman & even HARD Corps were more original. Arguably more important are: Spider-Man 1 (1st major artist-given-free-reign, variant bonanza & multi-million print of the modern era) and even: Youngblood 1 (1st Image book -- don't hate, but it started the hype of a far more influential company than Valiant. It also was also the highest print-run *independent* book to that point (to be quickly supplanted by Spawn 1 and WildCATS 1, respectively). Liefeld may suck and Youngblood might suck worse, but it was the first Image book & deserves respect for starting a company that's lasted nearly 25 years so far & given us Spawn, Walking Dead and more. Sandman 19 (deserved the awards it won) Maus (ditto)

Why? Your % return's likely higher on the normal one. As in, A+A 0 could go from $3-$4 to $30 or $40. While the A+A 0 gold could go from $30-$35 to $200. Again, I'd rather have a longbox of the regular version than 10-20 of the gold.

Add Solar 3 to the list above; it's a lot harder to find than Shadowman 8. And I still maintain that X-O 4's not even in the league of the other's listed. Yes -- it was a 1-page cameo but primarily a Wizard-hyped book. I'd take Shadowman 1 over it any day. And I did -- last December I had 3 copies of X-O # 4 to 26 copies of Shadowman 1. And X-O's my favorite Valiant character.

Haven't checked prices this week but I'd wager it'd be: 1) Harbinger 1 2) Solar 3 3) Solar 10 4) X-O 1 5) Eternal Warrior 4 **I know that the print run on EW 4 is higher than the rest, but if I were selling at a convention, I think I'd make more money selling 10 copies of EW 4 than 3 copies of Solar 10.

While Rai's my favorite Valiant character, I'd go for Harbinger. It was the most-expensive pre-Unity title back in the day because it was the 1st original Valiant title and a tad harder to find because of the coupon promotion. Rai books are great but suffer from a lack of 1st appearances. Also, the traditionally expensive books (Rai 3-4) were so only because of "low print runs" & relative rarity, but their 38k print runs would put them in the top 50 monthly titles today. And Rai 0, the break-out movie rumor key of the run so far, had a print run of well over 100K and was hoarded as a key from day 1. It's the opposite of rare, particularly by today's standards. For comparison, the # 1 Valiant book on the stands last month (Divinity # 1) sold barely over 12,000 copies, clocking at # 172 on Diamond's list. Last month's issue of Rai couldn't even hit 7,500.

Love that HARD Corps 5 cover! Here's my only Bloodshot cover so far, by Mike Zeck!

Another reason EW 4 trumps # 5 and Rai 0 as the "1st Bloodshot" -- it was the one most-hyped by Wizard. Perfect case of the early collectors' market being indoctrinated to think of EW 4 as the primary key, and it was arguably harder to find than Rai 0 because it wasn't ordered / hoarded beforehand, whereas Rai 0 was (just see the old-school American Entertainment ads for proof of this). As said a few pages back, Rai 0 became an important book not for the "first full Bloodshot" but because it showed the future history of the whole Valiant universe.

Perfect time to capitalize, particularly as she may be as mis-used and/or cameo-fied as were Bishop and Kitty Pryde in the last film. Kitty Pryde was arguably important to the plot, but that was what? 5 minutes of screen time? See also, Angel in X-3 (more like 3 minutes of screen time)

While I really liked the story in X-Men 244 itself, she grated on me after about a dozen issues. Like a low-rent, proto-hipster Asian Kitty Pryde. Always preferred Kitty Pryde's relationship to Wolverine, and Dazzler's character and powers, to those of Jubilee's. Also, hasn't she already been in at least two (if not three) of the films? Or is this a Kitty Pryde situation, where we're supposed to ignore the cameos in X-Men & X2 because she actually figured in two full scenes in X-3 & Days of Future Past? I'd take X-Factor 6 or 24 over another dozen copies of 244 any day.

The reason I hoard Magnus 0 (&, to a great extent, built that CGC silver age Gold Key set)? The very first Previews I ever saw highlighted Magnus # 1 as a "Gem of the Month" and explained the Magnus 0 (w/ BWS art) coupon giveaway. While I ultimately passed on the stack of Magnus 1s at my LCS when they were released (even with a sticky noting it was the employees' favorite book released that month) because it was too "sci-fi" rather than "superhero" for my taste, I jumped aboard with Magnus 12 off the shelf. But as to why I hoard Magnus 0? My LCS had a copy (with card) in their Showcase with a $90 price tag, right next to Platinum Spider-Man 1, ASM 129, AF 15 and (yes) Detective 27. For a time it was seen as that exclusive. Harbinger 0 pink never had that hype because it was so delayed that by the time it was released it never really matched Harbinger 1 in price (say, $60-$75 for Harbinger 0, vs. $125 for Harbinger 1). Also, Harbinger 0 was readily available via the blue version w/ the trade paperback. Magnus was the cornerstone of the VH1 ('91-96), just as Solar was the cornerstone of VH2 (Acclaim) and (arguably) X-O is the cornerstone of VEI today.

My bet's on EW 4 (raw & slabbed) over Rai 0. Rai 0 was a key (& hoarded as such) from day 1, whereas EW 4 wasn't hyped beforehand and likely had orders drop off from EW 1-2.