Gatsby77

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.

Hah! Pretty sure I paid $8 for my 1st Bloodshot 1 -- the same price I paid for my 1st X-O 1 & Magnus 1 earlier on. I remember right before the bubble burst someone sold three longboxes of Valiants to my LCS. While they weren't yet priced, they allowed me to look through them. Full pre-unity run (minus Solar 10 -- the lone copy in there was the 2nd print), with _heavy_ dupes on the # 1s & other early issues, like 10-12 each of Harbinger 1-6, 20+ X-O 1, etc. And the collector was good. Very few unity or post-Unity commons, but heavy dupes on Shadowman 8, EW 4-5, etc. Notably, the set basically ended at Nov. '92, with Bloodshot 1. A solid 100+ copies (1/2 a longbox or so). It was still a $12 book at the time, but I took it as a good sign to get out.

Yeah - I don't really blame folks who pre-ordered cases of Turok 1. It followed the exact same format as Turok 1, but with an arguably hotter artist. Given that Bloodshot 1 sold out on day of release & was selling (in the Philly region) at least for $12 within a month, Turok 1 seemed like a no-brainer. It was the customers themselves who then opted not to buy all the copies they'd pre-ordered when it didn't have a similar pop (wasn't it 1.7 million vs. Bloodshot 1's 600k or so -- or 1 million _more_ copies?) and a ton of comic stores were left holding the bag.

Quick -- stockpile the other Top 10 books, like New Warriors 1+2, Darkhawk 1, Gen 13 mini # 1! My favorite of Wizard's speculation "spotlight on" column was back when Marvel made the big media splash with Northstar coming out as gay in Alpha Flight 106. Wizard pointed out that DC did it more than a year earlier when the Pied Piper came out to The Flash in Flash vol. 2 # 53 (also a Superman v. Flash race issue). Like a sheep, I went out & got like 7 copies of Flash 53, only to see it do nada. Cool story though (both on the Superman & Pied Piper fronts).

What strikes me about that list is that HARD Corps # 1 -- which had the then-highest print run for a Valiant comics & a great Jim Lee gatefold cover, clocked in right above Spectacular Spider-Man 189, which went to a 2nd printing. Also note Man of Steel 17's paltry showing at # 97 on the list. EDIT: Just noticed that this was my high school collecting heyday. I bought 23 of the top 25 books of the month off the shelf for cover price, 10 of them in multiples. (Damn the Ghost Rider polybags & X-Men X-cutioner's Song polybags in the same month.) Wow...

Exactly -- per GPA, those 10 recorded sales in 2014 averaged out to $337. In 2015, there was a sale in Feb. at $339. It's just disingenuous to say "sales of $300-$400 even before the announcement" when the average over 15 months & 11 recorded sales was consistent at $337. In my mind, $337 is a far cry from $350, let alone $400. Per GPA, the low was $300 and the high was $395 in 2014. Despite an average of $337, "sales of $300-$400 even before the announcement" seems like an accurate statement. If you click on the link within GPA, it gives you that same range for 2014 - $300-$395. I don't think he was disingenuous at all. [/quote Exactly what I was thinking. Maybe disingenuous doesn't mean the same thing to you and I that it does him? Maybe in slang disingenuous means 100% accurate nowadays? Jim I stand by my statement because I've been actively buying Harbinger 1s (raw and slabbed) since December. I know the pre-movie announcement market (raw, as well as CGC 9.2-9.8) extremely well. And the fact was there were at least 5 copies of Harbinger 1 in CGC 9.8 available via well-known dealer &/or auction sites that were sitting unsold for weeks at $325 asking prices a month ago today. Nobody wanted them (December to present) at those prices. _I_ didn't even want them, and was waiting for a true auction that I thought would would finish in the $290-$310 range. So instead I bought raws, a few CGC 9.2s, a 9.4 and (I'm glad) a 9.6. Sure...maybe this was a cyclical downturn, due to post-holiday doldrums as folks typically pay off their Dec. credit card debt, but it's not a "$300-$400" book if _multiple copies_ sat unsold at $325.