thecopperagekids

Are you saying that you sold a raw NM 9.4 ASM 362 at a show for $50? If so, you're the effing man.....I usually just put 362 into my $10 boxes at shows, to move them without any hassle. I've got a raw 9.0 in my $10 show stock boxes and put a raw dead 9.8 aside, priced it at $50.Will probably just submit it. I don't have any conventions til march, anyway and trying to get top dollar for raw books on eBay is a waste of time.

Very well said...and cheers for pointing out my errors, which I will admit were due to some fairly...embaressing... intellectual laziness, on my part. AFAIK the release dates of Magnus/Valiant books with X Force 2, I was going by memory and it is fairly immaterial wether they were released a year or 2, before or after one another. I only brought Valiant books into this discussion as a reference point for the late 80's/early 90's comic speculator boom period. I did not know the print run of X Force 2, only that it was ridiculously high, which I alluded to. But ...., I will readily concede to grossly overlooking the Byrne/Legend tie in hotness angle.In all honesty, "overlooking" isn't an aptly fitting term as I had guessed on Legends being a second tier book and not having a signifigant print run. So yeah, there's a solid point in your favor.Quite a solid point but even so, I think the likelihood of Legends 3 copies all of a sudden turning up in droves in graded 9.8 is slim to none.Even if such a box does turn up, good luck on a signifigant amount of them fetching 9.8 grades.And by the unlikely chance that a 100 or so 9.8's get churned out in a week, there will still be more Suicide Squad collectors on the market that want the book in 9.8 than the supply accounts for. Graded copies have been selling for around $300 for months now.That said, it's not a secret that Legends 3 is a book to have graded, if you're looking to sell it and make a quick profit.We would have seen many more 9.8 copies on the census , flooding the market by now, if is a relatively easy book to find in 9.8. I'd wager that copies left somewhere in crates, would not have survived the 27 years or so they have been in storage, without signifigant paper degradation.other than usual corner dents, spine stress, the most prevalent defect that I see with Legends 3 is dirt and coinciding light abrasion to the cover.The light blue background reveals cover dirt just about as much if the background were stark white and to make matters worse, you cannot dry clean such a background without taking off cover inks. All that aside, we are talking about a book which contains the 1st app. of a wildly popular team with the current incarnation brimming with the likes of Harley Quinn and so on. I believe it will be a matter of lower supply vs. higher demand.As I said earlier, a total of 5 copies of this book in CGC/CBCS 9.8 right now on eBay is a whopping 5.Now, am I suggesting that it's sound investment advice for someone to buy up those 5 copies for $1500 and sit on them for a year? No, I am not. I don't think it would be inherently *bad* advice though but that's besides the point.... When those 5 copies are sold at around $300 a shot to individual Suicide Squad collectors, it will be a rinse and repeat cycle. We will have to wait and see....but as far as to making reliable predictions, I have NO intention of sharing "blue chip" comic advice with anyone.A sucker, I am not. What I was doing was using past experiences/examples to show that history almost invariably repeats itself in this field and if insight to current market trends and character popularity is judiciously applied, we can use those past examples as a reliable gauge to forecast future outcomes of certain books. I could go on and defend certain inaccurate facts of mine as sloppiness but , it was the day after Christmas and I I was a bit buzzed on Guinness when I wrote that first post.That still does not detract from the basis of using a supply/demand model, with the rest of the correct facts and insight provided, as more than likely indicating to serve as an accurate assessment of future trading rates. Boo-yah.

There are 5 CGC/CBCS 9.8 copies of Legends 3 on eBay right now....sorry, but that hardly constitutes market oversaturation Furthermore, comparing X-Force 2 with Legends 3 is like apples and oranges. It would be more likely to be justly comparable to a book like X-factor 6, which is roughly on the same level as importance as Legends 3 and it is in the same time period as Legends 3.Look up what X-Factor 6 sells for in 9.8. Extrapolate that sales data, in relation to my thoughts below and then you'll see how I came up with a figure of $500 being the going rate for 9.8 copies of Legends 3, in the near future.Also consider there were more copies of X Factor 6 produced than Legends 3....considerably more I'd wager as this was an X Men book and Marvel trumped all of DC's sales figures in the mid/late 1980's. There are a total of 19 CGC/CBCS 9.8 copies of X factor 6 on eBay as I type this, a while back X factor 6 was selling well at $500-ish in 9.8. X-Force 2 had a print run in the hundreds of thousands and previous to the announcement of the Deadpool movie was readily available in dollar boxes at every comic convention out there.I was at a show last year and a dealer had about 5 tables worth of dollar boxes.One box had over a 100 copies of X Force 2 in it.At the end of the show, they were nearly all still there. Also, consider that X-Force 2 was printed in 1990, when massive print runs for X-Men titles (especially 1st and 2nd issues) were the norm and Leifeld was one of the hottest artists out there so Marvel capitalized on his popularity with all of his comic covers produced en masse.This book was put out during the years of the "comic investment boom", which was a couple years before Valiant came out and the comic market took a big hit due to over speculation on "hot books" like X-Force and Magnus etc.... You can bet there was a ton of collector/"investor" types who bought X-Force 2 and stuck the book right into a damn Mylar sleeve, to boot. Legends 3 however had much smaller numbers and as a second tier title, the print run would not have been all that high in the first place. Legends books had sat in .50 cent boxes for years, getting neglected and so on. Add up all that information I've laid out with what I posted in my first post. Apply the standard supply/demand economics model,as everything I have laid out has a supporting basis in fact, not conjecture.... Equals... .......you have a consistent seller at around the $500 mark in 9.8, within a year. Of course, this is only my theory and opinion but it is all backed on my years spent in this hobby and the understanding of the market as a result of experience.I am not predicting market trends or anything else, head up my -esque. These are my thoughts on a book, based on my understanding of both the past and current market for copper keys and how the demand interwines in relation to future growth spurts....all of which we have seen time and time again. On that point,one thing we can all be sure of is that comics with already pre-existing strong fan bases, only increase exponentially in value when interest is further created with production of a movie.....and comics with established fan bases will always have a steady demand for first appearance books. Of course there will be shifts in the market, which will result in short term price differentials in books like X factor 6 in 9.8 and Legends 3 in 9.8. This happened with X Factor 6, which up intil recently, was selling for $500 in 9.8, now it moves closer to the $300 mark.Legends 3 was selling at upwards of $400 in 9.8 a couple months ago, now it is at around the $250-350 mark in realized sales. Once the hype settles down after the movies are out, prices will level off and slowly increase again as the characters shown in the movies are all characters which are shown in new books, each and every month. I welcome intelligent discussion on the points I have made. I will also respond in kind to anyone who has a valid counterpoint and/or attempts to refute what I've said.

With Legends # 3 being the 1st modern Suicide Squad app. ....and with Suicide Squad being one of the hottest New 52 titles.....and the Suicide Squad movie confirmed for a 2017 release date with an impressive cast....aaaand with the movie being the first time Harley Quinn will be in a film which translates into even more cross over appeal from Quinn fans.....I don't foresee Legends 3 dropping in price, period. I believe that 9.8 copies with white pages will consistently fetch around $500., as the movie gets closer. And given the popularity of the current Suicide Squad books, I think once the movie buzz wears off after 2017 rolls around, Legends 3 will keep its place as a strong Copper Age key. Other books in the series that will pick up nicely are Legends 1 in 9.8 , currently selling at around $80...1st Amanda Waller. Legends 2 has a last page teaser for Suicide Squad.... Legends 4 with the 2nd app of Suicide Squad and the Secret Origins book with the first detailed origin of the modern Suicide Squad ( can't recall the issue # offhand) is also a book which I believe will be a solid seller in 9.8.

Apologies in advance for getting slightly off topic but my thoughts do all tie in together with the topic at hand.That said.... I think one could do just as well, if not better, with copper age keys as I believe there is more growth for copper keys than bronze keys. Not that there are not some very good bronze age investment quality type books, out there.I just think that copper keys will be considerably stronger in 5 years then they are now as copper is still maturing as part of our hobby and in 5 years time, a lot of copper keys will have matured considerably, IMHO. We saw the same thing happen with bronze age keys in the late 90's.They kicked into high gear as collectors who came of age in the 1970's , started searching for the books they associated with their childhood so the perception of value greatly increased.Which in turn led to realized sale prices and after the speculators pulled out, the bronze keys remained strong. Copper keys have already rises signifigantly but I believe they will do so considerably more, as time has shown us with the market emerging strongly in the past for bronze keys.. I'm a child of the 80's myself and while I do collect some bronze books, I am not nearly as well schooled as other collectors who have more of an affinity for bronze books. A fine example of certain bronze books which look like solid investment books are highlighted in this article by BronzeBruce13 : http://comics.gpanalysis.com/gpaforcomics_newsfocus.asp?article=article000003

This pick isn't heating up quite yet but I think it will.... Figuring that a Preacher # 1 Preview in 9.8 is good for $800+ with Preacher #1 in 9.8 slightly under that figure and with the recent confirmation that Preacher is definitely confirmed with AMC...I think Direct Currents # 85 has some good potential as the underlooked Preacher preview, as it predates all other Preacher books. Raw copies sell for around $30 now. I bought a copy off eBay a couple days ago for $15, the pictures look like a VF+ but for some reason the seller called it a "GD 2.0", which by judging the pictures, was a mistake. I have another copy that has 9.8 potential, which I have already submitted

I did not know about the release dates, as you explained, , thanks for the low down. ...however, that said, I think an arguement can be justly made for AF 17 being the 1st app of Big Hero 6. The cover of AF # 17 , as you likely know, has a caption, boldly stating "Introducing Big Hero 6".... I have not read AF # 17 nor have I read Sunfire & Big Hero 6 # 1 or # 2 but it sounds like, story continuity wise, their first story was told in AF 17, then the events in Sunfire and Big Hero 6 # 1, and 2 directly followed the events in AF 17. Have you read the books? It sounds like the only reason AF 17 would not be considered their 1st app is because there was a delay in the publishing date. Story continuity is the definitive word though, I believe...and not an error made in publishing dates so I am inclined to rationally think that AF 17 is their true first app.

In relation to Amazing Spidey 252, I believe Spectacular Spiderman 90 is an undervalued book.Same goes for Marvel Team Up 141, comparatively speaking. ASAIK, they all tie for the 1st app. of the symbiote costume but Amazing is a core Spidey title so it garners more attention than SSM 90 and MTU 141. As the next Spidey movie approaches, I think the latter two will increase in dollar value more than ASM 252 will pick up as they can still be had considerably cheaper than ASM 252. Secondly..... Alpha Flight #17 is the 1st full app. of Big Hero 6 and Alpha Flight #16 is a cameo app, not a full app. Considering the success of the movie at the box office, I strongly believe that Disney will put out a sequel and when the sequel is announced , look for these 2 books in 9.6 and 9.8 to only get stronger. All that said, and with all due respect, I am not sure what your point is.