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Key Issues and Grails ....... inflated artificial values.
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Started by Mokiguy,

12 posts in this topic

Mokiguy

Mokiguy

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Posted

So this morning I was wondering about comic issue print runs for silver age books. I found that it's a tough search to find accurate answers to print runs, and best I could find was generalities, but consensus seems to say that average print runs for a single silver age DC or Marvel was 200,000 to 500,000 issues. So that got me to thinking about Key issues and Grails. At the time of publishing an issue, there would have been no reason to publish and more or less issues of a single book because it contained Lois Lane being black for that issue, or the first appearance of a character like the Batman's Poison Ivy issue, or the Fantastic Four Black Panther issue, or many others. If the Fantastic Four #51 had a run of say 300,000, then they probably printed 300,000 Fantastic Four #52 as well. But Fantastic Four #52 is worth 10 times as much as Fantastic Four #51 because it has the first appearance of Black Panther.

OK, I'll get to the point here. I have collected Morgan and Peace silver dollars a lot longer than I've been collecting comics, but what I know about Silver Dollars and most coins for that matter, is that rarity is what drives the value of one year or mint mark above another assuming condition is the same. Low mintage coins bring higher values than high mintage runs ....... makes perfect sense to me. But comics seem to be driven purely by speculative demand since print runs are virtually the same for a common or key issue, and that makes no sense.

Well that's what was rattling around in my brain this morning.

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shadroch

shadroch

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A Morgan silver dollar from 1881 is the same as one from 1883. The only difference in them is the mintage. Low mintage usually equals high demand.

A Fantastic Four 51, featuring the first appearance of a major character, is not the same as issue 53.  There is more demand for 51 because of the content. 

It's why many coin collectors go for type sets with one of each type of dollar made, while few comic collectors have a collection of one FF, one Avengers, one Doctor Strange.

Coin collectors care about mintage. Comic collectors not so much. 

By the way- most circulation figures for SA books are readily available on mycomicshop.com. It takes a little digging, but they are there.

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MattTheDuck

MattTheDuck

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I agree - it's hard to compare collectors' desires for different kinds of collectibles.  You also can't equate print run with rarity.  It's probably impossible to know the actual extant copies of any Marvel or DC Silver Age book.  My opinion is that there are fewer every year as collections are destroyed by accident, thrown away, etc.

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the blob

the blob

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On 9/17/2023 at 11:53 AM, Mokiguy said:

So this morning I was wondering about comic issue print runs for silver age books. I found that it's a tough search to find accurate answers to print runs, and best I could find was generalities, but consensus seems to say that average print runs for a single silver age DC or Marvel was 200,000 to 500,000 issues. So that got me to thinking about Key issues and Grails. At the time of publishing an issue, there would have been no reason to publish and more or less issues of a single book because it contained Lois Lane being black for that issue, or the first appearance of a character like the Batman's Poison Ivy issue, or the Fantastic Four Black Panther issue, or many others. If the Fantastic Four #51 had a run of say 300,000, then they probably printed 300,000 Fantastic Four #52 as well. But Fantastic Four #52 is worth 10 times as much as Fantastic Four #51 because it has the first appearance of Black Panther.

OK, I'll get to the point here. I have collected Morgan and Peace silver dollars a lot longer than I've been collecting comics, but what I know about Silver Dollars and most coins for that matter, is that rarity is what drives the value of one year or mint mark above another assuming condition is the same. Low mintage coins bring higher values than high mintage runs ....... makes perfect sense to me. But comics seem to be driven purely by speculative demand since print runs are virtually the same for a common or key issue, and that makes no sense.

Well that's what was rattling around in my brain this morning.

It is supply and demand, not an "inflated artificial value" unless someone is manipulating the prices short term. "Supply and demand" is what drives your Morgan values too. Of course, the print run is not the same as copies in circulation for these older books. DC in particular had many books not sell on the rack. Those were returned, pulped, destroyed or wound up being carted off to some warehouse fraudulently. 

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shadroch

shadroch

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On 9/18/2023 at 3:20 PM, the blob said:

some of them have cool covers...

 

As do coins.  I love spashing around Silver Strikes and the like. There is nothing like bathing in Morgan dollars.

Edited by shadroch
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Cman429

Cman429

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Comparing coins to comics is apples to oranges. Scarcity does factor into comic value to some extent but with comic prices you have so many other factors. They make perfect sense if you factor in emotional and cultural forces on price. Stuff like coins or stamps don’t have that 

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the blob

the blob

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On 9/18/2023 at 7:56 PM, Cman429 said:

Comparing coins to comics is apples to oranges. Scarcity does factor into comic value to some extent but with comic prices you have so many other factors. They make perfect sense if you factor in emotional and cultural forces on price. Stuff like coins or stamps don’t have that 

yup, I sold on these boards one of those gerber "you never see these" books and if I remember correctly the reaction was "where the F did you find that????".. low grade, a whopping $150, bad market then (mortgage crash I think), so maybe $1500+ now, but still, it was a one shot book, aside from rarity, nothing that special. 

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