Undervalued vs Overvalued? 1 1

[rlextherobot]

In a recent convo with a friend I was noting that certain Silver Age Marvel titles, specifically Daredevil, Iron Man, and Avengers, were relatively easy to collect in mid to high grade compared to other books from the same time frame. Obviously the popularity of Amazing Spider-Man and X-Men makes the demand higher for even filler issues, and thus pricing much higher, but I do wonder if in fact non-key "filler" issues of some of those titles are undervalued given the cultural juggernaut that Marvel has become? I know there have been plenty of cases where nobody cared about a title for years and suddenly the back issues went from the $1 bins to Heritage in high grade, but is the market for mid-high second tier books perpetually static or do you think we'll see growth? Or is it simply that Spidey and X-Men demand inflates their value and the price of Iron Man and DD back issues in lower than highest grades are right where they should be? 

Caveat here: I am primarily a collector and reader, and not an investor, so a lot of my observations come from watching pricing in what I like to call the "good enough for me" segment of the market. 

Edited January 29 by rlextherobot

[wardevil0]

I think most of those values are where they should be, but consider those values as relative to the respective keys from the run, so assume slow growth.

[Stefan_W]

In terms of over- versus under-valued most comics are worth very little. As you point out, the market is heavily influenced now by movies (although less now today than a couple of years ago), and certain key issues have always had excellent value. I remember X-Men 94 being a wall book at the local comic shop only a couple of years after it came out. 

In terms of movement, run filler books say from the Silver Age will typically hold value or do a gradual rise. Movie books are highly volatile and as people spec hard on them in order to do a pump and dump before they crash and burn. More established key books will typically rise faster than run fillers but it still takes a while. 

Regarding ASM and X-Men, early keys especially in ASM typically do very well in the market because there are so many collectors. If you focus on a title like Sub-Mariner, for example, you can fill it out for the cost of a mid grade ASM 1. Popularity mixed with the amount of copies available determine the value at the end of the day.